Epictetus - Discourses on Wargaming: gay porn

Showing posts with label gay porn. Show all posts

Showing posts with label gay porn. Show all posts

Wednesday, 23 September 2020

Bloody Barons II

I like to keep an occasional eye on the most common search terms that have brought people to the blog. Sadly 'gay porn' has disappeared from the list, but thankfully 'beardy Branson is a twat' is hanging in there. Recently, the term 'Bloody Barons II' has appeared. Upon investigation I discovered that I had somehow overlooked the fact that Peter Pig had updated the rules first issued in 2005 and of which I own a copy. Even more investigation revealed that they are in fact a completely new set of rules, but have been given the same name.

My initial reaction was that it was some sort of con; in my defence I'm a bit of a cynic and that is my reaction to most things. However, logic says that it's the opposite that would be a con: the same set of rules with a new name. I don't know why I mention it. In any event I bought a copy.

As a slight digression, I am in the market for a fitness tracker or smartwatch and have been watching a number of YouTube reviews of various options. These influencer chaps - none of whom seem to be at all physically fit despite their interest in health tracking apps - have hit upon a useful trick for stretching out content. They do an 'unboxing' post followed, if one is lucky, by a full review in due course. That doesn't seem a million miles from what I have done (i.e. started to do) with 'Infamy, Infamy', and so this is an unboxing of 'Bloody Barons II':

They are genuinely a completely different set of rules with, as far as I can see, no mechanisms in common.
They are recognisably a Peter Pig/Rules for the Common Man ruleset:

Four base units with casualties removed in half bases
a pre-battle sequence, this one much simplified compared to others
random game length
Very useful playsheets; completely impenetrable main rulebook that seems deliberately written to confuse

They are gridded with some obvious similarities to 'Square Bashing' e.g. in the morale phase
There a couple of what look like innovative rules - albeit that for all I know they appear elsewhere in the RFCM canon - such as a phase where movement is by square followed by one where movement is, well, by square, but in a different way. Cavalry also seem to spend all their time off-table until they charge on to the field, melee and then retreat off-table again.
Includes scenarios for all the battles from the WotR.

One of the things that I didn't like about the original rules was the way that they dealt with mixed bow and bill units, which was far too fiddly for me. These new rules seem to just assume that all units are mixed and abstract it from there, which is rather more to my taste. So, I shall add them to the pile of rules to try, and you can add them to the pile of rules awaiting a full review. Don't hold your breath.

Tuesday, 1 May 2018

Pot77pouri

Happy May Day comrades. Another month has passed I see, with absolutely zippo achieved wargaming wise. There haven't even been many games played; the last action was my ultimately futile dash across the bridge for the village in the game specially designed to show off James' new pontoon train. And that, dear readers, is why I've had to pad out the blog with all sorts of other irrelevant stuff, as I shall now proceed to do again.

I have been to a number of things which have not yet made there way into these pages. Musically, many of the acts I had both seen and written about before (e.g. Feast of Fiddles, the Jar Family, the Ale Marys) but Eric Bibb was new to me. He was rather good as befits a multi award winning artiste, although my abiding memory is actually of his drummer who was simply excellent. I wasn't entirely surprised to find that he had played in Nina Simone's band for many years.

In terms of theatre I think I mentioned in passing a trip to see 'Journey's End', a fine play very well performed. As a commentary on both the reality and the futility of the Great War it is head and shoulders above the lame 'Birdsong' which I saw a few weeks ago; but of course R.C. Sherriff was actually there. I also saw 'If I Say Jump', an amusing and entertaining though completely unbelievable piece about a vicar and a handgun. Speaking of the theatre I continue to research Salomé in the hope of understanding why I don't appear to like it. One fact that I gleaned from the opera programme is that the original German premiere of Wilde's play was as a double bill with 'The Importance of Being Earnest'; a juxtaposition which even allowing for the renowned cultural difference in sense of humour seems a tad odd.

Now to really scrape the barrel, I'm going to blog about the blog itself. The lack of walking reports has been commented on, the implication apparently being that I am a fair weather walker who is hiding from the cold and rain. That is in a very real sense a fair cop, but, as it happens, on top of that I have a problem with one of my toes; the big one on the right foot to be precise. Although minor in itself it is precluding me from walking long distances. Sadly, there will be a hiatus in the popular photographic series 'bridges of the Yorkshire dales'; apologies for that.

When James passed a million hits on his blog he said that his biggest audiences came from the UK and the US almost equally. This prompted me to look at mine and I find that apparently more than half of all the hits (which I can confirm still fall significantly short of a million) have come from France. Bonjour mes amis et bienvenus. While I was at it I also checked on the search terms used to find the blog. 'Gay porn' has sadly disappeared from the top ten, but a notable newcomer is 'fascinating stuff'; having read this far down it will be no surprise at all to you that Google sent them straight here. The most frequent search term directed to the blog is 'Epictetus', and one can only assume that there are an awful lot of disappointed and bemused seekers after enlightenment out there.

Thursday, 1 February 2018

Pot74pouri

Has anyone else received an email from Google purporting to explain how effectively or otherwise one's blog is dealt with by their search engine? I didn't really understand it and, let's be honest, I don't care anyway, but one thing did rather leap out from their analysis. Virtually everyone who gets Discourses on Wargaming's url displayed in their search results is actually looking for gay porn. Your bloggist has lost 8 kg in weight over the last year and is looking pretty buff, even if he says so himself; so on balance, well done Google. However, further investigation also points to a single post from almost five years ago about an opera I went to see, Handel's misleadingly titled 'Joshua' (It's really about Othniel - yes, that Othniel), as the source of the traffic. So, today's post should start it all off again; perhaps I should get get some advertising on the site to monetise the upcoming surge in visitors.

Anyway, while I'm here let me bring you up to date on events in January that I have neglected to mention so far:

Opera: I saw Opera North's revival of 'Madama Butterfly' which was as good as I remembered. Anne Sophie Duprels was wonderful in the title role and appropriately enough kept her clothes on this time. I also saw the Royal Opera House live transmission of 'Rigoletto' which proved once again that closeups can sometimes not work to the advantage of sopranos playing much younger parts. Just to avoid charges of sexism, Michael Fabiano may also have been favoured by watching from further away. He was physically a very unconvincing starving poet in last year's 'La Boheme' and here he appeared to be wearing a costume two sizes too small. I have a good mind to email him with my own proven tips for losing weight (1).

Theatre: Speaking of broadcasts I also caught up with an encore of 'Young Marx' from the new Bridge Theatre in London. I nearly didn't bother because it had mixed reviews, but I enjoyed it and can report that it made me laugh. As did Alan Ayckbourn's 'Role Play' which easily delivered its quota of laugh out loud moments and featured some fairly authentic sounding East London accents. Less convincing was 'You're Only Young Twice' which, whilst well performed and mildly amusing in places, seemed to have very little connection to real life or real people.

Gigs: I've written about a couple of these already. The other one that I will mention is Henry Parker, a very good localish (Bingley I think) guitarist in the Davey Graham fingerstyle mode. I'd seen him before and on this occasion was able to buy a live album of a performance at which I was present in the audience; the third such that I own.

I didn't get to ride on the cherry picker and the roof still leaks, albeit not as badly as before.

(1) Diet and exercise; controversial I know, but there it is.

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

See The Conquering Hero Comes

And so to the theatre. I attended the opening night of Opera North's new production of Handel's oratorio Joshua. Unusually this is costumed and staged; the ban on the appearance of biblical figures on the stage in Britain having apparently been removed about a hundred years ago. I wasn't familiar with the work before although there is one well-known and rousing chorus. As today's little known fact I can exclusively reveal that the original conquering hero about whom the chorus 'songs of triumph sing' is neither Judas Maccabeus - in whose oratorio it reappeared later - nor Joshua. It is in fact Othniel. Yes, that Othniel.

I'm in the mood for smiting

It was an excellent production. The design theme was, at the beginning, second world war displaced Jews morphing through resistance chic into guerrillas/terrorists fighting to found the state of Israel. The highlight of the show was the counter-tenor playing Othniel, who sang beautifully whilst whenever possible taking his shirt off to show off his torso. In this he was joined by Joshua, who at one point wore a couple of bullet belts slung across a bare chest, looking for all the world as if the Village People had decided to add a Mexican bandido to their line-up. Other design elements seemed to be based on Arthurian legend, the Wizard of Oz and the A-Team, but it all hung together in a remarkably coherent way.

The chorus of Opera North

The chorus paid homage to the work's origins by holding scores at certain points regardless of the staging, but they also spent a fair amount of time singing while brandishing AK-47s at the audience. Other elements that might have not been in Handel's first draft included rather a lot of simulated sex, the previously alluded to gay porn references, and a travelling wardrobe.

Thoroughly recommended.

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)