Category: Whatever

11/4/17

Convention Report – Spiel 2017

What did you miss in Essen this year? A special report for GrogHeads.com ~

Eddy Sterckx and photos by Ann Therie, 4 November 2017

Spiel is a boardgame convention held every year in Essen, Germany. There are 2 things you need to know about it :

  1. It’s big – really big – over a thousand new boardgames got premiered there this year
  2. It’s not a boardgame convention in the US sense of the word : people don’t go there to play games 24/7, they go there to get a demo and buy games – it’s more akin to a very large gamestore with a huge inventory and plenty of staff than anything else.

A tiny subset of the games getting presented there are wargames – or close enough – what follows is an overview of what managed to get my attention.

Phalanx Games

This Polish publisher managed to get the rights for doing the 20th anniversary edition of the famous Hannibal : Rome vs Carthage. It got overwhelming KickStarter support and was supposed to be delivered there, but got a bit delayed – they did have the final production version there though.

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10/28/17

Modern-Day Napoleonic Battles & Travels, Part the Fourth

Wherein our intrepid traveler deigns to report his on-the-ground experiences ~

Jim Owczarski, 28 October 2017

I suppose it is prudent to begin in the middle, at least as far as my trip is concerned, with my one-day drive to Schleiz and Saalfeld.

When I began traveling to Europe a lot of years ago my photographic weapon of choice was an old warhorse of a Konica 35mm SLR.  Built to last and weighing nearly enough to deny it modern carry-on status, its film had to be changed dexterously and in the dark.  I can recall having to do it more than once with my hands inside an empty duffle bag.   One never knew if a particular photograph had turned out until developed weeks later — remember Fotomat? — and, more than anything else, the cost of film and developing set a hard limit on the number of pictures one was prepared to take.

Things are different now.  I’ve spent the weeks since returning from my journey to Germany going over the thousands – yes thousands – of photographs I took of Jena-Auerstedt and other battlefields on my iPhone trying to figure out which ones tell this story best; or, honestly, even how to begin telling it.

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10/21/17

The Airborne & Special Operations Museum

Downtown Fayetteville showcases the history of these twin elements of the US Army ~

Mike Orwick, 21 October 2017

click images to enlarge, and read the plaques

Last week I was in Fayetteville, NC.  Fayetteville is the home of Ft Bragg, where the Army’s 82nd Airborne division and the Army’s Special Operations command are home based.  Located in downtown Fayetteville is the Army’s Airborne and Special Operations Museum.  This museum tells the story of the evolution and history of these two arms of the Army.  On the last day there, a co-worker and myself had an opportunity to visit the museum.

Before going to the museum, we walked to the opposite side of the parking lot, and visited the North Carolina Veterans Memorial.  There are pillars there with each of the county names on them, with molds of hands.  The hands represent the raised hand while taking the oath when joining the military.  The two most interesting items at the memorial was a chandelier make of over 33,000 dog tags and a table setup for a member of each branch of the military for those that are POW or MIA.

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