Two Sides, Take Two

I'm going to dispense with the cliches and “tap tap is this thing on?” crap.

The blog died, the blog is coming back.

Mike and I haven't been idle, by any means, but we haven't been doing things that are very blog-friendly. That, and I was going through a soul-sucking period at work where I writing enough that I wanted to do anything BUT write blog posts in my spare time. I really had the feeling that period was going to kill every desire I had to ever write again, but that thankfully turned out to not be the case. Playing games and writing about those sessions is something I want to be doing again.

So, you might ask, what HAVE Mike and I been doing over all this time?

Pretty much all of 2010 was devoted to an ongoing OCS Korea campaign. We got through all of 1950 before calling it a wrap. We will finish it some day, but it's going to be rough slogging the rest of the way. I was playing the US, while Mike took the Chinese – by the end of 1950, we devolved into a sort of WWI-style slogging match where I'm slowly wearing him down. I have to be cautious, but there are very limited opportunities for him to attack.

We took pictures as we went along, and someday maybe we'll write the thing up, but don't count on it. Maybe just a photo-log.

The second half of 2011 has been devoted to playtesting another OCS game that should be submitted for preordering very shortly. I don't want to go into details, as I'm not sure how public the information is, but it's a small (by OCS standards, it's a miniature) game on Operation Exporter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Exporter).

Those of you wanting to get into OCS, but have been turned off by the size of the typical OCS game, pick this one up. You won't be disappointed. Once it's available for preorder, Mike and I will tell you all about it.

There have been other things we've done – Mike may be able to supply some details as he keeps better records of what he plays when – but there have been a few shorter games that have hit the table in the mean time. I know C&C Napoleonics and Stalin's War were among them. We had our annual WBC-West gaming retreat in mid-May, so the bulk of early 2011 was centered around that.

We'll be getting things back under way with a playing of Combat Commander: Resistance. FAB: Sicily will be hitting the table right after we receive it (GMT claims it's shipping mid-late December), and there's plenty more where that came from.

For those of you new to what we do here, let me refresh you on the idea:

Mike and I play games. We then independently write about what happened. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. Mike prefers his games with a minimum amount of luck (With good reason – we've named the effect the Deansian Statistical Distortion Factor (DSDF)), while I'm fine with a fair amount of chaos. We're both wargamers at heart, and that'll be the large majority of the games we play, but you really could see anything covered here.

I've learned over time that I'm really not good at writing reviews. What I do write are reactions. Other people around the net are much better at reviewing games, so if you want that, head over to BGG or some other site to get your review fix in. What you'll get from me, at least, is how I reacted to that particular playing of a game. Sometimes I'll get into why I did what I did as well, but that depends on how many beers I had that night.

Unless life presses too hard, we'll be playing every week, and posting just about as frequently as well. Sit back, and enjoy the posts. Thanks for reading!