The Chatter Behind The Bike Sheds-Open House.

It's not only the look of the blog I have changed, I have also changed from Follower Only comments allowed to open to all. I did not even add the much disliked Captcha to protect the blog from spam. Well that was a few weeks ago and in that time I have had a handful of spam that have automatically ended up in my spam filter. I get a e-mail for every comment so I know I have had them arrive and it's a quick nip into the spam box and delete. So far no spam has made it to the blog pages, is it too early to say Mission Successful?

The new look has just under three weeks to go before it reverts to dynamic view for a month. It's a tough choice to pick one way of showing the blog so I am happy to keep rotating how it looks.

It Ain't Half Hot Mum.

Well today it's not but that's blogging for you. Is it me or has the whole blogging thing slowed down with the hot weather? Of course it's not just the heat, plenty of UK bloggers may well be on holiday, indeed some of the better UK bloggers have been up country over the last two weeks. But I think it has a great deal to do with the heat here in Blighty but what about elsewhere? 

It is no fun to paint in the blistering heat, especially when your paints dry up mid use, but gaming can be a chore. Look what happened to the Rejects, playing wargames whilst slowly cooking has it's virtues I am sure, just can't think of any. Given that so many gamers seem to have access to a large shed for games I would imagine more than a few are finding the heat too much. I am hoping to get a couple of games in this week, one such will be in one of those hotspots.

Blog-Con has got me thinking about Nottingham and the fact it's the spiritual home of wargaming. This is no empty boast, just look at the companies either in Nottingham or at the very least Nottinghamshire. Can any other city/county come close in numbers never mind turnover? So have we any other game rich area's in the world, past or present? The one that most springs to mind is Baltimore, home of the now defunct Avalon Hill and still home of ASL in the form of Multi-Man Publishing. I am not sure but was SPI from around that part of the States?

War Boardgaming is not and never will be as popular as it was in the heyday of Avalon Hill, and I doubt that if you include computer board games will you see a comparison. But if you look at figure gaming I am confident that it's never has been as popular as it is today. Strange how two parts of the same hobby can have such an opposite experience. VASSL* though has been a lifeline for board based wargames and so many old games are being dusted down and played again without the need to leave counters and board set up for weeks or months.

What was known in the near past as German Games and now termed Eurogames  have taken the gaming community by storm. More exciting though it's taken in some of the none games community as well. So much so that a number of none European companies have been formed and have made these games available to an even wider audience. I wonder if wargaming it self is benefiting from this growth?

So yes it's hot, but is it to hot for any hobby fun? 

*VASSL is a computer program that allows board games to be played either on two or more PC's in real time anywhere in the world or by making logs that are sent between the players.