This was the first Chestnut Lodge event I had attended and I must say that I enjoyed it. I was fortunate enough to have read the last few editions of MilMud. So I had a vague-ish idea of what was going on. I managed to find Chestnut Lodge eventually and turned up in the middle of the first turn for the Origins of World War One.

Origins of World War One

This was a rather intriguing game, with a good dash of paranoia all round. The game went quite well, although the timing was a bit confused. It wasn’t clear to the players what year it was, although I am sure that the umpires knew quite well. This wasn’t a serious problem in the sense that everything happened when it happened and not in any particular time sequence. At least that’s how I perceived it to be, I may be wrong. I’ll say no more as I’m sure others are better placed to offer more constructive stuff.

Pickles’ Railway Game

The next thing I was involved in was Jonathon Pickles Railway game. From talking to Jonathon this started out as a time-filler and grew into a behemoth so fast that he was forced to put it out of its misery on the Saturday evening.

It was a very good game as it went, although I thought that it went a bit slowly. Jon blames that on the lack of mechanical counting devices and help in sorting out the railways. Doing everything manually took time and contributed to the sudden demise of the game.

That apart the game would be worth doing in it’s own right, it was fairly engaging and involved as much activity as one was willing to give it. About the only concept that I didn’t quite get to understand was exactly how the stock market was operating, but then I never actually asked anyone to explain it.

The rest of the game seemed very obvious with only a minor skim through the brief, which seems ideal as I understand that not reading briefing is common. (Government Ministers certainly don’t read their briefing, so why should anyone else be expected to?)

Watch the Skies

As a blow by blow account of what I did at the games weekend I ought to mention Jim Wallman’s game, well he brought it along with him anyway. It was an MB game that Games Workshop could have written, the less said the better. Especially as my side (the baddies) got wiped out.

I did play in Jim’s trainer for Watch the Skies which I enjoyed, and managed to get landed with command of the SAS team. In the process of the operation we saw lots of strange stuff, reported it all back to Hereford, and didn’t fire a single shot!

This lead on nicely to the evening session of Watch the Skies. I had arranged with Mukul to join the Chinese team and looked after their operation. I managed to cause a fair amount of paranoia amongst some of the other teams, especially the Brits.

After peacefully resisting any attempt by the British to board my container ship, during which no-one was hurt or threatened by any weapon, the British shot a dozen or so of my crew after attempting to abseil onto the deck of my ship.  I had handcuffed the first two down. After such severe provocation I was forced to retaliate by shooting down the helicopter.

I also engaged the frigate with an ATGW, successfully hitting it amidships. Unfortunately a freighter is no match for a warship, however small, and I had to allow the Brits aboard before the 4.5″ shells hit something vital. After we got the fire out and the Brits had searched the ship, and found nothing with which to justify their piratical actions they apologised and withdrew rapidly.

I have learnt my lesson, there is no paranoia at Chestnut, everyone is out to get everyone else. Next time I’ll have anti-ship missiles.