Crisis on the Beach: A Review of Salerno
‘43
by Jim Werbaneth
Playtest Report: The Second Edition of Mark Simonitch’s France ’40
by Jim Werbaneth
Package Inbound: The
AFV Versus APC in Objective-Oriented Missions
by Jason
Guard
Marlborough on the Danube: The Battle of Blenheim, in Frédérick
Bey’s Game, for Turning Point Simulations
by Jim Werbaneth
Challenges for an Alien Empire: The
Higher Contexts of Imperium
by
Jim Werbaneth
Resurrecting the Electronic Dead: How to Play Old Computer
Games in the Age of New Computers
by Jim Werbaneth
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by Jim Werbaneth
Well, I can assure you that Line of
Departure isn’t dead. The evidence is that the issue that you’re reading
now, or just this editorial, read on the web. Either way, you should be able to
deduct a pulse.
The last couple of years were a mixture of good and
bad, with the bad interfering with my wargame work, especially when I would sit
down to do something. The good news is that my health is better and more stable.
Nothing is perfect, but then that is probably too much to ask, as I get older.
After all, I turned sixty-three this summer, and thus share with many gamers,
the quality of being too damned old. There are times when I really feel my age,
and then some, especially in my knees and my back. But my chronic health
conditions, especially the most scary ones, are increasingly under control. I
can actually relax a little bit about them.
Work has absorbed a whole lot
of my time too, as usual. Presently, I have a little more time for gaming and
Line of Departure, one big reason why Issue 85 is now a thing.
Hopefully it will stay that way, though inflation means that I need the income
that comes with having multiple jobs.
At the same time, the last
eleven years of home ownership have taught me that maintaining that roof over my
head takes a lot of time. I live alone, and thus have no opportunity to share
housework, and I have no children to dragoon into cutting grass or doing
yardwork. It’s all on me, and all that time needed to live in something besides
the neighborhood hovel comes out of my day.
Of all the things that have
been tough since Issue 84 went to press, the toughest has been the last of three
good friends. These included my very best friend, Cosmo, the long-legged Jack
Russell terrier.
Actually, Cosmo was my girlfriend Lisa’s dog, for
twelve years of thick and thin. This included a bout of nearly fatal sickness,
not for Lisa but for the dog, when his gall bladder failed. It was touch and go
for several days, but he came through. As he got older too, when Lisa travelled,
Cosmo would stay at his other house, namely mine. As I knew Cosmo his entire
life, we were used to each other, and there was little trauma or drama when he
was here.
Lisa’s work complicated things for the little guy, as
she was working nights, and Cosmo more of each day in his crate. Going to night
shift wasn’t good for either one of them either.
When Lisa had mandatory
overtime, she asked me to keep Cosmo for a month. Then it became a couple of
weeks more, and then until further notice. She went back on day shift, but the
workdays were still too long for him to spend in his crate. Before long, my
house was effectively Cosmo’s forever home. He was still Lisa’s dog, there was
no doubt about that. After six months though, I was calling him my dog too. And
he was.
Jack Russells are famously long-lived. There are
limits though, and right after his fifteenth birthday, Cosmo went into a rapid
decline, and I had to take him to the vet, and the Rainbow Bridge. That was 16
January 2023.
Exactly four months later, to the day, I went to the
Humane Animal Rescue Pittsburgh facility on North Side, and told them that I
wanted a new best friend. That turned out to be a six-month-old puppy,
supposedly a medium-sized black and white mixed breed, they’d named Dudley. That
was such a great name for him, that I abandoned all the others I’d had in mind.
He remains Dudley. Upon further review, he is most probably a treeing Walker
coonhound, and eventually reaching sixty-three pounds, he’s a bit above
midsized.
I can assure my friends with children of one thing;
children are for people who aren’t ready for puppies. Perhaps too because Dudley
was a stray from the streets of Pittsburgh, moving out to the open green
expanses of Gib-sonia, and house with soft chairs and beds, could have been an
especially hard transition. For my part, I was going from a very calm,
especially for a Jack Russell, gentleman-ly senior dog, to a puppy. It took some
time for us to get used to each other, and for Dudley to mature enough to be my
best friend, instead of a demonically-possessed pain in the ass.
Now, a year and a half later,
I am absolutely thrilled that I adopted him. Dudley is evidence that there are
some great dogs out there, who need and deserve a home. Before going down to
Humane Animal Rescue Pittsburgh, I considered going to a breeder, but elected
not to. Now, I am completely sold on adopting a dog, rather than buying one.
Work takes up time,
maintaining the house takes time, and raising a rambunctious, large puppy takes
time, and attention. Otherwise, the maintained house is likely to go down in a
storm of doggie destruction. Nonetheless, I am still engaged with wargaming,
more than I was in years. I attended both Origins and the World Boardgaming
Championships this year, giving four military history presentations for the
Armchair Dragoons club, at the Origins War College. I also play every weekend
over VASSAL with my friend Alan Snider. Thank God for VASSAL and the internet,
as I’m north of Pittsburgh, Alan retired to Thailand from Vancouver, so
otherwise there would be no way that we would ever game with each other.
Further, we talk over Facebook’s Messenger. I am old enough to remember the days
when a two-hour phone call to Thailand would lead to bankruptcy. Now, we do it
just about every weekend.
A large share of our gaming is
playtesting for GMT. So far we have tested the second edition of France ’40
and the upcoming Thunderbolt Deluxe, with commitments to test
others down the road.
All of the delays, I believe, come down to a couple of
regrettable but unavoidable obstacles. The first is that I’m getting old, having
recently celebrated, if that’s the right word, sixty-third birthday. I hate
getting older and slower, and there is only one logical outcome. The other is
that Line of Departure has always been an enterprise that I pursued,
secondary to work. The same could be said for all of my wargaming, including
designing. When I started this in 1991, I was living with my parents, and
working part time and on temp assignments, as I tried to build a career. Now, I
have that career, with at least two jobs most of the time, one of them
full-time. For six years too, I also had part-time online grad school. Don’t
think that it’s any easier, or less of a time drain, when it’s on the internet.
Like my online teaching, online graduate school can be actually more challenging
than the standard variety. Trust me, I’ve worked and studied both ways.
My plans for Line of Departure
do not include giving up. I do intend to publish more often, as once every
couple of years is unacceptable. Right now, I have some idea of what will be in
Issue 86, and have plans to publish in early 2025. I think too that my recent
enhanced engagement with wargaming is going to make things go better.
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