I seem to require one, or even better two major balls-ups before I can play chess with any degree of craft or cunning. Take the latest game played at Dr M’s after an entertaining reading the first half of the XXIst chapter of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman [Read more…]
Mr Ardle came over to indulge in another attempt to take a castle with just 20 minifigs and some additional features. New rules to allow the besiegers to build a siege wall. A card was drawn each turn to decide whether or not any reinforcements had arrived. We didn’t get [Read more…]
Last week I was introduced to the joys and tribulations of the Sigma Chess programme and have been playing it on and off ever since. The software has a built in ranking system which operates when you choose to play a “New Rated Game”. To win one of those games [Read more…]
The problem of the portable pavise has been solved! Take 1 x Minifig Collection Series base and five bits from the Kingdoms series to make a perfectly feasible pavise for your minifig crossbowman! A minifig base from one of the Collectors Series is ideal because when you attack a 1 [Read more…]
I arrived at Dr. M’s at 4pm on Wednesday to conduct his “History in English” class and to celebrate our anticipated completion of Volume II of the Folio edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which ends with the conclusion of the XXth Chapter, on “The Motives, [Read more…]
We treated ourselves to the LEGO® Kingdoms King’s Castle for Easter, and we spent the evening of the Royal Wedding and the evening following building it and creating a table-top diorama incorporating a moat and a gatehouse in preparation for an afternoon’s entertainment with Mr Ardle. Mr. Ardle was given [Read more…]
On the last couple of Thursday mornings I talked to my Ajina-dai Kouminkan (Community Centre) class about Jules Verne’s novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. In that novel, the main character, Phileas Fogg, is a keen whist player; Fogg is playing whist when he bets that can travel around [Read more…]
On the first Saturday in April I took my chess set up to Koi-Ue Kominkan to introduce my English class to the game. I had already talked to the class on a previous occasion about the big impression that Gerald Abrahams’ book, “Chess” (part of the Teach Yourself Books series), [Read more…]
The first thing I do when I go online is to check the ShredderChess gadget on my Google homepage. The gadget gives you three chess puzzles each day. They are rated “easy,” “medium” and “hard.” I particularly liked the “hard” puzzle ShredderChess gave us today: If you don’t use [Read more…]
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