The SoloWargaming Show Website | Miniature Wargaming from a Solo Perspective

Blog

I have heard and am humbled!

Posted by solowargamingshow at 09:19 PM on February 04, 2009

Well I checked my email this week and was shocked to find not 1 but 2 new comments to the site.

Yes, I do get notified when people actually look at the site AND comment. And if you all really want to get me to do anything else the best way is to leave comments.

That being said, Jeff and Chasseur will be pleased to know that I expect to upload my most recent Solowargaming podcast this week. I have had it in the klink for a while fiddling with the sound on Audacity but I have decided to post it as is and simply spend the time putting out my next episode.

I will also be updating this website seeing as how I now know people check it.

Anyway, yes I do hear you all out there and having heard I obey!

Deano

It's Good To Be Back

Posted by solowargamingshow at 09:42 AM on December 08, 2007

comments (0)

Well, it is good to have a new podcast out and to be getting great comments from all my fellow solo wargamers out there. In case any of you are confused, the new podcast is being hosted by podbean.com and can be found at http://solowargamingshow.podbean.com . I am really happy with the website and its content and the ability to add pictures. I hope to set it up through Itunes soon and then hopefully I'll just have to post to it from then on out.

In other news, I recently picked up a copy of Donald Featherstone's "Wargames through the Ages: 3,000 B.C. to 1500 A.D." When I ordered the book I had no idea that I had actually poured over this book when I was younger in my local library taking in the information, sketches and tables. For those of you who do not own the book, Mr. Featherstone covers the different historical armies/soldiers of the periods from 3,000 B.C. to 1500 A.D. However he does it in what could probably be called the first Army List format. Each chapter covers a new army/nation like say the Saxons. He then describes the army, its fighting methods, its strengths, its weaknesses and even better he summarizes it at the end of each chapter under several common categories like organization, command, etc. So if you want to compare the organization of an early New Egyptian army to that of a Greek City State you can do that and determine which should be comparatively more organized. Just to clarify these are not "wargame" stats for any particular game they are simply "rankings" which allows you to then extrapolate and use them when "stating" out the various armies/nations yourself.

This book was the basis for a wargame I later made when I was younger called the Joint Kingdoms based on a world where armies/nations from different great periods in Earth's history all fought at the same time in the same world, so you could have Ceasar's Romans v Alexander's Macedonians. King Richard's Knights v Darius of Persia. In fact my game included summary tables similar to Mr. Featherstone's but wtih different categories and more of them.

It sure brought back a lot of memories though holding this book again and I definitely intend to work it into a podcast.

It's good to be back!

Status of the Show

Posted by solowargamingshow at 05:35 PM on May 20, 2007

comments (3)

Well it has been a while since the last show and I wanted to update those who cared on what the status of The Solowargaming Show was.

Unofficially I have moved the frequency of the show from every week to once a month. The change occured more as a simple fact of reality than a choice, meaning the show simply wasn't getting posted every week.

Other than the frequency of the show I am also still debating the format. From the beginning I didn't want to do another "review" podcast as there are a very lot of shows out there doing that and doing it better than I could alone. Also from a solo perspective there isn't that much to review to justify a weekly show.

I still like the alternating show format so that every other show is a review but I am leaning toward doing the review shows maybe every third or fourth show as I generally get more negative feedback from those shows than the others.

As far as the other shows are concerned I always envisioned them more as a "Do It Yourself Solo" type of show like you see on the home improvement channel. The purpose is to actually hang a new door or a change a window and walk you right through it. The only problem is finding the time to actually play through a game solo or test a solo mechanism in a real game or, as we are currently in the process of, create and implement a solo campaign. So i think the move to a monthly format will be good.

Finally, I don't expect to post any future announcements for the show on TMP as the negative comments that i have gotten predominantly follow my announcements there. I would prefer to alert those who are really interested in the show through this blog, the Solowargamers Group at Yahoo, and the RSS feed that you can subscribe to through Google. That way I feel only those who really want to hear the show will know about it and respond.

My main goal for the show is for it to be fun for me and fun for my listeners. I don't make money on the show and I'm not doing it for any notoriety in the hobby. Just promoting fun and hopefully giving back to all you solo wargamers out there that have fed me your great ideas and rules through the years to keep me gaming - mostly solol all these years.

So with all that said i am really setting a goal to get the next episode posted by week's end. I will do part II of the solo campaign and give a good review of Berthier which I have been trying to use!

Technical Stuff!

Posted by solowargamingshow at 06:09 PM on March 05, 2007

comments (2)

I'm not sure what to post at this blog yet so for now I will use it to ramble about the more technical stuff. The night before episode three got posted I literally spent "four hours" trying to improve the quality of my microphone.

I have a Logitech standard plug and play mouse (not USB) that apparently has an issue with low microphone quality on Windows XP computers. Supposedly this was fixed when XP went to Service Pack 2 which my Toshiba Satellite laptop shipped with but I still have the problem. To complicate things worse my computer doesn't actually recognize the microphone as a "microphone". I mean it works but when I look at my hardware there is no microphone installed. This in effect prevents me from changing the settings to improve the microphone.

I searched far and wide for a driver or alleged "patch" that existed at one time for this but every time I found any reference to one it led me right back to Microsoft's knowledge base articles that only suggested upgrading to XP Service Pack 2. In fact most of the knowledge base stuff now is dealing with VISTA issues.

Anyway it appears the low volume, too close to the mic, high pitched tones will continue until I come up with something else!

General Feedback

Posted by solowargamingshow at 12:22 AM on February 21, 2007

comments (1)

Well I wanted to use this first blog to give an idea of the general feedback I have gotten from the first episdoe.

Fortunately more comments regarding the podcast quality have been good. We had some obvious problems with the mic that people noticed but it didn't appear to hinder anyone's enjoyment.

I also didn't get any complaints about the length. All in all a good first podcast.

The number one type of comment I have received is actually request to "review" or feature a particular game or product. The nice things about these requests is that most have been games or products I wasn't familiar with so hopefully that will mean most of you are not familiar with them either which makes them idea for a future epidsode.

Well between this page and the podcast itself this is really going to take a lot of my time so for the time being I am going to keep things short.