Thursday 29 December 2016

A New Year's Resolution - The Six by Six Challenge

Clearly the Christmas spirit has taken a firm hold of my better judgement right now as I find myself having accepted the Six by Six Challenge posed by Kaptain Kobold to the global gaming community (or at least those should who follow his "Stronghold Rebuilt" blog of gaming goodness) to play six games at least six times in 2017 and then blog about it. Here are the rules quoted directly from his blog:

How does it work? 

Well, anyone who chooses to take part commits to the following:

Choose six games for the year. It would be great if you chose them all at the start, but I know how mercurial I can be in my selections, so changing them as you go on would be quite legitimate. I probably will.
Post your choices to your blog. Your challenge for the year is to play, and record in some way, at least six individual sessions of each of your chosen games. I say 'sessions' because you may choose to count multiple games of a small, short game (such as 'Love Letter') as a single session. Or not. Any tabletop games count, be they miniature wargames (for preference), board-games, card-games or role-playing games. I shall probably select a mix of things. They can be games you are very familiar with, or you could use the challenge to try out games you want to learn more thoroughly.

At the end of the year you should have at least thirty-six game-plays recorded. If you have, then pat yourself on the back. That's the only reward, aside from the fact that you will now have greater experience of your chosen games. Game reports can be as detailed as you like, ranging from the visual feasts I like to produce from time to time, to a simple one-liner saying 'Played Game X last night. I won.'

It would be good, and probably helpful, to record overall progress in some way; perhaps a cut-and-posted list of the games, with a running total of the number of games next to it. More ambitious people could have links to the recorded sessions. 

There are at least three challenges for me:

When I am actually going to play? My gaming time is strictly limited but this is an opportunity to change at least some of that

Am I actually going to blog about this? Sheppard's Crook is hardly the most active blog in the blogosphere, but here's a chance to do something about that too

And the final bit is, what am I actually going to play? But that is, of course, not really a problem at all, other than what not to play!

So on this last point I have not yet made my final choice of six, but I have chosen the first three which I will expand upon in my next post. These three are:

  • Squad Leader - I have had this game for years and hardly played it. It needs to see the sun again.
  • Ancient and Medieval Wargaming - Neil Thomas's AMW rules are pretty quick to play. I just need to work up a theme - I have a cunning plan!
  • Memoir 44 - D-Day wargaming using the "Command and Colors" game engine. Again I have had it for some time and barely managed a game.

That's all for now, Christmas (and New Year) continues to call.

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