Ignition- an insightful and snarky history of early rocket fuel

 Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark and published in 1972 is an interesting bit of history.

The only reason I know who Clark is because of his association with Isaac Asimov. The two of them worked together during WW II. Later on, Clark was directly responsible for the formation of the Trapdoor Spider Club, which inspired Asimov's Black Widower stories. In fact, the Trapdoor Spiders formed because Pratt Fletcher couldn't get along with Clark's wife so he formed a social club so he could still hang out with Clark. (To make matters even more like a soap opera, Clark divorced and married the woman Pratt had been married to when the club formed) Clark is specifically the inspiration for James Drake.

While Clark did write a couple of science fiction stories, his most famous work of writing for non-scientists is Ignition. When I started looking at the Trapdoor Spider members I hadn't heard of, that rabbit hole took me to Ignition and it was too fascinating a work to not read.

Clark does lightly touch on the chemistry that is the point of the book, the book is really as collection of anecdotes about the research. It is pretty much an oral history of the development of rocket fuel up through the 1960s. Clark was in the thick of it so he got to hear a lot of what happened. (There are some things he specifically mentions were classified and he couldn't discuss) The chemistry pretty much went over my head but the stories kept me going.

Above all else, the book is entertaining. Clark clearly was a story teller and he also had a snarky, black sense of humor. He is discussing the development of extremely volatile chemicals during the Cold War. Explosions, massive property damage and death were a part of that and he addresses them with a lot of gallows humor. A particularly dark comment that stuck with me was that they only had to make a limited amount of ICBM fuel because everyone would be dead if they ever got used so they didn't have to make enough for a second round. (The real point was they could be picky with how they developed ICBM fuel but the argument definitely sticks with you)

Ignition also made me think about how much technological development I take for granted. Ignition isn't about the engineering involved in rocket development, which is what you usually hear about if you look at the history of rockets. It's about the chemistry involved. It's about a very specific part of the rocket development, albeit an absolutely essential part. It describes decades of research that I'm sure is still going on, as well as vast amounts of effort and money. You couldn't just pump diesel into a rocket and watch it go. (I was embarrassed at realizing I never thought about how oxidation would have to be part of the chemical reaction to make rocket fuel work when it's so obvious that that would be essential. A big chunk of the book in fact discusses oxidizers)

The book is more than fifty years old. As I've said, much of the development that is described must have been superseded by now. However, it's good to know what we had to do in order to get to where we've gotten. It is also a good look at technological development that was driven by the Cold War. (Or was it the first Cold War?) Clark wrote an book that is pretty darn entertaining but it is insightful as well.

The Great American Fox Hunt… isn’t that great

 A major point of Board Game Arena is getting to try games without going out and buying them. (_The_ major point is to play games with people who aren’t in the same room as you) Sometimes, you find an actual gem. And sometimes you find a train wreck.

The Great American Fox Hunt turned out to be a train wreck. 

It is themed around an international hunting competition. I got curious if it was named for a real event I just had never heard of. And apparently… it’s a nickname for a motocross event at Firebird Raceway in Idaho. (Not to be confused with a nigh identically named track in Arizona) So, no, it’s apparently not named for a real event.

You’ve got a 96-card deck of prey animals. Each player gets a five-card deck of hunters, which are really bid cards. And there’s a deck of hound cards you can buy to add to your hunter deck throughout the game. And they all have numbers on them.

The Great American Fox Hunt is basically a variant on blind bidding. On your turn, you lay down one or more hunter cards. Then you flip a prey card. If your total is equal or more than the prey number, you get it.

If you don’t equal or beat the prey number, you are tracking the animal and the cards stay in front of you. Another player, on their turn, can poach the animal rather than hunting an unknown. They can add hunter cards to your hunter cards to claim the animal. Yes, they get to use your cards to win a card.

You win by collecting a set number of one given animal. You have to get six squirrels compared three bears but there are thirty squirrels compared to thirteen bears.

My biggest beef with the game is the degree that there is how much luck determines the game. Bidding a lot so you are very likely to get a card feels like the best choice but that also burns resources for potentially little reward.

And poaching, the one time you can bid with precision for a sure thing, feels surprisingly mean spirited. Not only is there no way to defend against it, your opponent is literally using your bad luck against you. I love me some direct confrontation in games but this just feels like kicking someone when they are down.

The blind bidding against the game itself, mechanic brought back memories of a handheld solitaire game called Foothold Enterprises. But that game had a much more narrow range of odds, no mechanic like the poaching, and ways to earn special powers. The Great American Fox Hunt doesn’t have any of the elements that made me like Foothold Enterprises.

What it really brought back memories of the times I would buy some random game at a convention, have it hit the table, and be really disappointed. I am glad that PGA let me have that experience without wasting money or storage space.

Pyramid Solitaire combined with Yahtzee is perfectly pleasant

 Realizing that June was looking to be a crazy month, I decided to start looking at Board Game Arena for a quick game to learn, just to get that off the checklist. (I have found that if I don’t feel pressure, I’m more likely to try and learn a heavier game later on in a month) BGA has a big enough library that it feels like there’s always something new or I’ve missed.

Heck, I keep a running list of BGA games I’m interested in.

I stumbled across Dice Pyramid, which has probably been there for a while, and my first reaction was ‘Huh. Surprised I haven’t seen this idea before.’

The perfectly accurate elevator pitch is that it’s Pyramid Solitaire mixed with Yahtzee. You have a ten cards in a pyramid formation. You capture cards with specific Yahtzee combinations. You can only capture ‘open’ cards. Your goal is to get the top card, which means you have to get all the other cards to open it.

Every captured card gives you a one-shot dice manipulator. You can also use them to get another turn since you lose if you can’t capture a card.

To Court the King is one my touchstone games so the special powers in Pyramid Dice is something I appreciate. And I do think combining two fundamental gaming paradigms feels so natural I wouldn’t be surprised if it has been done before.

I am basically of two minds about Dice Pyramid. On the one hand, there’s not a lot in it. Luck can play such a big role that you could lose the game on the first turn. I don’t think that’s a good game design. The special powers you get from the cards aren’t very strong. They are just enough to keep the game from being functionally impossible to win.

On the other hand, it’s a perfectly pleasant, quite initiative little game that doesn’t overstay its welcome. A couple years ago, I learned another Yahtzee-card hunted called Pentaquest that just dragged. Dice Pyramid, on the other hand, moves along at a good tempo. Ten turns is the longest a game can be.

It’s not a game I’ll play over and over but I will keep it open as an option. More than that, it’s also offered as a free Print and Play download and I’m honestly tempted to make it.

I only learned Dice Pyramid to check a box off of an imaginary list. However, it’s a game I’ll play some more. It’s not brilliant but it exceeded my expectations.

Maigret Sets A Trap is pure gold

 Maigret Sets A Trap is probably my favorite Maigret work that I’ve read so far. There are over sixty books I haven’t read yet and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read up to this point so that isn’t too strong a statement. 

Georges Simenon’s Maigret stories was a long running and internationally famous mystery series. Except, apparently, in the US. Or I’m just an idiot. Regardless, they’re good reading.

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Maigret Sets A Trap begins in media res. The book starts five months after a serial killer has been terrorizing the streets of Paris, killing seemingly random women. The book itself takes place over four or five days during which Maigret sets in motion a plan to draw the killer out.

(While the Maigret books do have a darker, gritty take on the world, they aren’t _that_ dark and Maigret does catch the killer. Just in case you were wondering)

Maigret Sets A Trap may be the most plot-centric book in the series I’ve read so far.  There is still plenty of psychological focus. However, since Maigret spends a good chunk of the book finding the suspect before he can get into their mind.

And when Maigret does get his suspect? Then Simenon takes a deep dive into the psychological aspect of the story. The killer is a petty, nasty little piece of work. The serial killer is in no way a larger than life figure. They are terribly, perhaps even pathetically, human.

I also like how, as has been the case in every book I’ve read except arguable Yellow Dog, Maigret is not a one-man police force. We see him working with and depending on the rest of the force. In this book, as he orchestrates an elaborate trap and dragnet, more than ever.

I’ve become a fan of Maigrat over the past few months. And, if you wanted to start reading the series, Maigret Sets A Trap would be a great place to start.

Hear me out. What if you played Spot It AND killed monsters?

 I think Spot It is a lovely little game. You can play it with little ones who can’t read or show actual judgement or with brutally judgmental adults. 

So when Alexander Shen built a dungeon crawl around the idea of Spot It wasn’t something I could pass up.

Dungeon Spot consists of a stat card and thirteen dungeon cards. With the help of some tokens, the stat card helps you track health, attack, defense and treasure. Each card has four symbols on it and, in true Spot It fashion, any two cards share only one symbol.

You deal out two cards and draw a card for your hand. Pick any two of the three cards and resolve their matching symbol. Discard the used cards and draw two more cards.

(Why not have a tableau of three cards? Having a designated hand of one seems like a holdover from an earlier set of rules)

You fight monsters with attack and traps with defense. Items will improve your attack, defense, health or wallet. Fights are roll a die for each side. Add bonuses. High number wins and you win ties.

You go through the deck, you clear a level of the dungeon. You can choose to leave with your loot or go deeper, shuffling the deck again. And, this is a touch I like, your max hit points go down by one every time you go down a level. 

Oh, run out of health, you die and lose. Otherwise, points are loot and lowest dungeon level.

While I am having a lot of fun with Dungeon Spot, it has a number of issues. Some of which are because the rules really need some clarification. For instance, the only reason I know how item resolutions work is because of an example. It’s never actually explained in the rules themselves. And there’s one symbol, a hallway or maybe a shield, that I have no idea what it means.

I initially was worried that you’d only have two cards and no choices. Three cards and three choices, on the other hand, actually had the opposite effect. That gives you enough control that the game becomes weighted in your favor.

Which is why I like max hit points going down as you keep going. Because maxing out your attack and defense as early as possible feels like the best play, reducing the challenge of the traps and monsters.

So, I think the choices in Dungeon Spot are obvious and it takes bad cards AND bad die rolls to offer risk. Mechanically, I think it’s so-so.

But it’s Spot It as a dungeon crawl! The idea of the game and going through the motions are fun.

Meh game. Fun experience. 

What to pack?

 I’m getting ready for some travel. It won’t be a trip that will involve any gaming but you always pack a few games. Which has then led me to consider what to pack for the odd bit of solitaire gaming for a couple weeks.

And, yes, phones and tablets mean there’s a wide world of gaming at my finger tips. However, analog gaming, actually using physical items, make your brain work differently. Tactile is a different sense than sight or sound.

The first thing I realized was that, as this was a flying trip, space was going to be very limited. I have a friend who hates flying and I am convinced that it’s because it limits how many board games he can pack. And airlines are getting more and more unforgiving about luggage.

The second thing I realized was that there wouldn’t be any surprises about my packing choices. I wouldn’t be taking anything weird or experimental. Familiar, decompressing games that would just be used for mental coffee breaks.

(And I thought about including a game or two that I was still getting to know. However, minimal gaming time would just make that frustrating. But, as you will see, I did bend that rule lol)

At the very least, I knew I wanted one of my small cases of In-Hand games that basically live prepacked that I can throw in a bag or a coat or pocket at a moment’s notice. I have gotten so much mileage out of those. I am taking the ‘heavier’ one, which just means it has Palm Island. (I do like Palm Laboratory but it’s extra cards equal another game’s worth of space lol)

(And if I have to explain why In-Hand games are good for travel, that means you just need to have the term defined)

I have also been really mulling over Roll and Writes. A lot of them are only one sheet of paper, not counting some dice and something to write with. A relatively slender folder and a tiny tool kit of dry erase markers and dice becomes a pretty versatile game library. Heck, if I knew I was going to have a lot of dedicated solitary downtime, I would take a library of Radoslaw Ignatov games.

However, for this trip, I am just thinking of taking a couple of laminated index card-sized games. I have gotten far more mileage out of Knitzia’s Criss Cross than it probably deserves. And I’m just planning on using my watch’s die roller and skipping physical dice. If I don’t have table space, I’m not rolling dice lol

I’m basically looking at less than book’s worth of space here, even if you count the One-Card Mazes I keep in my pocket.

The one other thing I’m looking at, which actually moves away from the coffee break time space, is Chris Anderson’s Tempus games. You use the date stamp to create a number that dictates what actions you can take. Since the only moving part of the system is a writing tool, they are pretty ideal for playing on airplane tray.

The two flavors are Imperium which is about infrastructure development and Quest which is a resource management campaign. I think Imperium has more replay value but Quest is more interesting and dynamic.

I haven’t played the most recent version of the Imperium series, Tempus Imperium Aeternum. (I only seem to play them when I’m traveling) I decided that was a sign to print a few sheets out for the bag.

Oh and a regular deck of cards. Endless things you can do with a deck of cards.

So, I will focus on very limited space, comfort games and one slightly new game that is good for travel.

I didn’t know John Blanche’s name but boy, I knew his work

John Blanche passed away on June 1, 2026. When a friend told me that, I had no idea who they were talking about. However, I quickly realized that I had been exposed to a _lot_ of John Blache’s work.

John Blanche was a fantasy and science fiction artist, as well as a miniatures designer. More specifically, he did a ton of work with Games Workshop. He became their art director in 1986. He retired from Game Workshop 2023 but continued to work in the industry.

I’ve already said that I didn’t actually knew who the guy was but looking at his work now and knowing that he was their art director, I feel I’m on comfortable ground saying he helped define Games Workshop’s house style or aesthetic. Which means, damn, this guy was influential.

I’ve now heard him described as the founder of grimdark. He clearly knew that gothic and punk were a marriage made in heaven to cast a spotlight on hell. He knew how to decorate with more spikes than a porcupine and he knew how to use shadows better than Coubt Dracula.

Other people than me will give him a better eulogy. But John Blanche was clearly very talented, very thoughtful and, to steal a phrase from Neil Sharpson, bitten by a radioactive work ethic. He did a lot of work that shaped the hobby. 

Sorry for not knowing your name. Thank you for doing so much.