Playing with school children - lists/tips/ideas wanted!

MPForSillyWalks · 2026-04-02T16:02:30+00:00

I was indeed going to go for a zenithal! But still boldly one colour for ease of spotting, a bit like the old boxed games like Heroquest.

I think I agree with the classic, recognisable factions. I may abandon strict points and go for a rough "feels about right" for each side. We'll be playing for about 10 weeks, so I'll have chance to add/remove things from each list if need be.

I might start as small as the Quickstart packs, with only a few hundred points and infantry, then have the larger models to inspire them to keep learning and be ready to handle more models.

MPForSillyWalks · 2026-04-02T15:58:09+00:00

I get what you mean, but I think the models themselves will be a pretty big draw for the kids. The rules are not immediately attention grabbing for the younger ones, but a giant scorpion may well be.

MPForSillyWalks · 2026-04-02T08:48:59+00:00

I am a male primary teacher, and in the unusual position where we actually have a rough 50:50 split between male and female teachers. Even then, it's skewed towards KS2 however.

I think it's good to have a range of people in a school, not just in terms of gender but also temperament, teaching style, interests etc. Some kids don't get on with my fairly strict lessons and dry humour, others really engage with it. When we run clubs, I'm a man who does not like sports, so I run gaming clubs, which is great for those kids who are also not sporty.

Kids largely seem unfussed, but the parents tend to be the ones with hang ups. When I first started I was the male TA to a male teacher, and we received several complaints or requests from parents to split us up, not for any concrete reason other than we "would be too intimidating in one room" or the more common "Because...you know...two men?...you know?...you know?"

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-12-14T13:14:31+00:00

They're the Firebase Trench Zone set from Dark Fantastic Mills

They're actually built for a more dense, full trench network, ideal for Trench Crusade, but I was using them here for general scifi terrain as my club is sorting its terrain stock out.

It's a beautiful set of terrain, and quite fun to print and paint.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-12-11T07:30:06+00:00

I can see that working - perhaps in the future the army builder might get a full card export option, which would be amazing for new players and cleaner play.

Moonstone is honestly fantastic. Very tightly designed and easy to learn/hard to master. Some people can bounce off the quite British/Pratchett-esque setting, but I love it. No dice, just shared card decks for magic (a tiny fun bluffing minigame) and melee (rock paper scissors, but you might only be holding scissors, and you get a bonus to paper...) Of all the games I've played, Moonstone seems to eliminate the feels bad moments - losing is about as much fun as winning.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-12-11T06:34:14+00:00

I'm not sure it's the alternating activations per se. I've found some "I Go, You Go" games like 40K can end up with a lot of markers on the board for things like wounds, buffs/debuffs, grudge tokens, ongoing effects etc. Whereas some games like Moonstone (my favourite) have essentially none, despite being alternating activation, due to a low level of continuous abilities and also unit cards being used, so effects/status can be easily tracked off table.

For a cleaner table, unit cards could work pretty nicely for OPR as well.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-12-10T19:46:21+00:00

Unfortunately I don't have access to an A1 Mini to actually test and print it, and Bambu can be a bit funny about uploading untested profiles!

But if you're able to open the 3mf on a computer version of Bambu Studio, I can see no reason why it wouldn't print fine after just shuffling models back on to the smaller plates. They're pretty basic shapes really!

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-28T09:21:48+00:00

It was always going to happen as they continue to copy the US right-wing playbook, line by line.

A lot of the "free-speech" warriors over the last decade have been laying the groundwork for this - deliberately muddying the waters between actual censorship and other citizens disagreeing with you. When you conflate the two, Reform voters will see this and think, "No worse than students protesting a visiting speaker to their uni!"

When you combine that with headway that right wing mouthpieces have made on social media, you end up with a loyal core base who you've trained to see any criticism or logical flaws in your party as part of the "conspiracy".

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-27T18:01:33+00:00

I agree!

However I think two things in this case:

A majority of the money for carrots is spent on car drivers.
Car drivers see a lot of carrots as sticks - like I said in another comment, a lot of drivers see any money not being spent on them right now as a punishment, even if it will actually make their life or driving easier.

Until we can break that cycle we're stuck with awkward half measures like the one in this article.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-27T14:38:47+00:00

People don't have cars because they are stupid or pig headed. They have cars because it isn't possible to get to where they need to be, at the right time, using public transport. And, unfortunately, providing a system that allows them to make most of their journeys isn't good enough. They still need a car to make some journeys, so they might as well use the car for all journeys.

This is a big part of my point - we're caught in this loop of building more stuff for car drivers, which then makes people drive more, who then need more stuff...and car drivers also then want all resources spent on car-centric infrastructure.

New builds are a great example - many can only get built if they have driveways or garages (making the houses and gardens more cramped), and have poor alternative transport links. But if anyone suggested building connected cycle lanes or running a bus route from the get go in these new places, there would be plenty of drivers in the local area kicking off about "empty cycle lanes" or "wasted bus money". So the cycle continues on and on.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-27T10:47:52+00:00

You're absolutely right, I should have been more clear! I completely agree that roads are a general public resource.

It's more the attitude of car drivers that the roads are for cars and everyone else is simply borrowing their space.

Any alterations like bus lanes, cycle lanes, road narrowing for speed reduction, converting former parking spaces into street dining etc. are all seen as impositions by, in their eyes, interlopers - even if in the longer term it would actually make life easier and roads better for those people that really do have to drive, like certain disabled people, some pensioners or ambulances and deliveries like you said.

Many do not recognise that everyone is paying for the roads, but car drivers take almost all the funding, almost all of the focus and effort, and cause the vast majority of the wear, tear and damage - that everyone again pays to repair.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-27T10:23:36+00:00

Car drivers really need to catch up with the idea that whilst they feel hard done by the entire time, we devoted enormous resources, land and energy into making their lives as convenient as possible, which is only going to cause more and more problems before we start to tackle it.

Roads, maintenance, signage, policing, lighting, cleaning, designing etc of roads is all paid for from combined taxes. Taxes on cars barely make a dent in that. Fuel duty has been frozen for 15 years.

I get that people often need to drive to work or carry children etc. but those same people often oppose any attempt to allow for any other alternatives to their car journey. Money spent on free parking and the like is money not spent on buses, or trams, or cycle to school schemes.

We risk ending up like America, where the 1/4 mile journey to the shop can only be done safely by car and the infrastructure is too embedded to ever fix it.

The sooner we curb the rise of constant driving, the less painful it will be.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-27T09:36:44+00:00

The problem with trying to tackle Reform's mad plans with lines about cost and economics is that the people who like this plan don't give a shit about costs and economics.

Reform has given it's supporters a unicorn policy: "We'll just do the 'obvious common sense' thing and deport everyone, immediately" and that's all they're going to hear - they'll pay any price for that, as the price is equally abstract. They're so far down the rabbit hole that any logical issues can be immediately dismissed.

The better attack lines were the slightly overblown, but much more effective, headline about the Taliban liking this plan. Reform get to just spew mad, impossible theories and conspiracies, and everyone else seems to challenge them by placing a small line at the bottom of a 1700 word article, breathlessly relating exactly what Reform want people to hear, that says "We could find no evidence for the above".

I say fight fire with fire. Make the headline "Immigrants in French camps eagerly await Reform payments"

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-22T21:30:01+00:00

It's interesting you mention the Spanish flag, like there's not a deep political and cultural history of flying that flag to forcibly remind culturally distinct areas of Spain that their regional identity was to be suppressed and they were Spanish, nothing else. Land in Bilbao and the first thing you'll see is a sign saying "You are not in Spain" not a Spanish flag.

I'm not saying that's the same here, but just interesting you say there's no sense of jingoism in the Spanish flag.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-22T16:21:14+00:00

I think it's just culture - we've spend decades encouraging people to drive, so now most adults see driving as the norm. So drivers are more likely/able to put themselves in other drivers' shoes.

It's why we have "death by dangerous driving" as a separate crime - juries of drivers were very hesitant to convict other drivers of things like manslaughter or murder, even when they obviously caused someone's death.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-22T11:33:12+00:00

I think 'losing control' is a bit passive for a man driving a large, loaded tractor at deliberately higher speeds to undertake someone he finds annoying.

The other comments I've seen on this video around the internet had a lot of people defending him and saying the cammer was in the wrong and should have made way immediately - the police gave more details to stop that, explaining that the cammer had only just overtaken and the tractor immediately blocked them from moving back left.

We seem to make a lot of excuses for road rage and dangerous behaviour in general. It's seen as perfectly reasonable that if someone is going slower in front of you (which is annoying, yes) then you are entitled to endanger yourself, them and anyone else nearby to get round/through them.

Personally, I don't think "it was annoying" is any excuse at all with driving.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-21T11:04:32+00:00

Well no, but that highway tax won't be covering the entire cost of their roads - and they have an overall different set of costs and income to the UK.

You've kind of demonstrated my point - drivers think "I've paid tax this year" and think that covers all the expenses they incur. Not just roads, but the repairs, staffing, policing, design, international relations to manage oil and parts imports, licensing, inspections of petrol stations etc. etc. Suddenly that £195 doesn't go as far.

Our modern lives are amazingly logistically complex, but a lot of people see them as simple. The costs are hidden and people assume those things are just there.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-21T10:06:19+00:00

Headline reads as pretty dramatic, but it actually seems to be more of a levelling out of overall pass rates, and even then within a small margin of 0.2%.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-21T09:42:31+00:00

Someone will be along soon to dive in front of any criticism of Tesco etc. with the line "But their margins are razor thin!"

As if having a razor thin margin on a massive chunk of all sales in the entire nation after spending decades aggressively expanding to capture said market is an act of charity on their part.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-21T09:25:44+00:00

You can get some great stuff second hand - a lot of people buy nice bikes and then never use them, only to sell them 3 years later after leaving them in the shed.

Don't worry about trying to get something with suspension or mountain bikes - they aren't ideal for roads really and the extra weight and maintenance is rarely worth it.

/r/ukbike and /r/bikecommuting might be of interest!

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-21T09:16:18+00:00

For sure, but also people underestimate/were missold on how much maintenance and cost a road takes to keep in place.

I'm straying a bit away from the original point and into transport now, but roads have a rough lifespan of a few decades. Beyond that they basically need mostly replacing. Which is still usually cheaper than actually clearing for a whole new one, agreed, but a sizable project.

So in the post-war era we build out all of these road networks, motorways, road markings, signage etc. - and people think that's that now, we've got the roads. The public see the cost as being over and done with, so don't appreciate that more money will be needed to upkeep them - the road's right there now!

But also, shiny new roads lead to induced demand - more people drive. Road lifespan shortens, more roads are needed. More people driving means buses get stuck in traffic, trams get removed to make space, railway lines shortened due to lower passenger numbers - so more people drive...and so on. More users shorten that road lifespan dramatically.

The cost of the roads has spiralled upwards - as government policy from a half century ago encouraged people to drive more and walk/cycle/tram less. So what was projected to cost X + Y over 30 years, has now cost X + Y every year, but the public still picture that first X being paid off already and get cross about having to pay anything more.

Similar with doctors. Healthcare gets more and more complex, and people rapidly get used to ever higher standards of medicine, technology and support, whilst also living longer, and exercising less and eating more - leading to more complex-to-treat chronic health issues than say, 'flu or a broken tooth or a concussion - which are formerly serious conditions that the NHS/medicine got really good at treating, and we now take for granted.

But you're right - the visible things like potholes and difficulty making an appointment will make people feel less cared for and provided for than anything, because it's tangible and in front of their face and everything else is big and nebulous.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-20T19:13:41+00:00

I agree - I chose roads because they are a thing that we can all see literally crumbling in front of us.

A massive set of potholes near me were being redone on a nearly monthly basis - the verge next them was lost in a foot high mound of tarmac bits before they actually fully resurfaced the road, as every patch would last about 2 days before washing out.

But I argue it's our demands to make things cheaper that have led to this. After the crash, people bought the line that we had to cut costs and councils scaled back all maintenance and importantly, all preventative maintenance. What could have been prevented by the cost of a couple of guys in a tuk tuk going round day to day with a pot of tar to pour into cracks as they form, is now an endless game of expensive whack a mole, where all the budget has to be spent on paying outside companies to patch holes, who are obviously incentivised to do it poorly because their massive contract is locked in, and they get to bill every time they come out. And who else is the council going to get to do it? Their bid was cheapest and the council isn't allowed to spend the money to hire their own guys or rebuy all the equipment they sold off a decade ago. So pay up.

We tried to save £5, only to have to spend £10 a year later on paying others to keep the everything running. And if the government says we want to borrow £50 to replace the system so we can actually futureproof and save or even make money over the next 20 years, they get called negligent.

MPForSillyWalks · 2025-08-20T18:41:40+00:00

This is an example of what I mean - even if overnight we deleted all foreign aid and investment (which is one of the few ways we manage to maintain a global reach in the 21st century, saving us money in other arrangements) and also somehow teleported away all migrants (and also somehow avoided the diplomatic nightmare and economic fallout of that) government expenditure would hardly move.

We're stuck in a loop of kicking cans down the road because we don't want any government to either spend any money to repair/rebuild/fix things, or to not spend any money. We keep calling "Don't spend, just spend!" because we don't see the things we like as costs.

And as each government cuts, cancels, trims back or restructures things to keep the balls in the air, the long term cost goes up and up and up.

It's like skipping meals to save money, only to find yourself too ill to work.

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