Nortrom's Stratego (and other topics) blog

Stratego videos Technology 2018 There is no denying that the further technical developments go, the more these developments become standards in our live. 15 years ago, one could not possibly have imagined we're able to carry a small device called "smartphone" with us which, compared to devices back then, has a huge processing power. Powerful devices have been incorporated into our lives for the better or worse. With all these new technologies and such, more options arise. A site like YouTube was founded in february, 2005. Who could possibly have imagined the amount of content available nowadays? definitely not me. Look how easy it has become to make a video using software editing tools which are sufficient so that most computer novices too can produce a decent video and put it online. Video / image sharing has become such a daily business for most. Been somewhere? don't forget to put videos online on Facebook, Instagram and whatever "social" media on...

Country teams & Open tournament (sunday - day #4) After the individual WC, the day after, there always are two more tournaments to be played. 1. Country teams. 2. Open tournament. In the country team tournament, the top players, per country, form a team, this is based on the individual results of the WC and the player's willingness to play for their national team. For other players, the open tournament is available, which often features 5 rounds. The country team competition was played between: The Netherlands, United Kingdom and Greece. A shocker happened at the end, the team from The Netherlands(Tim, Max, Anjo, Edy) finished on place 3. Team UK (Richard, Alex, Charlie, Jonathan) took silver, while Greece (John, Gregory, Nikos, George) won the gold medal. Video of NL - GR Video of country team awards In the open tournament, Axel Hangg won the tournament. Yours truly finished on the second place and Ruben finished on place 3. Some players who were not present during the...

Main event (friday & saturday - day #2 and #3) In the previous post the barrage tournament at one of the best if not the best venue ever for a Stratego tournament was discussed. In this post I will take a look back at  the main event of the WC Stratego 2018 in Naarden. The day kicked off for me with one of the things I heavily dislike; an alarm that goes off early. All of this after a bad night rest which could not possibly have happened during a worse time. Moving forward, a quick breakfast was had. Shower. Clothing and ready to go. Upon arriving at the venue, some of the other organisers were present already and it was good to see them. Decorations were present too, for which, we owe great thanks to Jumbo . Despite the actions taken the day prior to friday, there were still some things that had to be done. One of these were the goodybags; all ingredients were present, candies, bags, bottle of water and WCO promotion cards. They now had to be put together into one goody...

What a truly wonderful and remarkable (for many reasons) the WC 2018 has been. In the previous blogpost I've written about the preparations from an organisational perspective which I hope has been an interesting reaad for many. All the preparations add up in time invested, for the entire organisation team. For me the main focus of this WC was to ensure everyone would have a good time, welcoming people, assisting the organisators of the WC days, basically being a good host. Barrage (thursday - day #1) For me, venues usually don't matter much. A simple hall with tables, chairs and some decent lighting will suffice. When we look at the location where the barrage tournament was held, the "vestingsmuseum"   one can only note that this truly is a remarkable location for a Stratego tournament. A fortress, military setting. Cannons, walls, water, soldiers with 18th century costumes to fire the cannon for the opening. It's a pity the logistics would have been...

Tournaments without proper preparations from an organisational side are doomed to fail. Small, local tournaments, may seem as only renting a venue to play at, but a lot of other things must be taken into account as well. Boards, clocks (logistics) must be taken care of. An invitation has to be made. A referee/computer operator is required. In The Netherlands we use a 'tournament owner' system. A player, often a local, will take care of many of the organisational things (venue, invitation, referee/computer operator) while the National Stratego Organisation (NSO), in this case Stratego Bond Nederland (SBN) takes care of the finance, logistics, prizes and sending out the invitation. A specific player (or group of players), with support from SBN, organise local tournaments. While all of this are a lot of background tasks, it can be time consuming and if the turnout of players isn't high, it can be slightly demotivating even for a tournament owner. Onhe year a local tournament...

When it was announced the 2008 live WC would be held in Kiev, Ukraine, the question was not about "are we going?" but "how do we get there?" the two main options being by plane or by train. Some went by plane, together with "the group" (consisting of Tim , Ricardo , Erik , George , Julian , Ronald  and yours truly we went from Rotterdam (Ronald joined at Deventer) to Kiev but not directly. The plan was as follows: Rotterdam(NL) --> Deventer(NL) Deventer(NL) --> Berlin(DE) Berlin(DE) --> Rivne(UA) Rivne(UA) --> Kiev(UA) The journey If I recall correctly, the train from Rotterdam to Deventer would depart around 9:00 in the morning, everyone (but Ronald of course) was present and we all went on the train. As we got near Deventer, it was then announced that the train would actually not go there, but its final destination would be one major stop in front of Deventer due to unannounced maintenance. As a result, we had to take a bus (from Dut...