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Blake
 Post subject: An Unsolvable Mystery?
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2023 1:51 pm 
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This image of the unit pictures from Battleground Antietam has bugged me since the 1990s.

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Alright.... we all know there is a story here. These images don't just come from nowhere. Did they have an extra square to fill and decided to whimsically put a man smoking a pipe there? Why that image? Why not Marilyn Monroe or Fred Flintstone? Also, why not fill the other image in the bottom right with an equally non-sensical image?

I used to imagine some odd group of civilians meandering into the First Bull Run scenario with this "smoking pipe man" as their unit image.

Will the whole story ever be known? I wonder who would even know it.

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M. Johnson
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:18 pm 
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Thats legit cool.

Easter eggs like that all the rage these days with games like Red Dead 2. I dont think this was what they were going for but it is still a cool easter eggs before that was even a thing.

I'd have used the empty space to put my own picture.

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Quaama
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:32 pm 
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I don't think it helps solve the mystery BUT ...

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It's "the figurehead of a parody religion - J. R. "Bob" Dobbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._%22Bob%22_Dobbs) from the The Church of the SubGenius (https://www.subgenius.com/index2.html).

Weird stuff.

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mihalik
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2023 4:04 pm 
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I remember back in Talonsoft days the artist put three witches dancing around a cauldron on the Murfreesboro map. There was also a shark in a pond, but I don't remember if it was the same map.

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Blake
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2023 7:07 pm 
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The shark was easy to find at Murfreesboro.

Image

I have heard tale of the witches but haven't found them. My first place to look was in Salem which is at the corner of the Murfreesboro map. But no luck.

- - - - -

You know, if some genius worked at Talonsoft they might have made all these clues related in some way. Perhaps there is a treasure buried out there near a lake with a mythical shark, near a place where witches are rumored to be, and controlled by the cult of the Subgenius. Maybe there are more clues out there.

Reminds me of the buried treasure book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(treasure_hunt)

- - - - -

To anyone reading this from WDS - easter eggs are great. You put a few random things like this buried in your game and we will still be talking about them 25 years from now.

- - - - -

The best message I have ever seen in a game was done by Tex McSwain. I guess he won the game early and the last ten turns were pretty slow as his opponent stuck to the defensive. So he put a message on the board so that when the final turn was played it would pop up on his opponent's screen. Well-played, sir, well-played.

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Quaama
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2023 8:02 pm 
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Blake wrote:
The shark was easy to find at Murfreesboro.

Image

I have heard tale of the witches but haven't found them. My first place to look was in Salem which is at the corner of the Murfreesboro map. But no luck.

- - - - -

You know, if some genius worked at Talonsoft they might have made all these clues related in some way. Perhaps there is a treasure buried out there near a lake with a mythical shark, near a place where witches are rumored to be, and controlled by the cult of the Subgenius. Maybe there are more clues out there.

Reminds me of the buried treasure book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(treasure_hunt)

- - - - -

To anyone reading this from WDS - easter eggs are great. You put a few random things like this buried in your game and we will still be talking about them 25 years from now.

- - - - -

The best message I have ever seen in a game was done by Tex McSwain. I guess he won the game early and the last ten turns were pretty slow as his opponent stuck to the defensive. So he put a message on the board so that when the final turn was played it would pop up on his opponent's screen. Well-played, sir, well-played.

Image


I remember Tex's message from a post in the Confederate forums. Great stuff.

There once were random things in the WDS games. I think they were a carryover from the original JTS maps. I know that in Antietam #186 there were scarecrows in {16,16} and {18,20} (see old MDT post https://wargame.ch/board/acwgc/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22906&hilit). In that scenario, there was also:
Barn with cow {27,3};
Hay Bales {13,8} and two adjacent hexes;
Well {15,20};
Round pen {4,27};
Cart {17,28};
Man with gun {17,29};
Rectangle pen {8,31-32};
Pig {15,34};
Cow {30,34}; and
Something indistinguishable to me {8,27}.

As I said in the Scarecrows post I thought they were a nice touch and it put a smile on my face when I saw them.

All those things were still visible in WDS v4.02 but sadly have been purged from the map in V4.04.

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mihalik
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2023 9:30 pm 
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The witches were near the bottom of the map.

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Blake
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2023 11:39 pm 
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Found them!

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Just in time for Halloween!

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
- Shakespeare's Macbeth


Come on WDS! More of these Easter Eggs please.

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