Q is for Quick tea card. Card no. 17 in ‘Locomotives’, a 25-card set issued by Barbers Teas of Birmingham in 1956, features Cock o’ the North, the first of Nigel Gresley’s striking but flawed P2s. Like the other five members of her class, she was rebuilt as an A2/2 a decade after entering service. Although no P2 made it into preservation, thanks to the Doncaster P2 Locomotive Trust and the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, one day there may be two of these powerful 2-8-2s running on British rails.
Every Friday, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers.
L is for Lamentable landscapes. Clumsily created and employed, AI art can ruin otherwise sound computer games. For proof of this, look no further than Frontline: Assault Corps, a £12 hex wargame in which southern Italy looks awfully like the Eastern Front, visuals and underlying terrain types barely correlate, and isometric battlefields are dotted with bizarre architecture and baffling objects.
Drydock Dreams Games has decided to give away four digital copies of uncommonly photogenic Task Force Admiral to four talented screengrabbers, and, as it was an email from Yours truly that prompted this act of beneficence, I’ve been invited to choose one of the prize winners.
G is for Green Tree Games gird their loins. Announced in the year the RAF retired its last Hawker Herbert, and the Pope described hula hoops as “Satan’s bangles” in his Easter address, Burden of Command has a precise release date at long last.
Move over DUSK, Strafe, and HROT; I think Venturous qualifies as my favourite fuddy-duddy FPS now. I was planning to mention this free, standalone Doom 2 total conversion in the current A2Z, but recent experiences in Egyptian tombs and Tibetan monasteries have convinced me it warrants its own post.
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, work out my location.
If you want the second part of March’s alphabetised news round-up, you’re going to have to thank me profusely for this part, and give me preferential extraction rights for all your titanium, zirconium, lithium, and graphite.