compulsive behavior

it has been awhile since i've sat in front of a monitor, repeatedely clicking "Get New Mail," but that's exactly the reaction Laser Squad Nemesis, a PBeM (play by email) wargame, has engendered in me. when i was a big fan of Warhammer 40k, I would spend hours painting figures (good fun!), and even more hours showing them off, setting them on the tabletop, and then going through turns and "discussing" various loosely worded rules from the book. LSN gets down to the meat of the wargaming portion of the pastime, as each player separately plots and submits their moves, and letting the server deal with all the rules to determine the outcome of a turn. Now the big trouble is waiting for my opponents, usually in wildly different timezones, to mail in their turns.