Jun20

Fool’s Mate

by Rindis on June 20, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Patch came over on Sunday, and we played some Sekigahara. He’d played once before, and enjoyed it more than enough to request it again.

I had Tokugawa the first game, and kept up a fairly aggressive strategy the entire game. This blew up a couple times with some expensive defeats, but I generally caused some casualties every battle (and there were a lot of them), and had some very good victories as well. I took Ueda castle early and kept it all game, but otherwise the East was a problem, with Date being defeated early, and an attempt at retaking Sendai failed.

Resources were tied at first, and then went to Patch for a couple turns, and then started going to me as fighting around Kuwana got very intense for a while. About mid-game I pushed south with a large army of Maeda, and had the cards to use it. I think this did a lot to break the deadlock in the West in my favor, and at the end of the game I had a commanding position, and was starting to mop up his armies, for an 18-9 victory.


State of the board at the end of the game.

After lunch we turned it around, and I was over-aggressive. During week 2 I pushed the main army up to Sawayama, and Patch got in behind me to attack Osaka with a decent force (I hadn’t properly credited that he could reach it). Mori’s army duly appeared, and a loyalty challenge on my second Mori card kept me from even doing any damage to Tokugawa’s army. That was the last act of turn 2, and Patch naturally won the initiative and won the siege of Osaka to win the game. (Now that I think of it, the surviving Mori blocks could have retreated into the castle…. darn it.)

We re-set the board and started a third game that didn’t go much longer. I pushed up to Gifu, but still had plenty holding things behind me. However, Patch’s nearby army had the cards, while I could only deploy a couple of units. He followed up with another fight against me before I could react, and eliminated the army, including Ishida. So Patch won that game in the second half of turn 3.

Technically, we had more time after that, but if the next game went the distance we wouldn’t have the time, so we called it there with Patch getting two wins to my one. (Sorry that none of the photos of the other games came out well.)

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Jun16

Enchantress From the Stars

by Rindis on June 16, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Enchantress From the Stars has a bit of an ambitious high concept, and pulls it off very well. The main ‘problem’ with the book is a galaxy full of inhabited planets where all the naturally-occurring intelligent life is human, or very nearly so; but paying attention to alien biology would be to miss the point of the book (and in 1970, it was still a somewhat acceptable idea).

The book is a clash between three civilizations, with a viewpoint character from each one. The ‘main’ story is given by the most advanced civilization, which has a non-interference policy that makes the Prime Directive look fairly tame. They keep keep themselves hidden from ‘younglings’: civilizations at a less-developed stage than themselves, including several star-faring ones, letting them find their own way, and assert that trying to help only leads to problems and stunted development.

But they do interfere on occasion. Such as here, where a less-developed Empire (I don’t think any other name is given) is colonizing a planet with natives that are still at a medieval level of development. The Service sends a small team to scare the Empire off the planet, and leave both cultures to evolve on their own. There are plenty of problems of course, and it makes a good YA adventure, with a certain amount of philosophy and growing up.

The main part that works is each of the three viewpoint character’s sections are written differently. They’re not announced or otherwise kept rigid enough to ordinarily keep it from being confusing, but the style changes between the three is so marked as to eliminate that problem. The native’s point-of-view is by far the most striking, being written with the feel of a lot of medieval tales, and is very successful. The Empire’s point-of-view conversely is the weakest, being in a conventional third-person, and being the least frequent, and least involved in the actual plot.

It’s a little too obvious with the points that it is making, but the novel does avoid feeling ‘preachy’, by virtue of the main character always being challenged to thing thinks out herself, so the philosophy is always a dialog. So it maintains a good flow and remains a fun read throughout, with the plot and characters always keeping center stage.

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Jun12

Dungeon Sorcery Spells 6

by Rindis on June 12, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

I’ve been off of this project for a while, but here’s another ten spells for my GURPS Dungeon Sorcery system. Most of these deal changing form, or related ideas, but I’ve also finally included write ups for Identify, and Dispel Magic, the last basic utility spells.

Alter Self (C)
Alteration, Somatic, Verbal
20 points + 5 points/level
Casting Time: 2 seconds
Casting Roll: None
Range: None
Duration: 3 minutes

Casting this spell allows the magic-user to alter his appearance. While he cannot imitate the appearance of a specific person, he can change his apparent height, weight, race, or species.

In all cases, his new appearance must roughly correspond with his own: He can only take on the appearance of a humanoid race (well, as humanoid as he is—a dragon magic-user would have to appear as something suitably draconic), and must keep the same Size Modifier, though he could appear shorter or taller within the bounds of that SM.

This acts as replacing the caster’s racial template with a new one, but at the base level of the spell, the new racial template can cost no more that the caster’s actual one. In many cases, the caster can cheat this by just taking the cosmetic 0-point Features of the template for his new form (e.g., a human magic-user could use alter self to turn into an elf with none of their advantages—but if all elves are beautiful, and he is not, he will make a fairly ugly elf, even though he has the pointed ears).

Each level of the spell allows the caster to take an extra 25 points of advantages in his new ‘racial template’. He can use this to ignore any racial mental disadvantages (which would raise the cost of the template), and to pick up physical advantages like gills or winged flight. He will never gain any magical advantages of the race, like innate spell-like abilities.

Morph (Cannot Imitate Specific Person, -10%; Cannot Memorize Forms, -50%; Extended Duration, x3, +20%; Requires Gestures, -10%; Requires Magic Words, -10%; Retains Shape, -20%; Sorcery, -15%; Takes Extra Time, x2, -10%) [0.2×100] Each level adds 25 points to the value of Morph.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Jun08

White Mare’s Daughter

by Rindis on June 8, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

White Mare’s Daughter is technically a historical novel, but I find it hard to classify it as such. This takes place way back in prehistory, around 4500 BCE or so, featuring a pair of cultures that it is impossible to know much about. Moreover, Tarr uses a contentious interpretation, and then takes a fair amount of artistic license to build her societies. Moreover, the world is drawn in broad enough strokes that it is hard to get a grasp on, and I never got more than the vaguest notions of the landscape and geography.

So, it took me a while to get into the book. It started slow, and trades between three viewpoint characters, which helped keep the action slow as they all got established. Ironically, Danu was the one who really started to get the book moving for me, and his viewpoint nearly disappears late in the book. Once going, however, it drew me in and kept me going with a very well structured plot.

The central piece of the novel is the Goddess-worshiping culture of the settled cities, with it’s entirely female-dominated society. Much of the book revolves around the culture shock of them meeting the entirely patriarchal steppe nomads, and demonstrating the differences between them (and giving us an anchor into this society). Much of it is fine, and the archaeological record does show that they seemed to have no knowledge of war, it is presented as too much of a utopia to fully hang together. Violence is nearly unknown (though not completely), though there are still some personal conflicts; the presentation would not be off as how a society views itself (…which it effectively is at first).

As appropriate for an early period, there is a lot of spiritualism inherent in the characters, which reminds me strongly of how Mary Renault depicted Theseus’ inner workings in The King Must Die. It’s very well done, and in conjunction with the overriding ‘end of an era’ theme of the book, really lends a mythic feel to what is otherwise a fairly straightforward plot.

This also is a source of my resistance to classifying it just as a historical novel, though I have no real reason not to. I also classify it as a very good one, though again, it does take a while to get started.

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Jun04

Medieval Siege Weapons: Western Europe

by Rindis on June 4, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Osprey’s book on siege weapons does it’s intended job of introducing the subject, but that’s about it. Sam Thompson’s gouache illustrations show a nice variety of specific examples of machines, but the rest of the book tends to be unspecific and feels lost in the weeds.

Now the main culprit for this is just the lack of real evidence. The book spends a lot of time looking at various terms used in manuscripts, and is good for showing region variations, but since most times its just the term with no description, it’s nearly impossible to know how technically precise any of these authors are, and therefore more than the most vague generalities. Since this was a New Vanguard book, I was wanting a fairly detailed physical analysis and description of the parts, but it just doesn’t exist here. The main chapter on throwing machines is nicely divided up into sections on the basic types, and gives some indication of when certain types were known to be in use in various parts of Europe, though a timeline for the major pieces of evidence would have helped there too.

That said,the 585-1385 time period fits with the dates of the first and last solid examples that are given, though there’s nothing else to really give a reason to those 400 years. I think I’d much prefer a book more like the Elite-series one on Roman siege engineering, which went a lot more into how sieges were conducted.

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May31

En Garde!

by Rindis on May 31, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark and Jason came over Saturday for some gaming. Dave was unavailable, so it was just the three of us, and we went for a ‘long game’ of Blackbeard.

I went for the same pattern as our previous three-player game, and deployed two pirates at the start, one in the Atlantic and one in India. Mark put one in India with me, and another in the Caribbean, while Jason just deployed one in the Caribbean to start with. The good news is that I had drawn Edward Teach (Blackbeard) as one of my three, and kept him in reserve at first.

I managed to swoop in and take the merchant that had started in India before Mark could, and he ended up sailing for the Gold Coast. I managed to get a decent start on VPs with a couple early retirements, and brought out Edward Teach in the Atlantic. Jason had taken the lead with a very nice retirement on his Caribbean nest egg, but I managed a very good career with Teach, living up to his name by taking prizes up and down the Atlantic coast, and getting a decent amount of ransom. He successfully retired with a Notoriety in the mid-20s and a decent net worth, which shot me  up to ~120 VPs, and well past Jason (Mark had been somewhat even with me).

Further retirements pushed Mark and Jason past 100 VPs, but I was climbing into the high 100s. As the game was coming to a close, Jason’s latest captain did very well in the Caribbean, getting a good amount of Notoriety and several high-value cargoes, as well as staying too strong to be challenged by warships and King’s Commissioners. All this time, I had been holding a Duel-4 captain to possibly get someone else’s ship, but I didn’t have the Piratical Ambition card. I finally drew it in between the turn that Jason converted all his booty to net worth and bought a safe haven, and the turn where he used it. With four dice for the duel, I rolled poorly, burned a Cunning and re-rolled just about as bad, and then used his last Cunning to re-roll a 15, which Jason couldn’t match on a 3-die Duel rating. Sadly, all I got was an empty ship with poor crew loyalty, and a captain with no Cunning left, but I had kept Jason from retiring with 7900 Net Worth. Between that and double Notoriety, he would have gone well into the 200 VP range.

My previously-active captain was on the Atlantic coast, following in Blackbeard’s footsteps (wake?), racking up a decent score, but I got the third draw of the General Pardon card on the turn that he would have gone in and retired, getting me 12 points for his Notoriety instead of 24 for that and ~14 VP for Net Worth. My final score was 210 VPs, while Jason had 104 and Mark managed 111 at the end.

One really good retirement put me in a strong lead, and I managed to do fairly well for the rest of the game to keep it. Getting that duel to wreck Jason’s main chance really shows how powerful keeping the right captain in reserve can be. I think Anti-Pirate activity was overall down from our previous game, though I certainly gave it a few tries. I pretty much ended up sticking with the Atlantic coast the entire game, but there were consistently merchantmen to be had there, which made up for the poor cash value. I should probably try concentrating on the Caribbean next time, as I’ve never really done that, though it tends to get attention from everyone else.

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May27

Catherine the Great

by Rindis on May 27, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Massie’s book on Catherine the Great is first and foremost a biography, and never loses sight of this fact. As an empress, there is a temptation to equate her with the state, and end up with more of a history of Russia during her reign. I wouldn’t have minded that, but instead the focus is mostly kept on Catherine herself.

However this is one of the best biographies I’ve read (I don’t read a lot of them) for getting a true sense of the person that is the subject of the book. It is a decidedly sympathetic view (aided by the extensive use of her autobiography for the first part of her life), but this helps with gaining a sense of the ideals she aspired to. Further, the focus is not so narrow that Catherine is the only person you get to know in these pages. Naturally, both Peter III and Empress Elizabeth get a lot of time and attention, and while there there are a lot of other people in these pages, they are the only other ones that get a lot of attention.

As ever, Massie is a great writer, and really brings the 18th century to life. Chapters are generally organized around a subject, so while this is generally a chronological telling, there is also a certain amount of back-and-forth, which gets annoyingly prominent right at the end. Since Catherine did not directly lead in her few wars, there is less of that side of things compared to Massie’s Peter the Great, and instead there is a lot of attention paid to her relationship with Enlightenment values.

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May23

ASL Upgrade Round 1

by Rindis on May 23, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

Much of my base ASL set dates to the mid ’90s. I originally got the rule book and Paratrooper at a flea market at DunDraCon in ’96. I remember specifically getting West of Alamein in a visit to the Oceanside GameTowne (which closed a year later), but I can’t remember where I got the other core modules. Anyway, while I mostly play on Vassal, the physical set does come out every once in a while. So I’m finally getting around to upgrading my copies of Beyond Valor and Yanks from the AH versions.

Eevee wanted to see what was going on. And yes, I also got an Action Pack so I’d also have something new while spending all this money.

This gets me the newer, nicer counters (without the annoying side-nibs) for the main system markers, the Germans, Russians, and Americans. (I’ll note that I ‘gain’ a half-sheet of counters going from one set to the other. I also get the light gray Finns to go with the ones from Hakkaa Päälle.) I transfer 9 boards to the newer SK-style, which helps on storage space. I managed to get most of the old SL-boards back in the 90s, so I’m getting several duplicates of boards that aren’t scheduled to go out with the sale of my old sets (1-5 and 8, 40-41 will someday go out with CdG, and this is my second SK copy of 24) the only ‘new’ board I’m getting is 46, which was originally from Action Pack 2 (and the other board from that was in Rising Sun; now if MMP will just release the scenarios…). There’s updated scenario cards, which mostly just update small bits of language, though “Gavin’s Gamble” is practically an all-new scenario, and can’t be played with just the contents of BV and Yanks since it also wants a couple overlays. Finally, there’s also all the ‘new’ reprinted scenarios in BV3 (123-136) and Yanks 2 (178-202), but I should have the original versions of almost all of those.

Round 2 of upgrading should be getting For King and Country and Hollow Legions 3rd Ed to replace West of Alamein and Hollow Legions 2nd Ed (this plan is part of what prompted this round, as I want Soldiers of the Negus, which will be included in the new HL). Of course, FKaC has sold out, so it will be trickier to do round 2 as I wouldn’t be surprised if HL3 sells out by the time MMP can get around to reprinting FKaC….

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May19

Zita the Spacegirl

by Rindis on May 19, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Zita is young girl (I’d guess around 10) who gets whisked away to wild adventures in space where she survives with courage, daring, and a number of friends she makes along the way. In this, it reminds me strongly of Mark Crilley’s Akiko, especially as they both are well-written adventures that kids will enjoy just as much as adults, but where Akiko tends to be quiet and thoughtful, Zita is headstrong and rambunctious (“Grabbing my notebook out of my hand isn’t ‘finder’s keepers'”).

A very good touch is that Zita doesn’t immediately throw herself into adventure. When she presses a red button on a strange device, and a portal opens and something reaches out and grabs her friend Joseph… she runs away. She has a very human reaction, and only later goes back and reopens the portal to throw herself in and rescue him. From there, there’s the usual ‘stranger in a strange land’ bit, as Zita lands in an alien city, has problems, runs into both nasty and nice people (and lots of indifferent ones), while getting one glimpse of Joseph.

The initial adventure wraps up in the first book, but Zita actually getting home takes the next two as well. As with anything, it’s hard to follow up a strong beginning, but the second and third books are just shy of the first one, and do a great job developing Zita and allowing her to get herself into trouble. The ending of the trilogy leaves things open for more stories, though at the moment Hatke has sadly moved on to other projects (which I will have to try out soon).

A highlight of the series is Hatke’s ability to design all sorts of odd creatures and whimsical places (which also reminds me of Akiko), and he also understands when to pull back and have a quiet moment contemplating the scenery. This is my favorite new discovery I’ve had in a while, and highly recommend it.

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May15

Two Rounds of Lechaeum

by Rindis on May 15, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

Patch and I had our between-bigger-games round of Commands & Colors: Ancients on Tuesday. This time it was the Battle of Lechaeum from Expansion #6. It’s a tiny little battle; Patch commented that it looked like I hadn’t pulled the pieces out yet when he saw it, and it only goes to three banners instead of the usual 4-5. The Athenians have two more units, but are all Lights with a couple Auxilia, while the Spartans are mostly the much-nastier Spartan MH. However, the Spartans only get three cards, while the Athenians have five.

I had the Athenians the first time, and led off with a Line Command to bring the Auxilia up to the front and start peppering the Spartans with arrows, doing a block each to two units, and force one retreat. Patch Ordered Two Center, doing two damage to an evading unit, and taking a block to one of his damaged units after doing nothing to an Auxilia. My next turn did nothing, and Patch Ordered Mounted to pick on my right flank, wiping out my Auxilia, and doing one block on an evade in return for three damage on one of his Spartan MH. I got lucky on archery to wipe out his two-block unit, and Patch rolled with Order Two Left in to force me back on evades, doing one more block. I got no result from an Order One (Heavy), and Patch moved up his right flank.

I used Leadership Any Section to activate most of the center, and forced two units to retreat, one of them with a loss. Patch used Mounted Charge to get three units into contact, forcing my Slingers to evade back to the base line while doing a block to them, and did two damage to the other Auxilia, who did three damage in return. I then used Clash of Shields to activate four units; the first attack knocked out the Spartan MH I’d just damaged, but the Spartan leader got away. On the other end of the line, I did one damage, while two banners in battle back forced my Light to retreat to the base line. Patch Ordered Medium to knock a block off my leader+Light while it evaded to the base line. I Ordered Three Center to pick on his 2-block MH and got lucky with archery to finish it off. 3-1

For the second round, Patch started with a familiar-looking Line Command maneuver and did one block each to two units, and forced one to retreat (he actually got two other banners, but they were both against a supported unit). I Ordered Light to bring up the Light Cavalry and start peppering the Athenian line back, forcing a retreat of his Bowmen. Patch forced a retreat on my left, and I Darkened the Sky with my Light Cav, doing one damage to a Light before forcing it to retreat. Patch Ordered Three Left to reform his line and do a block to one of the Cav. I Ordered Two Left (with only one unit there) to get him back in line, and he immediately did two more hits to the unit. A Coordinated Attack got him and his neighbor into contact while part of the right flank started moving up. I did one hit and was forced to retreat before a First Strike took out my weakened Spartan MH. Patch Ordered Light to do one block each to two units.

With both Spartan MH near my leader down a block, I Rallied to get them up to full strength (I could have rallied a third, wild, block, but the only other thing adjacent was the undamaged LC) and advanced to do a hit to his Auxilia while taking two in return. Patch Ordered Light again to pepper my line, forcing a retreat, and doing another two hits to my leading Spartan MH while only taking two hits in return and retreating out of the line. I Ordered Medium to pursue, breaking his line up with evades but no hits, but my 1-block MH forced his 1-block Aux to retreat and then Momentum Advanced to hit him again to finally knock out the unit, while the leader retreated to his base line.

Patch used Order Two Center to join him up with a unit, but his archery missed. I Ordered Three Center and knocked out his other Auxilia while my more distant units tried to reach the battle. Patch Ordered One (Mounted) and missed with archery on my 1-block unit again, and I Counter Attacked for Order Mounted to force him to evade, but only did one block of damage. Patch used Leadership Any Section to finally knock out my 1-block unit, and my leader joined a full strength Spartan MH right behind him, while he did a block to another unit. I Ordered Four Right (only three units) and I hoped to force his Bowmen to get trapped between the city walls and my Spartan MH, but my LC couldn’t get a result on him, and I simply forced his Light to evade with a block of damage. Patch used Order One (Mounted Charge) to force my weakened LC to retreat, which eliminated the unit. 2-3

Afterword:

Frankly, my hands were terrible both times. In the second game I finally chewed through bad cards to have some some ability to maneuver, but at one point in the first game my hand was a pair of Order Heavies, an Order Light, Clash of Shields (with no one in contact), and Counterattack (with Patch not using anything that I wanted).

The scenario really does a great job at presenting the heavy force that just can’t come to grips with the light force. The Auxilia are the only things that hit on swords in the Athenian army, and since they can’t evade they’re going to be the first casualties. It’s probably worth just keeping them behind the main line, and let the Spartans have to force the Lights to evade before getting to them, but I wanted every unit I had doing archery to whittle down the Spartan extra-large units. I really didn’t want to put the Light Cav in harm’s way, and it killed me the way I was afraid it could, but with three cards and my starting hand, I just couldn’t let Darken the Sky clog up my hand all game.

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