SH129 The Derelict

by on June 20, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

After finishing off a game of France ’40 Mark and I recently an SFB scenario, which featured far from expert play, but certainly taught some good lessons. We went with “The Derelict” from Module S2, as the more interesting looking of two Romulan scenarios for Y163. USS Hood finds the galactic survey cruiser (an expensive version of the heavy cruiser specially equipped for long-range exploration and survey) USS Marco Polo adrift, the entire crew having been killed by a disease.

Thankfully, a cure had been found just too late to save the crew, and personnel from the Hood are inoculated and moved over to Marco Polo, who start up the warp engines. And then a Romulan KR and K5R show up. Hood is at weapons status II, but Marco Polo is generating three power per engine (standard 15-box ones), which will go up one point per turn. Also, there’s two crew units and four boarding parties on board. This is not the minimum crew requirements, severely limiting what she can do. (There had been a distress call, so Hood has extra crew and boarding parties on board to man the Marco Polo.)

I had the Federation so Mark could try the KRs, and my two ships set up four hexes from each other, while the Romulans come in on the right map edge, which is only fourteen hexes away. Mark set up slightly further, and headed straight for Hood, going 21. Hood went 10, overloading three photons and with a wild weasel ready. Marco Polo was only generating 12 power (three on each engine plus full impulse and APR), and went speed 6. Not having a minimum crew means that one of the two crew units is on the bridge, controlling most primary functions (power generation, movement, shields, EW), and the second can be assigned to a systems box to make that box work. I didn’t have any good ideas for that, but I did energize the phaser capacitors.

The Romulans came in as a stack, and on impulse 10 Hood launched a shuttle as ‘fighter cover’. On 11, the Romulans fired all four plasma torpedoes. This isn’t quite the scary event this becomes later, but eighty points of plasma eight hexes away is more than intimidating enough. Classically, the worry is if they’re real or Memorex, with a smart Romulan probably doing three psuedos and one real (or not; you have to keep the opponent guessing). The really nasty play here is for them to all be real, but aimed at the Marco Polo. She can’t have a weasel ready, the Hood has to worry about them being on her (forcing her to weasel as they go by), and then get a head start on cruising around for the rearming cycle.

We got fairly straightforward tactics here. But I couldn’t know this, and I had some very tight timing as the Romulans came in behind the plasma. On 16, Hood turned in and declared emergency deceleration. On 17 Hood unloaded at range 4, hitting KR RIS Kestral with two 12-point photon torpedoes and another 15 damage on mixed phaser rolls. Only 29 registered, so the front shield held. On 18, the deceleration took effect, and the wild weasel was launched. On 19, the plasma torpedoes hit, and were all real, destroying it, and doing 46 damage, thanks to bad proximity rolls from all the ECM, which turned into 7 collateral damage, 5 of which registered on the #4 shield. Mark then fired the phaser-1s on both ships, but the explosion ECM kept the damage minimal, and the reinforcement from the emergency deceleration handled it all.


Turn 1, Impulse 17, showing movement from Impulse 12 to 24.
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Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

by on June 16, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

For military memoirs, Grant’s is one of the most famous, and something of a gold standard. This is a combination of fame, circumstance, and good writing. Grant’s writing of orders was always predicated on being clear and direct, and it shows here as well.

That said, my big surprises are what the two volume are not about. In the end, this is about the highlight of his career, his time in the United States Army fighting the War of the Rebellion (as it’s called by the Official Records). As such, the second volume starts with the Chattanooga campaign, and then moves into the final year the war, describing it in relative detail from his viewpoint as the Commanding General of the Army. It does not go past this, into the last two decades of his life. Certainly things of interest happened, though I imagine he would not relish talking about politics at all, and would not figure a travelogue of his trip around the world after his presidential terms would hold any real interest.

The first volume is much less detailed, covering his early life, lightly passing over his time in West Point, and service in the Mexican-American War. The bulk of course deals with the first three years of the Civil War, dealing with his various posts and commands in that time. Again, I was surprised by what isn’t covered. Despite the fact that these are his memoirs, there’s not a lot of inward-looking examination. What you learn of Grant is more through what he does.

Notably, in the early chapters (or elsewhere), he never talks about his name. If you know anything about Grant, you know that he was born as Hiram Ulysses, and only became Ulysses Simpson by a mix up in his enrollment to West Point. It’s known that he did not like his original given name, but this isn’t discussed at all. Nor is his early Army nickname of “Sam” (from “Uncle Sam” Grant), nor even his early Civil War nickname of “Unconditional Surrender” Grant even mentioned. In a way, his name is part of what made him, and it is studiously ignored.

Similarly, his drinking and smoking are not mentioned, though it’s much easier to see why. With so many other memoirs already out, he was more at pains to give a record of what happened, at least from his point of view, with more reference to his correspondence as corroboration than many, and was not interested in indulging in a bunch of self-reflection. He knew the public was interesting in hearing what the hero of the Union had done, and his memoirs are aimed at precisely that desire.

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Two Rounds of Silarus

by on June 12, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

After finishing off our carrier experiment, Patch and I went to our between-games round of Commands & Colors: Ancients. Up this time was Silarus, the final Sparticate scenario from Expansion #2, fighting against Crassus. Pompey is coming up from behind the slave army, so while they start in hills, any block loss from retreating off the board results in the unit being eliminated for them. (Not that it came up, but it’s a nice idea.) There’s also Crassus’ camp on one side, which is worth a banner if the ex-slaves can occupy it.

I started the first game with Inspired Center Leadership to get the middle off the baseline, and into the hills. Patch Move-Fire-Moved to harass the flanks, and got two blocks as well as driving back a Light. I Double-Timed my left into his line, knocking out a Medium, and reducing a second to one block, taking three hits in return. Patch Counter-Attacked to shift the rest of his Mediums over, knocking out a fresh Warrior unit at the cost of retreating a Medium. I Ordered Three Center to hit the flank of that move, and forced another Medium to retreat, and did a block on momentum, but took three blocks in return.

Patch Ordered Mediums, and finished off two Warriors, but not before a First Strike did three blocks, and then an Auxilia and MC traded blocks. I Ordered Three Left and finished off a Medium then forced a MC to flee the field (three banners) and finished off another Medium with momentum. Patch Ordered Mediums again to finish of an Auxilia and do a ranged hit on a Warrior. Coordinated Attack only traded one block each.

Line Command let Patch reorder his center a bit and do three ranged hits from his line at the wall and finish off the last Warrior unit. I started forward on the other flank with Order Three Right, and Patch met them with another Line Command and eliminated a Medium in two attacks. 4-6

Patch led the second game with Order Three Left for no result, and I Ordered Lights to deploy my left a little better and force a Light to retreat. Patch then brought his center into line with Order Three Center and I Ordered One (Heavy) for no result, and Patch Ordered Three Right and forced a Light to retreat. I Ordered Two Left and forced a Light to evade, while Patch Out Flanked, forcing a Light to retreat from the wall.

I stepped forward with Line Command, which didn’t get me into contact, but allowed some ranged fire, and I got a block that way. Patch Ordered Three Left to regroup on that flank, and a second Line Command got me into contact across my left and center, but left me fighting uphill to do a block each to two Auxilia, and knock out a Medium to break his line, and I took one hit each on four units. Patch Counter Attacked with the left half of his line, taking out four Mediums, and only took five blocks in return.

Order Three Center did three blocks to a Warrior, but I took two each on three units doing it. Patch activated his right wing with Line Command, which lost me another two Mediums. 1-6

Afterword

I went in aggressive for both games and primarily paid for it with well-timed Counter Attacks from Patch. The second game certainly would have gone better without that, though assaulting hills is just a tough proposition. The first game saw a lot of dramatically big results from the dice, mostly for Patch.

The scenario is interesting, as the slave army has to worry about being too close to the back line, but staying in the hills is essential to dealing with all those Mediums.

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The Lays of Beleriand

by on June 8, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The third part of The History of Middle Earth is much rougher going for me, as it mostly a couple of very long poems, which I never do so well with.

It does gain interest for a couple bits of real-world activities that intrude on the book.

The main attraction here is part three, the “Lay of Leithian”, which is a poetic rework of “The Tale of Tinúviel” from book two. This made it to over four thousand lines before dissolving into a mass of unfinished notes and plans for continuing the tale. However, this is also when Tolkien was getting more interested  in a wider audience for his writings, and part was presented to the Inklings. C.S. Lewis did an extensive commentary on the existing part of the poem, which is also included here.

Since this is still a fictional older myth, Lewis continued the fiction in his commentary, acting like there were several slightly different versions surviving from antiquity, and doing textual analysis on them. This let him couch a bunch of suggestions for revisions as alternative versions of the text, with various fictional modern commentators giving their impressions as to the ‘truest’ version. This was certainly to help take some of the sting out of Lewis’ criticisms, and also an interesting writing project while critiquing. Tolkien certainly took some of the advice to heart.

The very end of the book looks ahead by about a decade (the materials here were generally written in the 1920s) to the initial submission of the Silmarillion in 1937 for publication. This gets mentioned in a couple places, including Tolkien’s foreword to The Lord of the Rings, but Christopher Tolkien here teases out some further details. The handed the publisher of The Hobbit a pile of material without properly outlining what it all was. By Allen & Unwin’s accounting the fourth item was “The Gnomes Material”, which would itself be a number of different items, including well known parts of the Silmarillion (such as “Ainulindalë”). It seems only a couple parts were turned over to their prose reader, including the “Lay of Leithian” (described as “The Geste of Beren and Lúthien” retold in verse). Not having any background in what had been handed him, didn’t know who it was by, and that was only fictionally historic in origin.

This leads to the rejection of the Silmarillion, and that project never being finished, but leads to the writing of a proper sequel to The Hobbit.

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King of the Fertile Crescent

by on June 4, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Back on the 25th (day before Memorial Day), I had a couple people over for FtF gaming. Patch was originally scheduled to attend, but couldn’t make it, leaving me, Dave, Mark, and Jason to try out Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East.

It’s been a while, but we’ve played its brother game, Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea a few times, and I figured this would be easy to get into. I panicked when I looked at the rules that morning and realized I didn’t remember nearly as much as I thought, but looking at the actual game brought just about everything back, so it worked out.

Mark and I had gone over the playbook ahead of time, and we decided upon the Cyrus the Great scenario as the only four-player scenario that used the full map. (Maybe going for a more compact one would have been smarter as we needed a bit of the board to save table space as it was. Random draws for powers gave me the bullseye—I mean Babylon.

The other powers use the standard, somewhat compact, setups, but Babylon is specially ruled into occupying the entire fertile area in the middle of the board. The real changes in ACME are the terrain rules, and the fertile areas are really powerful, as you can just have camps and get growth, or, best of all, have cities to get VPs and get growth tokens. My initial growth was phenomenal, and only stalled out for one turn, when a horde of barbarians out of the deserts kept me from having control of a bunch of spaces. After that, they were largely cleared out, and my growth put me back into maxing out my tokens.

Mark had the Medes & Persians, and was a constant thorn in my side (as he should), but I didn’t have a lot of other troubles, so while he got more powerful as the game went on, he could never really challenge me in the Fertile Crescent for long. He also refused to join in on the initial rush to a religion, so he didn’t get VPs that way, and at the end of Epoch III (which the scenario starts in), he was trailing well behind in points.

Dave had the Lydian Kingdom, and Jason Egypt, and the two of them largely focused on each other, partially powered by Dave’s aggressively sea-oriented strategy. I was more focused on pure growth and managing my frontiers at first, so Dave also took a lead in cities, followed closely by Jason, and I slipped into third place.

We broke for a late-ish lunch at the end of Epoch III, and Epoch IV saw the earlier conflicts come into ever-sharper focus. Mark was getting his act together, and caught up to me in points (fueled by that bad turn of barbarians), and started catching up to the rest as well. I swept away the barbarians and concentrated on cities (and growth!) for a revival in the last two turns that put me near the lead again, but I didn’t quite catch up. Both Epochs ended after three turns, and IV ended with a Lydian (Dave) win at 36 VPs, Jason at 34, me at 33, and Mark at 27.

I think I like the long, skinny map set up of ACIS better, and I don’t see enough difference between the wonder and religion mechanics for it to matter. But, the terrain mechanics (including desert and mountain, which are also important) really makes ACME the better game in my view. The wealth of different civilizations also means there’s a lot of room for playing around with setups and mechanics.


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