AP73 Happy Valley

by on August 2, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

Patch and I’s latest ASL fight revisited Action Pack 8, with “Happy Valley”, an early armor clash between the Americans and Germans (with a couple Italians thrown in) during the race to Tunis in November 1942. It’s not DTO, but there’s plenty of arid terrain, with brush turned into cactus patches, woods turned into olive groves (regular orchards are still that, and out of season), and all walls and hedges are cactus hedges (that’s a lot of spines on that board).

The Americans are defending the board 6a village with four squads, two MMG, two 81mm MTR, a 37LL ATG, two M3 GMC, and a T30 HMC. In addition, there are three HIP Stuarts who can set up nearly anywhere, and three more that come in on turn 1. The at-start Stuarts are meant for an ambush, as they are revealed in the same way as emplaced guns, and their TCA can be whatever is desired when first revealed. The Germans enter on turns 1 and 2 (BS is NA for the Americans, something I forgot during setup, and wasted a fair amount of time on…) with twelve squads (mostly 1st Line, but there’s three 5-4-8s), as passengers in trucks and halftracks, a couple of ATRs, DCs, six Pz IVs, three Pz IIIs, and two Italian AB 41 armored cars. They need to cross most of boards 2 and 40 to get at the victory area and take all the buildings there in 6.5 turns, and get random air support every other turn.

There’s three or so general approaches, the most obvious is right down the center along the board 2 road. There’s a fair amount of hindrance, but it’s a straight shot in more ways than one. One thought that worried me is swinging around the east side of the hill. It would be slow going for the trucks, but it would allow getting fairly close without worrying about defensive fire. To the west, the board 40 hill overlooks the victory area, and has a good amount of cover, and there’s a gully in front of the hill. Two of the Stuarts set up HD on level 1 hills, with the bow pointed along the hill for a quick getaway, and the third was in 2D7, where it could cover the D4 farm area, and possibly ambush that east route. One MTR was hidden inside the village with 6aP12 to act as spotters (with the MMG—I seem to have missed the second one when pulling counters), the ATG was in P10 to look down the center

Patch mostly went for the center route, entering just his armor on the first turn, and keeping the mounted infantry back. The first couple tanks started climbing the board 2 hill, while the first AC started down the center road before climbing up the shoulder, and ending next to one of my hidden Stuarts who promptly rolled a 10 and 11 to miss and reveal himself, and then malfunction the MA on IF. He also set up a park near the main road, and around of the base of the smaller hill, with one Pz IV a hex away from my hidden Stuart, with a Pz III with it’s turret pointed that way, and an AC behind the position.


Situation, German Turn 1, showing the full board. North is to the left. The river is fordable, but neither of us bothered, especially with the north end having three places with no dry land. EC is “Dry”.
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Anime Spring 2020

by on July 29, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

New series are starting up, and I’m still finishing up the old stuff, so yeah, I’m still behind on things.

Star Driver — Smudge introduced me to this since was a fairly light season for us. This is largely the team that started Trigger, before they had done so. And indeed its very Trigger in scope. I’m currently deep in season 2, and it’s doing a good job on the character front, while having all the usual giant robots action, and girls in improbable uniforms. It started off reminding me a bit of RahXephon, and I’ve described it as ‘Utena with giant robots’ (it had some of the same ‘ceremonial’ feel to the conflict at the start).

Beastars — This has been on the vague ‘to watch’ list, and we watched it with Baron and Dave, who seem to get a bit more out of it than me. It was certainly well-produced, though the use of mo-cap animation bugged me a bit, especially for the first couple episodes. This is one of those where I kind of wonder ‘just how did this world get to here’, but it is otherwise a well-done world. (With some discordant notes—carnivores are given as universally stronger than herbivores, instead of just better armed. There’s a reason why wolves hunt in packs.) Still, does a great job with presenting internal feelings and doubts.

Cromartie High School — This has been on the ‘to watch’ list for ages, since we saw the first 2-3 episodes on a sample disk. It kind of reminds me of Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast. Stream-of-consciousness writing, limited budget, and random electric guitar wailing for the ending credits. It’s random, sometimes painful, and sometimes screamingly funny.

Flip Flappers — I want to know what the creative team was smoking, and like Abe Lincoln, send some to a bunch of other creators. Smudge and I are most of the way through this, and it’s still really hard to say what I think of it, because it’s all so, so weird. It’s certainly offering up lots of trope-parody salad, but the overall plot is just coming into focus at the very end.

Black Clover — Okay, we’re now through the entire real arc that this has been pointed at all this time, and did a great job of it (and it was a nice example of focus that these long fight-series have problems with). Now, we’re in unknown territory—will it hold together? So far, not bad, and we’ll see how it goes. Since everything prior to this point, the writing just kept getting better, I have hopes for no more than moderate sequelitis.

Thermae Romae — Holy low-budget, Batman! The high concept for the series has a lot of fun to it (cross over the two great hot-soak loving cultures: Japan and the Classical world), so this as been on the to-watch list. Given the… splash… the manga originally made, I’m quite surprised that this is such a low budget show with limited animation that makes Hanna-Barbera look good. Writing has also been all over the place, with some episodes being hilarious, and others just not living up to the high concept.

And of course Smudge and I have re-watched with the guys:

Acca 13 — If re-watching wasn’t a separate section, this would be top of the list. It really is well done, and both Baron and Dave have really appreciated it. I’m also newly thankful that Smudge spotted the soundtrack at Crunchyroll Expo a couple years ago; it’s extremely well done.

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Daughter of Lir

by on July 25, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Like White Mare’s Daughter, this is a… not-quite-historical novel, that explores how some of what we know of prehistoric societies might have worked. In this case, we’re around 3300 BCE, with the beginnings of the Bronze Age, and the invention of chariots.

Once again, this is a clash of two cultures; a sedentary, goddess-worshiping one, and a nomadic steppes-tribe which has developed chariots. We get a peek at the wider world this time, with a secondary character from Sumeria, which was nice (and he could have stolen the show if given more screen time).

The stories in this series are ‘mythic’ in feel, and again reminded me of the feel of Renault’s The King Must Die. Fairly down-to-earth characters are part of something larger than themselves, and also stand in for bigger forces in the world. The plot is a bit more intricate this time, with two young princes sharing a spotlight as they help the reader see their culture, and cross… destinies in the middle. The broad outlines are telegraphed, but it’s a great journey

While the goddess’ country is again a bit too utopian to be true here, but it’s not perfect, and I am reminded of some of the discussion in GURPS Religion about the hierarchy of a religion potentially being separate from who the god(dess) they worship imbues with power. There’s some good thought here, but it’s all seen from the outside, so it more ‘happens’, rather than is examined.

Its really best to just enjoy these as coming-of-age adventure stories, but there is more here, and I am disappointed Tarr didn’t include an afterword on the actual cultures she’s talking about, like she did with White Mare’s Daughter.

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Lost Time

by on July 21, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark and I have fallen into a bunch of fairly regular Vassal sessions over the past few months. Our primary slot has been our learning sessions with Operation Dauntless, and we had a few weeks of three-day weekends, so I proposed we start something a bit faster moving than our fumbling learning sessions, and well-known to the both of us, and we ended up going for A Victory Lost, doing one turn per session, and it (after a later schedule shuffling) became our Sunday morning slot.

Now, neither of us has ever been experts, and it’s probably been a decade since I last played, so expect a lot of sub-optimal play from us (moving HQs was a particular problem on a few occasions, espeically later, since the module, for all its great features, doesn’t mark the HQ as active along with everything else, so it can be easy to forget).

Mark wanted the Germans, so I started with a decision to mostly press in the center, keeping the 1GdA, 3GdA, 5ShA, and 5TkA chits (along with Popov who shows up at the end of turn 4), and of course picking 1GdA for the special combat segment, which eliminated the Ravenna division and retreated Julia and Tridentia, but got no effect on Cosseria and Cuneense.

Turn 1 chit sequence: 5TkA – 3GdA – 1GdA – R3A – Hollidt – 4PzA – STAVKA

My first chit draw also saw my first losses, as I tried a 1.5:1 and two 2:1s to get across the initial river lines (thought it was three 2:1s until I saw a town, which reduced it to 1.5:1), for a pair of A1 results, but I pushed the 7Lw back to break that line in the middle. I got a mechanized division across a gap for a second try to eliminate a pair or Romanian divisions, and then blew open the Italian sector (pretty standard stuff), to start heading west, with the 1st heading south towards Millerovo after bouncing the It8A HQ away from the remaining Italians. However, a 3:1 was NE, to keep a road clogged.

The Romanians ordered a fall back, with units heading to Millerovo, while the 62nd shifted to hold the flank of the southern line. Hollidt also fell back, with a thin line of infantry while the 11Pz headed northwest toward Millerovo. 4th Panzer Army sent two divisions circling behind the lines towards Hollidt and everything else putting up a light screen… safely away from the Russians. Stavka found that three divisions had been too eager, and were out of command range, so my tanks (most notably) didn’t roll any further forward. There wasn’t a lot of combats, and notably, the Hungarians refused to budge to a 2:1 in the north, even as the Italians next door ran for the hills.

Mark put all three new divisions and Kempf in and around Valuyki, and F-Pico went to Millerovo, while I put the 2Tk a bit behind the 69A, ready to use strategic movement down into the fairly open center.


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Holy Madness

by on July 17, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

In premise, this is more of a meditation on history than a ‘strict’ history book. Zamoyski had some thoughts on nationalism, and faith, and wrote this book to explore his thoughts. The general theme is that as the church lost its place of primacy in European society, the habits of thought remained, and devotion got redirected to the idea of ‘the state’.

It’s an interesting idea, and he’s certainly onto something. I’d kind of like something a bit less nebulous, though it’d probably go over my head. At any rate, in Holy Madness, it’s obvious that he has found every case of religious imagery, or ecstatic feeling in the writings of 19th Century revolutionaries. But I wonder how much (or really, how many people) doesn’t follow that theme? Perhaps its a consistent tone/theme across the vast bulk of them, but since there’s no examination of that, there’s no way to know. Certainly, he does show a strong ideal of martyrdom in a lot of writings.

Overall, there’s certainly some very interesting things going on here. The end of the French Revolution and Napoleon left a lot of people with unfulfilled dreams in Europe. Whenever some new ‘national project’ came up these people would show up to try to help, aiding revolutions with fundraising for arms, and a people who could form up revolutionary units to fight for a glorious death in the name of liberty. The three decades after 1815 in Europe aren’t dangerous for the ideals unleashed to cause the population to rise up (the general population in the countryside often wanted no part of it), but instead dangerous for all the flotsam and jetsam of previously wrecked hopes washing back and forth across the continent.

Post 1848… ‘revolutionary society’ is shown to be the transition out of the age. Some of what these men have been fighting for is happening politically. The new idealists have very different views, and the people who are powering all this struggle are aging out. The social circles get smaller every year, and while they still hold their decades old grudges, its becoming harder to fire everyone up for a new cause.

To a certain extent the formation of Italy and Germany mark the end of the movements this book is following, but it’s not quite presented that way, with things tending to trail off, not quite off-screen, but not really focused on. As with any natural process, there’s no neat end, no turning of the page, though there is further summary of where some of these passions went next.

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