The Panzer Villiage

by on February 10, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Jason came over on Jan 16th to introduce me to GMT’s Panzer. I was slightly aware of the original Yaquinto games back in the day, and looked over the AH MBT box at the end of the ’80s, but had no actual experience with the system, which Jason and Mark have been enjoying. Certainly, the production values with those thick mounted reference cards are really impressive.

I read through the basic rules, but we ended up with something of an amalgam of that and some advanced rules (the full hit locations, the damage roll, organization and orders by platoon) and some of Jason’s preferred adjustments (separate initiative per order, and the turret facing optional rule), and played scenario #2 (“The Village”) from the main set twice.

I had the Germans the first time, and entered at the bottom of the board. After setup, I realized that one Russian platoon was visible on a level 2 hill, and ordered a Panther platoon to fire on it before it moved, but narrowly missed at medium range. The command Panther set up for overwatch on a ridgeline, half the PzIV platoon set up to do the same if he came between the main hill sets, and everything else was still maneuvering, while Jason sent the bulk of his force towards the victory village while two platoons headed for the hills.

Jason was generally happy to move first, and I was happy to let him, so we skipped movement initiative rolls for the first couple turns. This allowed me to out-maneuver him, and start knocking out tanks during turn two. I took some hits of course; the StuG moved onto the ridgeline on 2, and was immobilized there on 3. The battle around hill A.11 got a bit tricky, but I had the advantage, which I used to finish off the combat, and then flush him out of the village. We didn’t play that out, but a calculation of victory points showed I was over 400 VP ahead after knocking out most of the Russian tanks, so even if he technically ‘held’ the village, I would have the 100 VP for the win.

We reversed sides and setup positions for round two, so it was effectively a replay, but we were seeing things differently. I set up not to be on that one hill hex, though it was tempting. Combat centered on an area a bit more ‘north’ and ‘east’ than the first game, and I continued doing all I could to outmaneuver Jason, which was needed. I didn’t do nearly as well this time, mostly because Jason largely kept me on the front of his Panthers. T-34/85s just can’t penetrate that, and my front/side shots mostly ended up hitting the front. The SU-100 was a big help, and cornered a pair of Panthers against the three-hex woods area in the center… and kept getting track hits! Even immobile, they gave better than they got. A separate combat raged around the village, and we called it as my final two platoons moved to finish off the Germans in the center (…which would have probably been a dumb thing to actually do, as I should have plenty of VPs, and could easily lose more than I gained).

I got to see some of the rest of the kit for the expansions, and the number of geomorphic boards available is pretty impressive. It was interesting to note that they’re 10 hexes by 32 hexes like the AH boards (I wonder if PanzerBlitz is the original prototype for these), but a bit bigger than I’m used to because of the larger hexes. The initial cut versions are interesting, but I agree that the later tri-fold versions are better. If GMT is smart, they’ll take a look at the ‘vertical’ boards for ASL, though their different road hookups used might turn into a problem (won’t be nicely centered on the half-board).

Overall, it seems a well-done game, and the general rules engine seems good. I do have some problems with the components: The counters are nice and big, and fill the nice big hexes from edge to edge. This means if two vehicles are in adjacent hexes, and facing different directions, there’s not enough room. The orientation of the text on the counter to ‘front’ is different between infantry & planes and vehicles & guns (frankly, all going with the top of the counter as front would have been better). And while I appreciate keeping the counters uncluttered (since you can’t put all the info on them anyway), a few basic pieces of info, like turret/no-turret or size modifier might still be handy (the latter especially, as its the only target firing info you need).

In fact, I find it interesting that Panzer uses the same size ratings as ASL (so far as I’ve seen, they match anyway), and the same +2 for firing at a moving target. Past that, it is largely more detailed, with a few things ASL seems a bit more detailed on (e.g., amount of time in view targeting penalties) easily viewable as part of the smaller scale of ASL. Moving from simple modifiers to a percentile roll works well in practice, but I kind of wonder if just using something like GURPS‘ 3d6 resolution would have worked about as well without needing the table in between.

At any rate, the armor and penetration details seem to be nice balance between lots of detail, and simple enough to manage, giving the entire game a true ‘minis game on hex grid’ feel. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I try the system.

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A New World

by on February 7, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Life

Smudge and I both enjoy soundtracks for a lot of our music listening. I don’t have a lot of music interest in my background, and have only been to a couple of very small concerts for any real live listening. Smudge on the other hand has a big background in that. We also are general Final Fantasy fans, and the series has a lot of great soundtracks. The big, full orchestral, concerts for Final Fantasy music (Distant Worlds) is a bit out our price range.

So, last week, we attended the A New World concert in Berkeley, which is designed for an 11-instrument ensemble, smaller venues, and more reasonable ticket prices. This was basically a birthday present for Smudge, and of course Baron came too, along with Mark. Mark has no background in the series (except I gave him the short history over lunch a bit ago), but thought it sounded interesting, and enjoyed himself.

The hall at the UC Berkeley campus had me wondering if we were really going to an Alexander raid:

The concert had a false start, as the timing was off. The conductor stopped them, turned around, bowed to us and said “Live music.” Then restarted the piece. They opened with what’s officially translated as “A Place to Call Home”, but I still know of as “The Place I’ll Return to Someday”, which is more unwieldy, but gives a better sense of the nostalgia at the heart of FF IX. That crashed directly into “Force Your Way”, and then the conductor gave a small talk about how happy they were to be there, and finished with, “I love Berkeley!” (it turns out he is something of an East Bay native), turned around and they did the “Victory Theme.”

After that, my memories are a lot more muddled, as there was no program to help keep track, and I only took notes later. But they played another twelve pieces before an intermission. Then came another ten, and the very inventively done “Chocobo Medley” as an encore. I’ve reconstructed what they played as best I could (taken from the A New World CDs, with stand-ins for the more recent parts of the repertoire):

In all, there was at least one piece from each numbered FF title (which has to be a heck of a balancing act), with VIII taking the lead with three different pieces. The “Chocobo Medley” was even sillier than I expected, having already heard it, as the conductor joined in with the slide whistle.

There was a concession table, and between us, Smudge and I got the two A New World CDs, the second and third Distant Worlds CDs (we already have the first one), and the Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward soundtrack (they had a number of the main soundtracks there, most of which I already have; FF XV was the main leftover temptation). It was just a table with no line and one person… it could use a little more organization. Mark also got the first A New World disk, mostly for “The Decisive Battle”; he seemed to be liking the battle themes the most.

Going home was a bit rough as the escape garage defeated attempts to do the right thing. The usual pay, get a ticket, stick it in the machine on the way out. But it was complaining of an error and not taking tickets. The answer was to hit the intercom button for help, whereupon the arm immediately goes up and you leave. So there was a lot of delays as everyone had to figure that out for themselves….

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Reptile Restart

by on February 4, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Got a group over on Jan 12th for a game of Dominant Species. It’s been a while since it’s hit the table so there was a certain amount of refresher needed. Random draws gave me the Mammals, Mark the Arachnids, Dave the Reptiles, and Jason the Birds.

The first turn was ordinary enough, but the second turn went sideways. Between glaciation and wasteland, the sun elements all disappeared from the board, and Dave had not yet manged to adapt to anything else, so he lost all his species on the board at the end of the turn to extinction. After that, he basically had to restart, and suffered from a deficiency of his ‘fixed’ element for the rest of the game, but actually stayed up with the pack fairly well.

I ended up trading ends of the board, glaciating over the mammal start area, and concentrating (with most everyone else) in a series of wetlands and oceans that developed (the early turns were almost all high-value tiles). I had a nice enclave, had it encroached on, shifted back towards the ice… all the usual patterns. I got some good adaptations that helped; water was fairly abundant, and I was about the only using it for a while.

Jason went for the survival strategy, and after the first couple turns started coming back from a slow start with lots of bonus points from that. I was the first one to try and stop it, but he usually had something to do to keep it from taking. On the other hand, he shot ahead a couple turns from the end, and got everyone’s attention. We had a couple turns of only claiming two or three cards during Domination, so the game went an extra round, and that might have messed up his timing.

We went pretty fast overall, and had a late lunch right before the final turn (which we realized would go long for all the positioning, and we should be well-fed for). Mark and Jason managed a tie on the tundra to negate the Survival card, and my score, which had been faltering recovered a lot of ground with seven dominations on the Ice Age (someone, I think Mark, was in second with six). Final scoring was fairly tense as we went through all the tiles, and Mark ended up winning by a hair: Mark/Arachnids 168, James/Mammals 167, Dave/Reptiles 150, Jason/Birds 138.


End of game. Me = Mammals/white; Mark = Arachnids/red; Dave = Reptiles/black; Jason = Birds/yellow.

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Frederick the Great: A Military History

by on February 1, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Frederick II of Prussia is considered one of the great generals of history (which is why we usually just call him ‘Frederick the Great’), so a book looking at his military achievements is an excellent subject.

Of course, it’s not hard to find problems with myth vs reality with him. Running off the field of battle in two battles that Prussia won, doesn’t sound very “Great”. And overall, Showalter is fairly critical (in both senses of ‘fair’ here), of Frederick’s performance overall. There’s a nice section at the end that talks of Prussia after the Seven Years War, and how both the army and myth were fashioned as a means of deterrence. (I wish he’d done more than just allude to the myth-making in that period; but no details are given.)

Of course the events of the Silesian War/War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War are the main rocks the book is structured around. However, along the way, Showalter takes time to take a look at how well other European armies were operating, and how Frederick’s various ideas worked out in that context. Much of the focus is fairly operational, with the marches and countermarches of armies being the dominant themes of the narrative. However, the battle descriptions themselves are well done, and each battle focused on is well presented, with Frederick’s (often overambitious) plans in context.

The biggest shortcoming of the book is a lack of operational-level maps, that can make the flow of events hard to follow. The battles get fairly simple standard maps that do the job, though they usually show up at the end of the battle instead of near the beginning. On the other hand, there is an excellent run down of other worthwhile books at the end, that moves from biography, to more general works, to Osprey’s more specialized volumes.

The early going is made very rough with some remarks on the theory of military history that are self-obscuring with inobvious allusions. Once past that, the book settles in for a fairly bumpy ride, that is valuable for being all-too-rare look at the methods of war over the course of a few decades, and how it worked in that context.

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9 To the Square

by on January 29, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

Martin and I went back to a mutual project to play through more of the initial Beyond Valor scenarios after I grabbed a hill in Italy from him in Regalbuto Ridge. This time was scenario 9, “To the Square” set during the Russian advance into Warsaw near the end of the war, and is a ten-turn slugfest on four boards, which took us nearly five months of PBEM to get through.

The Germans defend across three boards (1, 20, and 21) with fourteen squads (split between 467 and 447s), good leadership, two 50L ATGs, six hexes of wire, and a roadblock. He also gets 8 “?”, 2 squads can set up HIP, and he gets to place six rubble counters in the forward two boards, and then randomly generate two more hexes of fallen rubble. The Russians attack from board 8 with twenty 447 squads with adequate leadership (not too bad for Russian mixes, actually), four T-34/85s (w/9-1 AL), and a module of 80mm OBA. Oh, and both sides get a HMG, 2xMMG, and 3xLMG. The Russians have 10 turns to take building 20H3, or exit 30 VP off the opposite (west) edge.

Martin had the Germans, and set up a loose line on board 1, all at level 2. There was a noticeable gap in the I-O section, but it was backed up by a second line at the edge of board 21. There was also back up for the south half in 1Z9, 21L8, and 21J5h2. Invisibly, HIP squads went in on the north and south ends of the board 21 line, with the wire protecting the victory building from a front assault, the roadblock at the south edge of 20, and the ATGs near the north edge of 20.

I debated possible courses of action for a while (including rushing into that I-O gap, or setting up on the level 2 portions of board 8 for long-range 85mm, MG, and OBA spotting), but eventually decided to go hard against the south edge, looking for a board exit. Holding the flank with the board edge would be good for the start, but I figured a shift north to cross the board 21 graveyard would probably be a good way to go. In fact, if Martin built up too much in front of my south-edge drive, I would drive NW and assault the victory building. A functioning T-34/85 is worth 7 EVP, and with all four being 28, just shy of the 30 VP goal; the AL brings them up to 29. I hoped to keep them intact and use Riders to carry a squad off-map and bring me over 30, while they could also help with a quick shift in focus, and I set up with one tank having Riders.

I prepped a T-34 at 1X2, and naturally missed, but at least it should start forcing him out of there (Op Fire would have been smarter). Thinking the south gap was a bit large, I did some searching as I prepared to send tanks into unknown territory, and found nothing. I moved into 1Z2 to draw fire… and did, surviving a PTC. A second move to X2 got SFF in X1 for no effect, and another squad got into the building through Y3.

The T-34 with Riders dashed forward to BB6 with exactly enough MP to unload, and to my surprise Z9 did not fire. Presumably he didn’t want to come under accurate fire from the tank, but I felt keeping me out of building Z6 would be worth it. I showed Martin had the right I idea when the MA got a ‘2’ in AFPh, but didn’t manage an Unlikely Hit with a subsequent 5. Overall, the initial turn went very well, as I figured to have at least one broken squad from the rush on 1X2, but that didn’t happen. If only I knew where the AT and HIP were….


Situation, Russian Turn 1, showing the hidden parts of German setup. North is to the left, 20H3 is the one hex with a Level 3 Location. Two T-34 moves (which started in 8CC10 & DD9) are not shown for clarity. AL is with ‘C’ in 1Z3. My Sniper is out of position thanks to forgetting to move him after changing plans.
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