5 In Sight of the Volga

by on March 30, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

In my efforts to finally play all the original Beyond Valor scenarios for ASL, I’ve had two attempts on scenario 5, In Sight of the Volga. As is popular for the system, it’s a Stalingrad scenario. This one takes place in September ’42 on boards 1 and 20, with the large board 20 building counted as a factory near the banks of the Volga. The Germans are trying to get into the factory, and have more GO squads in it with a LOS off the board edge than the Russians have GO squads in the building, presumably so they can prevent further reinforcements from being ferried over.

Which is a concern here. The Russians start with 20 squads (in a mix of 1st Line types), with decent leadership, a pair of MMG, a 76mm INF, some “?”, 6 trenches, and 4 squads HIP. Every turn, they roll a Reinforcement DR, and if the colored die is less than the turn #, they get that many 628 squads, and the total DR determines if a leader comes with them. Also, the Russians are suffering from Ammo Shortage, and if the DR is doubles, supplies arrive, and the shortage ends. There are ten full turns, so while the Germans have time, there will be a good number of reinforcements over the course of the scenario.

The Germans are attacking with 25 467 squads, with good leadership, including a 10-2 and 9-2, and comparatively few MGs for the number of squads. Considering the distance to go, the relative number of squads, and the reinforcements, they have a tough job. But the initial concentration vs a defender that needs to defend across two boards can do a lot. Also, they can exit men off the board to stop future reinforcements (at a rate of stopping one squad per HS exited). Complicating matters, a fair number of building hexes have been rubbled, with more rubble spilling out into the streets. The Russians also have a SAN of 7(!), while the Germans only have a 3.

Back in 2013, I advertised for a game of this, and set up with Luke Sineath, and took the attacking Germans. He concentrated his defense on board 20, so I lined up on board 1, and did my best to overrun the defenders there. This is what things looked like at the end of the first movement phase:

As you can see, I was directly threatening the forward few squads on board 1, and was already moving around the end of the line. Things continued in this vein, with the Russian defense struggling to re-orient, and a nasty fight developing in front of the factory. Sadly for me, he had good luck with his Reinforcement DRs, so he was able to feed 628s directly into it before I could arrive. The INF turned out to be in 20B4, and that clear shot all the way to L9 was a major problem for me. By turn 5, almost all resistance outside the INF and the factory had collapsed, and I was struggling with how to leverage what was left of my forces to blast my way inside before the reinforcements got even worse.

That is what things looked like during my Turn 5, when Luke just… vanished. On me, and several other PBeM players. I’ve always regretted this game going unfinished. I’d managed to pry apart the defenders, but the trickle of new 628s meant I still had a challenge, and I had a real struggle in front of me.
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Sertorius and the Struggle for Spain

by on March 26, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This is mostly a reconstruction of the Sertorian War. There’s also some notes of the larger history of the Iberian peninsula, and people with an interest in the history of Iberia in general may want to pick this up too.

Back to the main subject, Sertorius is considered one of Rome’s best and least known generals. While I generally agree, I can’t help wondering if Sertorius was only successful because he was well-suited to the mixed force he had and the guerilla holding action he fought. That is, put him in charge of regular Roman legions in a more normal Roman war, would he have done so well, or would all of his superb qualities have been wasted in the standardized system, away from terrain he knew well? In any case, he was the perfect person for the role he did play, but that was unfortunately on the losing side of the civil wars of the early 1st Century BC. And the upshot of that is despite some glowing praise for his generalship, we don’t know a lot about what exactly happened over the course of eight years of fighting.

However, scholars have combed through all the various references that do exist to what happened, many of which are just particular incidents without a lot of context, and assembled them into a framework that seems to work. This book is Matyszak’s presentation of this framework for a popular audience. As there is so little go off of, a high percentage of the book is direct quotes from the ancient sources, woven together with explanations and probable interpretations.

As such, this is a very important book for those wanting to know more about Sertorius’ campaigns, as this is about as fleshed out as it gets at the moment (and quite possibly, ever). I have some quibbles with yet another unneeded in medias res opening to a history book, and Matyszak is still too unforgiving on the character of Gaius Marius (but that’s much more peripheral than it was in Cataclysm 90 BC). There’s three maps of Iberia at the beginning of the book, and the fun one is ‘from a campaigning point of view’, and is keyed with ‘merely unpleasant’, ‘rugged and mountainous’, and ‘practically impassible’. Overlaying the apparent routes of march of various campaigning seasons on that one would have been interesting.

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Two Rounds of Jaxartes River

by on March 22, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

Patch and I’s latest between-games set of Commands & Colors: Ancients continues through the career of Alexander the Great. This time the Battle of Jaxartes River from Expansion #1 was up. It’s unusual in several respects: First, the Scythian force is all cavalry, and almost all LC/LBC, with one MC mixed in. Second, Alexander has two heavy war machines, which took some reading up. It’s a river crossing scenario, and while the Macedonians have more and heavier units, the setup is heavily weighted towards their side of the board. As is usual, the Companions can ignore a banner and a sword hit, and Alexander adds a die to combat.

I had Alexander for the first play, and we started with ranged combat, which worked for Patch as a pair of banners chased one of my LC off the board, and then he got a hit on the Companions. I started deploying the center by moving up the Heavies, and Patch used Double Time to order one unit for ranged combat with no effect. I Ordered Three Left, and moved up a little, while getting a hit on a LC, and drove it back to his baseline, along with another one. Patch ordered one with Line Command to get a hit, and I Counterattacked to move the Heavies into the river and reshuffle almost everyone else. Ranged fire did two hits to a LC, a hit to another, and drove a third back to the base line. The Heavies did two hits to the MC, which did two to one Heavy in battle back.

Patch used Mounted Charge to swarm my crossing in the center, and did two hits to an Aux and a hit to the weak Heavy, but took a hit on a LC and lost the MC in return. I Counterattacked again to put my remaining cavalry into the river, driving off a weak LBC and doing two hits to the only unit still at the river on Patch’s left, but took another hit to the Companions in turn. Patch Ordered Three Center to pull back a weak LC, get Satraces up to a better LC, and try to pick off the weak Heavy, but merely took a hit himself. I used Order Mediums to get my MC out of the river and knock out two one-block units. Patch Ordered Three Center again, and this time picked off the Heavy, but lost a block when he tried to use Momentum as a follow up on the Aux. I Ordered Two Center to advance the remaining Heavy and the MC, which each picked off a one-block unit. 5-2

The second game started about the same as the first. My first play was Out Flanked, which chased a Macedonian LC off the board, did two hits to the Companions, and did a hit on the other flank. Patch used Coordinated Attack to drive off a LC and do a block to my MC (both with fire from the HWMs), while moving up a Heavy. I Ordered Light, and managed to chase off the LC on the other flank.

Patch used Line Command to move two units into the river, while shuffling the others. He did a block each to two LBC, and one LC, and did a second block to the MC, taking two blocks to a Light in return. I Rallied, getting my MC and the neighboring LC back to full strength, and I did another block to the Light, who evaded a second attack so I couldn’t finish them off. Patch Ordered Three Right to shuffle Alexander to an Aux, and retire the Companions behind his lines. I used Order Three Left to do a block to a HWM and drive it to the baseline, and do a block to some Slingers. Patch moved in with Order Lights, and did a hit and banner to a LBC, and then did two hits to the MC on an evade (would have knocked out the unit if I’d tried to stick to the river).

I Ordered Two Center to try to establish a line, and Patch Ordered Lights to knock out a LBC in that line, and do a block to a LC. I Ordered Two Right to do a block to a LB, and Patch had Inspired Center Leadership to get across the river, but didn’t do more than force a LC to evade. Leadership any Section let me move the line up a little, but I could only do one block to an Aux with ranged fire, and didn’t dare face Alex in close combat. Patch Double-Timed into my line, which eliminated two units from under Satraces, and forced off a LC. I Ordered Two Center to move the LC up a little, and send Satraces to join it, while Patch Move-Fire-Moved to eliminate a LC (three hits on three rolls), and do a hit to a LBC, while moving up a bit. I Ordered Three Right to force a Light to retreat, but that was it. Patch Ordered Heavies, and the HWM each forced a LBC to retreat, one of the losing a block. I Ordered Two Left to dash units back up to the river, hoping to get at the weaker units there, and did a block to a Slinger unit. Patch Ordered Two Center to get a Heavy in contact with a LBC at the board edge and eliminated it. 2-5

Afterword

Its a fun, fast moving battle, but it’s horribly lopsided. Once the Macedonians can get into action, there’s just not much all that light cavalry can do. The Scythians also have problems with a lot of dead cards. In the first game, I suffered from having a lot of ‘Order Two’ cards, and mostly was able to get going with a couple of Counter Attacks that were far more useful for me than Patch. Almost worse is the fact that the Scythians only have one leader, which adds to the ‘dead card’ problem. If the Sythians can survive the river crossing a bit better, the hills should help some, but with how broken up they are, the Macedonians should be able to just cut off units.

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The Ghosts of Cannae

by on March 18, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The ‘ghosts’ that provide the excuse for the (admittedly great) title of this book are the cannenses, the survivors of the Roman army comprehensively defeated at Cannae. And there’s some interesting info on what seems to have happened to them, and just how unforgiving the Republic was of people who dared survive a debacle, they’re not really enough of a focus to name a book after.

In an epilogue, there is another form of ‘ghost’. O’Connell looks at how well regarded Cannae has been throughout history. This actually provides a fair amount of myth-busting. Certainly, it was written about, but for most of the last two thousand years, Cannae was not a battle written about often. And it certainly didn’t have the near mythological status it has today. Most of the current reputation and study of the battle stems from Alfred von Schlieffen (yes, that von Shlieffen, of the ‘Schlieffen Plan’) becoming fascinated with the battle at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

Interestingly, O’Connell goes all the way back to human evolution to look at the sources of organized war before giving a brief overview of more recent history of the area, naturally concentrating on the First Punic War. This shows that this is purely ‘popular’ history, and doesn’t even pre-suppose that readers regularly read military history. So overall there’s not a lot new here for people who have had an interest in the period and done a fair amount of reading on it previously. However, he does pay a bit more attention to the original sources than many, and does a good job of showing what he is pulling out of them and how, making it better than a number of popular studies that way. Best yet, the book is excellently written, with some very nice analysis and modern analogies.

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Livin’ Large

by on March 14, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

After our last ASL game wrapped up, Patch and I got going on a round Space Empires 4X, while it was still fresh from our December FtF session. We went with the Large 2-player scenario, with no advanced rules, and only warp points from the optional rules. (Though we did use the expanded countermix of Close Encounters as there’s no good way to eliminate all of them from the module.)

Patch won the roll to go first, and set off with his scouts into unexplored space, with his colony ships in tow, and found two planets and a mineral. In contrast, my first turn turned up minerals, a nebula, and asteroids. As a whole, Patch found and colonized three planets during the first rounds of movement, four Mineral 5s, one of which he hauled home, a nebula and an asteroid field. I found two planets, one of which I managed to colonize, four Mineral 5s, one of which I hauled home, two nebulas, and one asteroid field.

Econ 1:
Patch: Income 20 + 5 minerals = 25 – 3 maintenance = 22. Buy 2xSC, 1xCOL
Rindis: Income 20 + 5 minerals = 25 – 3 maintenance = 22. Buy 1xSC, 1xCOL, 1xMiner

Patch found four Mineral 5s, four more planets, the home area barren and the black hole during the next set of movement turns. He also went into two of the SCs into deep space on the third turn, finding a Super Nova and Danger!, costing him two SCs (including the one lost to the black hole). He colonized one of the planets, and hauled in a mineral. I found four more planets, the home area barren, and three Mineral 5s. The new scout also found the black hole on its first exploration, and was posthumously named Red Shirt. I colonized one planet, while everything struggled to get to the further away locations.

Econ 2:
Patch: 2CP + Income 23 + 5 minerals = 30 – 3 maintenance = 27. Buy 1xSC, 2xCOL, 1xMiner
Rindis: 3CP + Income 21 = 24 – 3 maintenance = 21. Buy 2xCOL


The board at the end of the second economy phase. Of the right-most hexes, only A9 is in play. I’m blue, and Patch is green.
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