Pursuit of Afghanistan

by on April 26, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Finally had some FtF gaming recently as Jason made it over for Pursuit of Glory. It was a bit tempting to try out Illusions of Glory, but we decided to stick with the game we knew better, since it had been quite a while since either of us had even played it, and we’d need a fair amount of refreshing.

I ended up with the Central Powers, and Jason went with the standard Russo-British Assault opening. I started with Pan-Turkism, and managed to move troops up to the Suez Canal before getting across with Liberate Suez. Both of us got to Limited War on schedule, though Jason didn’t do much in the way of RPs at first, allowing the Russians to get a bit exhausted while I rebuilt the Ottoman army, and more tellingly, he never played Churchill Prevails or Blockade (and Enver Goes East wasn’t as bad as it could be since I’d been largely maneuvering out of contact while he pressed in); neither of us violated Persian neutrality (despite temptations).

The next few turns saw things go very poorly for me. Jason continued being very OPS-aggressive, and eventually pushed aside the few troops I’d let sit in Mesopotamia (at start divisions and two Marsh Arabs). The ANZAC reinforcements made things too dense for me to get anywhere in Egypt, and then he pushed me back out, and the front didn’t shift down there again (Jason admitted after that he probably should have just taken the lumps and gone for it, as not doing it gave him lots of trouble), though I really should have spent the OPS to move back to the two-space chokepoint.

My main problem was Project Alexandria, which came ashore Adana, and with some help from Maude, knocked out my defense. This then turned into an extended hide-and-seek game with Adana and Alexandretta, as I tried to contain him, and he tried to break out into more valuable territory. With the collapse in Mesopotamia, he linked up from there, but it was still too easy for me to potentially cut off his forces from that and the ports. I did retake Adana early on and eliminate the beachhead, which helped.

I had largely felt helpless during this, with no real spare troops, no desire to denude the Russian front, and no reinforcements. I did distract us both with a Persian Push, that took Hamadan, and later Tehran and Qum, but only held Isfahan with the Bakhtiari. I spent too much time trying to keep supply semi-secure before realizing near the end of the day that Afghanistan had a partial supply that could at least keep everyone alive from that end.

I got Bulgaria on turn 3 and held on to it to play on 4. It ended up being a sadly neglected front for too long, but by the end of the day, I had Serbia on the verge of collapse (there were still two reduced armies in Serbia, which I would have probably soon eliminated), and Jason passed on playing Romania on 5. On turn 5, I finally got Parvus to Berlin, so I could start planning for a Russian shutdown (especially since they were far from getting 5+ VPs), and I finally started reacting better to the disasters elsewhere, if a bit too late to really do anything about it.

We went late, but were still in the middle of turn 8 when we broke up. VPs were at 16, and Jihad at 7. I’d just gotten into Afghanistan, and that was probably going to revolt to help take Central Asia with it (I forgot—again—about the immediate roll for entering the region). I had hit Total War at the end of 7, but Jason had barely made any progress, thanks to spending big cards as OPS, and being unwilling to downgrade Invasions to Reinforcements. I still had major military problems, but Jihad was about to go up again, it was likely that Romania would be forced to stay neutral (giving me two more VPs), and I had finally started seeing Reinforcement cards.

Neither of our performances were very good, showing how long its been. I have, yet again, failed to defend against an invasion as the CP. I thought I had him reasonably bottled up, but then he formed the 2nd Indian corps there, and used Maude before I could do anything. If I’d thought about the limited supply for Afghanistan, I could have been in there a turn or two sooner, which could have been interesting.

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Two Rounds of Crocus Plain

by on April 22, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

After some delays, Patch and I finally did our usual round of Commands & Colors: Ancients, with the Battle of Crocus Plain from Expansion #1. It feels a little odd going into a hoplite scenario that hasn’t been re-done in Expansion #6; the Macedonians are post-Phillip’s reforms (and have some medium and heavy cavalry), but the Phocians should be the same hopiltes we’ve been dealing with for the last dozen+ scenarios. The Macedonians definitely have the advantage, with the Phocians with their back to the wall (or, the sea), and with a noticeably lighter force.

I had the Macedonians the first time, and led off with Order Two Right, sending my MC forward to force a light and LB to evade back to the sea. Patch Ordered Three Left and did a block and forced one of the MC to retreat with archery. I used Leadership Any Section for Philip to get the middle in motion, with a light getting into archery range. Patch Ordered Three Left again, doing a block to my light, and forcing the other MC back on a banner, but did no damage with his LC, who advanced into range of the wounded MC.

I Ordered Three Right to surround his LC, and wiped it out on the first try. Patch Ordered Three Left to pick off a block on the second MC, and on the light. He also got a banner on my HC, but the leader kept them forward. I Counter Attacked to bring my cavalry into contact with his flank, and knocked out a light unit, and reduced an auxilia to 1 block (after a First Strike that missed), while losing a MC.

Patch used Leadership Any Section to pull the Aux out and advance two mediums, and he did one block on my HC… which killed my leader! I Ordered Two Center to finally bring my heavies to bear, and reduced a medium to one block while forcing it back, and wiped out another while taking no damage. Patch used a Line Command purely to shuffle over, and re-form. I used Coordinated Attack to move part of my detached flank, and send my remaining MC into his reduced units. I knocked out a 1-block medium, and since the leader was already against the bay, he lost him too, and then the MC momentum attacked to knock out the auxilia. 6-2

Patch opened the second game with a Line Command, and I responded with Order Two Right, which did one block to his left light through archery. I had been waiting for Patch to get a little closer, but he Double Timed his heavies and mediums right into my center-right, knocking out an Aux, nearly getting two mediums, while only taking one block in return. I used Line Command to shuffle over to my right, and did three blocks to a heavy, while nearly losing a medium, and taking one block on another—losing a leader in the process!

Patch followed up with Order Two Center, taking out two damaged mediums, along with the second leader (back was to the sea again), and a momentum attack did three damage to a medium (which should have wiped it out; somehow I managed not to take the hit on the unit that lost the first leader, and we never noticed), and knocked out his one-block heavy in return. I Ordered Four Center to get off the coast, and after some failed archery attacked the remaining heavy with a two-block medium because it beat letting Patch roll first. I did no damage, and Patch finished off the medium. 1-6

Afterword

The fact that the Phocians can barely retreat at all really dominates the scenario. The Macedonians are heavier, and have an extra leader, but it shouldn’t be quite this lopsided. The main thing that got me in the first play is that I had no center cards to speak of, delaying the use of the Heavy Infantry for a bit. My leader losses (on intact units) in both games hurt too.

It was still fun, and very fast; both goes took about an hour total, which is really fast for a six-banner scenario. The Double Time in the second game really sped things up, and caught me while I was still trying to maneuver.

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Anime Winter 2018

by on April 18, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Smudge ended up getting us both involved in Final Fantasy XIV right as the current anime season started, and that’s been taking up much of our free time, so we only saw a few series this time:

A Place Further Than the Universe — The initial description for this series was completely incoherent, but this turned out to the the hit of the season. Four high-school age girls end up as part of an expedition to Antarctica. As usual with Japanese series of this type, it shows some real research and care with the subject, and the characterization is great, with everyone having good reasons for getting involved. The four primary characters grow, and are very good for each other. Highly recommended.

Last Man — Finally just saw the end of the series a few days ago. It comes to a very well done ending, but I hope we get a ‘part 2’ or something. So far as I know, we’re still not at where the graphic novels pick up.

Yamato 2199 — I wasn’t entirely sure on the dub at first, but it’s gotten good. The series itself, is of course, excellent. We really need more remakes like this.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride — This is continuing with a few different story arcs, and overall, I’m liking it better than the first season. It’s been well-produced all along, but the writing seems to have settled into its groove now.

Pokemon Sun and Moon — The current Pokemon series has continued to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the streaming service of them reset to the beginning after the two Kanto episodes. So it’s going to be a while before I get to see more.

Garo: Vanishing Line — The second half of the series was largely ‘on the road’ and built up to a good climax sequence. Overall, a good story that hangs together all the way through. The mood and style are very good along with the characters, and the plot is solid if not exceptional.

Black Clover — The other continuing series from the previous season, we’re well behind on it now, having only taken the time for a few episodes. While it is in many ways a bog-standard fight-anime (and surprisingly low-budget at times), I’m enjoying it at the moment. The current plot lines have been much more interesting than the beginning (expanding the cast didn’t hurt), and as long as it can avoid dragging things out, I’ll continue to watch it.

Darling in the Franxx — I’ve only seen the first two episodes. Smudge had some problems with the… controls for the mechs, though coming from the people who did Kill la Kill…. We’ll probably give this more of a try, but feelings are decidedly mixed.

Also, Smudge started me on one continuing series:

March Comes in Like a Lion — Pure character drama centered around Shogi. I’ve only gotten through the initial (13-episode) season, and partway through the second (together being the first series), and am liking it quite a bit. The creator definitely gets people and animals, and the art style is nicely done in the series.

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Designers & Dragons: Part 2

by on April 14, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The second volume of Shannon Appelcline’s history of the RPG industry is every bit as large as the first. It’s a much bigger subject though, since the 1980s saw a lot of activity up and down. But TSR and GDW were very prominent parts of this decade, and were already covered in the first volume. This is also the decade of most of my role-playing activity, so there’s a lot of familiar names here, and many more I remember from ads, but never knew someone who actually got the products.

There’s another 23 major histories here, plus six ‘mini-histories’, and two magazine histories (these really need to be in the table of contents). This is about twice as many entries as the previous volume, which shows that most of them aren’t as long, though there’s still some very substantial chapters.

The biggest omission I noted in this volume was Car Wars. Appelcline passes over it quickly as a board game that Steve Jackson Games did very well with. However, it really exists in that halfway realm of the ‘proto-RPG’ or ‘hybrid game’ that he explores a little in the first volume. While the people in Car Wars are largely not the focus, there is a skill system, and there is character advancement through those skills. Moreover, the expected mode of play was for characters to persist from session to session. Sunday Drivers (expanded and reprinted from The Space Gamer, and later retitled Crash City) was labeled as ‘a role-playing supplement for Car Wars‘ and Convoy (reprinted from the first issue of Autoduel Quarterly) is a solo adventure (though not for one character) not unlike the ones produced for Tunnels & Trolls. Perhaps a large history of the RPG industry isn’t the place to meditate on just what constitutes an RPG, but I think looking at the edge cases, especially where play styles and fan groups start bleeding over into each other, is instructive.

While there’s several companies I’m very familiar with in here, they’re concentrated in the early parts of the book. In the last two (of six) parts, the company I’m most familiar with (DGP) I only really knew of after the fact, and I never got anything by New Infinities and only one from R. Talsorian (Dream Park, though I certainly enjoyed playing Teenagers From Outer Space). Again, it’s an extremely informative book that covers a lot of ground well.

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Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire

by on April 10, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The title of Palmer’s book is generally familiar, and he acknowledges directly that he’s writing a similar book to Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the introduction. However, this is a ’90s book for a more casual audience, and so isn’t anywhere near as long or as moralizing as Gibbon’s classic.

And… maybe a little moralizing would help. He does a good job describing a lot of the events of the Ottoman Empire’s slow breakup, but never really tries to posit any real reason why such a strong state should come apart, and why it took so much longer to do so than many outside observers assumed. A large part of this, is that you never get a good picture of the Empire as a whole, with the bulk of the attention being tied up with the person of the Sultan, and innermost circle of advisers and diplomats.

Palmer picks the failure of the second siege of Vienna (1683) as the starting point of his book, which seems to be a good one. I had not realized just how battered the Empire was in the next few years, with revolts in Greece, and various European powers picking up what they could. But like the Byzantine Empire before them, the Ottomans recover, and retake almost everything that was lost.

After a decent amount of detail in this section, coverage becomes light, but slowly picks up detail again, with the 19th Century (understandably) taking up a fair amount of the book. The various diplomatic maneuverings of Europe around the ‘sick man’ are covered in more and more detail as time passes. WWI itself isn’t as detailed, but the actual fighting of the war is not the primary focus. Instead, we get good broad accounts of the activity on the fronts, increasing Arab restlessness, and the maneuverings of the men at the top. The ‘post WWI’ struggles of Kemal, and the final fall of the Sultanate and Caliphate are handled in some detail.

It’s a very good introductory account of all these events, and probably at its strongest at the beginning and the end, which deal with subjects that don’t get enough coverage in histories. The real shortcoming is the lack of any kind of look at how it all came to be. There’s a good amount on the efforts to ‘Westernize’ (and to resist Westernizing) the Empire late in its life, but Palmer does little to show just how the Ottomans ended up with with a dysfunctional system that left them unable (or likely, unwilling) to adapt, and unable to impose its will within its own borders.

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