Marching Around Sekigahara

by on November 28, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Played Sekigahara last night with my dad. It’s not his first time, but it’s been a few years, so it was a pretty much a full re-introduction.

I took Ishida, and wasn’t confident at all for any battle for the first couple turns. Fortunately, my dad used fairly conservative play, and the first real battle didn’t happen until the end of turn 3. However, I moved against Miyazu castle and took it at the end of the first week, giving me a lead on castles I maintained during the entire game. The opening Maeda forces in Kanazawa ended up heading east and south to help the main army coming up from Edo to besiege Ueda castle, so managed to advance to two-block force to take Kanazawa (two three-mon Ukitas to get seven impact).

I was also slowly marshaling forces along the west end of the Nakasendo road, and moved one block out from Ueda, so Tokugawa would have to besiege it with two blocks and the disk inside, and that chewed up time, as the force wasn’t able to get more than one block at a time. Part of the consolidation of my dad’s forces was moving the Date forces down to Edo, so I took Shirakawa and Sendai, and advanced towards Edo. My four-block army couldn’t take the city, but anyone who guarded it wasn’t headed west, and anyone fighting Uesugi was going the wrong way. As it was, he did go to fight it, just as I had the cards I needed, and while I lost half the army (two blocks) in the biggest battle of the game, I was still victorious (daimyo + 2×3-mon + special, all Uesugi = 16 impact).

The rest of the army got wiped out after that, but I’d been slowly mustering extra (non-Uesugi) blocks to Aizu that were all cavalry, and a starting (“random”) cavalry was up in Takeda. Before that last block could join the rest (failed my bid to go first), the three at Aizu were brought to battle, and I had a bunch of special cards to use. I won handily (3xcav, all different clans = 15 impact), but one of my dad’s blocks survived to retreat and block the road south.

Meanwhile, I had pressed south, and taken Kuwana and Anotsu before finally taking out the starting army in Kiyosu (in the week-three battle mentioned before). From there, I took Okazaki and reconcentrated on the Nakasendo. After Ueda fell, the Tokugawa army headed west, and the situation turned into a ‘sitzkrieg’ with two large armies staring at each other at Gifu and Kiso. I had control of all of the Tokugawa mustering locations other than Edo for a short period. Sendai was retaken during the fighting in the west, and then I moved out to take Takeda from Kanazawa. That worked, but then he mustered there before my army got back. For some reason this had slipped my mind, and I even had a turn in which to get back, if I’d thought to force march. As it was, I gave him a final turn-choice between retaking Takeda and taking Aizu, and my dad went for the more valuable castle, but couldn’t quite wipe out my army.

The final score was 17 to 10; I had 6 castles and 5 resources to my dad’s 3 castles and 4 resources. I was in the dominant position all game, though I had to be cautious around the large armies that might suddenly have a hand that worked. I always had the castle bonus, and almost always had the resource bonus (we tied on week 2, and my dad had the advantage on week 5). I was paying a lot more attention to my card counts this time, and was spending to an odd number pretty much every time, which is not something I managed to do before. Also, both of us did a lot of force-marching, which I’ve only seen once or twice in all my games before.


Situation at the end of the game. Trust me, the color from my camera is bad….

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Newbie Wind Alliance Turn 1

by on November 24, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: F&E

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

With a one-front war, it’s not impossible for the Kzinti to strike back, but there’s not a lot to do either, so my teaching game has already finished off my half of turn 1.

The first turn construction schedule for the Kzintis is limited, and after building everything, constructing defenses on the capital, and repairing the cripples, there’s still 30 EP in the Kzinti treasury. Sadly, I know that this will not last, and there won’t be enough EP to go around soon enough.

Builds
Kzinti: CV, CLE, DD, FF, FFE, 4xPDU (Kzintai)

I figured I’d take a stab at BATS 0705, and sent a force to pin his forces on 0504, so only the Reserve would be mobile and in range. But he reacted in the Reserve, meaning that the local forces were still mobile but the Reserve couldn’t do anything more. If I’d had more distant options, it might have been important. After sending in the main force to 0705, I moved an extra CV group down there, and Carl moved from 0501 to intercept, but I just sidestepped out of the way to avoid them (if I’d been less mentally lazy, I would have moved out of range in the first place to keep his ships from getting closer to Kzinti space for free).


Counter-raid.

Battles:
0705: Lyran: crip CA, CL, DW; Kzinti: dest CLE, crip CC
0504: Retreat after refused approach

At 0705, BIR went high, and I rolled a 1 while Carl got a 6 for 20 vs 34 damage. If it had been more typical, I probably would have had just a crippled ship, and with low damage, hopefully taken it all on fighters. In the event, I decided to retire a CLE early (they’ll slowly get replaced with the much better MEC, which I can start producing next turn), and just use a regular CL as an ad hoc escort next turn. In the meantime, the Lyrans took another three cripples on a stack that already had a bunch, and they refused to pursue a largely intact Kzinti force (which was short on fighters, only having the spares from a TTV).

So, we’re a turn in, and Carl is hopefully a bit wiser. The real challenge for the Kzinti starts next time, as the Klingons join in, more than doubling the number of ships invading, while the Kzinti have turned their Home Fleet into two reserves to help out on the assault.

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Dungeons & Sorcery Spells 8

by on November 20, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

Here’s another set of ten spells for my GURPS Dungeons & Sorcery project. Many of them are from later sources, but we headline with the old classic, Blink, and something of an emphasis on getting away.

Blink (C)
Alteration, Somatic, Verbal
35 points
Casting Time: 3 seconds
Casting Roll:
Range: none
Duration: 10 seconds

Casting this spell causes the magic-user to randomly teleport, or “blink”, once a second for the next ten seconds. Since it is random, it becomes hard for opponents to target the caster, as he may well shift out of range between attacks, and no amount of mind reading or analysis will predict where the caster will go. Of course, the same problem can inconvenience the caster.

Because this is happening without the caster’s control, he may try to perform other actions while blinking, but he must make a DX roll if he wants to perform an action before he blinks out of his current location. He must make this decision before he finds out the destination of his current blink (Wait maneuvers may be handy here, though casting a self-buff spell is still reasonable). Once an action is decided (or performed), roll for scatter (B414) with the distance halved, and the magic-user blinks to the nearest hex to that spot that is not obstructed (i.e., does not contain a wall, or other bulky object, such as a barrel; blinking into close combat with someone is possible) facing the same direction as when he started.

Note that actually performing any actions after the spell effect starts will depend on the caster making Body Sense rolls (B181) to keep from being disoriented/distracted. Finally, while the caster can take up to medium encumbrance worth of equipment with him (anything over that amount being left behind in the first blink), he will never take another creature with him. (e.g., if grasping a fairy in his hand, it would be left behind when he blinked. This is also handy for getting out of a grapple, if the caster can manage three seconds of gestures.)

Warp (Always On, -20%; Cosmic: No Die Roll Required, +50%; Extra Carrying Capacity, Medium, +20%; Range Limit, 3 yards, -50%; Requires Gestures, 10%; Requires Magic Words, -10%; Reduced Duration, 1/6, -15%; Sorcery, -15%; Takes Extra Time, x2, -10%; Uncontrollable, Random, -15%) [0.35×100] Note: “Uncontrollable” is boosted from its normal 10% for ‘harmless power’ as there is no Will roll to gain control.
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Newbie Wind Coalition Turn 1

by on November 16, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: F&E

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

Back in July, Carl Herzog went on the ADB forums and asked for a teaching game of Federation & Empire. After a little hesitation, I accepted, and also ended up with my Konya wa Hurricane game with Byron Sinor. Since then, the game with Carl has been slowly grinding forward, with lots of rules questions, clarifications, and various delays. The best delay was this:

Carl works with the USS Constitution museum, and was fully occupied for a couple weeks with the ceremonies surrounding the finish of her refit and relaunch.

Carl took the Coalition in the standard The Wind scenario, and hopefully we’ll at least get to the end of that. After a little bit of confusion on what was allowed, he ended up with a build schedule adapted from one I used the last time I started as the Coalition:

Builds
Klingons: D7C, TGA, D6, 8xD5, D5S, F5L, 4xF5, F5V, 3xE4
Lyrans: BC, TGC, 4xCW, 2xDW, DWS, 3xFF, MB, PDU

The Lyrans naturally did the typical thing  of lining up on the border, and moving against the three BATS facing them. I had a small force (CVL group + CL & FF) set up on 0803 and, except for one DF, the rest of the Count’s Fleet in the reserve. The DF reacted to 0803 as well, while the reserve went to 0703 and the Duke’s reserve went to 0701.

The six Lyran Home Fleet ships allowed closer to the border in 0707 did set up there, but ended up not moving, and later used Strategic Movement to stiffen the border. However, much of the Home Fleet was on 0608, and did move in to hit 0803.


Opening moves.

Battles:
0701: Lyran: dest CL, DD, crip CW, FF; Kzinti: crip BC, CL
0703: Lyran: dest CA, FF, crip 2xCL, 2xDD, FF; Kzinti: dest BATS, capture FF
0803: Lyran: dest 2xDD, 2xFF; Kzinti: crip BC

The Lyran force in 0701 was an adequate BATS-busting force (six ships), but when the Duke’s Reserve showed up, it was completely outclassed. Carl nearly attempted to fight it out anyway, but took my advice to run while he could after I accepted the first round approach battle, allowing him to keep something.

The best Lyran force was in 0703, and it rolled well enough on the first round to direct-cripple the BATS, and then killed it on the second round. I retreated onto adjacent BATS 0803; most of the Lyran force was crippled, so I could have done a lot of damage if I stuck around, though he’d kept a crippled CA on the line, which I killed with DirDam.

After I retreated onto it, Carl was facing three Kzinti carrier groups and retreated out after the approach battle. He decided not to put non-cripples in his pursued force to prevent further ships from being crippled, but lost all his cripples that way. (I advised for putting more ships in, but he’s trying to work out for himself advantages of repairs vs replacements…. It might take another turn or two to sink in, but it is going to be expensive.)

A decent line of ships were held back, and formed the Lyran reserve on 0404, while new construction used free Strategic Movement to go directly to the line of BATS.

Overall, killing a single BATS is not bad for the initial Lyran turn; they just don’t have enough, close enough, to get through Kzinti defenses on the first turn. Carl is being nicely aggressive, and if he can keep that, he probably has a good shot at doing a lot of damage next turn when the Klingons come in. (I’ll admit I have trouble swallowing the damage necessary for a strongly-defended SB.) Watching everything he’s going through is a reminder of just how much is going on in F&E. I at least had the advantage of some solo work (ages ago) to figure out a lot of basics before I started on my Vassal gaming career.

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Ancillary Justice

by on November 12, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice was something of a slow burn for me. It was obviously solidly written from the start, but the plot is slow-moving, and unfocused. Early chapters alternate between two very different stories (with—more-or-less—the same viewpoint character) fifteen years apart. We’re dropped into an unfamiliar environment without many signposts.

This is deliberate, with the first and most obvious removal of signposts being gender. The main character’s language and culture downplays gender as much as possible, and she admits to having trouble telling genders apart in a multicultural galaxy, and speaking correctly in a gendered language. So everything in the novel is ‘translated’ to she, and since there’s not a lot of detailed physical descriptions, everything else is left to the reader to puzzle out (there is one major character unambiguously identified as male).

But this is really just the first hint that the novel features an unreliable narrator. It takes a fair amount of the book to even begin realizing just how unreliable she is. Breq, or Justice of Toren One Esk Eighteen, is an ancillary, a person who was taken, put in cold storage, and then revived and fitted with implants and hooked up to the AI of a large military vessel. The large ‘carriers’ have potentially thousands of these people on board, who serve as the troops for planetary annexations to the Radch. (Aaand… this goes into the big pile of ‘futures I don’t want to live in’.) The ship is gone, but she still considers herself the same person, and has no memory of existence before being part of Justice of Toren.

As such, there is a distance in the narrative that is part of what makes the book have a slow start. She presents herself much as you might expect such an AI to be; loyal, obedient, generally logical and orderly in action. But… still waters run deep. While she doesn’t present herself as having emotions, she does have them, and the lack is purely her own blindness to how powerful they can be.

Given that the main character is a single part of what was once a much larger corporate identity, you do start wondering just how identity and personality interact here. And that’s just training wheels for a much bigger question of identity that comes as part of the central part of the novel. This gets revealed slowly, and late, but the conflict is at the center of the entire structure of the novel.

I’d seen a review (which I can’t find right now) that told me this would be an interesting book. I’m glad I saw it, or else I might have missed this, and it’s an excellent read, that benefits from spending some time and thought as to what exactly is going on behind the mere words on the page. It will repay you in giving you much to think about.

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