The Enterprise of England

by on May 30, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Ended up with something of a surprise gaming session with Jason and Mark this Saturday. After a little debate, we settled on a game of GMT’s Blackbeard, which hasn’t gotten to the table in quite a while. We went for the ‘long game’ option, though we ended up cutting it a bit short as we were delayed by Jason being a bit late, and we had to do a lot of rule checking since we hadn’t had any real prep time.

With a three player game, we can have up to three pirates on the board at once, but everyone opted to just place two and keep the third in reserve. I placed my two at the far ends of the board—North Atlantic and India—while Jason centered around the Caribbean and Mark placed one on the Gold Coast (and the other… I think in the South Atlantic zone). Jason cycled through a decent number of captains during the game. His most successful one retired, but at least one went down to a King’s Commissioner (mine), one was replaced by a successful mutiny, and one lost a duel with one of Mark’s captains. One of his captains also had major trouble with repeated storms in the East Caribbean. Mark was a lot more stable, fending off a mutiny, though he lost a captain to another of my King’s Commissioners, and taking over ships from both Jason and me with successful duels (the latter with Blackbeard himself).

For quite a while, it seemed I wasn’t doing much. I positioned my best captain (Edward England) in India, and despite an Ability of 4, I had a heck of a time spotting merchant ships (2/3rds chance, and I was about 2 for 8); thankfully, I didn’t have any competition, and new merchants trickled in at about the rate I could nab them. My booty rolls weren’t that great either, though several of the ships were good, and I kept rolling high on the notoriety gain. I ended up trading up to a brigantine shortly before a King’s Commissioner showed, and installed Heavy Guns to be able to beat him, a warship that showed up (we used the original printed values for warships and KC), and loot the port of Goa (with information provided by a hostage). This led to a retirement with 48 Notoriety and about… 5200? in net worth, which shot my low score well past everyone else.

My other captain had a 1 Initiative, so he was a poor choice for any cards that determined actions by that score, and I mostly ignored him until after England retired. I managed a couple decent prizes with him, and defeated another King’s Commissioner before retiring him. My third captain finally came into play at this point, who was defeated by Blackbeard shortly before we broke up for the day.

Jason ended the day with 76 VPs, Mark had 134, and I had… 233. It sure didn’t feel like a huge win like that was possible with my frustrating beginning, but once England got going, he became impossible to stop, and raked in a huge score by himself. And despite the overall relearning the system nature of the game, I think we learned a lot on successful play. Anti-pirate play picked up a lot as we went along (to levels not seen before), and warships are handy for wearing down a good captain until a King’s Commissioner can take him out.

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Wars of Empire

by on May 26, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Douglas Porch’s book on imperialism and warfare is meant as an introductory book on the subject, but I don’t think it serves that job very well. Organized around general subjects of how European vs non-European wars worked in the 18th and 19th Centuries is skips around too much for an unfamiliar reader to really get a good grasp of the events talked about.

Now, not a lot of background is really needed, as long as the reader has some sense of the course of events already, the book will be very easy to follow. It does go into the why of those events quite well, and the book is an excellent ‘next step’ once some general background is known. Wars of Empire is a long thought-essay (though a short book) on how Europe came to control so much over those two centuries. He goes into such things as why so many indigenous peoples completely failed to resist Western Imperialism, despite having access to many of the same tools (especially in the 18th Century, while firearms were still relatively simple to operate and maintain). He points out how Imperial expansion was often politically unpopular, and often came only by the actions of commanders posted far away from home (it is a pity he didn’t step outside his time frame to point out how the Japanese Army in Manchuria operated the same way). There’s some important things talked about here, but not necessarily enough context. I’d also like to see a detailed study of some part of all this to demonstrate that events actually work the way he says, instead of just drawing general conclusions from general trends.

Also, I have the Endeavour Press Kindle edition of the book, and it has suffered a bit. It’s much cleaner than a lot of OCR translations I’ve seen, but there’s still a few flubs (and about two cases where I could not figure out what the original word was), and a high number of dropped periods (which is not something I’ve seen before). What makes this especially surprising is that the original book was released in 2000, so I would have supposed electronic files would still exist, instead of needing to scan.

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Soaring to a Win

by on May 22, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had most of the regulars over on Saturday for our regular FtF gaming (Patch missed out by being ill; get better Patch!), going for Dominant Species this time. We did our usual method of handing out the animals randomly, with the Birds (which for whatever reason usually gets skipped in our random draws) going to Mark, Jason getting the Insects, Dave getting Amphibians, and Mammals going to me.

I mostly tried to set up for later in the game in the first turn or two, and felt that it had gone poorly. I didn’t feel like I had gained any sort of advantage over anyone else, and had passed over gaining points, putting me well behind anyone else. Jason had gotten a decent lead, followed by Dave, both off of double-scoring. Somewhat surprisingly, there had been no glaciation action the first turn (Jason tended to a heavy Glaciation/Survival strategy early on, but has since gone on to other strategies), and Dave ended up with the Survival card for the first time in all his plays.

4-Turn-1
After the first turn.

After that, my position improved, and my scored passed Mark’s by one point on turn 3, and stayed there on turn 4. I was picking up decent number of dominances across the board, and eventually realized that it was because meat was the most common element on the board, and I had adapted to sun and grass, which were also common. The points spread had gotten really wide during the first few turns, but Dave started catching up to Jason in the middle game, and I came out of the cellar (passing Mark as mentioned), and started climbing towards them.

4-Turn-4
After turn four. My meat-sun-grass combo is paying off at the wrong time….

One thing that decidedly affected the game is that both Intelligence and Parasitism came up early, and the player most easily skipped by them got the first choice at them (i.e., the person who would miss the action pawn if anyone other than them picked the card), so everyone had five action pawns from the second turn, and six from about turn four. On the last turn things got very crowded as all the action pawns combined with the choices that no longer had meaning were abandoned. Also, all of us had a fairly easy time getting all our species  on the board. I tried a somewhat risky strategy of getting everything out during the middle game, and still had a decent population at the end.

During the last couple turns, my surge in points and obvious dominance possibilities came to an end as events conspired to make me lose adaptation elements, and a last-place position in the initiative (I had put myself in third on the first turn, but Mark had put me back in fourth with Nocturnal) locked me out of Adaptation, leaving me with four elements to work with. As my dominance (heh) of the board faded, Mark, who had started doing better over the last couple of turns started emerging with a number of dominances across the board.

As it turned out I had one final choice at the end of the game. I had the final scoring position, and as we had had an even five cards available, Ice Age had not yet been taken. I could easily score a tied-dominance title and try to gain a victory I fairly obviously wasn’t going to get this turn. But I felt that next turn would be worse, not better, for me and ended the game. Mark had gotten up to eight dominances, and the bonus points pushed him up to a 134-point win. Dave and Jason had five dominances and also tied at 125 points. I only had four (if I could have moved a bit more to keep from getting knocked off a couple tiles, it would have been more), and came in fourth at 121.

4-Turn-7
End game.

The early game featured a ~30 point gap at one point, so this relatively close set of scores was very startling. Also, this is the highest overall scoring game we’ve seen yet. This is also the second game in a row that ended about a turn or so after I really needed it to. Though this time I got a clearer idea of just how some of this happened (popular elements), and I hope to be able to manipulate the dominance situation a bit better next time.

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The Four Vassal War Coalition Turn 5

by on May 18, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Four Vassal War

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

As the war drags into its third year, Klingon occupation of Kzinti space earns a VP (actually, 0.1 comes from a province disrupted by the Lyrans). The grand total of 5.6 VP earned for taking enemy territory (including one-time bonuses for capturing a planet at all) is still the smallest component of of the VP totals, showing that this isn’t really a war of conquest.

The Lyrans left a lot of repairs undone, but that was purely because of a lack of facilities. The Klingons had a fairly hefty bill, but managed to get almost everything repaired, and still had money to overbuild a D7 and F5.

Builds:
Klingons: 2xD7, TGB, F5L, F5, F5S, 3xE4, E3, PGB, BS->BATS, D6->D6S, D7->D7C
Lyrans: BCE, CA, CL, CLS, 2xDD, 2xFF

The first truly heavy scouts are introduced with the Klingon D6S and Lyran CLS at this point, which are going to be needed to counter the effect of all the Kzinti drone bombardment platforms.

The Lyrans raided the Hydrans with a new CA and destroyed a called up POL to disrupt the province, while the Klingons went deep into Kzinti space, hoping to pull a ship out of a Reserve. However, they pulled a BC out of a different nearby fleet, and destroyed the raiding D6, retreating back to the capital in process.

The Lyrans drove back across the Kzinti border, and Kzinti forces reacted into them generating a large fight in the neutral zone, and further forces pressed on to BS 0701. Meanwhile, Klingon forces probed into the same area, and after some initial indecision, I made a stab at the planet in 1001 instead of the SB next door.

The Lyrans didn’t do anything on the Hydran border. With both borders in bad shape, they wanted as little overall activity as possible. The Klingons raided the border, going after individual ships, and generated a few small fights.


The Kzinti front.


The Hydran front.

Combat:
0502: SSC: Lyran retreat
0701: Kzinti: dest BS, CC, BC; Lyran: dest CL, crip CA, 2xDD
0703: SSC: both sides retreat
0603: Kzinti: crip CC, CL; Lyran: dest 2xCL, crip DD
1001: Kzinti: crip CL, FF; Klingon: crip D6, F5, F5G
1002: Kzinti: dest CC; Klingon: crip E4
1004: Kzinti: dest FF, SF; Klingon: crip E3
1605: Kzinti: dest BS, FF; Klingon: crip D5, F5
0915: SSC: Hydran: crip CR, 2xCU, retreat
1216: SSC: Hydran: retreat
1217: SSC: Hydran: dest LN, HN
1317: SSC: Hydran: retreat
1217: SSC: Hydran: retreat

0502 was another annoyingly bad roll in SSC (2), which saw a CL retreat from a FF (which is a +2/-3 combat).

The BS at 0701 took three rounds, with the remaining Kzinti forces retreating out on round two after my DDG successfully scored a SIDS to cripple the base. I stayed in the hex, which has turned into a problem as the later retreat out of 0603 closed their retrograde path, and the hex is also out of supply range.

Even with the maneuvering I did, I didn’t have nearly enough to take out planet 1001. My ComPot was slightly lower, and I couldn’t keep up with Kzinti EW (boosted by the defenses) and then I rolled 3 under the Kzinti to take nearly twice as much damage. With good rolls, I was prepared to try and force the issue, but not the other way around.

0915 had a full hellbore-armed squadron against an F5 squadron, but this time the rolls were 10 vs 2 in my favor.

1217 continued good SSC rolls with a ’12’ to wipe out both Hydran ships. Later, the squadron from 1317 retreated into the hex, and both sides rolled average to merely force another retreat.

Despite problems, I still destroyed another two BS this turn. Combined with another eight ship kills and a slowly growing repair bill, my VPs are up to 104.4. Meanwhile, the my repairs have overcome last turn’s cripples to Alliance VPs to 94.6 (and another BS->BATS conversion is underway to reduce that total further). This is a Marginal Victory, down from a Minor Victory as of my previous turn, thanks to how bad Alliance Turn 4 was.

We seem to be solidly in the middle part of the war, with all the easy targets taken out, except for the Klingon border stations, which I have so far managed to protect, and three Hydran Lyran-border bases, which the Lyrans have been in no shape to get to.

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Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

by on May 14, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Over the years, and the course of well over a dozen novels, there’s been a number of different… ‘periods’ or groups in the Vorkosigan Saga. There’s the Cordelia books, the Admiral Naismith books, the Lord Auditor Vorkosigan books… as well as a number of little offbranches.

The series started with Cordelia, who has always been a favorite character of mine, so this return to her was overdue and welcome. From the other end of a fairly crowded timeline that is approaching 50 years, this is a mix of the familiar and the new. The past haunts this novel more directly than usual in this series. Surprisingly, the book that has the biggest impact is not earlier Cordelia books, but The Vor Game, from a view that Miles never had of the action.

I might suggest this is a less apt point to enter the series than usual as there is a fair amount of the past here. However, the real main part of the past present here is not in any of the other books anyway. So maybe you might as well get the new-old and old-old here with the same amount of weight. And that leads into the obvious problems here, with a relationship with a long history that there’s no signs of previously. It shocked me, and I was grumpy about it for a bit, but that passed; I have a feeling that for Bujold this is part of her own re-questioning of assumptions.

My actual disappointment stems from the fact that the book is a bit directionless. Bujold likes alternating between the viewpoints of the principles in a romance, and Jole has a real decision to make here. At the end, a firm decision is made, and the story comes to a natural close. But there was never any real tension here. It is too obvious where this is going, despite the other branch of the decision having its own obvious upsides, not even the inertia of that path carries through here. Cordelia’s side doesn’t even have that much tension; Cordelia has made her decisions and nothing really touches that bedrock. This feels like a transition, and I hope we see some interesting books emerge on the other side.

But in the end, don’t let any of this scare you off. This isn’t a great book, and doesn’t feature any of the action or tightly-wound plots that I like, and I associate Bujold with. But Bujold’s real strength as an author is the ability to do that and have wonderful characters and meditations on the human condition, and this is well worth reading just on that end.

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