A Midsummer Tempest

by on April 21, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest starts out with a fairly straight telling of the Battle of Marston Moor. There is a difference: Prince Rupert of the Rhine is captured at the end of the action.

And then, the second chapter has Rupert taken to be held as a prisoner at a nearby Parliamentarian manor. Rupert is under close guard, but Shelgrave, his jailer, is courteous, and he and Rupert share an interest the new world of mechanical contrivances that is opening up. In fact, he has his own locomotive that he tinkers with, and access to the new northern rail line.

Into this switch to a more seemingly Victorian environment comes another primary character, Jennifer, Shelgrave’s cousin, an appropriately bold and strong-willed lady in a culture of proper feminine conformity.

The plot gets properly started after Rupert and Jennifer develop some affection for each other, and Rupert escapes from captivity with help from Jennifer, third main character, and… Titania and Oberon.

This odd mixture of history, technology two centuries out of time, and fantasy continue straight through, and in good alt-history tradition eventually gets laid out straight for the reader. The actual high-concept behind the book is that William Shakespeare is The Historian instead of The Bard in this universe, and everything he wrote is literally true here. There are cannons in Hamlet’s Denmark, there are clocks in Caesar’s Rome; overall the progress of technology is well ahead of what we’re used to.

So, with all of this, and magic from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, it should be a royal mess. But it works. It all works, including some very Shakespearean touches to the language. Overall, I don’t call it great, but it is still not to be missed.

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SL254 Catching Hell

by on April 18, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

Patch and I recently finished off this Captain’s Log scenario from the early Four Powers War that also serves as a bit of a sequel to the “Where Wisdom Fails” mini-campaign we played a year and a half ago.

It’s still early in the 4PW (Y159) and wild reports have been circulating about the new Hydran weapon (the hellbore torpedo), and the high command wants one captured so that it can be studied.

“It was several weeks before a target of opportunity emerged. An F5 squadron was in position to intercept an inferior Hydran force that was believed to contain at least one ship armed with the new weapon. Fearing Hydran reinforcements if they waited for a battlecruiser (with copious transporters and marines) to join the fray, the F5 squadron commander decided to risk an attempt at capture.”

The Klingons get an F5C and two F5s, while the Hydrans get a destroyer and a frigate/police ship with a random reinforcement a random number of turns later (1d6 per turn, shows up when the total reaches 13). An interesting twist is that while one of the ships will have a hellbore, the Hydran player gets to decide if the DD or the FF is the hellbore-armed ship, and the Klingon player doesn’t find out what he’s facing until after setup is done. The map is fixed until the Hydran reinforcement arrives, after which it goes to a floating map.

The Klingons need to capture the hellbore-armed ship for a victory, though they can still get a minor one by wiping out the Hydran force. The Hydrans treat this as a normal battle and just use normal points-based Modified Victory Conditions.

I went with the “historical” force of a Lancer DD (for the four Stinger-1s) and Cuirassier FF. Patch set up his force at the center top of the board, about as close as he could get to my setup area in the center. The LN was slightly forward and went speed 19 while the CU went speed 22. As the goal of the scenario, the CU was going to avoid direct contact as best as possible; besides, the hellbore is a good moderate range weapon compared to the point-blank fusions. The entire Klingon squadron went speed 17.

Maneuvering stayed fairly simple with me going straight and slipping out to maintain distance, while the Klingons maneuvered to my shield three and tried a volley of disruptors (one per ship) at range 12-14 on impulse 15 at the LN, with one hit. Shortly after that, I turned off for an eventual loop around to a pass on the opposite side from the starting position.

For turn 2, the LN slowed down to 13 to overload a fusion beam, while the Klingons boosted speed to 21, and the initial reinforcement roll was a ‘5’. On impulse 2, the LN launched all four of its Stinger-1s. I was wondering if Patch would try to get at the CU, but on Impulse 10, he turned in for a direct pass at the LN. On Impulse 13, the Klingons launched (what turned out to be Type-V) drones at range 3/4 from the LN. They then sideslipped out, and with ships going out of FA arc both sides opened fire.

I fired a fusion at the second F5, doing 1 damage at range 4, and the CU’s hellbore hit to sandpaper it’s shields as well as nearly bringing the #4 down. Meanwhile the F5C and F5-1 each fired two phasers and a disruptor at the LN at range 3, doing 27 damage on really good rolls (all but one phaser rolled a 1) and doing 8 internals through the #6 shield, getting all three bearing phasers.


Turn 2, impulses 1-13.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Auric Survival

by on April 15, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I finished off Act 2 of Heart of Thorns last week, and then spent a while exploring the rest of the Auric Basin. It’s a lot more accessible than Verdant Brink, so we got further faster, though we still gave out at about the 80% mark. I think there’s a few more places we can get to, but we have seen a few that are specifically gated by the high level gliding skill.

Auric Basin is also a lot less dangerous than Verdant Brink, even though some paths are ‘walk 5 yards, clear out nest of pocket raptors, walk 5 yards, clear out nest of pocket raptors…’. I’m still very happy from the other night when we got deposited on a small ledge with no apparent purpose that I realized it was a jump point to a series of updrafts that took us a fair distance on the gliders. (Usually I just trail after Smudge, who has a much better idea of where we’re going than I do.)

The centerpiece of the map is the city of Tarir, which is apparently the center of Glint’s plan to get the world through the current rise of the Elder Dragons. The story takes you there, introduces the Exalted, and finally ties off Glint’s egg (for now). Periodically, Mordremoth assaults the city, and defending against that is a meta-event that dominates the entire map. Since it revolves around getting outer defenses up and running first, it acts a bit like the Pact assault in Silverwastes, but with a timer instead of being controlled by player actions, which makes it not nearly as satisfying. (I have yet to see a ‘win’ in the defense, though Smudge has seen it a couple times.)

One of the major problems HoT is having is that the new zones are tied up in big meta events that are pure timer based, and can’t be soloed, making the zones unpopular, and driving players away…. Overall, Auric Basin is a lot easier to deal with than Verdant Brink, but any place an event is happening needs at least three people present, or it’s just not survivable.

A final thing that has been bugging me is that they keep showing fragments of introductions to the new classes and specializations in HoT. At the beginning of HoT, Rytlock makes a grand re-entrance, and is obviously a Revenant (the new class) now, and a big deal is made of his abilities. And then it’s never mentioned again. One branch of the meta-events in Auric Basin talks about the druids, and gives a bit of lore for past druids. And then it drops, with no hints of where the learning for current druids is coming from.

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J173 Assault on Baerendorf

by on April 12, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

Patch was over Saturday for our first ASL game in a while. We’d decided to try J173 “Assault on Baerendorf” from the new Journal since it fit in our available time, and used one of the ‘vertical’ boards (1a). The Germans (which I ended up taking) are defending the 1a town with a mix of eight squads, a 75L and JagdPanzer IV. However, despite the nice armor support, there’s a lot of space to cover, and only have two leaders, a 8-0 and 7-0!

The Americans have 5.5 turns to get all Good Order German MMC out of the town, with twelve squads, including three assault engineers and five M4A3 Shermans, ranging from base models to a M4A3(76)W. They can set up in one corner of the area (consisting of a small slice of 1a and part of boards 11 and 38), and can enter some/all of their forces once the scenario starts. The Germans get another three squads and 9-1 in a 251/1 and truck on turn 3.

I let myself get too distracted by all the space out there. Since it’s a short scenario, I didn’t really want Patch to be able to just move through some of the better cover out there for free. But I ended up spreading my defense out too much to be useful. I put the AT Gun out in a lone woods hex in 1aG14, which could see a fair amount of space, though if Patch completely swung through the other side of town, it may never see anything, and it might be too unsupported to do much good. The JgPz went in 11FF8 where it could see the center of the American setup area, and had some decent support.

J173-setup
My setup, north is to the left. I didn’t realize that SSR2 allowed free setup concealment to everyone.

Patch lined up almost everything as near the town as he could, but had the two M4A3s enter off to his left (north) with riders. These charged right by my ATG position out of it’s CA, so I let them go. Patch had been worried that it was hidden in the orchards near its actual position, but while more convenient in some ways, there was just too little visible from there for my liking.

Patch quickly broke the up-front conscript squad, but did have to prep a number of units to make sure they didn’t cause havoc during MPh, which slowed him down a little. My turn got off to a very good start when the ATG managed a five-shot rate tear (with the first shot on a ‘1’ ROF due to CA Change). Sadly, part of this was wasted with a Dud and an ’11’ to bounce a shot off a turret. However, I killed the M4A3(76)W, shocked a M4A3(75)W, pinned his best leader, and broke the two squads with him.

J173-1G

Things went downhill from there. Too scattered and too few, Patch pushed me hard over the next couple of turns, and used the sM on his tanks to good effect (Never missed a roll! However, he never got a successful special ammo roll.), and his shocked tank eventually recovered after going to Unconfirmed Kill on his turn 2. The ATG didn’t have many good options, but still managed to take out a M4A3 in the back on a +5 shot through the orchards on my turn 3. If I’d known I’d manage that, I might have sent my reinforcements straight in, but naturally started where they wouldn’t be charging the Shermans directly, and unloaded near the NE edge of the town. As it was, it was tempting to brave the remaining Sherman and see if I could get lucky with unloading and getting a PF shot of in AFPh, but caution won out.

At the time, that back sector was my main hope, especially since I thought I might get into 1aL6, and maybe keep patch off of me. But he got more of his guys into the area, and pushed me further away on his turn 4, and I conceded. It was possible I might do something, but it was getting to be very long odds.

J173-end
Concession, turn 4.

In general, it’s not a bad scenario, but I had trouble coming to grips with it at first, and certainly needed to set up a much tighter defense. The ATG helped retrieve some of the situation, though the Duds (it had a second one later; of course I also malfunctioned it on an IF shot, and then immediately repaired it) and an no-effect ’11’s kept it from being as important as needed. Turn 2 also fell apart some on me thanks to doubles putting the most important men on Final Fire early. The MMG also never got to do any work thanks to an early break, and I could never recover it. The JgPz never got a chance to shine, but certainly kept the M4A3(75)Ws busy. It was finally killed in CC, since there was just too much going on for it handle, and a PSK squad from the reinforcements couldn’t come up fast enough.

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Pike and Shot Tactics 1509-1660

by on April 8, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The “Pike and Shot” period that marks post-medieval warfare is one that I’ve never known a lot about, and so Osprey’s Elite book on the subject looked like just the thing.

It actually deals with a just a portion of the period, as it’s generally considered to cover from 1500 to a bit after 1700, but Keith Roberts wisely concentrated on the reforms and changes that occurred from the Dutch Revolution through the Thirty Years War. The volume also covers the English Civil War, but that just shows how existing theory was used in the ECW, especially by the Royalists, and doesn’t go into the New Model Army at all. (Which is generally covered by other books anyway.)

I found a lot of the detailed breakdowns hard to follow, and had trouble sorting out the many diagrams in the book. Part of it is because I breezed through some of it without really studying them, and part of it is because several different styles of diagrams are given, with some being contemporary illustrations, or done in the style of certain contemporary diagrams, so they can be compared, and some in modern color illustrations. I’ve seen presentations of things like this where I didn’t need to sit down and study it, so I think the diagrams could have been much better done, even though I don’t know just what went wrong.

But the real meat of the book is a look at how European thinking about combat evolved and tried to bring more more flexibility and greater tactical acumen to the field through theorizing and then training their armies in smaller formations that covered more frontage with less depth and incorporated various methods of volley fire. I’d like to see something on the period immediately preceding, that shows how the Spanish tercio came to prominence, but I don’t know of an Osprey tactics book (much less any other book) on the subject.

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