Two Rounds of Munychia

by on April 28, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

Over the last couple of weeks Patch and I played a couple Commands & Colors: Ancients games of the Munychia scenario from Expansion #6. Set right after the Phyle scenario, the Athenians surprise the Spartan-supported oligarchs and drive off their army. Well, at least in history; here, not so much…

I had the Athenians in the first game, with compact formation set up on a line of hills, while the Spartan army is in two disjointed wings. I deployed the flanks of the army with Out Flanked, and got a banner on Patch’s LC to cause it to take two losses from bumping into the baseline. Patch responded by Double Timing the Spartan Hoplites up to the rest of the line. I kept skirmishing on the flanks, and kept forcing his left-flank Auxilia to retreat, but couldn’t cause any losses. He slowly advanced while skirmishing, and caused a loss on my leader-led MH.

I then pressed harder on my right with an Order Three Right, coming off the hill, with both of our Aux taking two hits and my right-most MH retreating back to the hill. Patch Ordered Light to cause another block of damage to my Aux while driving it back a hex. We then skirmished for another round before I swept down off the hill with a Mounted Charge. This broke my line, as I rolled lots of red results (there’s no heavy units in the scenario). I did knock out his damaged Aux, and did two blocks to two allied MH in return for losing two MH outright and taking two damage on another that then retreated back to the hill (where my leader joined them as his unit was wiped out).

Patch then chased me with a Line Command, and forced all three MH still forward of the hill to retreat back to it, two of them with damage, while only taking one block himself. He also attacked the unit my leader had joined, and eliminated it (but not the leader) while losing a MH himself. I partially consolidated my army with Order Mediums, and knocked out his leader-led MH and got the leader with it.

Patch countered with his own Order Mediums, and drove off three of my units while doing two damage to a MH, while taking 1 himself. I used Leadership to get all my MH into a line but lost a two-block unit while doing 3 hits to a Spartan MH. Patch then used Inspired Center Leadership to swarm onto the hill and pick off a remaining MH. 4-5

Munychia-1

Similar to my opening, Patch deployed his flanks with a Coordinated Attack, but didn’t get a lucky roll against my LC. I used Order Mounted to move up the Spartan MHs, and then Out Flanked to bring the MC up as the ends of the line continued forward a little. Patch then used Leadership to bring part of his center down off the hill towards the my center. I used Order Mediums to finally get the Spartan MHs up to the rest of the line, and Patch used Move-Fire-Move to rework his flanks, but couldn’t get any hits.

I then used Line Command to come into contact with him across the board. The left flank was separated from the rest, and didn’t do too well, doing two hits to his Auxilia while taking one hit each on two units, one of which was forced to retreat to the main line. After that, hot dice took over, wiping out his leader-led MH in one attack (and driving him away before doing any leader-influenced rolls). Two attacks reduced another MH to two blocks and retreated it for one block, another MH was driven back with two losses, his Aux took three hits while doing one, and then my leader-lead Spartan MH wiped it out and then traded one block each with a retreated MH, while accepting a banner to retreat back into my line.

Patch used an Order Two Center to pull his forward MH I hadn’t attacked back to the hill. I Ordered Lights, but only took a hit on my Aux for my trouble. Patch then played Line Command to shift most of his units one hex to his left and close a gap in his line. I used Out Flanked to pick on the ends of his line, and got single hits on both of his LS, as well as finishing off a 1-block MH. Patch pulled a LS back, and then I advanced my right flank with a Leadership any Section. I finished off one MH, and drove another off with two hits (and taking one in return). My leader then used Momentum to get into the hills, and drove his LS off with a hit.

Patch countered with Clash of Shields, which only gave him two units, and did one damage and two banners to my Aux, and got three damage on a Spartan MH, and took only one block in return. An Order Three Center allowed me to continue to press forward, and I finished off a two-block MH. 5-0

Munychia-2

Afterword:

Both of us had trouble with the Athenians. We were in a good position on top of a hill, and had a hand full of good cards. Why go anywhere? But we had to do something, and ran out of ‘little’ cards. The theory would seem to be to charge off the hill and defeat the left line of the Spartan army before the Spartan MHs come up. But both times the other half of the army came up pretty fast, and the Athenians have a hard time of it. I kept it fairly close in the first game despite the worst Mounted Charge I’ve seen, but Patch didn’t have a chance in front of the amazing die rolls I got in the second game.

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The Tigress of Forlì

by on April 25, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

My knowledge of Renaissance Italy is about as minimal as it can be and still have studied Western history. That is, I know a number of very famous names associated with some artwork just as famous; I know of a little of the politics… and that’s nearly it. It’s a lack that some of my reading has been filling in the edges of. (The Fourth Part of the World had a good section on the early Humanists.)

Elizabeth Lev’s biography of Caterina Riario Sforza de Medici is about some of the details of that era, and was still very easy to follow. Lev introduces a cast of characters and keeps them all straight (despite the usual problems of different people with similar names) with unusual ability. Caterina did not make it to the big times of international fame (though ‘Medici’ is one of the big names, and I realized I’d heard the the name ‘Sforza’ before too), but she is still very much a local hero. She has obviously become a hero for Lev as well, and despite some (sadly in keeping with the times) bad qualities, and excessive bloody-mindedness, at her best she was an excellent leader and Countess.

My main complaint is that Lev starts with a prologue from what can be called Caterina’s finest hour (I might argue it, but it certainly made her reputation). It makes a good introduction to her, but when the book catches up to that point near the end, that part is basically acknowledged and skipped over, leaving the reader to recall exactly what was said at the beginning of the book. Other than the hiccup of wanting to take the prologue and stick it between two other chapters, it was a well done biography throughout.

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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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