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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Verdant Mastery

by on April 4, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I finished Act 1 of HoT last Tuesday.

The story is continuing to be good, though it’s switched tracks again, and is only giving tiny snippets of had been the primary focus through the end of Season 2.

At some point, it’s going to be interesting to go through all of this as a non-Sylvari, as both this and Season 2 have been good at acknowledging the fact that there’s an extra personal impact here. And at other times, they ignore it, and I’m the only Sylvari that everyone’s still willing to trust.

How they present the story has evolved a bit, and it’s obvious that they’ve enhanced the engine some. It used to be that any time your character had dialog, GW2 would go into a type of cutscene for it. Those are largely gone now. Also, dialog are often triggered by proximity, which would happen inside of story instances, but these are happening out in the main world now.

So, the presentation is a lot smoother, though you don’t get to see the models up close and pretty as much.

Pretty much the first thing they do is introduce the new Mastery system, which stands in for levels in HoT. It looks like there’s an interesting mix of things in the masteries, part content-gating, and part new mechanics like the gliders. A very interesting wrinkle is that there’s ‘red’ mastery points for the original game’s areas, and ‘green’ mastery points in the HoT areas (these line up with the color of the logos for both), which means they can keep expanding the system with new expansions without going down the path of ever-escalating levels that all the other MMOs have used. You still gain experience, and when you gain a ‘level’ you get the new mastery. …If you have the Mastery Points to pay for it, which get awarded for story completion, and achievements, and so on. Smudge and I have a bunch of red points stored up already, but the higher ranks of any one mastery category get expensive, so they’ll probably give out on us mid-way through.

All of Act 1 happens in the first new HoT zone, Verdant Brink, which we’re still exploring. It kind of sprawls and goes all over the place, roughly in three levels, so it’s bit hard to navigate, even with the new gliders to help out.

And it’s dangerous. There’s a day/night cycle that works a little bit like the sandstorms in Dry Top, but instead of just cutting down visibility and making certain boss encounters available, the entire zone gets a lot tougher at night, and there’s events to try and secure base camps and get supplies to them to make them safer. I’d kind of like to get a chance to really go through that on a map determined to hold things, but so far we just see people blow through, and abandon a lot of secured camps.

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The Four Vassal War Alliance Turn 4

by on March 31, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Four Vassal War

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

Despite the Hydran pull-out last turn, and my attempts to pick off the garrisons, they still held a bit of Lyran territory to generate another 0.3 VP.

Construction was fairly normal, though even with the reduced economies of this era, the budgets are far exceeding his spending. However, the Hydrans did a lot of conversions (6 in all, plus using a couple FTS to form the basis of a SAF), mostly turning Rangers into tougher Lord Marshals. I generally avoid that conversion as it reduces the number of fighters, but Belirahc pointed out that the LM is a Hellbore-armed ship, which can do extra damage to Klingons…. So here, it’s certainly a good deal.

Builds:
Kzinti: DNE, CD, 2xCL, DD, 3xFF, FF->SDF, CS->CC
Hydrans: TEM, RN, 2xLN, SA, 2xHN, 2xLC->LM, 3xRN->LM, HN->SC, 2xFTS->SAF

Both raids picked on the Lyrans again, off in areas where the only choice was calling up POLs. Both POLs were lost against the CL and LN with Prime Teams sent raiding, but the CL was forced to retreat, so only one province was disrupted.

Movement started with a sweep of province raiders in Kzinti territory, but then moved to assaults on the Lyran border stations. I had set things up so that I could shift forces from one threatened base to another, but I ended up not suitably concentrated at any one base. I was expecting a push at the captured planets in 1105 and 1504, but instead everything went into Lyran space.

The Hydrans similarly started by sweeping Coalition pickets in their space, and then moved a couple of moderate-sized forces against a pair of Klingon bases before moving a very large force against the Lyran SB in 0409.


The Kzinti front.


The Hydran front.

Combat:
1217: SSC: Klingon retreat
0815: SSC: Klingon: dest E3
0915: SSC: Klingon: retreat; Hydran: dest HN, crip SA, HN, retreat
0714: SSC: Lyran: dest FF
0615: SSC: Lyran: dest FF; Hydran: retreat
1214: Klingon: crip D6, 2xF5; Hydran: dest KN
1415: Klingon: crip D6; Hydran: crip LN, PGZ
0312: Lyran: CL
0411: Lyran: 6xSIDS, dest BCE, CA, 2xCL, 4xDD, 2xFF, POL, crip CC, 2xCA, TCB, 3xCL, 4xDD, SC; Hydran: dest TEM, 4xLN, 4xKN, 3xCR, 2xSA, 4xCU, 2xHN, crip RN, LN, KN
0705: Lyran: dest BATS, crip 2xCL; Klingon: crip D6; Kzinti: dest 3xFF, FFG
0504: Lyran: dest BS, FTS, crip DD; Kzinti: crip 2xCS
0502: Lyran: dest BATS, crip CA, 2xDD; Kzinti: dest CL, BC, crip FFG
1204: Kzinti: dest FF
0703: SSC: Kzinti retreat
0904: SSC: Coalition retreat
1103: SSC: Lyran: dest DD, FF; Kzinti retreat
1004: Klingon: crip D6, E3; Kzinti: dest FF; crip 2xFF

Three ships to two, and Bel couldn’t roll high enough to generate casualties in 1217 (neither of us rolled over 5), and I retreated out before the odds caught up to me.

Bel sent a lackluster squadron to fight a fairly good one of mine in 0915 (SA, 2xHN vs F5L, F5, E4; I suppose he just wanted to pin them), and we both rolled high, which nearly wiped his force out, while the mods kept me down to needing to retreat out of the hex.

The SB battle in 0411 wrecked both fleets in seven rounds as Bel tried to force a kill of the base. I had a good reserve of smaller ships, and started using them from the start to take damage. It wasn’t enough I also had an EW advantage, though it took me a few rounds to realize that I’d gain ComPot by putting a second SC on the line so I could dial down the SB’s EW. And it was a very good thing I had the EW, as Bel generally outrolled me and the -2 shift dragged him back down to my rolls, leaving me to do more damage by virtue of the SB’s extra ComPot.

A problem that came up in playtesting the scenario is that the Alliance is supposed to be unaware of the utility of heavy scouts at the start of the General War, but the Kzintis can build a number of them now. The eventual solution was to limit scout production in this scenario, but it’s not helping a lot. Bel was able to put up 9 EW in 0705. It was otherwise a fairly even fight, but with that disadvantage, and not wanting to wreck the Lyran fleet on both borders, I was ready to pull out. However, I crippled the BATS, and a successful troop assault finished it off, and Bel pulled out after that.

The SSC in 0904 went two rounds with no damage when I retreated out before my -4 vs his -3 mod finally caught up to me.

1004 was a pinning battle from my planet 1105 garrison moving to block his fleet going the Lyran border. I had a tougher line, but only had five uncrippled ships after the first round and failed pursuit on a ‘5’.

Three destroyed bases gives Bel 8 VP (plus another 4 for bases I need to replace), and the destroyed ships and repairs (I note with annoyance that my overall repairs are exactly where they were a turn ago) drive his total up to 100.7 VP. On the other hand, the fantastic number of Alliance ships lost has driven my VPs up to 93.7. This is a Marginal Victory for him, but I think he’s going to regret losing those ships….

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Maguuma Wastes

by on March 28, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I recently finished off the Season 2 storyline in Guild Wars 2. Overall, I think they did a better job than with the original story, though it’s still by no means perfect.

Also, there was a final bit of living world events that came after the story, that we saw parts of back when we got involved right after the original game became free. The living world idea is really nice, but it does cause all sorts of entanglements, and it kind of locks out newer players, who don’t know what’s going on. The repayable storyline used here is a big step forward, but they still manage to drop important events.

The story is divided up into 8 parts, and 4 deal with one new map (Dry Top) and 4 with a second (Silverwastes). These are naturally the toughest-high level maps available without buying the game. An interesting idea is that after completing each story bit, you can go back in and try for extra achievements. Doing all the achievements in any one part gets you extra gear and an extra mastery point (doing it the first time also gives you one).

The story starts fairly abruptly, partially because the Zephyrites are a group important to the plot, but were introduced in one of the Living World parts not included. Season 2 begins with word that something happened to them out in the wastelands west of the previously developed world, and the players go in to find out what.

(And note, I’m going to have minor spoilerage from now on, if you’re concerned about that.)

Mostly, the story continues to feature the new set of characters developed in Season 1, with Destiny’s Edge being at most peripherally involved until later, and the immediate story line follows fairly closely on from Season 1, filling in the background of Scarlet Briar, the main villain from there. As the story progresses, it quite naturally flows into the threat of the newly-awakened Elder Dragon Mordremoth.

Dry Top is heavily featured in the first two parts of the story, and is an interesting idea in zone design. Largely a badlands-type area, there’s lots of sheer cliffs and the like. ArenaNet put in an entirely new mechanic of crystals that you can touch for movement bonuses. Either a fast dash, a high jump, or a long jump. However, these have several annoyances, such as the fact that they replace your normal toolbar temporarily, meaning that you can land in combat, and not be able to fight at first. The high jump is just a boosted version of the normal jump, but doesn’t use the same control, etc.

However, its certainly an interesting experiment with zone design, and mostly you don’t need the crystals to get around, unless you’re exploring the nooks and crannies (and going after the achievements related to doing so…), where it becomes one giant jump puzzle.

Another interesting part of Dry Top is the sandstorm. On a fixed schedule, a sandstorm blows in, reducing vision, and spawning extra monsters. Between storms, every event completed in the zone increases the outsider’s (player’s) favor with the stranded Zepherites and they provide more goods (including unique items and the like), and the awards of special in-zone currency goes up with the current level of favor. Also, some extra events during the sandstorm are tied to the current favor level. So, event-wise, it’s organized around a regular cycle of events where anything anyone does helps everyone.

The next two parts leave Dry Top behind, and focus on getting getting the world leaders together to discuss the danger of Mordremoth, who seems to have a longer reach than the other active Elder Dragons. Most of the side questing here focuses on the Charr, which delayed Smudge and I as we had not been to any of the lower-level Charr areas. The summit itself forms the climax of the first half of Season 2, and features a fairly nasty fight (tougher than anything from the ending sequence of the original story).

The second half introduces the Silverwastes, which is another example of interesting zone design. Instead of a set schedule of events, the players help out with the Pact’s efforts to destroy a powerful lieutenant of Mordremoth. The assault cycles through a few distinct phases, but the timing is based on player actions. If there’s not many players available, the first phase will go slowly, and while the later parts will eventually be reached, it will go poorly. If there’s lots of players available, the events will cycle through fairly fast. It makes the Silverwastes a very intense go-go-go environment to adventure in, and the amount of loot rewarded is hard to believe (or sort through…).

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t do as good of a job introducing the outlines of the zone as a whole, possibly because there’s just less differentiation between areas other than the gigantic Skritt caverns.

Again, the later parts of the story start turning aside from the new zone. At the same time, it starts exploring a lot of lore, dealing with the dragon Glint who was introduced back in the final expansion of the original game, and was killed in the backstory for GW2. Caithe steals a (previously unknown) egg of Glint’s, which sends the player off on a long search for both. This takes up the last couple of parts of the story. Season 2 ends on a suitably climatic note, with the Pact pressing forward with a (too cliche) doomed attempt to kill Mordremoth… but the actual explanation of what Caithe’s doing, and where the egg is now that the player is chasing after for the last quarter of the Season is still unanswered. The entire last part of the story is full of really tough fights. I wish the end of the original story had been more like the end sequence here.

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