Walls of Troy VI

by on March 4, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Osprey’s Fortress book on ancient Troy is not a bad guide to the history of the site as known to archaeology as a whole, but the bulk of the book concentrates (understandably) on Troy VIh, which is one of the contenders to be the Troy of the Illiad (there are arguments for VIIa). It also has the most well-developed defenses.

Beyond a few pages introducing archaeological periods, and the history of excavations of the site, there is a nice color diagram of the major features of each level of the city showing how it grew over time, and a 12-page history of the city from 2900 BC to 550 AD. I should say in the previous sentence, how the central fortress of Troy grew, since it has now been established that there was a walled lower town, at least during the Troy VI period, typical of major fortresses.

After a five-page digression on techniques of mud-brick building (the stone lower walls of Troy had mud-brick upper sections), book gets into its main focus on the walls of Troy IV, with an emphasis on the later portions of the period. Various towers and gates have technical names for archaeologists to identify them by (such as Gate VIT), but no diagram of these elements is provided, and would have made things much clearer. As usual with Osprey, there are some very good photos of various elements, that also show some of the unusual features of Troy’s fortifications. The color illustrations also do a great job with reconstructions of the city, and cut away views, but are curiously washed out with low contrast (the cover has much higher contrast than the full illustration when shown on page 39, and is much easier to read because of it).

The last parts of the book deal with evidence that the Myceneans were indeed involved in plundering the shores of Anatolia (as well as other places), and spends a few pages pondering interpretations of the Trojan Horse, including possibly as an actual siege engine. While the discussion was interesting, there just is too little known for it to be more than speculation.

In general, this is a typical interesting Osprey look at an interesting subject, but I think the color illustrations desperately need another pass through the art department to get the color balance and contrast fixed, and some of the subsidiary material could have been dropped for a detailed layout of Troy VI, both of which leave the book a little lacking.

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The Name of the Rose

by on February 27, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

It’s hard to figure out where I should start with this book, because there’s a lot of places where I could start.

The Name of the Rose is set in 1327, and the struggles of the Christian church in northern Italy form the real background of the novel. The early 14th century comes through very clearly throughout the pages of the book, and as a historical novel it does extremely well. Various struggles surrounding the idea poverty and the church, heresy, the nature of heresy, the changing nature of towns and power, the emperor and the pope are all there, and come to life as much as the monastery that provides the setting of all the action.

However, all of this is part of the secondary plot, and form long passages that distract from what is technically the main action. The center of the book is a series of murders at a Benedictine monastery, which are investigated by the two main characters. (The main—not viewpoint—character, William of Baskerville, is an obvious homage to the origin of the mystery story, Sherlock Holmes.) The mystery itself is less successful, partially because all the other parts of the book demand too much time to keep it moving consistently, but more because the story is more of a tragedy than the mystery it presents itself as.

The book is well-written, even in translation from Italian, and well worth reading for a good combination of prose, history and mystery, but it tends towards the overwrought and long-winded.

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The Four Vassal War Coalition Turn 4

by on February 24, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Four Vassal War

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

The beginning of Y159 is when the terms of the Treaty of Smarba kick in, requiring me to start delivering D6s and F5s to the Romulans. Since these are activated out of mothball stores for minimal expense, and then shipped free, this is not a large burden (though delivering a pair of TGBs is a little more problematic).

However, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d been assuming I also got the normal General War mothball activations of 2xD6, 2xF5, 1xE4, but the scenario uses its own OoB, and this does not include any mothball activations for the Klingons unless the capital is attacked.

Oddly, I seem to have caught this on turn 2 (I paid for activations, but didn’t pull the ships), but then missed it and did the activations on turn 3. Thankfully, there’s enough money available to pay for them as overbuilds, though D6s and E4s is not what I’d choose to overbuild….

Straightening that out ended with me skipping some Klingon repairs this time, but the Lyrans are in good shape.

Builds:
Klingons: C6, D7, D6, 2xF5, 3xE4, E3, BS->BATS
Lyrans: DNE, CA, 2xCL, 2xDD, 2xFF

This is also the turn where repair ships and repair pods start becoming available, but I’m not planning on repairing at the expensive rate when the normal repairs have been a major part of the budget.

I sent both raids into Kzinti space this turn. Bel reacted a CS out of a reserve to fight the Lyran CA, and the CA crippled while doing nothing to the CS. The Klingon D6 had no trouble defeating the called up POL and disrupted a province.

With much of the outer defenses out of the way, I targeted a couple of starbases for this turn’s thrusts, sending combined fleets to 1304 and 0716. This did not work out so well.

I had actually meant to re-work some of my last move to 1304 if Bel reacted to protect planet 1202, which he did, but I ended up not bothering. I should have stuck with the plan.


Invasion of Kzinti space.


Invasion of Hydran space.

Combat:
1701: Kzinti: crip CS, CLD, 2xFF; Lyran: crip CA, CL, SC, 2xFF
1202: Retreat after refused approach
1304: Kzinti: crip 2xCL; Klingon: dest 3xE4, E3, crip D7, F5L, F5S
1204: Kzinti: dest FF
1405: Kzinti: dest BATS; Klingon: crip F5
1506: SSC: Kzinti: retreat; Klingon: capture planet
1605: Retreat after refused approach
1504: Kzinti: dest 2xPGB, crip 3xCL, CLG, FF; Klingon: dest E4, crip F5L, 2xF5, E4, capture planet
0714: Hydran: dest BS; Lyran: crip FF
0512: SSC: Hydran: dest CU; Lyran: crip CL
0511: SSC: Hydran: retreat
0211: SSC: Hydran: dest CU
0210: SSC: Hydran: retreat
1116: Hydran: dest BS, LN; Klingon: crip F5L, E4S
0716: Hydran: RN captured; Klingon: crip F5, 2xE4, E3

The first few battles showed how unprepared I was for a general assault. 1701 featured a Kzinti EW advantage thanks to a CD, CLD and SF. SB 1304 had a large Kzinti fleet at it, and generated far more ComPot than I could, and then there was 1-6 die roll split just to make it that much more painful.

My petty revenge was retreating on top of a lone Kzinti FF in 1204 (direct path to nearest supply), which didn’t have a chance.

The flip side of that was that the squadron I sent to take the NZ planet in 1506 caused no damage, and the defending Kzinti squadron was able to retreat onto 1605 next door making the combined defending force+base tougher than the assigned squadron could handle. So they retreated onto 1506.

I had an advantage at 1504, but a bad roll could have reversed things. As it was, the first round was 6-4 my favor, and Bel ended up retreating out with most of his force crippled, but with an intact monitor.

I refused to assault the Hydran SB, but they came out to engage me in an approach battle. I had a heavier line, and got a 6-1 roll to allow me to direct on a RN, which I then captured. I was halfway through typing the normal response when it hit me what had happened. I handed the hull to the Lyrans who will presumably convert it next turn.

Another three bases down means another seven points; capturing 1504 is another two points, and holding 1105 and disrupting two provinces is another 0.6 VP. Along with destroyed ships and enemy repairs (the Kzintis have a lot of crippled ships piling up) gets me up to 82.3 VP. Meanwhile, I’ve upgraded a rear-area BS to BATS and made good on many of my cripples to reduce the Alliance VPs to 72.3. This gives me a Minor Victory, and things will only get better if I can hang onto Kzinti territory.

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Whipless

by on February 20, 2016 at 6:48 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

After a number of delays, partially due to January cold season in the household, we had a few people over for gaming today. Namely, Mark and Patch came over, and Baron joined in with Dave and I for a five-player game of Circus Maximus.

We used the standard 8-chariot field of course, with Mark and Baron being the only ones running single teams. As usual, it’s been been long enough that none of us remembered more than the outline of the rules to start off with. We had a fairly varied field of teams, though no one went for a heavy chariot. My primary team had a good driver at the cost of a light chariot, while my second team had a fast team at the cost of driver skill (I think driver +0 was overall fairly common).

We had a fairly polite start, with no combat until well into the first corner, and even then, there wasn’t much result (a couple of movement penalties).

CM-1-4
At the end of turn four. My secondary team (Black) has a temporary lead.

Things slowly heated up after that, but there still wasn’t lots of combat as people concentrated on maneuver. Dave had had an early lead with Green, but Patch’s Purple team came out of the second corner in good shape, while there was large choke-up with Orange (Baron), Red (Mark), Yellow (Dave), with some late moves from Blue (me) and Green (Dave) not helping matters. I had done strongly for a little bit, but was forced to take some chances with my primary team (Blue), and kept rolling poorly. On the first turn, I had rolled a 17(!) to take damage to a horse while going one over the speed rating (I forgot the driver should have applied to the roll, which would have helped, since I would have had more speed for the rest of the race), and then I got a ‘jostled’ result when trying much the same thing on the same corner on the second lap.

CM-1-8
End of turn eight. Patch really did a good job with tight cornering on White.

The really ironic thing is that three of us had lost our whips to ‘G’ results while trying to whip the other driver. This really hurt some teams with good endurance, such as my Black.

Patch lead the charge on taking chances. With both of his teams in good chances, he started pushing Purple though tight corners at full speed. The main event was a cornering on the 8 column, where he finally rolled non-low to take damage on a horse. Which turned out to be no damage at all….

With few options left, most of us took the last corner or two hard, I managed to get out of the last corner on the 9+ column with only a point of damage to a horse, Baron managed with no more than some slipping out, but Dave’s Yellow team flipped the chariot, and was unable to cut himself free, and didn’t survive the drag down the final stretch.

CM-1-12
End of turn twelve.

The end results:

1 Patch Purple
2 Patch White
3 Rindis Blue
4 Rindis Black
5 Dave Green
6 Baron Orange
7 Mark Red
– Dave Yellow
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F&E Vassal 2.0 Beta 6

by on February 16, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: F&E

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

The beta testing of the new Vassal module for F&E is finally starting to wrap up. Bel and I have been working on doing setups for all the major scenarios, and I’ve found and squashed a number of counter bugs along the way. Hopefully, it won’t be too much longer before a completed module is made available.

This has been taking a bit longer than I’d strictly like, but there’s been a number of new additions to the module along the way:

Raid and Battle markers can now be flagged to show which one is currently being resolved. Battle markers flip over to show units are capable of retrograde movement. There’s now a marker for units that are eligible for free strategic movement. And there are larger blank markers that can be labeled for a variety of purposes.

Admirals have been reworked and are now with the other ‘personnel’ counters. These counters will then draw from a hidden store of variable admirals when using that optional rule. (The old ones chose their variable status when originally pulled, meaning that any pre-done set up was always the same unless the players put them all back and re-drew them at the beginning of the game.)

And just recently, I pulled monitors out of the NSU section (…which they don’t belong in anyway; oops) and did separate MON+pallet counters for them. I am now working on combined tug+pod counters. I won’t be doing everything, but I plan to hit all the more likely combinations. I… may have already gone a little overboard on the Federation TUG combinations, but there’s still room for a few more….

I’m still working on this last part, and any suggestions as to useful tug counters will be appreciated.

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