Two Rounds of Anapus River

by on October 21, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

Last night, Patch and I did our usual between-games round of C&C:A. Up this time was “Anapus River 415 BC” from Expansion #6. This deals with the beginning of the Athenian campaign on Syracuse, so while it features orange blocks, they’re not Spartans. (Being Greek colonists, I suppose the orange set is more apropos than the brown Carthage set.) The Syracusans are at a decided disadvantage, with four cards to six, only one leader, and one of their MH stuck behind the line. But they do have the first MC we’ve seen in a long while, and if they can (somehow) get into the Athenian camp, they can loot it for banners.

I had Athens the first time, and we started out skirmishing on my right (near the camp), before I used a Line Command to bring my entire army up. Annoyingly, I was concentrating so much on my right, that I forgot to do ranged attacks with the bows on my left. I did eliminate an MC by rolling four triangles as it evaded.

Patch used Mounted Charge to get his main line into contact, and did seven blocks damage, not knocking anyone out, but killing a leader, and forcing two units to retreat, so I only did three damage to one unit in return. I Counterattacked, and wrapped around his line, and managed to wipe out the forward line (3xMH), leaving his leader’s unit intact, while reducing a Auxilia and taking six blocks myself.

Patch used Order Medium to get his leader in action with his two remaining MC while bringing the rear MH up, and knocked out my two weakest units while only taking one block in return. I played Mounted Charge, and knocked out the Auxilia while forcing of the MC to evade, and forcing a Light to the baseline. Patch Counterattacked to knock out another two MH while I weakened his MC and drove them to the baseline.

Since Patch had the only good MH units left, I started trying archery to whittle a few things down, while trying to figure out how to get at all the juicy targets at his baseline. Patch got his two MH together and moved his weak units out of the way before assembling together. I got his leader-led MH from four blocks to one, but just couldn’t get hits on the weaker units in range. Patch moved up the MHs with a Light in support, and finished up the game in two turns. 5-6

Anapus-1

Patch opened the second round with Order One (Order Heavies…), and did a point of archery damage to an Auxilia. With four cards, my hand was not great, but I had two left cards, so I started with sending my MC against the light units on his flank. They evaded across the river into the camp, and I followed into the river, and nearly knocked out his Light.

Patch used Double Time to bring half of his MH over to deal with this, and knocked one MC out. I used Leadership to bring the bulk of my MH into range, and then Ordered Light to straighten out the flanks. Patch knocked out the other MC and forced my Light to evade before I used Line Command to head for the gap in his line, and knocked out one unit in return for two blocks. Patch Out Flanked me to eliminate an Aux, while reducing the other to one block and forcing it back.

I Ordered Mounted to attack two detached MH, but a bad sequence of rolls saw me lose a MC (took two banners) and a MH while only doing three blocks. Patch Ordered Three Center (only had two left there), and traded three blocks for three on one side, while doing one block and forcing a retreat on the other. Center Leadership killed both MH of Patch’s MH on the right, but failed to get his leader.

Line Command got Patch’s remaining MH in motion, and he killed a separated MH. 3-6

Anapus-2

Afterword:

The first game was brutal. The end dragged out a bit as we were both at five banners and didn’t have a lot left. Patch should have moved a bit faster with his intact MHs, but archery just wasn’t enough for me to finish him off. The four cards for Syracuse is bad, but the one leader just makes it worse. Half of my hand was Left/Right Leadership. Outside of that, they technically have a decent force, with just as much MH as the Athenians and three MC, but it starts in poor shape, and I was never able to move the MH on the baseline (I certainly wanted to bring it up before using the Line Command!).

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FB10 Return of the Black Company

by on October 17, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After going up the hill in Tunsia, Patch and I decided to go back to Budapest for our next round of ASL in Europe with FB10 “Return of the Black Company”. Patch didn’t want to have to deal with Ammo Shortage again, so I got the defending Germans.

It’s now Feb 3, and things are getting desperate for the Axis forces. The special rules for lack of food and fuel kick in a day or two after this scenario, but Axis forces are still at Ammo Shortage level 4. Both sides have largely variable forces as they struggle over an area near the Kiralyhgo ter on the SW board (which is an area we haven’t seen before, though it’s not too far from a couple of the ‘big hill’ scenarios). Oddly, both sides have a 5 SAN, but a ‘1’ SAN roll is either treated as a ‘2’ (pin/wound), or it can be used to battle harden your own troops.

The Germans get six SS squads (split between 658 and 468), MGs, a DC, and a few concealment markers. They get a leadership choice between a 9-2 and two 7-0 with a FT and a more mixed set with a HMG and PSK. For me, choice A2 was obvious, since even with the shortage, an HMG would be a big help, and I didn’t want most of my leadership as 7-0s. They have a supplemental infantry choice of 3.5 447 SS squads with a leader and LMG, or 5 Hungarian 347s with two leaders and two MGs. This was a tough choice, and even though I felt short of bodies, I went with B1 as I felt I needed a flexible defense, and I didn’t want to have to worry about keeping the Hungarian units together. There’s a Gun/Vehicle choice, and I went with C2 for an extra M15/42(i), as they are part of the victory conditions and the 105 gun on the Zrinyi II, though a 75mm AT as part of the final defense may have been a better idea. For the fortification choice, I went with D2 for two fortified building Locations and mines instead of wire, even though the fanatic unit that comes with the latter was tempting.

The Russians enter along the west or most of the north side on turn 1, and have a (pre-game) choice between three victory conditions. They can go for 18 CVP, or for a pair of buildings, or for a pair of hexes (and all the hexes adjacent to them). In all cases, the Russians only win if the Axis do not control XX29, and have a functioning M15/42(i) in the hex at the end of the Game Turn. With 5.5 turns, I felt I had to try and slow the Russians down for a couple turns before going to the final defenses, and with such a large entry area, I was worried he’d just find a way around one flank and make good progress on the first turn. I especially gave some thought to entry at the NE extreme and going downhill around the bulk of the level 1 playing area, and straight at one of the option 2 victory buildings from behind.

Pre-game rubble checks did very little (three hexes, one of which fell into the street, but that was well out of the likely area of action), and I ended up positioning my mines for a west entry as there were a couple hexes that seemed inevitable if the Russians were in the area at all. I put my roadblock in YY33/YY34 to block access to the heart of the VC area and provide cover for the AA gun, which went behind it. One fortified building Location went in YY30, next to the German victory hex, and the other in CCC32, one of the hexes the Russians needed for their third option. My Zrinyi II went in AAA32, where it was very hard to get at, but could protect CCC32. The HMG went in YY28h1, where it had some decent LOS down the main north-side street, and could protect against an east-side thrust.

Patch ended up going for a NW corner setup. A lot entered along the west side, but three large stacks were at the west side of the north edge. He had contemplated the main north-south road in the middle of the north edge, but decided it was too vulnerable. He chose A2 (fewer leaders, but with a hero), B2 (more men, no Assault Engineers, and only one FT), and C2 (two T-34/85s instead of four vulnerable SU-76s). His first unit found the mines in ZZ38, but were unharmed by them. Despite some fire from BBB36h1, his entire west force entered without incident.

His first two units from the north edge Searched near my “?” but while the first found a HS+DC, the second rolled poorly and failed to search anything, preserving my Dummies. TT35 threw his DC in DFPh at TT36, breaking one squad and ELRing another while staying unharmed. AFPh broke my squad in BBB36 and revealed the Dummy in VV36 on a PTC. Beyond that, his two T-34/85s got acquisition on the buildings flanking my roadblock, which I considered the anchor of my defense in that direction.

He advanced into the street on the south side, and got his squad out of the mines without incident. There was only one squad left adjacent to TT35, but he was concealed and killed the HS in a successful Ambush.

FB10-1R
Situation, Russian Turn 1, showing the full playing area, and the hidden parts of my setup. North is to the left; yellow ‘V’s are the second option victory buildings, and the yellow circles are the third option victory areas.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Wooden Rose

by on October 13, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Comics

Smudge picked this up at APE 2015 last week. It’s a self-published graphic novel of a webcomic that finished up a couple years ago.

The general high concept is Victorian fantasy, and it delivers on that quite well. The art is the best part of the book, and is very good and clean. Page layouts are generally good, but do seem to wander a bit, and I had occasional problems picking out where I was to look next. I think part of that is the pages weren’t conceived with an idea of how they’d look in a book, and things occasionally go into the gutter. Smudge also feels that this should have been noticeably shorter, and I agree; this shows all the signs of a typical write as you go comic story, so this is really a first draft, and some further thought could have tightened the pacing up nicely.

The story is good at its elements. But there’s only four characters, and we only get to know the two sisters at all well, both of the men in their lives continue to be blank slates. The villain in particular is inscrutable. This may be at least partly on purpose, but there’s no sense of how he was motivated. Was this pure survival? Instinct? Did he, in some way, actually mean what he said?

On the other hand, for a story about four people, with no real action to speak of, it never devolves into talking heads either.

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Anime Summer 2015

by on October 9, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Well, we’re done with another quarter-year season of anime. Only one series continued from last time, and I think one is continuing this time of the four I watched regularly. In rough order of quality:

Classroom Crisis — I missed this for a couple weeks, before Smudge realized this wasn’t going to be a high school harem anime. Instead, this is the star of the season. A very solid SF story involving the ultimate of Advanced Placement classes, corporate politics, and a feud stretching back nearly a century. It concluded very well with episode 13.

GATE — This was the obvious one to watch this season. A gate from a fantasy world appears in downtown Tokyo. After the invading fantasy army is defeated by modern weaponry, the SDF goes through, and gets involved on the other side. It gets into some standard tropes (“Think there’ll be catgirls on the other side?”), and is heading a little more harem than I’d like, but the military is being nicely competent for a change. We’re beginning a new story arc, so I assume there’s another season coming.

Food Wars — Looks like this one is coming to an end, at least for now. It’s been another good season. I’m surprised this continues to work, and it does go way over top with the reactions and exposition, but continues to be well written. Hopefully, this is just a pause, and it’ll be back.

Rokka — The concept is an interesting one. The world feel is more Aztec/Mesoamerican, though only loosely so. Somewhat standard fantasy setup: evil force bursts forth every so often to destroy the world, and a set of six heroes emerge to defeat it. However, all of this is sidetracked into a mystery when seven heroes show up.

And then the older things I caught up on, or didn’t watch.

God Eater — This one is pretty. Someone spent a lot of money making this have a style that looks more like it was painted. The writing however, wasn’t there, and I didn’t bother with more than about two episodes.

Ushio and Tora — Our group is fans of the original OAV series from ages ago, so this was on the ‘highly anticipated’ list. However, I kind of let it slip, and much of the beginning was too familiar from the earlier series. So, I’m way behind, though I recently saw the latest episode, and it was looking good, so I need to catch up on this.

Amagi Brilliant Park — After a delay, finally got to see the rest of this the other night. A really fun series that needs more attention. I would have handled the denouement differently, but that’s me.

Heroic Tale of Arslan — Smudge introduced me to this in the ‘when we’ve seen everything else’ slot, so I’m only a few episodes in (and am watching the dubbed version), but I’m very happy with it.

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Deep Secret

by on October 6, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Deep Secret begins with a cryptic message that the following was secretly deposited in the archive at Iforion. I’d pretty much forgotten that by the time reference was made to it late in the book. There’s a number of things from early on that circle back into prominence towards the end.

To a certain extent, it is a standard contemporary fantasy novel: Earth is one of a large number of alternate worlds, which have varying amounts of magic, and there is an organization of high-power mages that keep an eye on the multi-verse. The part that is a delight for someone like me, is that the bulk of the middle of the story takes place at a SF convention. It’s obvious that Jones was thoroughly familiar with them. I don’t know any of the people she describes, but they’d all fit in at any con; I know a lot of people who are very like them.

The hotel with the mirrors at every corner? Been there. (Thankfully, I have yet to encounter more than four right turns in a row, though there are hotels where it feels possible.)

The story itself has a slow start, with the main character switching between two disconnected plotlines. However, this smooths out, and in the end, everything is shown to have a place in the overall structure. It’s not a stellar book, but it is a fun one, and there’s a lot of extra fun to be had if you’re used to the con circuit.

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