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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The Legacy of Gird

by on October 3, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Elizabeth Moon’s Legacy of Gird is a pair of prequel novels to her Deed of Paksenarrion series. They’re something of an odd pair: the two books have some significant overlap in time, and while the first one is easy to read independently, the second one has framing that happens after Paksenarrion, and makes it partly dependent on that series. I enjoyed both, but they don’t have a lot of the appeal of the original books.

Surrender None is the story of Gird, told from his point of view. It is the story of the peasant rebellion that would establish the grange system and society seen in the later Paks books. Gird is some sort of ill-defined saint/demigod centuries later, but now he is a simple peasant, until the slow squeeze of the lords forces him (and many before him) into outlawry/rebellion.

As such, it is well told, using a very episodic structure. Various subjects and challenges are brought up, and confronted; while the fighting itself is important, it never crowds out the eventual challenge of building a system to replace the one being torn down.

Liar’s Oath overlaps the last section of Surrender None, from the viewpoint of Luap. For the most part. Scattered throughout the book are a few chapters from the viewpoint of two proto-paladins, which also provide most of the action/adventure of novel, with the rest being politics and personal relations. In general, I liked the bulk of the book, but it ends instead of resolving. The framing with post-Oath of Gold Paks (or really, Phelan) becomes a space-time wedgie that cuts off the ending of the book.

This makes it obvious that the point of the book is to explain what was found in the abandoned fortress of Divided Allegiance, which it does, but that also undermines the structure of the book. Liar’s Oath has enough burdens without this, as Luap never comes across well enough to make a good main character, but it is obvious that this is a foundation for the Paladin’s Legacy series (which I will need to get to).

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The Four Vassal War Alliance Turn 2

by on September 30, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Four Vassal War

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

For the Alliance half of turn 2, the war continues to expand into the Four Powers War, with the Hydrans able to attack the Klingons in support of the Kzinti.

The Kzinti repaired the damage to their SB, while the Hydrans repaired a number of frigates.

Builds:
Kzinti: DNE, CS, 2xCL, CLD, 3xFF, MB, Convoy, CS->CD
Hydran: TEM, RN, 2xLN, SA, 2xHN, Convoy, MB

Bel concentrated his raids against the Klingons, and disrupted two provinces at the cost of a crippled LN.

The Hydrans kept up pressure on the Lyrans, putting much of their navy into Lyran space for a second assault on the Enemy’s Blood SB, and sent a strong force forward to kill the BS at 0109. Meanwhile, the 1st Fleet crossed the Klingon border and attacked the two border stations near the rim of the galaxy.

The Kzintis also counterattacked, hitting four border stations, the NZ planet, and the planet in 1407.


Hydran occupation of Lyran space.


Kzinti counterattack.


Supporting the Hegemony.

Combat:
0411: Hydran: dest RN, SC, crip SA, 2xHN; Lyran: crip 2xCC, 2xCL, 4xDD
0109: Lyran: dest BS, POL
0512: Hydran: crip HN; Lyran: crip FF
0312: SSC: Hydran: crip CU; Lyran: crip DD, retreat
0412: Lyran: dest DD
1419: Hydran: dest SC, crip HN; Klingon: crip D6, F5L
1417: Hydran: dest 2xCU; Klingon: crip F5, 2xE3
1004: SSC: Kzinti: crip FF, retreat; Klingon: crip F5, retreat
1305: SSC: Klingon: dest E3
1505: SSC: Klingon: dest F5
1606: SSC: Klingon retreat
1506: Kzinti: crip 3xFF; Klingon: crip 2xF5
1507: Kzinti: dest CL, crip 2xCL, CLG; Klingon: crip D7, D6, E4
0906: Kzinti: dest CL
1005: SSC: Klingon: dest F5
1107: Refused approach, retreat
1307: Kzinti: dest DF, crip SF; Klingon: crip D6
1407: Kzinti: dest CLD, SF, SAS, FTS, crip CL; Klingon: crip 2xD7C, D6, TGB, F5, E4

The SB battle was impressive, with the Lyrans getting 114 ComPot even while dialing the SB EW up to 4. The Hydrans went for a heavy line, and got up to 118, but were looking at a -2 shift, and then I destroyed the only scout so I could dial the EW back a little. After killing a RN on the second round, he retreated out, as I still had a pretty deep reserve even with all the cripples I was taking.

The cost of all the mayhem in Lyran space is that the Hyran forces facing the Klingons are completely inadequate. He attacked two bases, and after the reserves showed up, didn’t have nearly the firepower of the Klingons at either.

The SSC in 1004 should have been a kill for Bel, as it was 3xFF vs an F5. But a low roll on his part just did two casualties, allowing it to retreat out. Better, a ’12’ from me caused one of the FFs to cripple as the Kzinti retreated out. I’d promote the captain to a D6 command, but the F5 was overrun and destroyed by forces retreating out of the 0906 battle.

The main action on the Kzinti border was an attack on my minor planet in 1407. I was able to retreat 1307 into the battle, which sadly moved some cripples away from repair, but made sure I could drive him off. He’d even brought in a couple auxiliaries, but they had no chance to do anything in the one round before retreat.

The Hydrans still have substantial forces in Lyran space, which really puts the onus on the Klingons to be active on that front to try and force him to redeploy. Not a pleasant prospect in the face of good ships, bases with fighters, and the BIR adjustment against hellbore-armed ships, though so far everything there is fusion-armed.

Thanks mostly to a good number of ship kills, the Coalition total is up to 41.45 VPs. The Alliance is starting to gain VPs for occupying Lyran provinces and a large number of cripples, and is up to 71.2 VPs for a Major Victory (at this moment).

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On the Front

by on September 27, 2015 at 10:50 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Patch came over yesterday for a second day of Up Front. It’s been a while, and neither of us had gotten much chance to read up on it before hand, so we started off a bit slow.

We started with a couple rounds of “City Fight”; I went down pretty hard in the first game with my Germans getting slaughtered by the Russians, and conceded before the first deck was done. The second game went much better, with my Americans in three groups, and two of them got into forward buildings. At one point, I had to pull a group back to get out of demo charge range, but that didn’t last long. On the other flank, my force was a little forward on a hill, and got slowly taken out by infiltration and close combat.

While the initial stages of that went solidly in Patch’s favor, I still had a good central firebase that kept disrupting him, even if it wouldn’t last long enough for me to do much else, but then close combat started going a little more even, and Patch’s force steadily eroded, until he had to concede near the end of the game.

Then we did a round of “Elite Troops on the Attack”, with my SS versus Patch’s Russian conscripts. It began about as well as you could ever hope: I placed a stream on his center group in the opening setup, and then discarded a sniper on that group on the first turn, which killed his light machine gunner, with the LMG sinking into the river….

Things continued well after that, with me tearing up a couple of his groups and causing a number of casualties. As I got closer though, Patch started getting some effective fire, and finally took out a member of my squad. After that, things came apart fast, with me getting ground down, unable to advance, or shake his remaining troops much. I dropped to three people (making a win impossible) somewhere in the third deck, loosing without even managing to go to the second round.

Finally, we tried “Surprise Attack” from Banzai. We’d been looking at other scenarios, but they kept wanting to add more rules than we were looking for right then. This one however just uses fairly basic squads. Patch had the defending Germans, who start all pinned except one rifleman, and he can’t rally until he either takes a fire attack, or manages to make one with his lone man. All buildings are discarded except the ones the defenders start in, and my attacking British had to occupy at least as many buildings as the defenders (which means kill/rout the defenders or capture buildings through close combat…).

We cycled through two thirds of the initial deck before things began in earnest. I naturally wanted to get close before starting things, hopefully from some form of cover. But movement cards just weren’t showing up, and I was still at around relative range 3 that far through the deck when Patch got a shot off to start the actual fighting. By that point, Patch had everything else he needed, and rallied everyone on the next turn. I got a force on a hill, and the firepower bonus from there, combined with a lot of good fire cards started causing him lots of problems. Meanwhile, my other group got stuck at a river, and took forever to get out (still no movement cards…).

As Patch’s position came apart, I did slowly get into motion again. Patch evacuated the last two guys from one group to the main one in a -3 building. This also got his firepower concentrated just as my streak of fire cards came to an end, and my position came apart hard and fast. Notably, as he swept up my flank force, he got a very strong attack on my main force as it got to range 5. I forget just what he attacked at, (12?), but one of the results was a 16! I don’t think we’ll ever see a higher total in Up Front.

As an 8+ is a kill, I ended up with my squad leader pinned and nothing else left, and five Germans still in the last building. Patch infiltrated a man into my position, close combat… and the SL shoots the hun! Patch got a second man in, close combat, he gets another kill! At this point, I finally got a rally card, and managed to infiltrate the German position, killing one of the defenders.

Sadly, after reducing the odds from 5-1 against to 2-1 against, the third deck ran out, ending the game on time, with a loss to me. Still, a great end to what was a surprisingly good scenario!

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