J260 Retaking Hill 772

by on March 2, 2026 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After trying out the strike cruiser, Patch and I looked at scenarios from ASL Journal #16. While we were interested in the Capriquet scenarios, the boards weren’t in VASL yet. We ended up with a North Africa scenario with the Americans attacking the board 25 hill. I’ve done this twice in the past, so it was time to get revenge and force Patch to attack into miserable terrain.

An interesting SSR has the cliff hexsides removed, and instead any move over those hexsides is an abrupt elevation change. Nice concept, but I would like a little more guidance. “Abrupt elevation change” normally just means you changed levels at least twice in one move (and then gives you the extra costs for the ‘intermediate’ levels). Moving from Y9 to Y8 seems simple enough – the cliff becomes a double-crest line, and you pay for going up two levels at once. Y9 to X8 is a little trickier: there is a cliff there, but the difference is one level. Do you just assume that there was a non-existent intermediate level, and pay as if you just went from level 1 to 3? (I think yes.) How about IN K5 to K6? Normally, removing the cliff, this is abrupt elevation change, going from level 1 (wadi) to a level 3 hex. But do you again ‘assume’ the cliff hexside (with only a 1 base level difference) is itself assumed to be a two-level change (or at least costs as much as one), and you pay as if you just went up three levels?

Most of the time, the complicated part doesn’t come up. And the Italians have five squads, a 75mm ART, and light fortifications (12 mines, two wire and a pillbox for the Gun). The ART must face west (towards the American setup) on level 4. Since the American attack comes down the length of the board, the Italians get a choice setting up forward with better LOS, or back, with not a lot of LOS outside of other level 4 Locations.

I went for a forward set up, hoping to force the Americans out of the center and out of CA, and then have to deal with the hill they just got off of.


First try.
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The Hussite Wars 1419-36

by on February 26, 2026 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I accidentally bought this from Osprey in the ePub format, and confirmed my suspicion that that is a poor choice for the heavily illustrated Osprey books. If you want electronic format, for them I recommend PDF so that the formatting is intact. (Especially when they make reference to an illustration ‘on page 30’….)

The Hussite Wars are a subject I’ve wanted to get a little more depth on since running across it in Terrance Wise’s Medieval Warfare. As to be expected, this is a nice step up from that, though far from any sort of in-depth study. First published in 2004, this Men-at-Arms volume feels like a much earlier release with nearly half the text being a history of the wars, and the reproduction of a single older map to show the area of the conflict.

Now, the history is a large part of what I wanted, so that’s actually the right call here. The general nature of the “heresy” is gone into, and the general groups that got involved. There’s a lot more background that could be given there, but it’s a very fine line between interest and overburdened, but I will say that Sigismund of Luxembourg needs more fleshing out as the opportunistic figure that much of this revolved around. Also, the chronology mentions George of Poděbrady as the one Hussite King of Bohemia (after the scope of the book), but he gets a bare paragraph at the very end of the history, mentioning another war (dismissed in one sentence), and not mentioning that he had taken part in earlier battles. The weakest point of the book is that all the battles and sieges are handled very briefly, with no diagrams for them, and just that one overloaded map to refer to (and a photograph of a display at the Hussite Museum of the Battle of Sudomer).

The military section of the book starts strongly by pointing out the various contingents inevitably brought in by the declaration of five different crusades against the Hussites. After that, it gets a bit general, but there isn’t a whole lot of direct evidence for what a lot of the troops looked like. It is pointed out that on the noble end Italian armor styles still held sway, and points out that the period covers from Agincourt (1415) to Jeanne ‘d Arc (1430s), and their changes in equipment. The Hussites had largely peasant armies, and a bit is gone into with their weaponry, and the expected discipline ordered by Jan Zizka. A couple of good pages gives what common peasant dress was like at the time.

There is of course a good section on the war wagons employed to great effect by the Hussites, and the main defining feature of the war. Photographs of a reconstruction of one of these are provided (along with one of a model), and a section view, all from the Hussite Museum in Tabor. I find it a bit hard to believe, mostly because it doesn’t look anything like the stereotypical “cart” fixed in the imagination that it presumably derived from. But, I’m sure there’s been lots of arguments on the way to this reconstruction, and frankly it would have to look something like this to do the things that it had to do (also, seeing one ‘on the move’ would have been a plus). There’s also a good section on guns and artillery, as this is one of the first wars in Europe where we know they were used. This section is decidedly informative, and though similar information on early guns is elsewhere, here it is in context of a war where they were certainly used.

This is one of the later volumes featuring Angus McBride’s art, and sadly has none of his more ambitious pieces. The cover uses a cropped version of one of the betters (as art), but they are all informative, including one giving an idea of a war wagon in use, which points up disparity in what it seems one would hold, and what sources say were assigned to it (I’d be willing to believe that the latter was more what weapons they carried, for distribution when setting up for battle). As usual, there’s plenty of well reproduced black-and-white photographs, and the commentary for the color plates are very informative on the visual end.

There’s a lot more that could be said, and no hints that any of it has been (of course it has, though probably not in English). But it’s not really the place of a 48-page book to go into it anyway. Overall, it delivers pretty much what you’d expect from a Men-at-Arms book: Enough history to get you going, and enough of the military details to get a sense of the fighting, and maybe do some miniatures gaming, if that’s your inclination.

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Great Britain and the American Civil War

by on February 22, 2026 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This is a 1925 book. I got it for cheap at one point through Diversion Books, but it’s available through Project Gutenberg as well. In fact, the latter appears to be in better shape, with proper linking to footnotes, which would have been good.

But the Diversion version came out a decade ago, it’s quite possible not everything had been done yet. I’ve certainly seen Gutenberg books get derailed by all the tagging for the original page breaks (though I just found a problem that persists in the Gutenberg edition—the only problem I’ve seen—of confusing “II” for “11” in a date). At any rate, it is currently available for free, and worth a look.

The purpose is to examine relations between the United and Confederate States and Great Britain, and examine the popular perception of Britain’s government leaning towards recognition of the Confederacy. As such, it is focused entirely on diplomacy, with instructions, notes, the differences between things said, and things officially said. The big events like the Trent affair are covered, but do not consume that much of the book, because they have been so well covered elsewhere, and the goal is to trace the day-to-day course and all the smaller actions not typically talked about.

It sounds dull, but Adams keeps it from actually being so. While diving into the weeds, a good pace is kept and actions and memoranda sweep on. The chapters are done by subject, but with a minimum of going back and forth in time, though it does happen. In fact happens most on a small scale, with a chapter, thanks to the speed of communications across the Atlantic.

The general opinion held is that the view of the British government was any rebellion as large as the South’s had, historically, won out in the end, and even if the North could somehow subdue them, the size of the army of occupation afterwards would be entirely impractical. This largely explains the feeling the Union generally had that the government was leaning towards recognizing the Confederacy as a separate government; they felt it was a done deal.

But there was a definite war on, and Great Britain adopted a neutral stance while the parties involved worked towards a solution. As the war drags on, the North seems no closer to getting anywhere (Britain, like so many others, mostly paid attention to the eastern theater), and the loss of life and property keeps growing, a desire to mediate between the sections is pressed. This reaches a climax in mid-1863 with a decided fight in the cabinet over what should be done (and then aftershocks in Parliament).

But Palmerston and Russel, while thinking there’s no hope for a restoration of the Union, understand quite well that mediation itself is a hopeless cause. Just a bare offer to do so would, at best, be empty air, and likely be resented by one or both. And there is no concrete proposal that could be put forth that would not be immediately rejected by one side or the other. Trying to force mediation would be equivalent to declaring war (de facto, if not de jure) and Britain is in no shape to take on a large country that is already on a wartime footing, no matter how distracted it is. All that can be done is wait for events to run their course and look for a time when defeat of the North is so apparent, hope in the war so low, that mediation could be started.

But no matter how bad things get, there’s still another Union success waiting to redeem the war effort, and that time never comes. The later parts do deal with the Alexandria and the Southern attempts to get popular support. The final chapter actually goes into popular support for the Union, and isn’t as well developed as the rest, but still fairly informative.

Generally, this is book for people who are already interested and generally knowledgeable about the ACW. This isn’t a place to begin studies. But it is, in it’s own way, still a general book, and an interesting one.

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Troy

by on February 18, 2026 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

After our tour in World War I, Mark and I decided to return to Chariots of Fire, and he wanted to go to the final scenario, on the plains in front of Troy.

This is one of two scenarios that uses the hero rules, and has a few other oddities. Most notably, there are no “wing commands” in this scenario; instead the commanders activate anyone who is within range. Momentum can be used to just move all the heroes instead of rolling to command a wing, but they can also move with units they’re already stacked with, and we extended it to they got commanded and could move regularly with a leader activation, to keep things from grinding to a halt if we needed to rework them.

The first task for both sides is to set up, and therefore organize the troops. This is especially true for the Danaans (Greeks), since they enter from the west edge of the map, and you go by their grouping for the initial entry. The Trojans set up in Troy, but there are more allied troops than actual Trojans, and they set up on a convenient rise south of the city. I had the Danaans, and set up Idomenes in the north with lots of SI and a handful of BI, Menelaus took the center with the best SI and a good number of BI (also the best ones), and some chariots, and Nestor got the south flank with low-quality SI, a good amount of BI and the single LI.

The long distance between the armies gave us time to sort out some form of line, but we didn’t start coming to grips until turn three, when a pair of my BI got across a bend of the Scamander River. I was worried that Mark would hit them before I had anything else there, but I successfully trumped Acamas’ activation (who had his center), and used that for Menelaus to go again and engage his line of chariots that were just in range while I got a third BI over the river. My BI each took a ranged hit on the way in, but the chariots each took to from the pre-shock check, and then the combat itself scattered the chariots with one routing and the other fleeing.

The start of turn 4 saw Aeneus go first, and his chariots got out of the way as a line of BI formed with some SI behind them, and forcing one of my BI to rout in a two-on-one combat; the other one fled two activations later when the engagement concluded. But, I now had a four-unit line of half BI and half SI across the river, with another three units behind them. Idomeneus was just in range of these last, so they could extend the line while his wing got up to the Scamander. Mark got momentum with Aeneus, and set up a line opposing mine and anchored on a marsh.

Then I got momentum on Idomeneus, and I pushed forward into Mark’s line with everyone across the river while reinforcements crossed behind them. While part of my line was BI, all of Mark’s was, and my SI cut right through them, causing four units to rout, while the rest were engaged.


Second Contact.
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Fairy Tales

by on February 14, 2026 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This is a recent contemporary fantasy furry romance novel. It’s fairly lighthearted, fun, and good.

On the furry side, it’s the fairly typical backgroundless furry contemporary world. Technology is about what we have (cell phones and all). Background isn’t really given, but we’re somewhere in the Midwest United States. And everyone is an anthropomorphic animal of various types, without any rhyme or reason (other than fitting the character, of course).

The contemporary fantasy side is fairly typical too. Magic exists, there are witches out there who largely keep an eye on things, and most everyone else will automatically default to a more ordinary explanation given any reason to do so.

Our inciting incident is when an ordinary-but-glamorous cat accidentally hits a weak place in the boundaries between realities and lets a large number of pixies into the normal world. Coyote goth witch-in-residence Tamara repairs the breech, puts a memory charm on the unfortunate Maddie, and starts thinking about how to round up the magical pests.

Glamor-cat Maddie is unexpectedly completely resistant to the memory charm, and eager to help out. And so our unlikely duo is born, with Maddie learning about the magical world, and both trying to find and catch the pixies before their mischief-making causes too much damage—possibly to the pixies themselves.

This isn’t a big ambitious novel trying to break new ground. It doesn’t need to be. It stands on its characters and a fairly easy-going plot. There’s a few more dramatic incidents, but the book is mostly at a steady but relaxed pace, keeping everything character focused the entire time. A lot of fun, well worth a read, and the door is left open to a sequel I would be happy to get.

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