In the Shadow of Empires

by on May 14, 2015 at 8:39 pm
Posted In: Books

Sir Jens’ (‘Sir’ seems to be his first name…) In the Shadow of Empires is an amateur history book about Vlad Dracula (as opposed to a sensational book about the fictional ‘Dracula’). It shows its amateur status in some uneven editing, and problems keeping tense and subject-verb agreement under control.

Once past that, it is a well-written introduction to a part of history that just isn’t well enough known, and is crowded with all sorts of modern myths stemming from a century-old bestselling novel. It is a very nice step-by-step walkthrough of eastern European politics in the 15th century. He first points out that Vlad Dracula (‘of the dragon’) was from Wallachia, not Transylvania, proceeds into Wallachia’s troubled politics from being a buffer state, his father, Vlad Dracul (‘the dragon’), and then his ever-shifting fortunes from Ottoman ‘guest’ to Voivode (roughly ‘prince’) to prisoner of Hungary, to backed by Hungary, to his death in a skirmish in 1476.

Along the way, there’s a number of interesting observations, the last of which being that the four principle movers of the book (Vlad Dracula, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed, King Mathias of Hungary, and Stefan of Wallachia) are all men who’d be unhesitatingly convicted by a war crimes tribunal today. But all four are heroes in the eyes of the people (well, their descendants) they ruled over.

In all, it’s a very readable amateur book with some good history in it. Something I’d like to see more of.

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Stolen Songbird

by on May 13, 2015 at 9:08 am
Posted In: Books

Danielle Jensen’s first novel reads fast, but has quite a bit going on in it. At the start of the story, the main character (Cécile) is kidnapped, and taken to a hidden city of trolls, where she is ‘bonded’ to a prince to fulfill a prophesy. The first part of the book is recognizably a “Beauty and the Beast” romance after that, but the plot soon outgrows that tale. Even in the first few chapters, quite a bit is going on.

Overall, the worldbuilding overshadows the characters a bit, most of whom go by fast enough that they never become fully-realized characters, but are drawn broadly enough that you still know exactly who they are when they show up again. Of course, this is a function of there being a good number of secondary characters in a fast-paced book. The plot itself is well-done, and small things early on in the book are important later. This is the first book of a trilogy, and the end of the book is very much not The End, but it does end the current equilibrium, and the next book will be very different than this one.

This is the first time in quite a while that I’ve gotten into a series just as it’s beginning, and I’m looking forward to the next two books!

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R vs B Coalition Turn 10 in Review

by on May 7, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: BvR - The Wind

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG

Hopefully, everyone is as glad to be reading this as I am to be writing it. Belirahc’s life started getting extremely busy in early 2012, which led to our PBeM slowly grinding to a halt late that year. There were a couple of restarts past that, including a fairly decent one in 2013. Recently, he got back in touch, and we’ve managed to pick up where we left off.

So, where were we again?

Turn 10 marks the beginning of the third scenario, The Hurricane, and is the the turn in which the Romulans are put under player control. Often, if the Coalition invasion of the Federation does not happen on turn 7, it happens on turn 10 as a combined Klingon/Romulan assault.

However, with Bel still struggling to clean up Hydran space, he declined to declare war on the Federation, and put the Romulans on a Peacetime economy. The bad news is that they must spend at least two turns at peace, but the good news is that they won’t hit exhaustion until turn 18, even if they go to war on turn 12.

This leaves me with the decision (on my turn) of if the Federation should declare war on the Klingons. The Federation is fairly hampered in what it can do while only at Limited War, but if they declare war, the Gorns will not join in unless attacked.

However peaceful the Federation border, things were happening elsewhere. Several major fleets moved on the Hydran capital, in the long anticipated second attempt to take it. The on-map reserve was pinned again, though a couple ships reacted out of the Old Colonies, and freed up one ship to help in the capital….

There were a number of aggressive moves in Kzinti space, and I shuffled units back and forth to try and keep everything nailed down.


Kzinti front.


Hydran front.

Combats:
1807: SSC: Z: crip FF & retreat; K: retreat
1105: SSC: Z: dest FF; K: capture planet
1202: Z: crip CL, FF; K: crip F5S, capture planet
1303: K: crip D6
1402: Z: crip CM, MEC, dest FF; K: crip D6, 4D5
1502: Z: dest 2xEFF, 2xPDU; K: crip F5L, 2xF5, dest 2xD5, F5; F5 captured
1504: Z: crip CC; L: dest 2xCA
1704: Klingons retreated after refused approach.
0119: H: dest CU; K: crip D5, F5
1506: Z: dest EFF; K: dest 2xD5
0617: Hydrax: 9xPDU, 2xSIDS; H: crip RN, H-D7; L: crip 2xBC, DWS, SC, dest STT, 5xCW, CVL, CWE, DWE; K: crip 2xD6, dest 2xD7C, 2xD7V, 2xD6M, 2xD6, 2xAD5, 2xF5E

Overall, Kzinti space went fairly well, but he has now killed the last PDU on 1502, which makes defending that planet more complicated, since if I want new PDUs (yes), I have to spend a turn setting up the first one.

I probably could have drawn out the fight over the Hydran capital longer than I did (six rounds before retreating out), but I’d either be crippling a lot more than I did, or I’d run out of fighters. Right now, the Hydran fleet is out of supply, so I need a good number of fighters for the journey off-map. I also could have dropped damage rather than direct killing carrier groups, which would have meant a lot more cripples and self-kills, which might have forced Bel into using the smaller ships that came in…. I might, even, have barely forced him to retreat, keeping the capital again (the fact that I rolled consistently higher would help here). But, that would leave me stuck on a shipyard with no economy available. I’ve been considering abandoning the capital as it is, I’m not going to wreck myself just to try and force a third go at the hex.

As it is, the Klingons and Lyrans both have a reserve in Hydran space, and some Lyran production was diverted down there. There’s two reserves that can reach part of the Federation border, but much of that large expanse is wide open, with only the bulk of the East Fleet in 1914 to protect it….

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Thirty Years of War

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

Published by Didactic Press, Gardiner’s The Thirty Years War is another cheap ebook of a public-domain work. The normal price seems to be a buck or two, and I think I picked it up for free. In general, this is one of the better put together cheap OCR-derived ebooks I’ve seen. Editing problems are minimal, with only a tendency towards two words being run together as a recurring flaw. The book is marketed as ‘illustrated’, and it is, with a number period paintings, that do help some with getting the right feel, however, with few captions, and battle scenes when there is no fighting going on, and so forth, it’s hard to tell what the point of some of them is. A few portraits are included, which is nice, and I wish there were more of those.

Samuel Rawson Gardiner was a 19th-century historian known for his work on the English Civil War. This shows through from time to time here with a number of parallels and contrasts given between that and the Thirty Years War. In all, it still makes a good and readable overview of the subject today. I haven’t read much on the Thirty Years War (yet), but can recommend it as a light, short work (estimated at 200 pages) available for cheap.

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Breaking the Speed Limit to Pella

by on May 4, 2015 at 8:36 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had the gang over for gaming Saturday. Mark had mentioned the week before that he’d really like to play Successors again, and since we had four (me, Dave, Mark, Patch), and I’m always up for Successors, we went for that.

Sadly, I hadn’t properly realized just how long it’s been, and how much there was to forget in a game that has a fairly nice rhythm. Also, two of us only barely remembered the game at all. So, things went slow, with a fair amount of rules lookups, and a large number of rules goofs. Thankfully, the game manages to be quite a bit of fun even with those problems.

I ended up drawing Peithon (Media) and Antigonus (Phrygia). I wasn’t too happy with that start, especially as Patch got Lysimachus (Thrace) and Leonnatus (Hellespontine), giving me a very compact and concentrated neighbor. Dave got Craterus (Cilicia) and Antipater (Macedonia), putting him on either side of my territory in Phrygia, but with the same problem as me with Patch. Mark got Perdiccas (Babylon) and Ptolemy (Egypt) for an easy first turn Usurper.

I concentrated on Media for my opening moves, sieging the rout into Mesopotamia (and taking it with two very good rolls), and spreading influence into Persis, before heading north to take Atropatene. Patch mostly played defensively, taking control of Tribali and Lydia after I had taken the city of Sardis. Mark built up a large army, and started heading north-west from Babylon… which was by far the biggest rules goof of the day.

We hadn’t remembered that the Funeral cart isn’t ready on turn one, and only realized it as things were rushing to a conclusion at the end of turn two, when I happened to note the various reminders on the turn track. As it was, Mark managed to knock out Craterus’ (Dave’s) army near the end of the first turn, precipitating a crisis that would unfold over the next turn. I had recently made an attempt at Patch, as part of an effort to stop him from interfering with Lydia and Caria any more (forgetting about losing Successor status until well after the combat), and went down surprisingly hard. Thankfully, I got the Silver Shields on a surprise card redraw, and scared Patch off with a surprisingly capable force under a minor general.

Until turn 2 that is. Even with the return of Peithon, and some extra troops, Patch nailed me again after I failed an avoidance roll, and played Silver Shields to take a major component of my army away to boot. The next round, I finally remembered I had Deception and Surprise, which could have made my avoidance roll succeed…. Grr.

Patch’s army then defeated Mark’s as it continued on it’s way to Pella. Patch then turned around and took the body to Pella himself, to fight Dave’s army, which had been recalled from a campaign  in Greece. While the outcome of that battle wasn’t in too much doubt, we were denied any satisfaction of schadenfreude when both leaders survived death checks after rolling ‘9’s in combat.

Between 10 Legitimacy for burying Alexander in Pella, and the various royals that Patch had picked up in battle (including Philip III, which he looted back from my army after I stole him from Patch with Philip Breaks From Guardian) he had about 19 points, enough for the auto-win. Patch was disappointed that it wasn’t an entirely ‘honest’ win, thanks to the goof with Alexander’s body, but that hadn’t been his fault.

It was still a good time, and we need to do it again, before we forget everything all over again.

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