Warm-blooded Win

by on May 24, 2014 at 8:06 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Shortly after the last group day, I remembered Dominant Species, and proposed that for the next time, hoping we might get to try it with a larger number of players. Sadly, Mark and Patch could not make it, and Zjonni had to cancel at the last minute, just leaving me, Jason and Dave for a three-player game.

Random draws gave me the mammals, while Dave got the reptiles, and Jason the amphibians. I quickly started falling behind in the VPs over the first 2-3 turns, since I was more trying to maneuver for position, and was only hitting one scoring action per turn. It sure didn’t seem like I was getting anywhere though, and I was starting to think my entire plan had backfired. But I did manage a Wanderlust action with four adjacent hexes, and the Bonus VPs put me back in the pack.

During lunch, I finally remembered I have a camera available now, and started taking pictures:

1-turn3
After the end of Turn 3.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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History of the Moors in Spain

by on May 22, 2014 at 9:17 pm
Posted In: Books

Along with all the other cheap ebook reprints out there, there is a company (unnamed, so far as I can tell), who specializes in distributing the files from Project Gutenberg in ebook format (with a fairly distinctive two-tone cover pattern). This means that unlike the other two companies I’ve dealt with recently, the number of typos is low, but there are still formatting glitches. Notably, all the page number tags in the Gutenberg files are still in-line here. (Since there are notes that reference these pages, it is of use.) Occasionally, the line breaks of the original file have not been properly removed, but this is a handful of times, and generally the formatting is good.

This particular book was originally published in in French in the late 18th century, and given here in a 1840 translation, which means it is somewhat… dated. (Especially as the accepted Anglicizations of the names have changed quite a bit.) The author’s name was only given as “Florian”, which took some investigation to find out was Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian.

At any rate, it’s not a bad book, and is one of the first Western works to take a more sympathetic view of Moorish civilization (not entirely sympathetic, however). In fact, it is two works in one, as the final part of the book is a separate overview of Muslim history in general by “Rev S. Greene” (included in the 1840 book). That said, unless you’re interested in the historiography of Spain, there must be better things to read, though I don’t know what they would be (which is why I got this in the first place).

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Kernstown

by on May 4, 2014 at 10:20 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark came over today for some long-neglected FtF gaming. After the negotiation process, I went with a game of Stonewall in the Valley. I’ve been meaning to give the GCACW series another try, and wanted something that we shouldn’t have any problems finishing in a day.

I was a little unsure of table space beforehand, but found (to my surprise) I could fit the two maps of the first scenario together on the kitchen table with no problems. So we started with scenario 1, which covers mid-March 1862 (I had thought we might need to do the 1-map scenario 2 instead). The available forces are very lopsided, but the Union needs a high VP total to win, with taking both the objectives (Winchester and Strassburg) and wiping out the Confederate forces only worth a marginal victory. The Union can get more VPs by sending units out of the game (to McClellan) in the first six turns (or slightly fewer points for sending them on turns 7-12). We only got around to looking it up after the fact, but Stonewall presumably lost this scenario, fleeing into the southern reaches of the map early on, and being repulsed at the Battle of Kernstown on the last day of the scenario, after most of the troops had been sent to Alexandria (and then Fort Monroe).

I took the Union side, and decided to press towards Winchester along a couple parallel routes, threatening to surround the city if Mark waited, or catch exhausted Rebels in a counterattack if they tried to pick off an advancing brigade.
Kernstown-3

Shields’ 3rd Division began in Charlestown and had almost no impact on the game, with an average speed of ~2.2 per activation (I was activating the division as a unit, so the minimum roll was a ‘2’…), Finally reaching Winchester on the 5th turn, where I sent two brigades east for the points, and the final one garrisoned the city.

Meanwhile, Mark tried to get one of my brigades early in the second turn. This was a big mistake as it turned out, but we figured that out by going through the combat procedure. Jackson is a better commander than anyone the Union has, but the artillery modifiers are quite generous to a defender in the open, and he ended up disorganized and fatigued to no real effect. I moved in with the next nearest brigade, and with good odds and a flanking bonus started the destruction of the Confederate army.
Kernstown-4

The third turn saw a couple remnants flee towards Strassburg while I finished off one brigade and tried to keep from blowing the entire army. The fourth turn was mostly rest for both sides as we recovered from exhaustion, disorganization, and (for Mark) demoralization. On turn five, I caught up to the survivors as Strassburg and finished him off to effectively end the game. I was able to send enough out of theater at that point to get a Substantive Victory.

GCACW has always been a system I’ve wanted to like, but I was unimpressed with what I saw in Stonewall’s Last Battle. I figured at the time that the scenario wasn’t really showing the system’s strengths, but still… I just wasn’t seeing it. This time, however, it worked. Both of us enjoyed the scenario, and we want to work through the rest in SIV. We got a good handle on combat, and can see how a well-paced long-term plan needs to work.

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History of Germany in the Middle Ages

by on April 24, 2014 at 8:07 pm
Posted In: Books

This is another cheap Kindle version of a public domain book, this time offered by The Pergamum Collection (I got it for free some time ago). Originally written in 1894 as the first volume of an English guide to German history, it covers from Roman times to the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in the mid-13th century.

While the difference in publishers is evident in the fact that the nature of OCR-related problems is different, the fact is that they are present, and show that no real proofing of the document was done. From several occurrences of “Charles the Pat” before finally showing up properly as “Charles the Fat” the last time he is named, to “Emperor Frederick II.,” showing up as “Emperor Frederick IL,” in the introduction, the book has a large collection of minor problems that would have been fixed with a pair of attentive eyes. Overall, though, the incidence of problems is probably less than the average for Lecturable, so I marginally recommend Pergamum over them.

The book itself is quite good. It is of course dated, and mostly concerned with the affairs of kings and rebellions (not a problem to me), though it does have chapters on society and literature at the end, and is written with a great deal of enthusiasm for the subject. I’ve long wanted some sort of answers as to how the post-Carolingian Kingdom of the East Franks turned into the disunited Holy Roman Empire of the Renaissance, and this book does talk about the beginning of the process, with the rise of cities and local leagues, as the administration of the Empire comes apart in the face of a Papacy determined to keep the Hohenstaufens from uniting Italy around the Papal territories.

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Crown of Rules

by on April 20, 2014 at 11:03 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Finally had some of the gang over for gaming yesterday. Patch is busy vacationing in Canada, and Dave is actually attending a convention this weekend, so it was just me, Mark and Jason. Mark and I had tried Crown of Roses 2-player some time ago, and he was eager to try again, in multi-player.

I don’t know about Mark, I’d forgotten just about everything I’d learned the first time around. Combine that with being generally busy (partially with numerous other reading projects), so that I didn’t get through all the rulebook again, and we had a slow day. (Also, this was our first time with the living rules, which really has re-written a fair chunk of the rulebook, though I don’t know how big the changes really are.)

At any rate, I ended up with York, and started off with an aggressive policy of trying to trap a small army in Norfolk. This went badly, as Bad Weather Delayed the Attack, twice, and Lancaster (Jason) cleaned up the rest of the area behind me. On the other hand, he left a few more block scattered around, and I ended the first turn by bringing Henry the VI to battle and defeating him. This left Buckingham (Mark) in charge of the country by virtue of holding the Chancellor’s Office, but I had the more votes available. I promised Mark that I’d give him support for Chancellor and Earl Marshal if he voted for me for King. He duly did, and I kept my promise, even if I didn’t chip in very much on the latter (Influence Points go quickly…). I managed to grab the Exchequer, Ireland and North Marches for myself (on some minimal bids), while Jason also took Lord Admiral (he and Mark had spent large bids on Chancellor), Lord Captain of Calais went vacant.

WIN_20140419_153329
Beginning of turn 2. Lancaster is opposite me, and Buckingham to the right.

Militarily, the second turn didn’t go any better for me than the first. I had actually lost one noble to the Inactive Pool after getting killed last turn, and this turn I lost Exeter to Treachery. I was slowly becoming uncomfortably aware just how much military might Lancaster had, and that I was wearing away faster than he was. However, there wasn’t much opportunity do much as Affairs of State ended the turn a bit early, while I had been busy getting my Minor Heir out, and taking care of a couple of Embassies. (The latter I used a Writ to pull an endangered block out of trouble.)

With our extremely slow start, that’s about as far as we got, though Henry Holland (of Lancaster) was voted King of England for the next turn. Mark wasn’t going to let me get two turns of Kingship in a row (with good reason!), and there were certainly no commanding leads in Parliament (I did have a small lead in votes thanks to offices and popular support). Everyone was about out of Influence Points so several offices may have gone vacant. Jason sounded like he was out, so it was up to me to try to outmaneuver Mark as Jason would likely resolve ties (or at least the important ones) in his favor.

I generally like idea of how the game works, but I do wish it was bit less involved. It’s going to take a bit of practice to get to the point where we have a shot at the cut-down 5-turn version of the main scenario in a day.

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