Fox Den

by on August 6, 2014 at 5:37 pm
Posted In: Life

Well, I’ve done it. It’s official, I have my own business: Fox Den

I should point out here that there are four people and three businesses where I live now. I guess I felt left out. (Smudge and Baron of course have one joint business.)

This started early this year, when I read a few ebooks of public domain works with horrible, horrible quality control and editing (effectively, none). This got me thinking, ‘I can do better than that.’ And the concept of my own publishing company was born.

Of course, things have changed a bit since then, and Fox Den’s current projects have nothing to do with the original impetus (I may well come back to it, however). My dad has just published a new book, and I’m now working on reprinting his earlier books, with the hope that they will both help each other out. Smudge was about to self-publish a book of her own through Lulu, and just let Lulu be the publisher of record. I’ve picked it up, and will provide the ISBNs, and so Fox Den suddenly has a Fantasy line.

I’m all official with a business license and Doing Business As paperwork. But this is really just a hobby, and I don’t expect to make any profit off of it; but it would sure be nice to get my costs back. Setting up for a website for the business caused a rework of my site and is why things suddenly look different here (if anyone’s paid attention enough to notice).

The two initial projects of the new company:

No Turning Back – My Dad’s first book now long out of print. The scanning is done, and I’m finishing off the text conversion. I need a cover, and maps, double-check the text, work out the formatting, and then put it together for hardcopy and ebook.

The Keeper’s Warrior – Smudge’s book is about done, with illos and cover… it just needs to clear editing, and finalize the blurb and other annoying things.

And it joins all the things I’m already doing with my life:

Reading: If I wasn’t reading, what would the point be of publishing? I’ve been trying to say something about most of the historical books I read, and if I am going to be publishing SF&F, I should probably start saying something about the books I read there to help force me to think about the genre….

Gaming: At the moment, I’m in a couple of PBeM games, and only occasionally get much else in (I’m not even on an MMO at this moment…). And lately I’ve been playing Professor Layton as well as my usual big strategy games.

Anime: We gave up cable some time ago, but I watch a few anime series through streaming services (mostly Crunchyroll), after getting them recommended to me by Smudge.

Paradox review series: Okay, there’s a good number of games to cover, and I do really long reviews, making this a huge project. It also keeps stalling out. I’m finally wrapping up #7 nine months late, and… #8 may take as long.

RPG reviews: I occasionally review various RPG items, but started an actual effort to review the old TSR FR-series modules last year. I’m stalled part-way through reading FR3, and I may never really get back to it. Though I’ll certainly keep doing the occasional miscellaneous review.

Electronic ASL Rulebook: This is a huge project for something that has to just be for me. But I refer to the thing often enough, and MMP’s project seems stalled. The law of irony says the best way to be able to buy theirs is to finish mine.

Federation & Empire for Vassal: I’ve poured a lot of effort into this, and have actually gotten to use it myself, and there are others using it. So, of course I want to do it all over again. Right now, I’m actually working with the original to update it for a new version of Fighter Operations (pretty much done, but I want to see the final product first), and adding the LDR as an extension. The new one keeps getting stalled by difficult new features.

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War for the Holy Land

by on August 5, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Posted In: Books

Authoritative – adj. “having or showing impressive knowledge about a subject”

Asbridge’s ‘authoritative history’ of the Crusades certainly does this. It is a very extensive look at the period in a single volume. There are problems; I think there is still not enough examination of what was going on in the Muslim world around the Crusader States, and the role of Byzantium in the area is barely touched on most of the time. But, neither are these absent.

In fact, the role of Byzantine cooperation with the First Crusade is examined in some detail; it is only later that they drop too far off the stage. Also, the role of jihad (or even the existence of it) is meditated upon at length in the middle of the book, especially in relation to rooting out how much of Saladin’s actions matched his propaganda as a mujahid. Indeed, one of the primary goals of the book is to try and ‘correct’ certain long-held traditions, notably around just how much animosity existed around Outremer with relation to Byzantium and the surrounding Muslims.

I have to note that despite this detailed study, I was disappointed with losing a lot of details that I’m used to. This is because I’m used to Runciman’s three-volume A History of the Crusades. One volume can’t really compete with three (though they are individually smaller than this one), but the ‘authoritative’ tag made me instantly want to compare them.

As a one-volume history, it is very good, but it does not replace Runciman’s history, and while the parts that do re-evaluate the Crusades are a nice companion to it, it is too extensive just for that.

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37 Khamsin

by on July 27, 2014 at 9:01 am
Posted In: ASL

It was back to the desert for our next ASL adventure, and Patch and I decided to go for scenario 37, “Khamsin”, from West of Alamein. Having just been the attacking Soviets in Festung Budapest, I had the defending Brits for this one. There’s a Series Replay of the scenario in Annual ’90, but neither one of us got around to more than glancing at it.

The British are defending three hillocks as part of a defensive box as the Germans advance on Tobruk with a decent force of infantry with a HMG, a couple ATRs, a couple light MTRs and three LMGs, backed up by 2-pounder ATG, all in sangars and anyone in scrub HIP. The Germans attack with six squads of infantry mounted in halftracks, a Pz IV, six Pz IIIs, two Pz IIs, and a Marder III (this is mid-’42, so these are all early models—at least the IIIs have 50mm guns), with three armor leaders. On the first turn, the British get a pair of Grants, a pair of Crusaders, and a Stuart as reinforcements (with an AL of their own). The Germans have eight and a half turns to take control of all three hillock summits without taking five more CVP than the British.

Complicating all of this is a sandstorm that has blown in. This is heavy wind from the southwest with heavy dust. This adds a +1 to dice rolls for every two hexes of range (fractions round up), an additional die is rolled in every attack and divided in half to generate an additional modifier (fractions round down, so it’s from +0 to +3, with +1 or +2 most likely), and fire into the wind gets an extra +1.

One long, skinny hillock and one small one are near each other on board 28. Board 27 has a large, rounder one just a little further away (especially by distance to the summits). So I kind of figured Patch would go after the north two first, and and set up for the third to be my ‘final defense’ with the ATG in a pocket on one side of the hillock with a MTR and the HMG nearby. This put most of my ROF in a small area, with the ATRs in positions that he should have to go through earlier.

So Patch set up to crawl along the southern edge and force me to fire into the wind for the extra +1. The Germans are basically one giant sixteen-vehicle platoon until they come into LOS of a British unit (which isn’t until range 10 with all the dust).

37 1G
Situation, German Turn 1, showing the full board. My HIP units are visible to show the entire layout. The German mass started breaking up from speed differences.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Over the River

by on July 21, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Posted In: Books

First, a couple notes: The author is my dad; I’m trying to be evenhanded in this review, but that bias is there. This book is self-published through CreateSpace, and my copy started coming apart on my first read-through. A couple pages popped out on their own, and many more are sticking and threatening to go. I’m not sure if I’m just unlucky, or if CreateSpace has trouble with 600+ page books (the theoretical maximum length is 800). Also, the electronic version of the book has trouble, and can’t be recommended; this is being worked on, and I’ll update when the problems are fixed.

Over the River is a chronological (day-by-day) reconstruction of the events in the American Civil War from March 23rd to May 22nd, 1863, which saw two nearly simultaneous Union offensives. It is effectively the first book of a series on the war in 1863 (which is a companion to Lowry’s 1864-5 series that was published in the early ’90s), but stands alone without any problems.

The actual narrative content is less than might be supposed, as the book fairly extensively quotes from various primary sources (generally noting the difference between reports at the time and recollections years later). These are critiqued at points where there are mistakes, or perhaps ‘spun’. And then every once in a while the book stops and takes time out to examine the larger meaning of events, which doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, though the afterword has in interesting analysis of the similarities between Grant’s and Hooker’s positions and opening moves, and how the two campaigns eventually ended up with very different results.

It is a particularly interesting period to cover in this format. Hooker’s movement across the Rapidan started within a day or so of Grant’s major movements to get his army across the Mississippi south of Vicksburg. The central third of the book is largely occupied with the Battle of Chancellorsville, and then Grant’s campaign in Mississippi gets exciting just as the Army of the Potomac withdraws back across the Rapidan.

Along the way, the structure makes other things fit together well, most notably the extreme delays in communication between Grant (in northern Mississippi, working south) and Banks (in Louisiana, trying to work north), since all messages had to go the long way through telegraph connections to the east coast, and by ship through the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

In the end, it is probably too detailed for a reader new to the ACW wanting a more general history or overview, and not deep enough for someone well-versed in the war looking for new insights. But the chronological framework is a very interesting view for the Civil War buff used to more bite-sized chunks of the war, and plenty of basic explanations are given for those not well-versed in the military history of the time.

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Up Front

by on July 13, 2014 at 9:19 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Patch made it over for some FtF gaming yesterday. I was a little shocked that he’s feeling a little burnt out on ASL. But he seems okay since he was wanting to play Up Front, which he got a copy of last year. I’ve known of it since it came out, and I can remember a couple people at the Vista gaming group playing it a bunch, but I’d never really looked at it myself.

It is pretty ingenious. Each scenario specifies the forces each side gets (which are individual men with associated weapons on small numbered cards with all their details), and the victory conditions. There’s a main deck with ‘actions’ (fire, movement, rally…), terrain, and some other events. Scenarios modify the general ‘feel’ of the terrain by making you toss out the first few instances of a terrain type that doesn’t fit. There’s a fairly simple system for keeping track of how close various groups are to the enemy, with complications allowing a group to flank the enemy, get behind them, etc.

Patch had only ever soloed the game, and was wondering about the time limits the scenarios impose in terms of multiple play-throughs of the main deck. Seemed like it was unlikely get more than halfway through the deck once.

Well, our games went longer, but the initial scenario (“A Meeting of Patrols”) is short, so it didn’t go much longer. We played it twice, swapping sides (and which Allied force was involved), and I managed to win both times by getting groups up to Range 4 in cover while keeping Patch tied up with streams and similar movement blocking cards.

After that we tried “City Fight”, which is slightly bigger and more complicated, and Patch just completely disassembled my force in that one, ending with multiple men infiltrating my positions and taking me out in Close Combat.

Then we went for “Elite Troops on the Attack”, a two-round scenario with Patch’s SS attacking my green Americans. Patch took the first round after a drawn out fight that again saw my guys go down pretty hard. The defender gets exactly the same force for the second round, but the attacker only gets his surviving guys (including anyone who routed out of the game), but I’d only managed one kill the first time. However, the second round went much better for me, with a drawn-out fight coming down to the wire that left both of us with shattered forces, until Patch no longer had the men for a victory.

We didn’t have anything else going on yesterday, and so went a couple hours later than normal with one more game, “Rear Guard Action”, with the idea of trying out the ordnance rules. Sadly, they didn’t get much of a workout, as Patch’s mortar (the only ordnance in the scenario) malfunctioned on the second shot. Patch came on strong for a while, but I got both of my oversized Russian groups on hills, and the extra firepower effect from them helped grind him down, along with the deck. The scenario finished on time (three play-throughs of the deck) with the Germans in seriously bad shape.In all, it’s a fun and fast game. Everything is necessarily abstract, so all the scenarios are generic ‘situations’, which causes me to miss the ‘history’ of SL/ASL scenarios. It’s also at the man-to-man level, where I tend to prefer higher-level games. But, we’ll certainly be playing more of it in the future, quite likely as part of our Vassal rotation.

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