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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Barbarians to Angels

by on April 3, 2014 at 8:20 pm
Posted In: Books

Peter S. Wells’ book Barbarians to Angels is a look at the Dark Ages in the ‘cultural continuity’ tradition that started in the 1970s. It is mostly aimed at dispelling the extremely bleak view of post-Roman history taken by the early Humanists to Gibbon and through most of the twentieth century..

And it’s a certainty that things weren’t as bad as they represented them. However, the arguments presented that the post-Roman world continued without major disruptions are often nebulous, ill-supported, and lacking any degree of detail.

The strongest assertions are with the continuance with cities. The older view generally asserts that post-Roman cities were abandoned, or greatly reduced in size. Wells talks about what archaeology has found in several cities throughout Europe that show these cities did not show in disruption in the post-Roman era, as well as several sites outside the Roman world that developed in this time frame. However, one city did indeed shrink massively in this period (Rome itself), and there’s no discussion of if there are any cities from that period where there has been a conspicuous absence of any meaningful finds. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but the comparison would provide a useful baseline for better theorizing.

Still, archaeology is the best parts of the book, and I wish he had gone into more detail about what has been found. New finds are made all the time, and this book does touch on several more recent ones. I think a more systematic examination would have helped develop his argument much better. As it is, he shows that there were new sites, outside the Roman world (in the Baltics) that were developing, and trading. And while that does support his refrain that Europe did not turn into a howling wilderness, it does speak to the potential of large economic shifts, which would disrupt ordinary life.

Moreover, Wells asserts at one point that the finds of exotic luxury goods in graves and the like disproves that trade declined in the post-Roman period. No, it only shows that luxury goods continued to be traded; it says nothing about bulk non-luxury goods, the part that only sees trade when there is a well-established infrastructure in place.

In the end, I suppose I was expecting a more scholarly work, while this is really a very introductory text. It is also aimed at traditional rut of learning about the period, which is not where I am. It’s not a bad book, but not what I’m looking for.

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Two Rounds of Thermopylae (Overview)

by on March 18, 2014 at 10:16 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

Commands & Colors: Ancients Expansion #6 actually has two scenarios based on Thermopylae, and Patch and I played the second one tonight, as our between-ASL game. This one is much more unusual than the first, with impassible hills occupying much of the center, and the battle broken into two very distinct parts in the two flank areas. This makes center cards nearly useless, and the Greeks have an extremely low number of units, with the Persians being crammed into their starting space (watch out for banners!).

I had the Persians the first time, and started by moving up my right-side force with an eye towards breaking the Greek units there and eventually exiting units off the Greek board edge for extra banners. Patch Out Flanked me to hit both sides for heavy losses, wiping out one archer unit with a combination of hits and retreat losses. Mardonius Inspired my left to move up my mediums and pull out an archer that was down to one block. I lost five blocks to his four, but pushed one unit back, and if I could maneuver, I had better reserves on that side.

Patch reshuffled a 1-block MH out of the way and wiped out what was left of my Warriors, and then used a Line Command on the other flank to move everyone into contact to wipe out both archer units on that flank, at the cost of weakening the leader’s unit. I burned an Inspired Center to move one unit up and finish it off, after which he engaged my Aux on that side and drove it back to the base line with one block left.

I moved up on the other side, and finished off the weakened Spartan MH, but lost two Meds to a Counter Attack right afterward. 2-6

Thermopylae Overview 1

Patch led the second game with archery concentrated on Leonidas’ position, and knocked out three blocks in three attacks. I consolidated the left a little, and then moved up with an Order Medium. I was still moving up on the left, but on the right, I knocked out one archery unit, and reduced the other two to one block apiece, and used a banner on battle back to get Leonidas back behind the wall.

Patch Out Flanked me to shoot up the advancing line on the left, and pin a Spartan MH behind the remnants of the archers on the right. I Out Flanked him to wipe out the archers and move into contact on the left, and greatly weaken his archers at the cost of a couple blocks. He Ordered Four Left to drive back the Spartan MHs with light casualties.

I countered with I Am Spartacus, and rolled… five banners and a Med. Patch was right, it was a heck of an omen.

I ordered the led MH on the left, hoping to finish off both archer units with Momentum, and instead killed one block and lost the unit; the leader evading back to the Aux on that flank. Patch Line Commanded his left into contact with the Spartans and knocked out Leonidas’ unit (after a First Strike that did three blocks) and reduced another to two blocks. I Ordered Medium (down to two units) to finish off an archer and the Medium that Leonidas had weakened.

Patch Ordered Medium to knock out the remaining MH on my left, finish off a Spartan MH, and reduce the last one to one block. I Ordered Right to try and get a Med, but only did one damage before forcing it to retreat two hexes. Patch then advanced and finished it off, sending Leonidas fleeing with no troops left.

Patch hadn’t noticed the Persian exit provision (and I was too busy to really think about it), so we spared a little as I tried to get my last unit up to kill one of his. Eventually, he hit me with his Warriors, and reduced me to one block, while I did two blocks and a banner. With one unit and a hill behind them, they were trapped and killed. 6-5

Thermopylae Overview 2

Afterword:
The first battle was especially bloody and fast, with hardly any attacks not costing both sides at least one block. Patch really should have got the second round, with a Cav in easy range of my board edge. Still, that would be 5-6; a real close battle, and either way he wins the pair on banners. The Persians have power in this scenario, but the packed setup really makes it hard not to lose a good number of units, it pays to be aggressive as both sides.

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