Guerra a Muerte

by on February 24, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Mark over last Sunday for some 2-player wargaming. It was his turn to pick, but he gave me a choice: Guerra a Muerte, Men of Iron or War Galley; the latter being the only one he’s gotten to the table before. Being more of a strategic gamer than tactical, and always up for a game on a bit of history I don’t know much about, I selected Guerra a Muerte, which is on the breakup of Spain’s empire in the New World.

We went for the intro scenario, which is just 5 turns of the full game, and didn’t even make it that far. It’s understandable with our first time out with a game, though I had hoped we’d get slightly further than we did. At any rate, I had a pretty solid grip on the situation at the end of turn 3 as the Patriots, and Spain would have had a hard time making a substantial comeback.

There were the usual first-time questions, and unfortunately, it lived up to my usual idea that magazine games tend to have poorer-written rules than normal. One goof up we did probably helped me fairly noticeably. The Patriot player is really four different groups, and we didn’t do the split up of funds correctly (I didn’t realize some of what the rules were trying to tell me for a bit), which helped fund the El Plata patriots.

The schedule of reinforcement threw us at first too, as while they’re marked with turn numbers the rules don’t talk about the meaning of the designation.

Mark took some detailed notes, and hopefully he’ll write them up soon. But the initial fighting was in the south, as El Plata starts with about the only Patriot regular troops. At the same time, the only leaders are in Mexico, and even though the imposingly large stacks are all Militia (only worth one each), I managed to take Vera Cruz from a small garrison. (I do generally like how combat and sieges work.)

On the second turn, El Plata had enough resources to reform the part of the army that the Royalists smashed the previous turn (if we’d done the resource split correctly… I think they’d have still had enough, but it would have emptied the bank for next turn), and the Mexican forces got a bunch of regulars in. I managed to force the Royalists in the south back into Montevideo and consolidated my hold on Mexico in the north. The Peruvians were doing well on the coast, but had lost the interior of the Andes.

The third turn saw Spanish forces start arriving, along with Grand Colombian regulars and Bolivar. The Colombians had already purchased artillery to help defend Cartagena, and now with plentiful local superiority, Bolivar moved to assault Maracaibo.

And that’s about where we had to call it. The final count was about 22 provinces controlled by the Patriots (needed 12…). Obviously, we need to consider just what the Royalists need to do better. I certainly hope we do get to try it again before we forget everything about the game, but there’s a lot of games on the shelf eager to get a turn.

I offered Mark three choices for next time (as it’s my ‘pick’): Fire in the Sky, Stonewall’s Last Battle (I really want to try out the GCACW system since Battle Above the Clouds is on preorder), or Carthage. It looks like it’ll be Carthage.

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Computer Woes….

by on February 9, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Posted In: Life

It all started last November.

Shortly after that adventure, I started having problems with Haruhi again. Occasionally, she would have trouble making the leap from BIOS to OS. Sometimes the initial boot would go fine, and when it got to the point where the initial Windows 2000 start screen should come up (the text mode one right before the initial graphic screen) nothing would happen, and I’d have a blank screen—that the monitor still reported had a signal coming through.

This initially happened during my visit at my folk’s place. It eventually settled down, and stopped doing it… for a while. By mid-December, it had gotten fairly common, only to stop again during my two weeks off at the end of December, which I figured was probably lulling me into a false sense of complacency, but I let it go. As it turned out, I was right.

The general diagnosis was that either the boot sector of my main hard drive was damaged, or the drive controller on the motherboard was having trouble. …I wasn’t especially eager to consider replacing a motherboard.

Last Monday, Micca acted up. He’d been slowly accumulating a couple of boot-quirks, but was working fine. Then he suddenly started throwing multiple error messages on boot. Clearing those was possible, but they’d come back after a minute or two. After some fiddling around, I found that IE was not in good shape, and fixing that stopped the error messages. …And let some adware that’d gotten in somehow start IE every minute or two…. >.< Either the system was broken in other ways, or the adware was particularly bad, since I had trouble downloading anything to remove it. In the end, I did a wipe and reinstall of Windows (which is why we keep our data somewhere other than drive C…).

Meanwhile, Smudge was on my computer, and WoW died. Bad. When I finally got to the point where I could look at it, it seemed a fairly simple fix, and I got Haruhi back in shape. Wednesday, I tried to use Excel and the wheels came off the wagon. The system struggled valiantly on, but it was obvious that something bad had happened. The biggest shock was when I looked at the file system and found most (but not all) of the contents of my F: drive residing on D:…. I’d gone a bit overboard when setting up Haruhi for projects that never happened, but this was really, really bad, and indicated that both physical hard drives were corrupted.

The next few days were spent moving as much as I could onto the house NAS for later recovery. As you might imagine, a fair number of corrupted files showed up, though generally not in the most critical places.

As of Friday, I was building a new temporary replacement machine: Goriki. This was based off of the parts from the machine that Drew donated that hadn’t been used in Haruhi. Assembly and install went pretty well, and I was at least partially back in business that night. Sunday, I swapped the RAM and processor over from Haruhi, making it almost as good as she was. Sadly, there’s no SATA on that motherboard, so I’m stuck with a CD drive.

While all this was going on, there were rumblings from a friend of bringing over some leftover computer parts from the last time he was trying to diagnose and fix a problem. With Haruhi having just gone down for the count, I sort of pressured that into actually happening, you know, soon.

He never does things by halves. I need some RAM, and some cables, and perhaps a new drive, to put it all together. I’ll be doing more with that over the next couple weekends. The part that I was not expecting was the two monitors, a 22″ widescreen and a 24″ widescreen.

So, I’ve claimed the 22″, Smudge will probably end up with two monitors, and I’m not sure about the rest of the shakeout past that.

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Pursuit of Victory

by on February 2, 2009 at 10:24 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Mark over yesterday for another attempt at Pursuit of Glory. It went pretty smoothly, and we got through the end of Turn 3, which is pretty much an extra turn, and last time we were on a script.

Mark took the Central Powers again, which is just as well, as I’m just not sure what they should do. Or, maybe, do first.

I went for the expected opening and went for the Russo-British Assault. Pretty standard, took Basra, attacked on the flank of the Turkish line in the Caucuses and knocked a unit out permanently, despite Turkish Withdrawal. Past that, things have not gone so well on the Russian front. The Turks got some good reinforcements in, and advanced in a couple places as well as extended the line into Azerbaijan before the Russians could do much. I used Enver Goes East at the beginning of the second turn, and the main attack that generated got good weather and knocked me out of Kars. However, between a blizzard and the assault, the second one knocked out the Stanke Bey unit.

That helped me zip a spare cavalry division into Trabzon, besieging the fort, and immediately focusing all Turkish attention there. The Turks were already in Kars, and the end of the second turn saw our first sieges (the Turks barely missed forcing my unit back out on the last round). Thankfully, Kars held out while Trabzon fell.

If I had been thinking I would probably have either SRed the division out, or SRed some reinforcements in on the first round of turn 3. But I was happy to let it be a diversion, as it gave me time to redress the situation on the rest of the front (including driving back into Kars). I have yet to get to clearing out Azerbaijan, but there are spare troops nearby, and the rest of the front looks stable now.

Also, thanks to Kitchner on turn 2 and Asquith/Lloyd George Coalition on 3, I was able to turn some spare British RPs into Russian ones and rebuild much of the army, which had been fading fast.

Meanwhile, the Turks also got busy in Palestine and attempted to Liberate Suez before I had done much with it. He didn’t quite clear the west bank of the Suez Canal, but I’ve had no luck with driving him out either. Thankfully, the Jihad level is still low enough to keep a revolt from breaking out, but I’ve got to kick him out soon.

Also, the initial troubles in Russia meant I’ve had no chance to get into Persia, so the Turks managed to grab everything of worth with their Persian Push.

Progress in Mesopotamia has been slow, as I haven’t had the forces to feel comfortable stringing myself out, but some Indian Army Reinforcements landed the Tigris Corps in Basra at the end of turn 3, and things may be about to start moving.

Right now the Jihad level is 3, the VPs are at… 12? (have to look again), and the Allied Powers have a good lead in getting to a Total War commitment (Mark was complaining of a poor turn 3 hand). Technically, he’s in the lead, but I get the idea he should be doing better from other reports. I’ll have to look at them again. We’ve transferred the setup to Vassal, and should be continuing the game by email.

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Giant Anime Meme

by on January 19, 2009 at 11:33 am
Posted In: Anime

Swiped from Elin & Smudge. Okay, I typically avoid memes, but this one hits close enough to home for me to actually care.

Go through the list and check off the titles you have watched. For our purposes, “watching” a title means that for TV and OVA series, you have to have seen at least one episode. For one-shots, you have to have seen the whole thing. At the end of each genre/category, add up your sub-total. At the very end, add up the sub-totals to come up with your grand total. If your grand total is 80 or over, congratulations — you are an obsessive anime watcher!

I. Action and Adventure
(X) .hack//SIGN
() Airmaster
() Battle Arena Toshinden
(X) Bleach
() Blood+
() Burst Angel
() City Hunter (seen the live action movie)
(X) Cowboy Bebop
(X) Dragonball (a few episodes of Dragonball, none of Dragonball Z)
() Flame of Recca
() GetBackers
(X) InuYasha
(X) Lupin III
(X) Mai-HiME
() Naruto
() One Piece
() Tenjou Tenge
(X) TRIGUN
() Saiyuki
(X) Yu Yu Hakusho
Total Here: 9/20

II. Comedy and Parody
() 2×2 = Shinobuden
() Adventures of the Mini Goddesses (read the manga)
(X) Azumanga Daioh
() Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan
() DiGi Charat
(X) Dragon Half
(X) Excel Saga
(X) Fruits Basket
() Galaxy Angel
(X) Here is Greenwood
() Kodomo no Omocha
() Kyou Kara Maou!
() Midori Days
() Ouran Koukou Host Club
() Pani Poni Dash
(X) Project A-ko
(X) Ranma 1/2
(X) Tenchi Muyo
(X) Those Who Hunt Elves
(X) Urusei Yatsura
Total Here: 10/20

III. Drama and Miscellaneous
() Beck
() Full Moon wo Sagashite
() Gankutsuou
(X) Genshiken (the second series should be required watching for anyone wanting to get into comics)
() Glass Mask (original)
(X) Haibane Renmei
() Hitsuji no Uta
() Honey & Clover
() Kaleido Star
(X) Last Exile
() Le Portraite de Petite Cossette
() Monster
() Paradise Kiss
(X) Princess Mononoke
(X) Read or Die
() Speed Grapher
() Twin Spica
() Weiss Kreuz
(X) Wings of Honneamise
() Yakitate!! Japan
Total Here: 5/20

IV. Ecchi/Mature
() Agent AIKa
(X) Cutey Honey
() Ebichu
() Golden Boy
() Grenadier
(X) Hand Maid May (I wouldn’t really put it with these others….)
() He Is My Master
() Iketeru Futari
() La Blue Girl
() Lingerie Senshi Papillon Rose
(X) Mahoromatic (well, okay May and Mahoro belong together)
() Mezzo Forte
() Miyuki-chan in Wonderland
() My Dear Marie
() Najica Blitz Tactics
() Negima
(X) Puni Puni Poemi
() Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend
() Wicked City Noir
() Yumeria
Total Here: 4/20

V. Fantasy and Supernatural
() Angel Sanctuary
() Aquarian Age
() Berserk
(X) El Hazard (OAV, Wanderers, and second OAV)
() Final Fantasy Unlimited
(X) Fullmetal Alchemist
(X) Howl’s Moving Castle
(X) Magic Knight Rayearth
(X) Mushishi
(X) Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
(X) Record of Lodoss War
(X) Scrapped Princess
(X) Slayers
() Tales of Eternia
() Trinity Blood
(X) Tsubasa Chronicle
(X) Vampire Hunter D
() Violinist of Hamelin
(X) Vision of Escaflowne
() X: TV
Total Here: 12/20

VI. Historical and Alternate History
() Anne of Green Gables
() Basilisk
() Barefoot Gen
() Chrono Crusade
() Grave of the Fireflies
(X) Fire Tripper
() Kaidomaru
() Legend of Condor Hero
() Millennium Actress
(X) Nadia – Secret of Blue Water
(X) Ninja Scroll (well, II, not impressed)
() Otogizoushi
() Peacemaker Kurogane
(X) Porco Rosso
() Rose of Versailles
(X) Rurouni Kenshin
() Samurai 7
() Samurai Champloo
(X) Steel Angel Kurumi
() Victorian Romance Emma
Total Here: 6/20

VII. Kids and Family
(X) Angelic Layer
() Astro Boy (anime no, I have a volume of the manga)
() Beyblade
(X) Castle in the Sky
() Detective Conan (would like to see it)
() Digimon
() Doraemon
(X) Hamtaro
(X) Kiki’s Delivery Service
() Kimba the White Lion
() Monster Rancher
(X) My Neighbor Totoro
(X) Pokemon
() Samurai Pizza Cats
() Sazae-san
() SD Gundam Force
() Sonic X
(X) Speed Racer (loved it when I was 5….)
(X) Spirited Away
() Yu-Gi-Oh
Total Here: 7/20

VIII. Magical Girls and Boys
(X) Cardcaptor Sakura
() DNAngel
() Earth Girl Arjuna
() Elemental Gelade
() Hime-chan no Ribbon
() Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne
() Magic Users Club
(X) Magical Girl Pretty Sammy (OAV and series)
() Magical Stage Fancy La La
() Mahou no Star Magical Emi
() Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha
() Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok
() Ojamajou DoReMi
() Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo
() Pretear
(X) Sailor Moon
() Saint Tail
() Tokyo Mew Mew
() Ultra Maniac
(X) Wedding Peach
Total Here: 4/20

IX. Romance
(X) Ah! My Goddess (OAV and the movie, and the series)
(X) Ai Yori Aoshi
() Air
() Ayashi no Ceres (have several volumes of the manga…)
() Boys Be
() Chobits (seen the beginning of the manga, not impressed)
(X) Fushigi Yuugi
() Hana Yori Dango
(X) His and Her Circumstances
(X) Kimagure Orange Road (way back when)
() Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
(X) Love Hina
(X) Maison Ikkoku
() Marmalade Boy
() Peach Girl
() Piano
() Please Teacher!
() SaiKano
() To Heart
(X) Video Girl Ai
Total Here: 8/20

X. Science-Fiction
(X) Appleseed
() Blue Seed
(X) Bubblegum Crisis
(X) Crest of the Stars
() Galaxy Express 999 (seen some of the manga)
() Gundam (any)
(X) Macross (any) (‘Robotech’ version, Do You Remember Love, and Macross II)
(X) Outlaw Star
(X) Patlabor (well, the movies)
(X) Planetes
() Please Save My Earth
(X) RahXephon
(X) Saber Marionette
() s-CRY-ed
() Soukyuu no Fafner
() Space Battleship Yamato
() Stellvia
(X) Transformers (any)
(X) Voices of a Distant Star
(X) Xenosaga: The Animation
Total Here: 12/20

XI. Shounen-Ai and Shoujo-Ai
() Ai no Kusabi
() Descendants of Darkness
() Earthian
() FAKE
() Fish in the Trap
(X) Galaxy Fraulein Yuna
() Gravitation
() Haru wo Daiteita
() Kannazuki no Miko
() Kizuna
() Lesson XX
() Loveless
() Maria-sama ga Miteru
() Mirage of Blaze
() Oniisama E
() Seikimatsu Darling
() Song of the Wind in the Trees
() Sukisho
() Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito
() Zetsuai/Bronze
Total Here: 1/20

XII. Sports
() Ace wo Nerae (Smash! Volley!)
() Ashita no Joe
(X) Ayane’s High Kick
() Baki the Grappler
(X) Battle Athletes
() Buzzer Beater
() Captain Tsubasa
() Eyeshield 21
() Ginban Kaleidoscope
() Hajime no Ippo
() Hikaru no Go
() Initial D
() Major
() Monkey Turn
() One Pound Gospel
() Prince of Tennis
() Princess Nine
() Slam Dunk
() Suzuka
() Wild Striker
Total Here: 2/20

XIII. Surreal and Psychological
(X) Akira
() Betterman
() Boogiepop Phantom
() Elfen Lied
(X) FLCL
() Gantz
(X) Ghost in the Shell (movie or TV)
(X) Hellsing
() Jigoku Shoujo
() Karas
() Madlax
() Melody of Oblivion
(X) Neon Genesis Evangelion
(X) Noir
() Paranoia Agent
() Perfect Blue
(X) Princess Tutu
(X) Revolutionary Girl Utena
(X) Serial Experiments Lain
() Texhnolyze
Total Here: 9/20

Total: 89/260

It’s not a bad list, but there’s some decidedly notable titles missing. No Dirty Pair, no Crusher Joe, no Gall Force, no Megazone 23, and no Comic Party. And personally, I’d expect to see Fashionable Judo Girl Yawara and Touch in the sports section.

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