Onward to Jerusalem!

by on May 26, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Me, Patch and Mark got together for monthly wargaming today. We continued our earlier game of Onward Christian Soldiers. We’re near the end now, and when we continue, we’re going to need a second game to play afterwards.

When last we left our heroes, the Crusaders were besieging Aleppo and Antioch, and Kerbogha was was set to come on board and start causing trouble.

I figured (rightly) the situation with Duqaq was more immediate, so Kerbogha set out to rescue him from the armies that had surrounded him, and leave Aleppo to it’s own devices for a bit.

In the actual First Crusade, Kerbogha arrived at the seige of Antioch just after the Cruaders took it, failed in an attack on the Crusaders in the city, had his alliance break up, and retired from the war without really doing anything else. His poor luck seems to be following him in the game.

He’s a good leader, and he’s got a gigantic army by the standards of the game. He has suffered from poor attrition rolls, and has been very timid in battle against these barbaric invaders. In about four straight battles he rolled “cautious” for his tactics (which is good for most First Crusade Muslim leaders, but is his poorest choice, and should only happen 1/3 of the time). He failed to break through to Duqaq, who got his army cut to ribbons by the continual harrying of the Crusader armies around him, and got captured, putting one of my best leaders out of action.

Kerbogha pulled out and headed to Aleppo to break the siege there. Meanwhile, Antioch fell to the Crusader forces there, freeing up one of the more powerful armies.

Aleppo turned into a disaster. I had a good leader and army trapped there, and the Crusader assaults on the walls were getting closer to succeeding. By the time it was done, I had wrecked a couple of armies trying to break the siege (and got another one trapped and lost Balduk, a not-quite incompetent leader), and Kerbogha’s army was dangerously depleted. Aleppo fell, and Ridwan was captured, taking out another of my good leaders. Winter brought an end to the campaigning as the Crusaders started to head south again. Soqman, another of my second-string leaders managed to ambush and halt the march south.

In any battle you roll two dice for every leader involved. On a 2 or 12 they are eliminated or captured. Mark and Patch had been playing with fate, rolling lots of 3s and 11s all day. Finally, it happened and I captured his leader. And then I rolled a 12 and Soqman was captured in turn.

In all, I’ve had five leaders captured. There’s automatic replacements for all but one of them, but they aren’t very good. Meanwhile the Crusaders are getting dangerously depleted, with some factions with a bare handful of men left. But my poor leaders have trouble fighting anyone, no matter what the odds. The game doesn’t have far to go (about four turns), and if Kerbogha can keep from getting himself killed, we figure I’ll win. But we’re uncertain on how the victory points will pan out, so we’re going to have to finish it off to really know.

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Database Musings…

by on May 24, 2007 at 10:40 am
Posted In: Life

A while back, a friend of mine had the idea to put all his DVDs into a database so he could keep track of them, let his friends know what he had to borrow, and keep track of who had borrowed what. A noble idea, the project eventually collapsed under its own weight.

In the meantime, it had sparked an idea of my own that was a bit more grandiose, and therefore collapsed under its own weight even faster. In my case, it was also the realization of some problems that I’ve never been able to reconcile.

My project was a database of magazine articles. Between the three of us here (at that point), we have a fairly good library of reference materials. And it’d be nice to spread the wealth around. Locating a particular book is not too hard. But, I also have magazines with articles on various interesting subjects. How (even for my own purposes) do I find what I want in those?

As a good example, I have a good number of National Geographics. When Smudge or Baron want reference to, say, cheetahs, it’s nearly impossible to find the right one, even when we know we all read an issue featuring them relatively recently.

So, the original idea was to record each article, with the magazine and issue number, and for sorting purposes, a general category (history, astronomy, nature…) and a short specific description of the subject matter, equivalent to what you see on the spine of a Nat Geo.

Not a bad idea, as far as it went, but too limited to be a great search tool. Part of the idea was to make it easy to fill in the data and thereby make it possible that the project could be competed. But some articles defied an easy description, and some things that a person might want to find, may not just live in obvious subjects. If National Geographic does an article on the African savanna, and there’s there’s some really good photos of elephants in it, when Baron wants photo reference, he won’t see the article it if he looks for elephants in the database.

I suppose a list of keywords might be better. In a way, what I want to do is create a card catalog for magazine articles.

Actually, what I really want is a magical way for someone to find information on a subject if the household’s combined library has anything on it (yes, that includes the books). @_@ There’s a lot of stuff in there, and I’d like it to be more visible.

So, I’m pondering the subject again, and wondering if anyone has any bright ideas.

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( No Title )

by on May 14, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Posted In: News

Thought I’d post this since I think I’m the only one on my friend’s list that watches Phil Foglio’s LJ.

http://philfoglio.livejournal.com/5139.html

Extremely short version: Kaja Foglio is in the hospital. Slightly longer version, she’s going through a bout with Chrohn’s disease, and is in no real danger, but is going to be in the hospital for an unknown period of time. Go read the post to get the full details. How he can still make me laugh when he’s in the mental shape he must be in is beyond me….

And, while I’m at it, let me plug the Foglio’s Girl Genius to anyone reading this who isn’t following that already. I think it’s one of the best comics out there (web or not), and deserves every kudo it can get.

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Shattered Update

by on May 3, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Posted In: MMO

Between BackBreaker being busy and my other hobbies, haven’t spent as much time on WoW lately. However, that’s not to say nothing’s happened. In fact, we had a very exciting run this last Sunday.

We’ve been trying, without success, to get through the level-70 wing of Auchindoun. This last time we decided on something slightly easier, Shattered Halls, the third wing of Hellfire Citadel (and technically the easiest of the level-70 instances).

As it turned out, none of our party (Blanc, Dunain, Blondiewood, Grumbly, Asclepius) had been through the entire thing. In fact, the only prior experience there was was from when Blanc, Blondie and I tried to three-man part of it. We got through the second room before encountering a group that we couldn’t do.

It’s a nice instance. Blizzard has done a nice job with a different set of challenges than the normal fare. We wiped three times, and none of those was on a boss. Sadly, Lance had the highest death rate I’ve seen yet. There’s a lot of high-damage melee types that Lance just cannot handle tanking (especially while he’s still 67), but we needed the extra bit of fight control. In those fights where we could avoid doing that, it was much better.

The first real challenge of the instance are the initial groups. You can pull many of them separately, but they will get replacements for anyone you pick off. The key is the Legionnaire in the middle. Until he dies, the group will keep getting replacements forever.

The other parts that stick out in my mind are a couple of areas where one or two monsters and maybe some non-elites will regularly show up. It really rewards a party that can handle situations on the fly and keep moving. The first one is a kind of slime-pit that you get at through a hole in the wall to get around a locked door (and immediately got a bunch of Star Wars references), and the second is an advance down a corridor while flaming arrows are being shot at/around you.

It’s certainly the toughest thing we’ve gone through, and should help put us on the right track for a successful return to Shadow Labyrinth later. Oh, and Dunain dinged 68 part way through the instance. ^_^

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A Victory Regained

by on April 22, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

And the other thing I’ve been meaning to write for a week….

Finally got a second chance to play A Victory Lost last Saturday. I’m afraid it got started later than I wanted, and went much longer than I expected. At any rate, I got to be the Germans/Axis and Dave took the Soviets. (I would like to try a game on the other side…)

Things started as expected. The initial Soviet push demolished the center of the line and destroyed a good portion of the Italian 8th Army. I tried to put up a defense at Melikovo, the first defensible spot south of the break, but the Soviet army nearly beat me there, and certainly got to the city before I could put up much of a defensive line. I managed a counter attack that reduced two armor corps, but a pair of further attacks failed to do anything.

This is the same type of thing that caused a large problem for me in my last game. So when a pair of 1s left me out of position, and ultimately led to the destruction of two valuable panzer divisions and five German infantry divisions… I knew I was getting behind the curve.

Worse, I was just barely avoiding getting the extreme southern flank turned, and 1st Panzer Army, which enters from down there hadn’t arrived yet. Thankfully, I put just enough low-power infantry in the road to Rostov to keep Dave from just taking it uncontested. As he arrived across the river from the city, I managed to pull out my southern flank and start redeploying it on the Don River line. Then the 1st Panzer Army shows up and starts to engage the Soviet forces in the way.

This seems to be one of the critical points of the game. Those reinforcements are too valuable too loose, but come in late enough that it’s tough not to have them cut off on entry. In this case, they were aided by AVL‘s supply rules, which are exceedingly generous. There’s a road off in the extreme south-east corner of the map that goes nowhere (nowhere on map that is). But it does provide a bridge that allows tracing a line of supply out of the area. There was a gap elsewhere in the line that allowed supply to be traced to that. A single Soviet unit sitting on or next to this bridge would have put the German formation out of supply, and complicated command to no end. Something to remember for the future.

In the event, the Germans were in supply, and the powerful units systematically ground up the entire Soviet force in the area, and Rostov was under no serious threat for the rest of the game. Then I passed the heavy offensive armor units around the area patching up the various defensive lines I had established.

I now begin to understand the “backhand blow”. An active, flexible concentration of armor and mechanized units can do wonders. Dave’s problem for the rest of the game on 2/3rds of the line was that he could push me back, and cross the various rivers that I was set up on, but then he was across the river, away from defensive terrain of his own, and my counter-attacks would promptly push him back. Or, if he’d gotten a little deeper in, I’d cut off some of the offending units and eliminate them.

Meanwhile in the north, after the usual slow start, the Soviets had started grinding their way forward, against opposition that was slowly pulling back, and slowly getting ground up. With all the high-profile events in the south, I never paid as much attention to this sector as I would have liked, and towards the end the Soviet forces were making some good time. The last turn of the game saw the Soviets unexpectedly get to and occupy Kharkov after pushing out the defending units. This was not enough to win the game, but with my high early losses, it put him close. The final total was 28 to 24 for a German win.

I’m still exploring aspects of the game, but it is holding up well, and is really subtle in some places.

On another note, I just got an email from Against the Odds for a game named Wintergewitter, on the last German attempt to relieve Stalingrad (which the Germans are in the middle of as AVL starts). Hmm… where to get the money….

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