The Battle of Trafalgar

by on October 22, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Bennett’s book on Trafalgar is fairly typical of such books. As a popular history book, it wisely starts with a couple chapters of background, including how naval combat worked in the Age of Sail, and after that he moves on to more direct backgroud, with one chapter dedicated to discussing the personalities and careers of the various commanding officers involved.

Bennett occasionally takes time out to present important dispatches; for instance, between chapters 6 and 7 he inserts Nelson’s (abridged) memorandum to his fleet as they crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of Villeneuve, and then gives an important paragraph of Villeneuve’s instructions as a comparison. Near the end, he gives Collingwood’s two main dispatches after the Battle of Trafalgar. I found the latter to be bit much, but it is certainly good to have them available in the book, which also quotes from a variety of sources throughout the main text.

For anyone familiar with the battle, all the main elements you expect are here, and told quite lucidly. This isn’t a book to discover new insights with, but that isn’t what’s needed for the intended audience. If you only know the highlights of the battle (spoiler: Nelson dies), this is a good telling of the entire battle. I would recommend Alan Shom’s Trafalgar: Countdown to Battle instead of this book, as it is more comprehensive than this, and Bennett doesn’t gain anything with his slightly tighter focus, though this is a shorter read.

My version of this book is no longer available (dead ASIN), but there is still a Kindle version with the same cover (and I believe, publisher) currently available. Hopefully, it’s a cleaned up copy of my version, which is already in fairly good shape, though there are some notable OCR goofs (one nonsense sentence becomes clearer if you substitute “15” for “is”, and a ‘go-gun’ ship is… startling). If the current version got another pass through edit, it should be in good shape.

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35 Garibaldi Legion

by on October 18, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Near the beginning of August, Mark and I returned to Great War Commander, with another scenario from the recent Battle Pack. This one needed a bit of fudging in Vassal, as French Legion platoons don’t exist there yet; however, they’re identical to the Chasseurs platoons except for having one better morale while broken.

It is December 1914, and the scenario uses a no-man’s-land map (#9)… except that everything is destroyed woods instead of shellholes (representing the Argonne Forest). This leads to some interesting line-of-sight questions. Destroyed woods blocks LOS on the second hex, and there are slopes on the board. Generally, in this system, there’s  only ever one blind hex. We worked out that looking down into a broken woods hex would work as normal, and then the next hex in line (also broken woods), being affected by ‘blind’ hex would be the second broken woods hex, which would then create an actual blind hex behind it, and this would continue until the chain of broken woods hexes was interrupted by something (like the stream flowing near the bottom of the map).

The Germans set up along the top edge which is a level 2 ridgeline with a road in front of it, with ten platoons and two MGs and foxholes, while the French are at the bottom with 11 platoons and better leadership. The objective hexes are all in the middle, and the ‘open’ one was L, giving 4VP for objective 4, right below the German ridgeline. Mark had the Germans, and set the MGs up on the ridge, with one on a forward promontory with a platoon and Lt Hertzler to back it up.

I tried starting off with an Artillery Request, but it went off-board. An Offensive let me get everyone moving, but the stream in front of me breaks up the cover, and let that forward MG do a lot of damage, breaking seven platoons and two leaders, and suppressing the unbroken one. With some idea this would happen, I Recovered, which rallied four platoons, leaving two others suppressed (and broken), and suppressing Lt Antoine (after an initiative re-roll).

Mark called in an Artillery Request, which thankfully shifted to just hit one platoon, who was fine. He then forced me to Rout, forcing Lt Antoine, Lt Lebas, and a platoon off-map and onto the casualty track, as well as causing a time trigger. I Recovered the remaining broken platoons, and Advanced into the river on the left, where my only remaining leader was. Mark Denied my artillery, and Moved forward to take all five objectives. This took him off the convenient ridgeline in the back, but he had a small presence at the level 1 slope. At that range, I started Firing on the forward position, with little result.

I Moved mine off board while the intact group pressed onto level 1 to threaten Objective 1. Mark couldn’t do anything about it, but I couldn’t get a card to let me kill to the platoon garrisoning the Objective either, though I did break it. Mark Moved to intercept, and I broke nearly everyone who came in range, but I kept Moving up the board, and exited five platoons and my remaining leader shortly after another time trigger. Worse for Mark, one of his MGs malfunctioned, and was eliminated. This brought VPs down to 3 for the Germans (I think there was a mistake in there, later corrected). And right about this moment, I got two Ligne platoons and Lt Grenier as Reinforcements, these were brought in on the edge of my shattered formation so Grenier could start asserting some control over them.


Remember, shellholes are destroyed woods.

Mark Requested Artillery… which landed a bit short on his own line (I was holding the Under Shoot strategy card to enforce that if it hadn’t happened on its own), breaking two of his own platoons, and turning I6 into actual shellholes. I Moved Grenier forward, with OpFire causing another time trigger, and my exited troops returned, to the left of the stranded ones from early on. Two platoons broke in the stream, but immediately Recovered.

Before much else could happen, an Air Assault caused another time trigger, taking us to the 4 space on the track. Between the re-entry of my troops, and the reinforcements, things were turning around, but time was slipping away. I managed to make a couple German units leave position on a Rout, and then Moved getting across the river with two platoons and Grenier broken to OpFire. Mark Recovered, getting… some of his troops back in order, but failed on two platoons and Waldau. I Recovered my broken troops, but had to give up the initiative again to do it, and Advance got my right onto the level 1 slope. Shortly after, I Moved up to take control of Objective 2, and headed for #4 (accidentally leaving one platoon behind as it was off the bottom of my screen).

Mark Moved to reinforce the area, with my OpFire doing nothing… except setting off my Sniper to break his MG team. I then Advanced onto the forward platoons (J4 & I3) and eliminated the German platoons in both. I also Moved the left flank into the river. Fire then managed to break the German platoon guarding that area, and had another time trigger, taking us to space 6, and passing the first Sudden Death check (at 7 German VPs before the +1/turn).

The close-quarters struggle near #4 continued, with me using multiple Counter Attacks to suppress his troops as he fired (he later cleared that with Recover, and I started the process all over again…). Another time trigger took us to 7, and the game continued. The left Advanced out of the stream, and then into control of Objective 1. I’d been looking to get into Objective 4 and take it in melee, but I had to burn important cards in defense, and then lost the platoon with Grenier, though he was only suppressed.

I got the left back towards the back area again, where Mark had positioned a platoon to OpFire, which ended up Recalling Grenier, and Scrounging his lost MG (this led to an interesting question, if a platoon is already activated, and receives a MG through this event, can he use it; i.e., is it active? Our answer was ‘no’.), and KIA killed a German platoon, while I got two platoons to exit. Offensive got the other three platoons and Fleury to exit. A couple turns after that, I ran out of cards for a time trigger, ending the game with 3 French VPs thanks to those exits.

Afterword

About mid-way through the game, Mark and I found we’d been playing wrong all this time. Someone came by and pointed out that terrain acts as a modifier to most any morale roll, when we had thought it was just a defense bonus. The rules for cover talk about this, but the Recover order rule doesn’t mention it, and when playing Recover, that’s where we looked….

We finished the game as we had started, without cover helping against anything but taking fire, but we will use the correct rule next time. Both of us are concerned about how easy that makes a lot of morale rolls, notably recovery. Since most broken morale is 8 or 9 to begin with, that makes Recover a nearly automatic pass, especially for a defender.

In fact, it would have prevented my early-game disaster, which while it had me down for a bit, was interesting to recover from as I got things together. I think we saw the Reinforcements event in one of our first games, but nothing more until this time, when Mark got it early, but couldn’t take what he got, and then I got mine.

Including all the objective chits, Objective 4 was worth 7 VPs, which is why the fight in the center got so desperate, with neither of us getting enough advantage to clear the other out. Objective 5 was worth 4 VPs, so along with the early casualties, I was fighting an 11-point deficit in control. My ability to exit so many troops really saved me.

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Ashes of Victory

by on October 14, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

It’s been quite a while since I’ve gotten back to the Honor Harrington series. It’s been more than long enough for me to forget a number of details, and anything more than the bare outlines of the plot of previous book. Thankfully, Weber provided a fair number of nudges to help with that, though there certainly were a number of places where I was a bit lost.

Overall, we’ve got a number of different major threads running here. The dominant one of course is Honor Harrington’s life, which here is complicated by the fact that she was supposed to be dead, and there’s already been a grand funeral, monuments, and a new ship named after her. Even being alive, there’s been a fair amount of abuse to her body, and that gets taken care of with the latest round of super-science, and she is largely out of action for the book. The requisite action scene in exactly in place at the end, and Harrington stars in that, but it’s also a somewhat unusual one, though still filled with Clancy-esque detailed fictional engineering.

In between, Honor nearly disappears in the middle of the book, even though she may be doing one of the most important things of her life. Since she’s out of front-line duty, she ends up teaching tactical classes at Saganami Island for a semester, helping shape some of the brightest of the new cadets the expanding Mantacoran Navy needs (and cadets from allied navies). Unless a story is really ready to focus on this, it would get dull fast, so wisely, not much is shown. But we do get enough to see some of the teaching methods, and get a very good feel for the proceedings.

Meanwhile, the war with the PRH continues. The previous book put the Mantacoran alliance on the back foot, and the opening parts of the book nicely re-establish the current strategic situation, as both sides work up their plans. This kicks off the introduction of political infighting between Saint Just and the Haven Navy after climatic battle of the previous book, which becomes one of the major backbones of the novel.

The last major plot thread starts with the opposition on Grayson, and surveillance on one of the major movers in that. Much of it feels like it’d belong in a Tom Clancy novel again, and I worried that it would be an inconvenient throw-away plot, like in some of Clancy’s more bloated writing, but it’s there to show how we got to the point of the ending action scene.

Overall, another good book in the series, with decent pacing considering the strain of being its own story, and setting things up for further books. The bad part is, the fact that Weber is working towards ways to keep this entire thing going as long as it sells is too evident. I’d much prefer a series that had some form of initial structure in place. It might be planned to be a long series, as long as it has a defined end to move towards, instead of this struggle between making sure things move forward, and wrecking the good guys just enough to make sure there’s room for a few more books after that success.

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AP112 First Ally

by on October 10, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After demonstrating a Fighting Withdrawal, Mark and I turned AP112 “First Ally” from Action Pack 12 as our next ASL game. Set early in the invasion of Poland it features the rare match up of Allied Minors (Poles) versus Axis Minors (Slovaks). Published in Action Pack 12, it features vertical board 5a, along with half of boards 10 and 50. Though, really, board 10 isn’t here at all, as it’s almost entirely covered by overlay 6. Hi12 adds an extra small hill to board 5a, and X18 adds an extra cluster of buildings to the corner of board 50.

I had the defending Slovak forces, who set up in building hexes, which can let them scattered over a fair amount of terrain, and need to hold at least one multi-hex building at the end of seven turns. They get nine squads, two leaders, a MMG and two LMG. I spent quite a while pondering a defense, as the Poles also have an extensive setup area, and I had no idea what direction they’d come from. I eventually settled on the buildings near the border of boards 50 and 10 as my likely ‘final stand’ area, with both leaders, and three-and-a-half squads scattered about the ‘board 10’ hill, including the MMG, which would be used to slow down attacks into there.

The Poles are counterattacking to keep from being cut off by the Slovak advance, and have thirteen squads, three leaders, two MMG, and a radio for 70mm OBA (part of the point was to get Mark some OBA experience). They get to set up on the hills of boards 5a and 50, giving them a fair number of approaches to this scenario. Mark put five squads and a 8-0 on the south end of board 50, to sweep onto board 10 from that end, and the rest were on board 50, concentrated at the eastern end.

The initial advance was on the 10U9 building, and I had no luck against that (or anything else) at first, with the Poles walking through my fire, and tying up the squad while the leader stack maneuvered around the edge of the hill. However, my HS in T5 got a PTC to pin the 8-1 and one of two squads. After that, another squad broke in U10 to the residual, and another broke as it tried to cross open ground nearby. At the other end of the hill, my first shot at his main stack approaching the hill did nothing, but SFF pinned his leader and a squad, and broke another one.

Advancing fire pinned a couple units, including the HS in 50I8, who then self-broke to get out of the area. I also self-broke 10U9 to avoid the 4:3 CC coming up, but didn’t have any great route paths out of the area.


Situation, Polish turn 1. Note that the lower-right is all overlay 6 on top of board 10.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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The Islamic Enlightenment

by on October 6, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

From the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries, Europe went through a fairly profound cultural transformation, beginning with the Renaissance, and ending with the Enlightenment. The philosophies developed during all of this were powerful, and came at the same time as the physical horizons broadened, with the discovery of the New World and new routes to Asia. All of this helped develop government and military systems capable of defeating armies anywhere else in the world (largely by practicing on each other in wars kicked off by the same process).

de Bellaigue starts his book with one of the most dramatic of these encounters, when Napoleon comes to Egypt and defeats the existing Moslem armies with barely any trouble. Operating far from his base in a siege is a big problem, and governing Egypt is more of a problem, but the French army wasn’t going to be defeated in the field. This becomes the first point where the Moslem world becomes aware that something has certainly happened in Europe, and gets directly exposed to the latest philosophical inventions of a place that had for so long so little to say.

This book is not the story of a home-grown Islamic equivalent to the European Enlightenment. This is the story of a religion having to grapple with a very dynamic set of ideas being imposed on what had been a relatively static society. European society had a hard enough time with this itself with more than three centuries to work through ideas that had stared (ostensibly) as a rediscovery of its own past. In 1798, Egypt got a sudden education in the end result of all this.

The first half of the book focuses on three of the major centers of the Islamic world, showing how each one dealt with these new ideas in turn. Starting with Egypt, then Istanbul, and then Tehran. The second half traces through the next century in a more unified approach, as people everywhere talked to each other about this, reinforcing the spread of ideas, debating about them, demanding progress, demanding morality. For, as with anything else, all actions have a reaction. In all of this, de Bellaigue discusses the people behind it all. The people who listened to Napoleon’s savants, the ones who studied abroad, the ones who published journals and newspapers, the ones who wanted to bring this to Islam, the ones who grew disillusioned. This book is full of threads for further exploration.

In some ways, the book feels a little disappointing because it is by its nature an unfinished story. It would seem the Islamic world has managed to find a new stability with distinctly authoritarian governments that practice many of repressive measures that the Enlightenment argues against. This reaction is largely due to European meddling that was allowed in because various leaders wanted all the things that had come along with the Enlightenment, guns, airplanes, and all the forms of power in the modern world. As I write this, there are massive demonstrations across Iran that trace back to similar protests touched on in this book. The waters run deep, but they aren’t very still.

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