A Wizard of Mars

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

When you look at a book in a contemporary fantasy series, and it name drops “Mars”, and has a tripod on the cover, you have to wonder if someone’s gone insane.

And the title, “of Mars” implies, well, people, on Mars, which with this being a very scientifically grounded series, seems… off.

But worry not, Diane Duane has it all covered here, successfully delivering on promises you’d think can’t be kept.

Like some of the best setting-based stories, Mars itself is almost a character here, and certainly Duane and her characters have done far more homework than I have, and it the geography of Mars plays a part in the novel (and provides chapter titles).

An interesting conceit in the novel is that any time a nearby planet weighs as heavily in popular consciousness as Mars does in ours, it’s a sign that something more is going on. And of course, much more goes on during the novel. Along the way, Duane pays tribute to the continuing popularity of Mars in popular culture (referencing two versions of War of the Worlds, B-movies, and of course Edgar Rice Burroughs). I’d point out the psychological reasons of being the second brightest ‘star’ in the night sky, and more easily visible than Venus, which never strays too far from the sun from our point of view, but it still makes for a sensible “there’s a secret here, if we can find it” hook.

Meanwhile, personal threads with Kit and Nita continue. It’s been long enough since reading the previous books that I don’t remember some of it, but they’re generally introduced well enough to pick up without much trouble. I certainly would recommend going back to the start of the series than picking up here (or anywhere else), but I do recommend the series as a whole, and this book in particular.

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HF2 Bertoldo the Brave

by on September 8, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After finishing some French Toast and Bacon, Patch and I returned to Hatten, with the second scenario, in March. I continued with the Germans, who are attacking in about the same area this time.

Pre-game rubble took out Eglise Saint-Michel, eliminating a potential early lookout position. The Americans set up behind a road in the area the first scenario covers with eleven squads, MGs, a couple BAZ, one each 60mm and 81mm MTRs, three tank destroyers, a 57mm ATG, and some foxholes to spread around. There was a decent looking line up front, with the TDs further back along with the MTRs, and second line already in place with them, and a bit in front of the victory area.

The Germans get sixteen squads, good leadership, a PSK, a couple DCs, five halftracks (three standard 251s, and two 251/21s with 20mm guns mounted), and two Panthers. They set up on the other side of the road, but can also enter along the east edge (which I did with two loaded 251/1s). They have six and a half turns to go about twelve to eighteen hexes and take nine out of eleven victory hexes. (An extra wrinkle is that shifts one hex against a side that no longer has mobile tanks/TDs with functioning MA left.) I concentrated on the north edge with less cover, and a lot less green in front of me. A middle group was tasked with clearing out the central area with a cautious advance, while another three and a half squads held down the south, waiting to advance when he had to pull out from events elsewhere.

Much of the center OpFired, and I took a MMG shot at E7, sadly getting no result. The first two probing HS drew no fire, but the third one took a 1KIA from N8 (not where I expected…). A squad moved up, survived fire from D17 (barely in long range, but clear thanks to the road), and entered E7 to eliminate a dummy. As I moved into the central area, I took fire from I10 and H7 and C9 finally revealed themselves. Only the latter managed to break anyone, which was a help. At the end of the phase, I tried dashing across in the south again, and he revealed J7 (instead of adjacent J6…), and got a K/2 to break and ELR what was left.

Final fire then broke the initial HS in B8, and malfed an AAMG. My only advancing fire result was malfing the CMG on a Panther, despite two good rolls on C9. Patch did self-break the HS in H7 to get away from a 548.


Situation, German turn 1, showing the full board. This is the entire north edge (towards the left). Victory hexes are marked in red.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Medieval Scandinavian Armies (2) 1300-1500

by on September 4, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Much like the first book, this is a solid but unspectacular Men-At-Arms volume.

The Angus McBride art is better this time, with one two-page spread battle scene (shown in part on the cover). There’s a couple where the backgrounds aren’t detailed, but Plate A depicts (in not a lot of detail) a group on one of the smaller ships of the 1300s in the North Sea, which is a plus.

Again, most of the photos are of period illustrations and carvings rather than actual artifacts. But there are some, and they tend to be varied and useful, including a light canon taken from a Danish shipwreck. There’s also several photographs of period fortifications, since more of them were made in stone in this period, and have thus survived.

The chronology section is very extensive and runs over four pages (all with illos…). Certainly, this is an excellent first stop for finding out what was happening in Scandinavia in the period, and covers the outlines of the failing settlements in Greenland.

The opening section deals with the politics of the region, notably the Union of Kalmar, and Scandinavia breaking into western Denmark/Norway, and eastern Sweden/Finland in the Fifteenth Century. The rest of the text naturally deals with the usual Osprey focus on military equipment and organization. It’s well done, but there’s not necessarily any surprises here; by this point Scandinavia was more integrated with the rest of Europe, so technology and fashions are no longer lagging so far behind. On the other hand, interior roads were still few and underdeveloped, so the control of blocking positions was still important. At the same time militia was becoming more important, and later rebellions razed many wooden fortifications, prompting their replacement with stone castles in areas with a stronger economy.

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Ticket to Root

by on August 31, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had a face-to-face game day back on the 21st. Mark and Jason came over to join me and Dave, with the headline game being a second try at Root. Random selection gave me the Woodland Alliance again, Jason got the Eyrie again, while Mark got Marquise de Cat, and Dave the Vagabond.

I remembered the slow start I had last time, and only partially avoided it this time. Mark put a large force into the clearing I had already figured was going to be my first base, and knocked out two buildings, and something like six-eight warriors on the uprising. I never got a lot done after that, feeling a constant pinch on cards, though I gained a few from outrage. I declined to take any extra officers for a long while, which was probably a mistake, since it’s hard to do much with only one military action.

Jason also took a bit to get going (and wrap his head around the Decree), not building any extra roosts for a while. However, he cleared the Marquise from a decent chunk of the board, and once he did start building, started raking in the points. The Decree collapsed once, setting him back 5 VPs, but he gaining 4 per turn at that point, and would have soon passed the rest of the pack.

Dave took the Tinker as the Vagabond, and quickly explored the four ruins. He got set back a bit mid-game by a strong attack from the Eyrie (who needed a battle, didn’t have other targets available) that damaged three items. But he was already well enough off that this was a very temporary slowdown.

Mark as the Marquise benefited from a lot of aid from the Vagabond, as they were nicely available all over the board, and Dave pushed up to an alliance with them, and started milking the VPs out of it. On-board build of buildings seemed a little slow, but he did a lot of recruiting, leading to half the board being a extensive armed camp.

Overall, I think the game went better this time, and Mark enjoyed it. I’m not sure of Jason’s thoughts, but Dave really enjoyed playing the Vagabond. Which might be a problem, as I’m sure everyone else would like a chance at it. Jason/Eyrie was in last at 13 VPs, but was gaining them fast, I’d managed to get up 16 after being a bit stalled, which Mark had hit 17 at a very steady pace. Dave shot up over the last few turns to get to the goal of 30 as he got going on the quests.

I tended to forget about the card cost of moving into my sympathy at first, which is important, as cycling cards is the chokepoint of the Alliance. I was feeding more into my supporters this time, which helped, but I was still too slow. I think the Alliance needs to get a base or two as early as possible, and not worry about keeping them longer than needed to pump up the card draws.

That took us to a bit after lunch (which was a bit earlier than usual). After that, we tried out Ticket to Ride, which Mark got as an ‘office game’. It’s not a bad basic train game, with the choice between taking cards and using them, and needing sets of various sizes to do anything. The usual things of bigger sets scoring better, and having some longer-term goals are pretty par for the course.

None of us got around to grabbing more destination cards during play. I contemplated it, but didn’t want to complicate things, and stuck with just the beginning two that I’d already gotten. Most early activity was near the east coast and midwest, with nothing built on the west coast until past the halfway point. VPs shifted back and forth while sets were put down, and everybody made their route cards. Mine were only mid-range, so I lost more ground on that than I had supposed, and Mark got the longest route bonus to win at 112 VP, Dave got to 96, I had 84, and Jason was at 80 (he had smaller destination cards than I).

It was fun enough for a light game, but looking at it made me regret never having my own copy of Empire Builder or the other crayon-rail games, which I would rate as more fun.

We finished up the day with a partial round of Braggart, since there wasn’t enough time to get through the full deck. But it brushed the dust off, so we might remember more next time. I had a couple of good rounds… but someone else would do better, so I never actually won a round, despite having put together a couple of good sets.

Jason did well on a couple of rounds to win at 35 VP, Mark did well while I wasn’t noticing to get 27, Dave got 22, and I was stuck down at 19.

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The Lombards

by on August 27, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This would be much more appropriately titled The Longobards, but it would unnecessarily further reduce sales on what is already a niche book. Lombardy is a modern region of Italy, and the people living there are Lombards. This is an evolution of the term “Longobard” (long-beard), which was a Germanic tribe that arrived in Italy in the 6th Century. English usually uses Lombard for both, but this is far from the first place I’ve run into Longobard, and I’m quite happy with with Christie’s decision to avoid confusion with more recent people by using Longobard throughout the book (other than the title…) for the medieval kingdom and earlier.

This is the second Peoples of Europe title I’ve gotten that is a current POD copy of a book otherwise out of print. The first one (The Etruscans) had some trouble with the binding giving way for a couple of loose pages; this one has severe binding problems throughout. Any further books I get in the series will need to be electronic, old, used, copies, or try out one of the few books republished by Wiley (with a new cover style) after they bought Blackwell.

Like with most Germanic tribes, their history before entering Roman territory proper is extremely murky. Christie traces what is known/guessed of earlier history in a single chapter before going through what is known of their time in Pannonia. Which isn’t much. Most of the chapter naturally deals with the archaeological record, which is a bit sparse. There’s a lot of work to be done in that area, and the post-Roman period has not been a priority, but that means there’s a lot to be learned about the Longobard presence there.

This leaves the bulk of the book for the Longobard kingdom in Italy. There is a good amount of info here about them. Of course, this is ‘the peoples of Europe’, so I would still like a good history of this period. There’s info here, but its not a main focus compared to talking about settlement patterns and the such. In fact, there’s not as much detailed info there as I’d like, with no diagrams of Longobard-derived place names and the like. In fact, the overall number of illustrations seems low compared to other volumes, which made me think of Osprey books with the profuse number of black-and-white photos. What pictures are here are good, but there’s not quite as many as I’d expect.

Overall, this volume is a bit disappointing compared to the others I’ve read. It’s still a good book, and good reference, but not quite as informative as other books in the line.

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