Gulliver’s Fugitives

by on August 3, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Way back when, I read through several early ST:TNG novels (all put out during first season). It was a pretty sad bunch. One of them was notably better than the others (not to say that it was worth recommending), and it made sense when I looked at it afterwards and noted it was by Peter David.

Now I’ve come into possession of some slightly later ones; I think this was put out between seasons two and three (and officially it’d need to be set during season 3, as Dr. Crusher is mentioned, though she never gets ‘on camera’). And I can say things have gotten better for the novel line by this point.

Just. Barely.

There’s some good ideas here. The Enterprise ends up involved in a lost colony where all forms fiction are banned, and the repressive government is dedicated to ‘truth’, if not necessarily honesty. There’s a long-running underground rebellion dedicated to preserving literature and mythology. This part is handled fairly nicely, including a very multi-cultural set of story traditions.

However, there’s a couple of side plots that don’t work well at all. In fact the secondary plot gets going first, and looks like it will tie in directly to the main plot, but eventually turns out to be nothing but a red herring. This undermines a fair chunk of the structure of the novel, which is a real shame because at the same time it was also an early look at Troi and her abilities, and undermining that also hurts. The shift to red herring for the secondary plot could have been a nice subverting of expectations, but the payoff isn’t good enough to make it work. (I much prefer my initial expectation that the area happened to be where some form of extra-dimensional thought-beings resided, and Rampart’s efforts to quash fiction was started as an effort to keep from being unduly influenced by beings they can’t understand. Spoiler: Nope.)

And the world-building itself is lackluster. You never get to see what passes for normal life on this planet, never get a sense of what an ordinary person on this planet is like, how the overall culture works, and just why/how there’s apparently a constant bleed of people into the resistance. Also, this setup apparently got started by a bunch of Christian fundamentalists (the “truth” of the colony starts with an inerrant Bible), but there’s no hints as to how they got to be in charge, because the stories and myths that the resistance is preserving shows that the original colony ship had a very diverse population. Also, in the current day the planet has quite a bit of super-tech that lets them plot execption much of what a 24th Century starship can do.

So, it would take a lot of work, but we have a salvageable high concept here. One that could say some interesting things in the tradition of the best of Trek. But we get an underbaked plot, poor characterization (not something to attach a lot of blame to, as the main cast characters would still be developing in the time period the book would have been written, since there can be a notable lead time for that), and no more moral lesson than ‘fundamentalism is bad’ (it would have been fairly easy to point more at ‘stories are important’, and middle does this, but not so much the conclusion).

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34 Race to the Bridge

by on July 30, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

At the end of May, Mark and I returned to Great War Commander. He has gotten the first Battle Pack expansion, and we went to the 1914 scenario from that. It reuses a map we’ve seen before, and doesn’t have any new unit types, so it’s easy to set up in the current Vassal module. However, there is a bridge on the map that doesn’t exist in the scenario (by SSR), and counter for that doesn’t exist. So we just put a shellhole marker on it.

It’s a couple of weeks after the battle of Mons, and the British are falling back. At this point, the rearguard is trying to take and hold a bridge near Antwerp, while the Germans are trying to block them. Both sides are in ‘recon’ stance (the first time we’ve gotten to see that), and get one leader with four platoons. They both start off on the right side of the map, with the bridge on the left. However, the time index starts at 2, and at 3, both sides get five more platoons (including an engineer) and a better leader, and then on 4 they both get three more platoons and a third leader, with sudden death rolls starting at 8. The open VP marker makes the bridge worth 4VPs, and you can deny that to someone about to take it from you by having an engineer blow it up (leaving no one able to cross).

Mark had the British, who go first, and he started with an Air Assault, which didn’t find my troops, and then Moved out. There was then an exciting round of both sides discarding before I started Moving. Mark managed to Fire at them, and broke Lt Ruhberg, but one of his platoons broke to a sniper. We both tried to Recover, but blew our rolls before I did it on a second attempt, and Mark Advanced to get the broken guys out of the way. Fire broke a second British platoon, but it recovered (and the first one didn’t) with a Recover, and he Advanced further. I Moved towards the bridge, largely staying out of range, and occupying the farm house (objective 1). Mark Moved to cross the stream on his side, but I broke two platoons in it. Further Fire eliminated one of them, and then the other Advanced out of the stream. Mark attempted to Recover him, but failed on a 12 to get a time trigger, and I Dug In near the farmhouse.


At the end of the initial turn. Objective 5/bridge K6 doesn’t exist.

I got my reinforcements Moving first, and then ordered an Offensive for the first contingent to seize the bridge. The fire from that action finally eliminated the second British platoon, and an Air Assault let me suppress one of the reinforcements. Mark got his reinforcements moving with minimal trouble (I broke a platoon, which immediately came back with Probe) before we both needed to discard cards again. I Moved my reinforcements up to the rest of my troops just before running out of cards for the next time trigger.

Mark used an Offensive to get Perry closer to the bridge and shoot at the platoon there, but couldn’t get a result. He then Advanced the entire mass of both reinforcements. I Moved my newest reinforcements, getting them around the orchard before committing to an Offensive with everyone else. Air Support managed to suppress the stack of my highest-ranking leader, and a Sniper broke one of the reinforcing platoons, but I suppressed Maj Stone with an Interdiction event. I didn’t manage to break Lt Perry and his platoon on that turn, but the next turn, Fire broke Perry (recovered with a Probe) and the platoon. Mark continued Moving up, but a regular platoon, Maj Stone, and the engineers broke to my Fire. High Command Meddling “forced” me to recover at this point, clearing a few suppressions that had built up, and rally my one broken platoon. I then Fired and eliminated a broken platoon. Mark then Recovered, getting the engineers and and remaining regular broken platoon back, but not Maj Stone.

He also ran out his deck during this, taking us to time index 5. He then Fired to break Lt Ruhberg and his platoon, who both successfully Recovered. I Fired on Maj Stone again, but while he made his defense roll easily by rolling a 12, that put us at time 6, and the engineers broke again, and he lost Lt McBeath to Recall Leader.

Mark Recovered both his units, and Fired, breaking Ruhberg again. He then tried to Move across the stream again, getting another time trigger to my Op Fire, returning McBeath to play, and I got a Reinforcements event, which sadly did nothing (out of fusilier counters). And then he got a time trigger again, to take us to 8, and did not pass the Sudden Death check to end the game very suddenly with 11 German VPs.

Afterword

The general scenario concept is good, and it was very nice to see a meeting engagement style scenario. I’m a bit concerned that it may be a little too weighted to whoever can get near the bridge first. Worse, that stream the British need to cross is just nasty. 3 movement, and it makes you more vulnerable. Once I got in range of it before Mark got to it, it was largely downhill for him as I could do a lot of damage as he tried to get close enough to the bridge to contest it.

Much of the action also pointed up the disturbing all-or-nothing nature of defensive fire. Either you don’t have or want to use a card when someone moves, or you do and the game grinds to a halt as each and every hex in a move becomes subject to fire which breaks up the normally free-flowing nature of the game. It’s also a stark contrast to the “normal” Fire Order where everyone just fires once and is done.

The sudden string of time triggers at the end was unusual, but something that has to be expected once in a while. It cut short my expected grind to six casualties to force a surrender, but also prevented any opportunity for the mid-game turn around which GWC has certainly delivered on occasion.

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The Years of Victory

by on July 26, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This second volume of Bryant’s series on the Napoleonic era was published in 1945 (commonly given as 1944, but he mentions “the events of 1939-1945” in his preface), and he has no qualms about drawing a parallel to Britain’s experience in WWII with its experience of the Napoleonic Wars. Unlike some who would bring up something like this several times over the course of the book, Bryant merely mentions it in his preface, and lets the history he writes stand on its own.

Having left off with the Peace of Amiens in The Years of Endurance, this volume starts with a look at England in 1802, and all the tourism to France that happened in the months of peace. This is an English-centric history, so while it does cover the various wars on the continent for a decade, it is largely concerned with what England was doing. The end of the book is naturally concerned with the Peninsular War, and ends with the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo.

Once again, this is well written, and the translation from print to electronic format in the Endeavour Press edition left it in pretty good shape. It’s a good book to read as part of a more rounded set of lighter books on the period, as it does leave out a lot with its English focus.

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3 McDowell’s Opportunity

by on July 22, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Back during May, Mark and I returned to the GCACW series with the third All Green Alike scenario. Interestingly, it’s simultaneously historical (in that the opening setup is just where everyone was two days before First Bull Run), but ahistorical in that it assumes that McDowell assumes the offensive with the Army of Northeastern Virginia two days early, with the Confederates less prepared.

Somewhat oddly, part of Tyler’s 5th Division, and Early’s Brigade start exhausted because of a small fight the day before (seeing the overall set up for that would be interesting). The Confederate Army of the Potomac is behind the Bull Run, with abatises under work, and Johnston’s units are still far away, while the Union troops are already concentrated at Centreville. The Union forces are going to need to deploy and shake themselves out, but there’s plenty that can be done. And they need to do plenty, as the victory conditions are suitably more ambitious than the pure historical battle.

I reprised my role as the Union player, who gets the first initiative by scenario rule, and I sent Hunter’s 2nd Division towards the Confederate west flank, and on my second activation (thanks to Confederate command paralysis) came around behind Stone Bridge, while Burnside attacked across the bridge, blowing the roll to do little more than exhaust and disorganize both sides. Porter’s Brigade managed to go again and forced a retreat, which wiped out the Confederates blocking Stone Bridge.

Then I sent Heintzelman’s 3rd Division towards the east flank of the line. The trip took a bit, and ended with Franklin’s Brigade crossing the Bull Run at Butler’s Ford and taking up a position to block the fords while the rest of the division was still on the other side. Mark finally got a real chance to move, and shifted Longstreet’s Brigade to confront Franklin, sent Early to Camp Pickens, and Bonham to reinforce the west flank and occupy Groveton (in two moves).

Hunton’s Brigade moved on the Union flank but had slow going to end up near Sudley Springs. Tyler’s 1st Division took positions along the middle of the line, now that the Confederates were getting spread out, and Miles’ 5th Division headed west to try and get around the flank. Good rolls got him to Sudley Springs for hasty attacks against Hunton, but it took both brigades to force him to retreat near Gainesville despite good odds. Mark moved Early down the Manassas Gap road to join Hunton, along with the 13th Mississippi and Radford’s cavalry. Munford’s cavalry went to get behind Franklin and keep me from using the fords a bit further downstream.

Jackson’s Brigade and the 6th North Carolina entrained and got into the area of the fighting, but the rest of Johnston’s army had a struggle to get to the closest station (Rectortown) for entraining the next day.


End of July 19/turn 1, after fortifications are built, but before recovery.
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The Tea Master and the Detective

by on July 18, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This Aliette de Bodard story is every bit as good as the first one I read a while ago. In fact, I felt it was more tightly plotted, and shorter, than On a Red Station, Drifting, but it seems that book was only slightly longer than this.

At any rate, they share a setting, and at some point I will revisit it again, as the stories are well worth reading. I’d say this one could be slightly harder to get into than On a Red Station with no introduction, thanks to the viewpoint character being a ship’s intelligence stuck at a collection of habitats.

However, there is a nice melding of genres here, as a very SF setup quickly turns into a mystery with hard-boiled overtones. The Shadow’s Child is on the thin edge of bankruptcy when a new client walks through her door, and the assignment ends up generating new questions. The initial bit sets up the two characters well, but was a little difficult to get through for me. After that, the plot drives itself, and drags you along in the wake of two interesting characters.

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