HF1 Black Day in Hatten

by on February 6, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

With Patch and I’s journey through Budapest finally over, we’ve started in on the scenarios from Hatten in Flames (wait, isn’t that a World in Flames expansion?). It’s a nice mini-HASL set, though I’m disappointed that there’s footnotes to the rules. It’s always good to see the thinking behind some of the special rules.

The first scenario is in the northeast corner of the map, and surprisingly features an American counterattack after the Germans have gotten into the town in the early morning of the 9th of January. I took the German defenders who have nine squads, the usual machine guns, a DC, a PSK, and a light infantry gun, as well as some concealment. They get three more squads partway through, and are trying to defend seven hexes for six turns (the first two of which have a dawn LV penalty to fire). The Americans get to line up on the other side of the street with thirteen squads ranging from elite to 2nd line, three MMGs, two BAZ, two 60mm MTR, and three M18 tank destroyers. An important note is the Americans only need to take six of the victory locations as long as they still have a functioning M18.

I had to setup defending everything, and went for a couple of layers, with the final defense planned for I4, which got the INF. From there, it can see three other victory locations, which should give it targets as the game goes on. The second concentration was H7, which had one of the LMG squads and an 8-0, with E11 and L9 being the main forward defenses. Patch set everything up in the south, ready to cross the Rue Principale (and near all four of my dummy stacks). He also forgot to setup two squads, which he noticed during turn 2, and explained some of his early trouble (I let him set them up behind the lines in M15 and P13).

Patch started with finding one of his MTRs had no WP, and setting all the TDs to OpFire. His one effective attack eliminated my dummies in N9. He sent a HS dashing across the road to search… and rolled a 6 to not find anything. Thankfully, none of our fire did anything (thankfully, since he had a lot more of it than I did) except put out acquisition markers.


Situation, American Turn 1. North is to the left. The board goes another five hexes down (west), but the full width and east edge are shown. Victory locations are outlined in red.
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Spice and Wolf #1

by on February 2, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Spice and Wolf is a great anime series, that I give one of my strongest general recommendations. Sadly, it did not get the third season promised some time ago, but the two existing seasons are very good. It comes from a light novel series, that I avoided for some time purely because I couldn’t justify the shelf space of all those oversized books. Thankfully, the books finally became available in electronic format a while back, and here I am.

This book is the initial storyline, which took six episodes in the series (maintaining the usual rate of two light novels per season/cour rate that I’ve noticed elsewhere), and the two are very close. The main part of the book deals with a money-changing scheme that means a lot of money for someone. It also means delving into the technical details of metal-based currency and devaluation. In this, the book is a bit better because its easier to re-read anything that goes by a bit fast. Also, there are little touches of background information that can easily be given in the narration, so the book is better there too. There’s a bit more world-building going on than is evident from the anime series, though it manages to hint at pieces of it.

And of course, the central pillar is the same in both mediums: the relationship between Lawrence and Horo. Both are engaging characters, both are lonely, and are well aware of it, even if it is often buried under the day-to-day events. Lawrence being the sole viewpoint here lets the wolf sage Horo be properly unpredictable and mysterious, partially because she can also be human and vulnerable when least expected. Some of this is undoubtedly an act, and some is the fact she hasn’t had much real interaction with anyone for quite a while.

At any rate, this is a case where an original novel and its adaptation live up to each other. If you liked the series and want to see more without going through the same again, if my prediction holds up, book 5 should be the start of new material. Otherwise, start with whichever you like, you won’t miss anything from the other version

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22 Kurhaus Clash

by on January 29, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After “Absolut Markajarvi“, Martin and I returned to the early Yanks scenarios for our next PBeM game. Both of us had slowdowns (I’ll admit to having more consistent ones), so the game took far longer than it should have, which was not helped by me being in a bad position for most of the scenario….

Aachen is something of a favorite western front subject in SL/ASL, and this one deals with a near-simultaneous pair of attacks. For scenario purposes, the Germans are attacking with thirteen SS squads with good leadership and a pair of StuGs. The Americans defend half of board 23 with seventeen squads, and a fair number of toys, including 100mm OBA. The goal is to have more squad-equivalents on board 16 (behind the American setup) than the enemy, with ones in buildings counting double, at the end of seven turns.

Board 23 is the ‘canal’ board from Beyond Valor, but the ‘canal’ is here defined as a wide boulevard that both sides set up across from each other from. So the first thing the Germans have to do is get across the boulevard, through the American part of board 23, and then secure some portion of board 16.

Patch remembers the scenario from his early ASL career, but I forget what he had to say about it. But he did point me to a YouTube video of someone going through it. I took one look at the American setup in that, and knew how I’d try to attack it. Sadly, Martin’s defense was much better balanced, and I had to work to come up with a German plan. I noted that both American MMGs were on the west end of the line, and set up forward of everyone else. So, I determined to rush them, using the StuGs to lock them up while taking out the MMGs in CC. With luck, I’d be across the boulevard and capture the MMGs at the start of the game. I’d also hurry some units north, and try to get behind the main hedge in hex column Z before the Americans could react.

Martin was smart enough to see what was coming, and put down residual with spraying fire as the StuGs approached. I then moved a couple of HS to attract fire, and started the main moves. That’s where things started going wrong, as a number of low rolls from the residual broke two and a half squads, and wounded my 9-2. Still, I had plenty to throw against the two HS on the front line, and I got a platoon+8-0 behind the hedge line on board 16. The good news was advancing fire broke both MMG HS, so I didn’t need to worry about the fickle dice of CC, though one HS was able to rout away with the MMG.


Situation, German Turn 1, showing the full board. Most of the action was on board 23, so any hexes given without a board number are there.
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Leviathan Wakes

by on January 25, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This is a large SF novel that uses the space to fit a lot of themes and ideas into it.

First, we’ve got an inhabited asteroid belt. The date is kept purposefully vague, but its far enough in the future for century-old cargo haulers to exist (it’s reduced to hauling ice from Saturn’s rings to the major asteroids, and described as obsolescent, though we don’t get to see what a modern civilian craft would be like in comparison). This is a staple of an earlier generation of SF writing that isn’t paid nearly enough attention to these days. And it’s well handled here with lots of political and cultural divisions between Earth (not quite sure what the overall government there is like…), Mars, various inhabited asteroids, and the colonies further out.

The the ending is a great seat-of-the-pants ride, which turns bits around, and makes me think of Brin’s Earth and Hogan’s Two Faces of Tomorrow. My only disappointment around that section is that I’d seen the big reveals coming from too far off.

And we have horror elements. These are generally well handled, and their inclusion into the story didn’t cause my horror allergies any trouble. That said… the novel does allow it to descend into fairly trite handling of this part for a big section in the middle. The action is generally well handled, and survives this part, but it did sag for me because it was handled in a too predicable way.

My biggest problem is probably the fixed two-viewpoint characters who alternate chapters structure. This is a device that gets tried every once in a while, and can really warp the structure of a novel as a whole as you try to get it to fit the framework. Here, it mostly works, and the two viewpoints are nicely different enough that their existence help the storytelling. Most of the time, the two characters are far apart and things hold together well. There are places where the structure groans as the tradeoffs between two characters in the same place gets annoying.

But, it works at all because the two characters are well realized. One is fairly smart, but without a great sense of the consequences of his actions. The other is straight out of noir-mysteries, and it takes a while to appreciate just how messed up he is. In fact the major problem here is the lack of outside viewpoints makes it hard to get a bead on what they’re really like. But, this gets developed during the novel, and both do a lot of growing, which is a large part of what drives the novel forward.

I’ve seen some discussion on whether this is ‘space opera’ or not. That depends on how you define it. For me “space opera” is one end of the sliding scale of space opera-scifi-SF-hard SF. I’d put this more into scifi land, sliding towards straight SF. The details of how technology and everything else works aren’t important, or given, here. On the other hand the number of assumptions made about future technology are kept very restrained here, with only the Epstein drive and the main MacGuffin of the story being allowed to break current knowledge in any meaningful way (now… the MacGuffin probably leads to much more in the rest of the series, but this is a fairly restrained foundation). On the other hand, it avoids a lot of things that we generally expect would be around at this point; the emphasis is on ‘people are the same’, which is true enough, what little sense we get of computer technology feels frozen in the ’90s.

Of course, you can define space opera as an indicator of the scope of the story. In that sense, space opera is the SF equivalent to “epic fantasy”, where you’re dealing with the fate of planets and the galaxy at large. This is accompanied by lots of melodrama, and over-the-top action sequences to match the stakes involved. (GM advice in the original WEG Star Wars RPG: “This is space opera, don’t blow up a landspeeder when a planet will do.”) Going by that, yeah, this a pretty good fit for space opera.

I was a bit intimidated by the doorstopper size of the novel at first, but it moves at a good clip, and pulled me on with good writing and pacing, despite occasionally going down some too-well-worn grooves. I am definitely looking forward to the second book after this one wrapped up its main plot very well. It’s also very nice to see a well done SF setting with no FTL for a change.

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Successful at Being Unsuccessful

by on January 21, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Jason came over on the 9th for a FtF two-player day. It was his pick, which naturally meant Last Hundred Yards. This is still my second session with it, but it generally impressed me as much this time as it did the first time.

The first game was more of a refresher (it’s been quite a while), as we went with mission 4, “Chance Encounter”. I got the Americans and the end of the board with the more compact woods masses. Both sides get a full company with a little support, and are trying to get a majority of the buildings and woods under their own control. Technically, this should have introduced mortars to me, but they generally went unremembered.

I don’t remember details on this action, but I intended to advance in two groups, with the stronger half (since I had three platoons to work with) providing overwatch to the other half of the board as the Germans moved up. This wasn’t a bad theory, but initial fire broke a lot of my squads, and put the ‘stronger’ half into trouble. I never really recovered from the initial breaks. I did get rid of a couple of his platoon leaders, but couldn’t capitalize on the lack of leadership before he got them back.

For the second scenario, Jason introduced me to vehicles with mission 8, “Black Cat Blues”. Classic numbers vs quality, with the Americans having a full company to a defending German platoon, and a platoon of Shermans vs a single Panther. It was also my first scenario to feature two map boards, and the extra space was welcome.

The Americans need to take 10 “points” of buildings, with the church on board 11 counting as three, which makes it impossible to win without taking it (there’s only nine other hexes). The Panther set up in the middle of board 11, and my initial attempt to deal with it merely ended with a dead Sherman. The second attempt went better, as I got Shermans on opposite sides of it, and despite him assaulting one with a half-squad, I managed a good hit on the Panther. I was down to two Shermans, but they helped me sweep deeper into the board, and take a few buildings.

The main problem then turned into the group stationed in the church, which defeated a couple attempts to get at them, and I couldn’t manage any decent shots. However, I brought down mortar fire on it which let me get up to it. Sadly, the second turn of mortar fire drifted onto one of my stacks to break much of it, but I could still get in as soon as the fire lifted. I took the church and forced a retreat that kept going a couple turns. I also could have done it better (did things in the wrong sequence), so I was glad that it had worked.

Casualties had gone against me at first, and then went over to the German side as I got into the town and took the church. But after that, casualties started piling up for me again, including both Shermans. And, about 50 minutes in (game time) I went over the casualty limit.

The general system has held up well for the second go-around. The tanks integrate into the rest of it well, so its a nicely consistent game. That said, there are some wrinkles. I’m certainly startled that you can just drive into a building hex, get the benefit of the terrain, and not worry about throwing a track (in fact, I don’t think there’s any sort mobility kill in the game). Also, the fact that enfilade fire only works full-on to the rear (180 arc), when a simple flank shot should be a lot easier to arrange (and every bit as effective).

Still, it was a good day, and an enjoyable pair of scenarios, despite losing at both.

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