Penric’s Fox

by on December 27, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I decided to go with chronological order as I catch up with the Penric series (…”catch up” is probably the wrong term here; perhaps “tread water”), and I’m glad I did. This one features the return of the characters from Penric and the Shaman, set about eight months after that story, so it ties in well with that one.

It’s also something of a genre shift, since we move towards the murder mystery here. It’s still not primarily a mystery, which is good because it’d fall a bit flat on that end. (The title actually gives part of it away, and… you can see what’s coming before the characters do, though Penric is at least getting suspicious before it all gets revealed.)

Still, the shift does help add some much-needed depth to the story, and make it more interesting than the previous two (chronologically). Among other things, we get a larger cast of major and minor characters to fill things out, which has really been needed. And this is in about the same length as Penric’s Demon, which I felt was too short and limited to really do much as a story. This one is a lot more dense, and to me, the most satisfying novella of the series so far.

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20 Sanatorium Furiosum

by on December 23, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

A bit ago Mark and I cycled back to Great War Commander with the final Mons scenario from the British expansion. After attacking last time, I had the British as they defend a large sanatorium where the battalion HQ is. Somewhat oddly, while the description mentions a cemetery, which is on the board, the special rules mention its treated as open ground, even though cemeteries are also a terrain type….

At any rate, I set up my one hex of wire at the central crossroads/victory location, with four platoons covering it. Another platoon was on top of the west hill to cover another location, three more covered the east location in buildings, and the rest, along with the one MG was in the sanatorium and on the adjacent hill. I wasn’t really happy with this setup, and I was probably trying to cover too much, but I didn’t like leaving any avenues of approach too open.

The interesting part of the scenario is the Germans start with ten platoons randomly chosen between landwehr and fusiliers. All but one leader is also randomly chosen. And every odd turn, they can draw random reinforcements. Mark broke into two groups, a small one on the west, and a longer string in the east. The entire line shuffled forward by moving up with three Advance card. Fire then caused a couple suppressions before Moving towards the eastern objective (2). More Movement got him close to the objective (this was helped by High Command Meddling).

I tried an Offensive in the west, moving out of the too-light cover of the hedge around the graveyard, and going for the orchard north of it. Sadly, the “big” fire attack I had was negated with a Probe. Mark conducted an Offensive in the east, wrapping around my positions, but the only result of his fire was play of Hidden Position to put an 18-pdr in M5.

I Advanced in the west, but an Ambush broke my platoon that went into melee, and I lost them and Major Wells, and put that entire area out of cohesion. I Fired in the east, trying to use the 18-pdr as a sniper weapon, and broke Lt Lochow and his platoon, but couldn’t get any results with follow-up fire, and the lieutenant Recovered. More Fire eliminated the platoon, and broke Lt Herzler and his platoon, …and also got the time to 3, and Mark brought in another six platoons; two in the east corner with the new Lt Rommel, and four in the west, already in range of Hptm Waldau.

Mark Recovered everyone, and then Fired, getting no result, but a sniper broke my west hill platoon, and another time trigger happened (all three so far had been British). Also, Aftragstaktic came up, which let him get Waldau and a platoon into one of my positions in the orchard and eliminate my platoon. He then Moved in the west, and I broke a lead platoon with some OpFire. He then Moved in the east, drawing the noose tighter, and I had nothing to do.

I Recovered, which got rid of a lot of built-up suppression, and rallied the hilltop garrison. Mark Moved up to the hilltop position (1), and towards the graveyard. I tried to halt Waldau with Hidden Wire (this had worked fairly spectacularly in our first game), but he countered it with an immediate Engineering Works. Advance got him into all three positions in the east, and took out two of the three (including Lt O’Donnel) in melee, with Herzler becoming veteran in the process. Also, he ran out of cards to take us to time 5, and he brought in another three platoons with Lt Ruhberg.

Offensive let him creep up in the west, with the fire breaking my last platoon in the orchard. Fire from everyone else over there broke the hilltop position again, and eliminated the broken platoon in the orchard (…I had finally gotten a Move, and had been about to get him out of trouble in the gully). More Fire in the east did nothing, but got me an Offensive through High Command Meddling, which I used to get my remaining platoon in the graveyard back towards the sanatorium. But then more Fire finished off the hilltop garrison, which took me to my surrender limit.

Afterword

Overall, this was a fairly frustrating scenario. I spent most of my time feeling unable to do anything.

Now… there were some things I did do, and one of them ended in disaster. That… is the price of doing business. Charging forward into the orchard was risky, but without that action to break my platoon in melee, it would have paid off well.

I’m finding the more I play GWC, the more critical of it I get. With only four cards as the defender, I feel like there’s a lack interesting choices, when all too often your only choice is to discard a completely useless hand. This is a more acute version of the problem I see too often on offense.

Part of it may be that ASL and SFB have trained me well to maneuver. And… without move cards, which it feels like I too often am, you can’t maneuver. As either side, but especially as the defender you feel herded into a siege mentality, even when it’s not appropriate. There’s a lot to like in the system, but, it does rub me the wrong way.

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The Map that Changed the World

by on December 19, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I picked this up for cheap on Kindle some time ago, and meant to get to it a lot sooner than this. Especially as its part of an interesting period as our perception of how the world works.

Winchester is as some pains to show how much of a change in thought was going on. This informs the main subject, which is a biography of William Smith. Smith is quite definitely Winchester’s big hero, and the source of his interest in geology. I’ve seen some complaints that Smith’s role in a lot of this is overemphasized, but I’ll have to leave that to people with a lot more knowledge than I. No matter how true that may be, much of the central focus is the map Smith produced, which is certainly a tour-de-force of applied practical knowledge and theory.

The most annoying point for me is yet another in medias res start to a popular history book. In this case, it centers Smith’s incarceration in debtor’s prison, or actually, when he gets out, and leaves London, where he’s been trying to get contacts with the upper classes to spread knowledge of his ideas. Frankly, his life, as presented in order in the main book itself is interesting enough to not need this sort of thing, and the constant referrals back to this part that haunt the book are annoying.

There’s quite a lot of extended asides during the book, which range in interest and presentation, but almost all are about painting the world around the subject (one chapter instead goes into Winchester’s interest in geology, and serves as an intro to Smith’s study of rocks instead). This is very effective in generating much needed context, which it should be, as it does occupy a fair amount of page count. But this combined approach is what makes this a good book worth reading, there’s plenty in here that layers in more knowledge of the world.

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Normandy 7

by on December 15, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

After finally trying out U.S. Civil War, Mark and I went back to the “ZOC-bond” series to try out Normandy ’44. For the first time out, we did the seven-turn mini game, and I had the invading Allies. Unfortunately, after the very good module for Ardennes ’44, I do have some complaints here, most notably that it uses a bunch of shift-commands on the counters, which had us both inadvertently firing off commands as we typed. (Never, ever, use a bare shift-command in a Vassal module, it’s very bad practice.)

Somewhat oddly, the Germans go first in this game, followed by the Allies. But the first turn starts with a special invasion phase, where the Allied first wave comes ashore, and then the second wave comes on the normal Allied turn after the German turn. The first thing that happens is the three airborne divisions drop, and the Allies roll to see how the drops go. Each division has it’s own table, with the 82nd having the worst one, but good die rolls meant that two regiments landed fine, with the third scattering and losing two steps. The 101st did worse, losing three steps across two regiments, that at least the last one had not scattered. The British 6th Airborne, with the easiest results table, still lost two steps, though one unit also did not scatter.

Then comes the initial assaults to get on the beach, which also have unique CRTs (with Omaha having a special result of losing a step, and then rolling again). As these are just ‘results’, you don’t check odds or anything, and the DD tanks check to see if they lose steps separately. Point du Hoc is treated as a separate mini-beach with a chance that the 5th Ranger Battalion will get word to come ashore there (despite the area being cleared, they historically went to Omaha because they didn’t get word in time). Overall, I came ashore in pretty good order, with only one ‘repeat’ result on Omaha, but lost steps on the majority of DD units.

Mark had a somewhat abbreviated first turn as he tried to figure out just where the problems were going to be. He made one attack to shift an element of the 6th Airborne off their landing hex. The British, in turn, were able to get to the outskirts of Caen, and launched attacks to clear strongpoints, and couple weaker units, clearing the front fairly nicely. The Americans were able to clear out a unit in front of Omaha, and advance to the Aure for a small, but secure, beachhead, while units moved up to secure the Airborne perimeter behind Utah. We never got into the habit of doing much with reserves, but I had a few here, which helped the British advance.


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Penric and the Shaman

by on December 11, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The second Penric story feels a lot better developed than the first. It’s also about 60 pages longer, which for a novella is quite a difference. Things happen instead of merely happen to Penric.

Penric is not the only viewpoint character here, which is partially a device to keep you from immediately understanding everything he does. Or, maybe, it would be better to say that it’s used to show that the other characters don’t understand everything he does. Meanwhile, we get two new characters, that are central to the story, while Penric is more roped into it.

Penric has had four years to get used to his ‘passenger’, and go through a somewhat rushed education as a divine (it isn’t said, but it’s more likely that Penric hurried through on his own, rather than was pushed through), and has settled into the Martinsburg court before this adventure picks him up. Oswyl is a “Locator”, basically a marshal/detective, who shows very much as a dedicated career cop, and Penric starts mentally categorizing his frowns partway through.

The case he’s on seems clear enough, as it was fairly definitely the knife of the prime suspect who killed a minor noble, and it was obviously in his possession at the time. But motives are cloudy, and the action of the story gets tangled up in a completely different tragedy. Much of the theme here, as in the other Five Gods stories is in the realm of the gods work in mysterious ways. Of course, part of what makes the series work so well is that the gods’ aims are generally comprehensible, its just their side of the problem lies a bit outside the normal human world.

In all, it’s a solid sequel to Penric’s Demon, and better than that story. The expansion to three (okay, four) major characters helps, the tradeoffs in viewpoint are a little jarring at first, but serve the story structure, and the overall plot is in better shape; this ups my recommendation of the series as a whole, and I expect it will continue to get better.

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