Fighter Rush

by on November 5, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

After my knife fight with Demon finished, we immediately went to a second SE:4X game on the small two-player map (which is, amazingly, still bigger than the previous game. This time we used all the base set regular and advanced rules, and threw in ship experience from Close Encounters.

The beginning went as usual, though I was slightly behind on initial colonies, as the placement wasn’t as good (nothing but minerals adjacent to my homeworld). To my surprise, Demon explored into deep space at the end of the second cycle of movement, with ten hexes of his own space left to explore. He found a 10 mineral and a barren planet, where the aliens promptly shot up his SC. Meanwhile I was down to seven unexplored hexes, but colonies were still slightly behind, as I was having trouble finding the planets.

His second SC died to a Danger! at the beginning of the third round of turns, while one of mine survived an encounter with the home-area black hole. Demon struggled to finish exploring his home area, while I finished up, and explored two hexes of deep space in the third round, losing a SC to another black hole, and finding a nebula, which gave us a clear route to each other. I was still a colony behind, but I had some pipelines in, whereas Demon had yet to build any. Demon built two forward shipyards and a pair of new SC, while I upgraded my homeworld SY and built one forward one, rounded out my colony ships, and replaced a SC.

I lost a SC to another deep-space black hole, and then another to Danger! Demon sent a pair of groups through the “pass” to my space, but thankfully I’d have another build before they could arrive. (Even if he’d bought move 2, the deep-space nebula would slow them up.) As he slowly explored his own space, a SC and colony ship stumbled into his black hole, but both lived. I got DD technology, so I could put a base up at the colony he was approaching, bought a DD and a SC, along with more pipelines. Demon improved his shipyards and deployed a new SC.


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Braggart Maximus

by on November 1, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Finally had another day of face-to-face gaming back on the 17th (I’ve been bad about cat-herding lately). And while Patch couldn’t make it, everyone else did, so we had four for a day of some shorter games.

Up first was the usual Circus Maximus. With a 2+ year gap, we had to re-learn a few things again, and there were some more pre-game questions on heavy chariots and the such. With four of us, everyone had a “speedy” team and a “heavy” team (my split was possibly the most modest, since my ‘speedster’ wasn’t entirely optimized that way; also, I had fairly low endurance on both teams—not helped by the die rolls).

On turn 2, Mark opened the demolition derby with three attacks on two different teams. This ended with all three chariots wrecking as they failed rolls after getting their wheels damaged. Mark’s red chariot and Jason’s orange chariot ended up landing on the same space, and the red driver and Dave’s brown driver cut themselves free and made it over the wall, with the orange driver being dragged to death.

Things were somewhat more sedate after that, though Dave’s white team and Mark’s Blue team both ended up wrecking after about a lap (only white’s driver made it to safety). Of the three teams left, Jason’s yellow team was in a fairly good lead, though movement finally started working out for me and my purple team started narrowing the gap with some good cornering.

Headed into the final lap, my green team got an early move, and managed to come alongside yellow. I’d forgotten I had taken a heavy chariot, so what started as a couple attacks just to try and scrub down his top speed a bit turned into a serious ram from my chariot. His horses got injured, slowing him a bit, and then the wheel gave out in the final turn, just leaving my two teams to finish.


Going into the final straightaway. Orange (Jason) technically finished first, but died two laps earlier.

After that, we tried out a game Dave had gotten a while ago, but had yet to play: Braggart. It’s basically adventurer Mad-Libs. You’re all in the tavern trying to impress the audience with your tales of derring-do enough to get some tips for drinking money.

It’s simple, but took us a while to wrap our heads around what was wanted. You get cards that are the elements of a boast, and each round you either boast (put cards down), or go off to get more cards. The person with the best boast keeps all his cards for scoring, everyone else picks one card from their boast to keep for scoring. There’s complications with special actions from there, but that’s the essence.

Of course, as with Mad-Libs, the boasts can be fairly hilarious. Jason had a good round or two at the beginning, and that carried him through to a fairly comfortable lead at the finish (which is when the deck of cards runs out). I did okay all the way through and was a couple points behind Dave’s second place. Mark had some aggressive plays near the middle, but it didn’t really pan out for him, and he was in fourth.

I certainly hope to see it again, as it was a fairly fun game with a bit of thinking. I think all of us are going to need some defensive driving lessons the next time Circus Maximus hits the table though.

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Anime Summer 2021

by on October 28, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

So another season started around the beginning of the month, but I barely noticed the summer season ending because my watching is so out of synch there was only two things that ended on me, and one of those I was watching about a year late.

Megalobox II: Nomad — I often don’t pay attention to the nomenclatures around separate seasons as its all still one big story. But this one really is a sequel story, with a very different feel and tone. It’s also that rare thing: a sequel that’s better than the original. We’re still working our way through the ending parts, but it has been truly excellent so far.

Great Pretender — We’re currently in Case 4, and it’s still being a great ride, though it has gotten overall more serious and a bit darker in tone. Overall, its’ a great series, with great art and writing, and manages to be witty straight through while presenting all these high-stakes capers.

World Trigger — This is a long series; I’m at episode 40, which is just nearing the end of the ‘first series’ (with the third one just starting). With a fairly slow start, this has really grown on me as its a well-balanced handling of typical shonen tropes and solid world-building. It’s not as flashy as many (and I think the budget might be a bit low), but it has a much more substantial foundation, and very good characters.

Beastars — We’re midway in the second season now, and it is another case of the sequel being better than the original, though it’s not as radical a change in story.

My Hero Academia — This is the main thing that finished up and told me the season was over. The last part was all diving into things that had happened earlier, but there was just now enough context for them to make sense in the overall plot. It ended up doing a great job exploring several of the main recurring villains’ backgrounds and motivations, while ratcheting up the tension for the big showdown to come—next time.

Star Trek: Lower Decks — Thanks to a borrowed blue-ray disk, we’re getting to watch this. We’re not that many episodes in, but the writing is definitely picking up as the characters get settled. The entire thing is a bit of a love letter to The Next Generation, with references all over the place.

Log Horizon — This one sat on the ‘to watch’ pile for a while as Smudge was sure we must have missed something in between the latest season and the previous. I’m pretty sure we didn’t, but the start was pretty jarring. It has been too long, and the first storyline was feeling fractured, either because we forgot things, or the series skipped a novel while trying to get to current content (or both!). Once over that hurdle, it was a good season, and it eventually touched on just about all the main unresolved threads. None of them actually resolved, but there was a good story concluding the season which also advanced things a bit.

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime — I’m still getting caught up on this, there’s about a half-season to go. I think I might be caught up to the dub. At any rate, it continues to do well, though the power levels are truly of E.E. “Doc” Smith proportions.

Pokemon Journeys — This is the definite bottom of the list. We’re only watching it when we have time after going through everything else, and that’s because it’s just not that good. I do feel it has been picking up some as we get into the tournament prep, which is giving more of a longer arc goal. But… we’re still at two focus characters, and they’re feeling a bit bland.

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FB17 Stalingrad Redux

by on October 24, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After our adventure in the desert, it was time for Patch and I to return to Budapest one last time. (Well, final return to Buda; I hope to talk him into “End Station Budapest”, which takes place in the other half of the city at some point.) It’s taken far too long, but we’ve finally reached the end of this journey.

The last scenario takes place along the southern edge of the map, with the rail line from the rail station in the last two scenarios right at the edge of the map, and the Bloody Meadow just to the north. The Russians are headed for the Krisztina Kürút, and win if there’s less than one unbroken squad-equivalent within three hexes of the Krisztinaváros Parish Church at the end of five and a half turns, with a 32 CVP cap. I eventually decided I wanted the attacking Russians, largely so I could use an OT-34 flamethrower tank.

The Germans get seven and a half squads (mostly a mix of three different kinds of SS squads, but there’s non-SS as well), some mines, three hexes of wire, a roadblock, a 75mm ATG, and a Panther. They’re all at Ammo Shortage 4, suffering from food shortage, and gas shortage. They get most of the available map to set up in, and Patch made the most of it, centered on the two biggest buildings in the victory area (which had a few hexes knocked down by pre-game rubble checks).

The Russians enter on turn 1 with twelve squads (two of which are assault engineers), plus another three squads of BVR (who don’t count for the CVP cap), with good leadership (the Germans only start with two leaders—this would be important), MGs, a DC, a FT, two T34-85s and the aforementioned OT-34.

Initial rubble blocked some paths in the south, and Patch stymied a lot of potential moves by putting the roadblock in DDD8/EEE9. Worse, most of the west entry area for the Soviets is blocked by rail cars, leaving a bridge over the rail line the main legal offboard vehicle setup hex there. I eventually settled on entering one T-34/85 there, and the other two tanks on the south, with one taking up position behind the roadblock, and the other going east through many twisty alleys, all alike. Hopefully not to be eaten by a panzerfaust.

Once again, both sides get to buy reinforcements for the first few turns from a short schedule of available units. I spent the entire first turn’s lot on OBA. It comes with a 7-0 leader, and that was handy, and if I was going to use it, I needed to get it moved into position as soon as possible. He was put in charge of a couple squads meant to be the ‘second wave’ of the main attack.

The BVR entered as far north as they could on the west side, in the face of a German “?” in AAA13. I finally started moving in with the main west force, and the HS there opened fire, with my squad surviving a PTC, and then pinning to 1MC in the next hex. This left the 9-1+MMG squad to armor assault to take up positions looking down the Márvany utca.

The south didn’t go nearly so well, as the limit of the Russian entry area is a street that I wanted to get east of, and Patch had (what turned out to be) a LMG sighted right along the length of it, over the roadblock. The first probing squad ate a 1KIA, and the rest of that platoon armor assaulted into a 2MC from resid to break my 8-0 and reduce a squad to a HS of broken conscripts; at least the elite squad passed.

…And then my sniper went off, killing his 9-1 in ZZ5h1, and the LLMC reduced the 468 SS squad to a broken 237 SS HS. This also took his MMG out of action.

Things got better during AFPh, when I managed to break the HS in AAA13, since the BVR would be asking for trouble taking them on in CC. Of course, Patch pointed out I couldn’t use the tank FT from behind the roadblock, as it’s a bow-mount (I had kind of been thinking that BBB7h2 being a level up from me would do it, but no; finding a way to use the FT was a bit of a challenge with this set up…).


Situation, Russian Turn 1, showing the full board. North is to the left.
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Dragon’s Fealty

by on October 20, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

About the time I finished reading Dreamhearth, I happened on a giveaway for a couple of Hogarth’s other books, and got them. It turned out that they’re very late on in things, and there is a warning up front about other books to read first. I spent a couple days deciding if I was going to leap into things here, and eventually did.

I was a bit surprised to find Jahir and Vasiht’h here, and in much changed circumstances. I figure Dreamstorm would help explain a lot of that, but….

In fact, it’s obvious the galaxy in general has been a fairly busy place over the last several years. It takes some digging to find out that it’s been about a dozen years since the last I’ve seen the duo, and while Jahir is fairly important, there’s plenty of other characters that are more central to the plot, including some obviously returning villains.

So, I had a fair amount of figuring out to do, and I certainly don’t recommend starting here. Hogarth recommends Healer’s Wedding as the start point in the note at the beginning of the book, though that one mentions it’s bringing together characters from Her Instruments and Princes’ Game as well as the Dreamhealers series, so getting into everything could be quite an undertaking, and cutting the Gordian Knot here might not be an entirely bad answer (…though I think I’d probably still recommend cutting it a bit earlier than this).

At any rate, here is where I did start, and things did largely make sense, though with a lot of backfill to be done, and in many cases only a sketchy idea of the large cast of characters. So if you want to start here as I did, go ahead, it will work out.

Overall, the flow was good, and I picked up momentum after a rocky start to a nicely dramatic ending. I’ve gotten very used to trilogies over the decades, and it is very nice to see Hogarth do duologies that split very well, with a very natural stopping point for the first book.

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