Two Breakthroughs

by on December 20, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

After going through the last tutorial scenario for Operation Dauntless, Mark and I spent a little time with the classic pocket game GEV, and it’s initial “Breakthrough” scenario. I haven’t played it in decades, and while Mark is well aware of Ogre/GEV, he’s never played the series.

I took raiding Combine GEVs (12 for the basic scenario) for our first playthrough, while Mark took 2xheavy tanks, 2xmissile tanks, 2xlight tanks, and 2xlight GEVs for his six armor units (yes, we used the full range of ‘standard’ units, including Shockwave units, but not the more advanced bits like the GEV-PC and marine infantry). I came in with two groups, one of six GEVs unequally split between three hexes cruising up the river, and then three sets of two GEVs each headed through the gap in the forest nearby. Mark redeployed a little, but mostly hung near his initial posts as I got closer.

For my second turn, five of the GEVs continued up the river and then into the lake, while one went ashore to help the other set who advanced up to the stream before crossing it on the second move. Mark hurried a second heavy tank east, and sent a light tank and infantry that way, but other parts stayed put (including a missile and light tank in the west). I concentrated 6 GEVs against the heavies and killed one and disabled the other before scattering away from the infantry, while the group on the lake came ashore during the second move.


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Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England

by on December 16, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This was recommended to me by someone who’s opinion I trust, so I expected a good book going in. It exceeded my expectations.

Despite the title, this is not just an examination of the Battle of Agincourt. It occupies a central place in book, but it is more than that. The book starts with a brief description of the fourteenth-century succession crisis that ended with Edward III claiming the throne of France. The first parts of the Hundred Years War are covered in a similar amount of clear brevity. Then we get to Henry IV and Henry V.

The first detailed part of the book goes into Henry of Monmouth’s (the future Henry V) campaigns in Wales, and how that shaped his future outlook on warfare. The campaign was generally underfunded, and Henry had to scrape together the resources to bring the rebellion in Wales to an end. This mostly happened after he figured out ways of better financing it on his own.

Much time is spent with the beginning of Henry V’s reign, and the various diplomatic maneuvers with France even as he secures funding from Parliament, and begins putting together an army. This forms a significant part of the book, and a nicely detailed one, using lots of examples of surviving registers and indentures to show how the army was hired and organized and paid.

Then there is a good section on the siege of Harfleur. It also goes into detail, and takes a look at was (and wasn’t) happening at the French court during all of this. The march towards Calais afterwords is also very well covered, including the fact that it had nearly reached its goal before having to turn aside to look for safe river crossings. Much appreciated is the look at how long this was expected to take, and why, and just how much of the march went off on schedule.

And then we get to the field of Agincourt, the day before, and the battle itself. In some ways, this isn’t as well-covered as the lead up to the battle, but that’s more the high bar the rest of the book set rather than an actual lack here.

After that, there is good examination of the aftermath. The main subject boils down to the prisoners taken, and their fates. This is harder to determine in detail, but Barker spends some time picking out examples. The political and military aftermath get less attention than the lead up.

It’s a well-written, and well-focused book, without being so focused as to lose some essential context. In fact, the context (especially Henry V’s early career) is the best part of the book. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to know more about this period.

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Reflections in Crystal

by on December 12, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

By the time you read this, patch 5.4 will have come out for Final Fantasy XIV, and I’ll be starting down the road leading to the fourth (currently unannounced) expansion for the game. I’ve just come off a week of vacation, and I spent far more time in-game than I meant to (I meant to spend more time reading and in Stellaris and EU IV than I did; par for the course).

Last time I wrote on this, was just as 5.3 was getting ready to come out, so lets start with the big things. The content for that patch was mostly wrapping things up from the main Shadowbringers story, and taking care of the main dangling plot threads. And I can say that that was just as well handled as the rest of the story has been, and came to a solid stopping point.

(Things might get a little spoilery for a bit here.)

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The Lost Fleet: Dauntless

by on December 8, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Okay, military science-fiction is always a selling point for me, and I have taken too long to get to this series.

It is always presented as a series, and with good reason. While this is a complete story, structure-wise, the overall situation and problem won’t be resolved (presumably) until book six. The good news is that these are relatively short books by modern standards, coming in at ~300 pages each, so this isn’t a six-book series of bloated editing.

The overall set up fairly good, and quite space opera in nature. The Alliance fleet finds an old survival pod on its way to battle, and it happens to contain a near-legendary hero from the beginning of the war—one hundred years ago. This is before the start of the book, and the actual start is the top command of the fleet getting killed, leaving our Jack Geary the most senior captain available—by nearly a century.

The setup is actually handled fairly well, and a lot of the personality, and personality clashes are well done. It’s definitely one of the strong points of the writing. The military side can get into teeth-grating problems… but this is by design. It’s… also a case of making the main character look smarter by ‘dumbing down’ the other characters. However, here, Geary is a professional, well-trained for his job. After a century of taking heavy losses, institutional memory in the fleet is almost non-existent, and all the officers are much younger than they should be. And the characters are generally written as intelligent, they just don’t have a lot of military knowledge and habits they should.

This does also mean that the other characters can serve as a way to naturally bring up how things work and explain them for the reader. One unknown is just how much the Syndicate navy is suffering from the same problem, and I assume it’ll be explored in later books. Similarly, there’s a bit of setup here for the sequel series; Campbell was definitely thinking ahead.

There’s two real battles in this book, plus some other activities (taking down some light planetary defenses), and the action is well handled all the way. It’s also nicely paced. In many ways, this isn’t anything special, just a bunch of milSF tropes seen before, but it is all well crafted, with good writing, characters, plot, and pacing. That’s the real win here, there’s not much in the way of weak points. That makes it worth a look right there, and recommended even to people who may not normally go for this kind of thing.

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T3 The Lone Gray Wolf Y160 S3

by on December 4, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

[Scenarios 1 & 2]

Mark and I returned to the “Lone Gray Wolf” mini campaign a bit ago, as my C6 dreadnought continued making its way back to friendly lines. This time was a proper challenge, as the pursuit group came up ‘4’, which is the second-best Kzinti group. In the original, this is a CVL+ carrier group (basically modified BC, CL, FF with nine fighters); in this Y160 variant, there’s no fighters (of course), and the ships are their regular unrefitted equivalents of a CS, CL, and FF. By straight BPV, this is 195 vs 262 (and by F&E ratings 10-12 vs 17-18), though there are some serious advantages to having one large ship instead of three smaller ones (it being easier to punch through a shield to destroy weapons on a smaller ship being the main one).

As ever with this campaign, setup is the C6 in the middle of the board, with the Kzinti 14 hexes behind it; in this case Mark started his ships one hex apart, with the CS in the middle. I started at speed 20 and no EW, while the Kzintis all went speed 18 with 1 ECCM running. The first few impulses got us going, and I slipped and then turned on Impulse 5. The Kzinti generally slipped over to keep in line with me, and I turned in late in the turn, and used the good arcs on the ph-1s to hit the FF’s shield #1 for 8 points at range 12 (5 registered).

With the range staying closer than I might have liked, and Kzintis turning to intercept on impulse 32, I decided on a somewhat risky maneuver: going down to speed 12, and launching an ECM drone (actually done on Impulse 32). The Kzinti went to speed 21 (except the FF, which stayed at 18), and used varying amounts of ECCM, while I generated 6 ECM (with another three from drone when it came on-line during impulse 4).

I turned in at the start of the turn, and Mark tried to clear the ECM drone with a pair ph-3s on impulse 7, but failed to get any hits at range. He launched drones on 8, the FF slipped out, and the CS turned in for nose-to-nose confrontation. I tried tractoring the CS on 10, but gave it up after three points of power. The CS then launched from its remaining two drone racks, and I launched two drones, and then we unloaded into each other (with the CL adding in). Phasers knocked down all the just-launched drones and the ECM drone, and the CS and CL boosted ECCM enough to get the shift down to a +2. Two of four of his disruptors missed, and mixed phaser performance added up to 23 damage, or just over half my shield #1. One of my disruptors missed, but three overloads, 4xph-1 and 2xph-2 did a total of 50 damage, crashing through the #1 for 24 internals. This ripped through the forward hull, and took out the batteries, along with the usual scattering of weapons and power.


Turn 2, Impulse 10, showing movement for the first 16 impulses.
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