Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m an ASL junkie; like most players, I buy new products faster than I can ever hope to do more than just sample them. However, Patch and I did spend the time to go through most of the Pegasus Bridge scenarios. It has since sold out, but it still seems to go for reasonable prices on eBay, and I recommend it; it has my favorite HASL map so far.

So in November 2006, we started our journey with the first non-night scenario, “Piecemeal”:

Yes, I’m back again for more punishment! Right now, me and Patch have decided to go through the non-night Pegasus Bridge scenarios, starting with this little fight.

It’s the early morning of June 6th, and the British (me) are trying to keep the Germans from pushing through Benouville to attack the canal bridge. The Germans have a few advantages, more troops, a couple of (odd) vehicles, slightly better support weapons, and 8 turns to go 14 hexes.

The thing I really didn’t anticipate was the effect that the dawn +1 LV hindrance is having. Most of the terrain is stone buildings and walls. Most attacks are +3 or +4(!), and there’s not really enough troops, or concentration, on either side yet to generate very high FP attacks. So far the most damage has occurred from the German sniper (broke a squad), and one of the vehicles getting Mired.

My initial Idea was to set up forward, and on a slightly broad front, to force a cautious entry, and then start falling back. Well, it’s working, as far as it goes. I’m kind of developing into two separate groups, and I’m getting worried that they’re getting too far away to support each other properly.

This is certainly not the scenario I thought it would be….

Situation at the beginning of the second British turn. WA is all Germans.

Beseler commented:
“you’re doing the right thing.”

“I thought this scen was alright, but agreed, not AT ALL what you think when looking at the scen card.”

That didn’t last.

Now the middle of German Turn 3, and Patch has shown again that there’s a lot of things to maneuvering in ASL that I’m just not seeing yet.

I saw that my two forces were getting too far apart to support each other properly. I figured that shifting some force from one to the other (where his main push is developing) would be a good idea, but didn’t pursue it aggressively enough. I should have CXed and gotten the squad into N11 with its advance. As it is, he’s in N10, not doing a darn thing. He’s a hex back from the crest line and unable to see most of the action. Something that didn’t occur to me at the time.

Patch then immediately set about exploiting the hole in my defenses… and I didn’t see it coming until too late.

I’ve been worried that he would slip around on the south side given half a chance, and get units into a position where it would be nearly impossible to keep them from exiting. While I was worried about maintaining the ability to fire south, he slipped around my rally point to the north and put a HS in M12. As if this wasn’t unhealthy enough, he then advanced up close and personal on the other side. About the best idea I had was to spraying fire K14/K15. With stone buildings and +1 LV the odds weren’t what I’d like… naturally I rolled high.

At best I’m losing a squad to FtR. With what he has there, I may easily loose the entire South side force…

That, of course, would put a real crimp in my plans. The best I can say at the moment, is that I’ve broken another squad, the Sniper Immobilized one of his vehicles, and while the other one has unMired (darn), it has malfunctioned the MA.

Situation after DFPh on German Turn 3.

Patch noted:
“Not much to add to what Rindis has written. My current difficulty lies in that southern force, which is still partially concealed and is withstanding my fire. I eliminated the broken squad due to FtR (as Rindis noted), and have swarmed his concealed leader in CC in L12. I’ll know tonight if I popped him or if he slipped out the back.”

“What I didn’t do is advance into L13. Tough call to make, but as there’s a concealed unit still in there, my ambush odds aren’t good and I didn’t want to risk losing a portion of my southern force. I’m continuing to envelop and hope to break the hex my next fire phase. It’s still early, so I feel good about my position. Was not going into L13 a mistake? We’ll find out tonight when we fire up VASL once again.”

Tonight was pretty exciting. Got through practically an entire Game Turn.

He got the leader in CC. I tried a reshuffle and limited counter attack. Moved two squads up, one broke immediately, and the other HoBed a Hero. Then he subsequent fired and the squad rolled a ’12′ on the next MC.

About that time, I realized that I could have handed the PIAT to the Hero at creation, and with his better morale it’s not a bad idea in general. Certainly would have been handy if I had.

However, his 1FP advancing shot pins an adjacent squad, and I make the decision to go in for CC. Sadly, no heroics here, just the odds, he gets me, and I miss a CR by one. However, he did DM another squad that did indeed fail to rally because of the extra +4, and that had been part of my decision to go in.

Meanwhile, L13 absorbs a lot of firepower in his AFPh, again in my DFPh, and again in his turn 4 PFPh. Between high rolls and Cowering, he can’t reveal the concealed unit, and he pins the squad in there twice, before finally breaking it towards the end of his PFPh. Darn shame too, he barely got that first pin, and without it, I would have been free to advance into L12, which really could have gotten nasty. I’m thankful that they held as long as they did (about to lose them to FtR again), and would be much more thankful if this scenario had a tighter time limit.

Situation, German Turn 4, just before AFPh. K10 has the PIAT, and is DM after a drive-by threatening by the mobile FLAK-truck.”

“Well, I may have gone and thrown this one away.”

“I simply could not break L13. It’s not that the 648 was passing MCs, I couldn’t even get MCs with multiple 24 and 30FP attacks. That simply threw a monkey wrench into everything and I got horribly flustered and lost track of the plan I had thrown together. As a result I’m out of position and not sure of how to proceed next, which has allowed Rindis some time to recover and form a thin line, but elite squads in +4 terrain have remarkable staying power. I did finally break L13 and will be advancing in to see what lies under the ? counter, but I think my earlier decision to take out the hex with direct fire was still the right one.”

It would seem we’re both somewhat pessimistic about our chances to pull off a win in this scenario. Which is probably a good sign for the eventual tension level (TL).

The major thing that’s had me worried from the start is the fact that I only had two leaders. Not a bad squad/leader ratio, but it makes for a certain lack of ‘backup’ if something went wrong, which it did. Patch eliminated one during the initial move on my southern group.

L13 proved to have a HS in it, which survived the initial attack while eliminating a HS (through CR). This still left me to deal with a line that had moved up to the L hexrow. The initial good news was that the Flak-truck permanently malfunctioned the MA, Recalling it. (I have to admit that I probably would have Exited it already to keep that from happening. But my CVP cap is approaching, and Patch is probably concentrating on that.)

My turn didn’t do a whole lot, other than find that O12 can’t see L15 (misses the building in N12, clips the crest line in N13). And I advanced down into M12 and N12. With luck, the HS would live again to continue the Melee, and I could concentrate on the rest of the line.

Well, no such luck. I lost the HS (taking another HS with me), and German prep fire broke the squad in M12 (and Patch’s MMG on the second shot). And my Sniper got his MTR squad. Again, my DF (what there was) couldn’t roll under a 10, leaving Patch free to do what he wants.

…and I’m not quite sure what he wants. Looking at it again, I think he’s going for an Encircle on British turn 5.

Sigh, I always see these things late.

Situation on German Turn 5, right before AFPh.

I was wondering when I did it how smart the move to M12/N12 was. If the Melee continued, I think it would have been reasonable. The question was of course, the more likely outcome of losing the HS. Possibly, I should still be skulking at this point. But the Germans still had four turns to Exit (slightly over two hexes/Turn), and if I put myself in a position that’s hard to get at, it would be hard to interdict any move towards that.

It would seem we’re both somewhat pessimistic about our chances to pull off a win in this scenario. Which is probably a good sign for the eventual tension level (TL).

“Balderick, I have a cunning plan…”

L13 proved to have a HS in it, which survived the initial attack while eliminating a HS (through CR). This still left me to deal with a line that had moved up to the L hexrow. The initial good news was that the Flak-truck permanently malfunctioned the MA, Recalling it. (I have to admit that I probably would have Exited it already to keep that from happening. But my CVP cap is approaching, and Patch is probably concentrating on that.)

“This is what is known as a “Learning Experience”. Yes, I should have driven the truck off-board. I didn’t that one turn as I was worried what a pair of 648s and a 9-2 could do and I was using it to try and eliminate the broken 338 for FtR. Next time I’ll look more closely at getting while the gettin’s good.”

Well, no such luck. I lost the HS (taking another HS with me), and German prep fire broke the squad in M12 (and Patch’s MMG on the second shot). And my Sniper got his MTR squad. Again, my DF (what there was) couldn’t roll under a 10, leaving Patch free to do what he wants.

…and I’m not quite sure what he wants. Looking at it again, I think he’s going for an Encircle on British turn 5.

“I do admit that the defiant defense of L13 broke my back. I lost too much damn time trying to reduce that building, and lost all direction of how I wanted to proceed once I did. I’ve still not recovered. I think I know what I should have done, but it’s late now and I need to deal with an assault. Not good, as I expect the broken 648 to rally (“7″ or less), leaving me next to a 20FP stack led by a -2 leader. My hope is all the +4 terrain will benefit me as much as it has the Brits, and I’ve three stacks that can deliver 20FP+ attacks in retaliation. I expect two to survive.”

I was wondering when I did it how smart the move to M12/N12 was. If the Melee continued, I think it would have been reasonable. The question was of course, the more likely outcome of losing the HS. Possibly, I should still be skulking at this point. But the Germans still had four turns to Exit (slightly over two hexes/Turn), and if I put myself in a position that’s hard to get at, it would be hard to interdict any move towards that.

“Interesting question. I’ll not answer as I don’t want to give out hints as to what I hope you won’t do so I can win this thing and maintain my record. “

“Entering Turn 6 this has definitely turned into a dice game. Rindis rallies a broken squad, leaving a stack of 3 648s and a 9-2 next to three of my stacks. Rindis hit me in Prep with a 20FP spraying fire attack that managed to do nothing more than Pin 4 squads and break one. My return fire hit him with a NMC and a 4MC, which broke the 9-2, HoB’d one squad, Pinned one, and killed the last through CR. Rindis then advanced the Fanatic unit into CC in M12 and killed a 467 while retaining Melee. My 8-0 bagged his broken 338 in Melee as it tried to withdraw, leaving me with 10CVP. Only 2 more to go!”

“Turn 6 is now a conundrum for Rindis. The 648 in Melee is enough for me to win, as is the broken 9-2. I am now trying to both win the Melee and kill the 9-2, so I can win if either plan fails. With only one 648 to interdict, I think I can pull at least one off.”

Start of German Turn 6

When I start seeing the possibilities on cutting off routs, I may stop losing.

I’ve surrendered. He can move guys into P12 and P14 without me being able to shoot at him. I can’t get effective fire on multiple stone locations (+4, here) with a single squad, so I can’t rout my leader.

I didn’t like the M12 move when I did it. It threw away the advantage of a ML9 squad, split up my seriously depleted forces, and risked losing almost immediately on a lucky die roll. Patch mentioned to me the idea of going to N13, but with how desperate I am to conserve what I’ve got, I can’t really afford sitting out in the open for +1 shots. I suppose it’s a valid idea, but I can’t see that working out either.

But, I didn’t see a better choice. Letting him gang up on my guys with the ability to firegroup three stacks just wasn’t something I could afford. I would actually rather have gone for N11, but I’d go CX advancing there. If I’d seen the possibilities for cutting off my leader’s rout, I would have risked Interdiction to get to P13. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. But at least I’d get the extra -1 on rally, and its obvious that I could not afford to have a valuable broken unit wandering around.

Overall, I’m moderately happy with my performance. I did relatively subtle things wrong, and when I paid the price for letting my troops get out of touch with each other, I kept what I had left intact longer than I thought I could.

“And I accept! Well played.”

“I wasn’t sure I was going to pull this one off at all, especially when I both vehicles. Learned some valuable lessons there. Those paratroopers in +4 terrain were tough!”

“I was leaning towards an advance into N13 by the Fanatic unit for two reasons. One, it removes you from being adjacent to the M12/N11 powderkegs, and two, it permits you to cover the valley to the south with fire. If you advance to O12 and I break N12, you’ve lost all cover to the south. I’d gamble on that 9ML unit surviving my Prep, which would leave my units in the open adjacent to yours. With a -1Ldr in N11, I think your chances of surviving the resulting ambush dr were poor if you had advanced into O12. Perhaps just delaying the inevitable by this point, but I think that would have been my move. Still, you did well in CC all game.”

“I’m looking forward to PB4 and the eventual campaign game.”

I’ve seen Patch get convinced that things have gone horribly worse than they really have on occasion, but this is probably the worst case of it I’ve seen. L13 did indeed take way too much effort to clear, and that could easily be fatal in another situation. However, he had a pretty good handle on everything else during the scenario, and it didn’t have an insanely tight schedule to meet. It was only a matter of time before the position went, and when it did… that was the bulk of my defense in the area, so I couldn’t afford the inevitable loss of L13.

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

Thanks to having gotten into ASL later than Patch… well, being active in ASL later than Patch, one of the things I had that he didn’t was Croix de Guerre. I like the early war period, and this particular module has some fine scenarios. Patch wanted to see the French in action, so we tried out “Bridge of the Seven Planets” in October 2006…:

Again, the game is in progress, and I’m getting started on the AAR writing early.

Though, if I can make a few more major rules mistakes, this could get short….

Anyway, Patch has been wanting to try out the French, so we’re playing this bridge crossing (gasp!) scenario from CdG [this was played shortly after Journal 7 and the -1 bridge TEM temporary errata]. It looks interesting, and seems good for getting me back up to speed with vehicles. (Not that I ever got much experience with them.)

The weekly Wednesday on-line session started the game, so there’s not too much to say, as we’re at the beginning of Turn 2, and it’s taking a bit of time to come to grips with each other.

…A bit more time than I’d expected, in fact. The most notable news is that I completely muffed a ‘remember the rule correctly roll.’ I walked a 9-2, squad and MMG into a 4 -1 firelane attack that I thought would be a 2 +1. The resulting 1KIA killed the squad, and the MMG is still lying in the road after the same HMG got a K/1 on the squad sent to retrieve it.

This all means I’ve barely got anything around 16L6, which was going to be the early firebase and jumping off point.

Overview of the map as of Turn 2 German Rally.

New Rules:
Trucks and all associated passenger rules.
Vehicular ordnance

Rules Lessons:
A9.22 Fire Lanes are one column to left, not 1/2 FP like other Residual FP.
A9.222 Fire Lanes ignore SMOKE, grain, brush, marsh, FFE, Dust, huts.

Patch provided most of the reporting for the scenario:
“Yeah, the 9-2 moving into the firelane path, followed by a snake-eyes was a dream come true. I on’y wish I’d nabbed the 9-2 instead of the squad. 3VP, and the 9-2 goes away! I’ll have to stick with the 2VP for the squad instead. My other fire was surpisingly effective, breaking two other squads.

“Rindis is coming in more spread out than I had expected. I’m hoping that works in my favor, as I’ve the board nicely divided into thirds with MGs. Too early to discuss my strategy as I still have a lot of Germans to hurt. More to come!”

“German Turn 2 movement continues through the mail. I’ve managed to Pin two squads at the expense of losing a MMG and HMG ROF, but a squad’s IFP at long range nailed a 467 on the 2FP -1 column with another snake-eyes, reducing it to a 237. Another VP! This is tempered by the fact that the more I look at my set-up, the more I realize I should have given it more thought. I’m less than happy with several features. Too late to deal with it now. *sigh*”

“I can’t go into what I’m doing until more units are on the board, but it looks like Rindis is doing what I predicted, but not as heavily (aim for the 16L6 area as a jumping off point). I’m curious to see how his Turn 3 reinforcements are directed. Should learn more tonight on VASL.”

“Well, Wednesday didn’t go well as Rindis didn’t show on VASL. Train delays kept him from getting home on time to play, so we’re still doing things via email.”

“Turn 2 went poorly for the Germans. Rindis still has yet to score a MC against any of my units, and I continue picking away at his squads, breaking two more and killing another HS. However, I still cannot damage that damn truck with my HMG. 20 hexes appears to be a nice safe zone for it. His units are too spread out, and I’ve managed to break all his units on the right side of board 16, where there’s no leader. I’m sending down a HS to see what mischief it can cause amongst those broken units. I don’t think the French were meant to counterattack in this scenario, but it’s not stopping me!”

“Several errors were committed by me up to this point, but it’s too soon to discuss as it concerns hidden units. More on that to follow.”

“I now await those turn 3 reinforcements. Things are about to get complicated for my units.”

Honus asked:

“Are you using the -1 Bridge TEM rule in this scenario? I speak of the recent errata in Journal 7.”

Patch answered:

“Ya know, we’re not even that far along yet and it hasn’t come up. Personally, I’m more inclined to abide by what the counters say, as it avoids a whole host of new questions. Must be discussed with Rindis, however.”

And then I responded:

I had meant to mention this when we got going….

Personally, I was planning on using the errata. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I generally support it, and I’m not changing that just because I’m attacking across a bridge.

Besides, at this rate I’ll be lucky to clear out the French in front of the bridge….

“Turn three proceeded slowly last night, only bringing us through the entry of German reinforcements. We’ve now a light breeze blowing to the SW, and I’m hoping that it will kick up to heavy winds and eliminate Smoke cover for the eventual bridge crossing. I’m doing rather poorly, not only managing to muff near every die roll, but I also broke an HMG on the right flank for the second time (thankfully, Rindis also broke an MMG). Rindis went gun hunting with his trucks, and I managed miss with every infantry shot against the vehicles as they trundled nearly to hexrow Y, even surviving my MMG’s boresighted hex. Guns are still hidden, and I’ve my first broken unit. I’m hoping things turn around over my turn 3 and I break another unit or two, and maybe bag a vehicle.”

Yes, German Turn 3 movement was something of an epic.

After the mistakes on turn 1, my attack pretty much stalled before it even got to the initial defenses. This put a lot of pressure on me to ‘get it right’ this time. I futzed around with pre-RPh placement for two evenings, and then had a disagreement with the interpretation of the scenario card, which had me going back to do it again during the Wednesday session.

Towards the end of my movement, Patch asked me, “You do realize you have four trucks, right?” I looked at the card, and sure enough, there was a ’4′ beside the truck counter (as the line was long enough to wrap ‘up’ at the end), that I had missed when pulling counters on Vassal.

…So I pulled out three more and moved them on as part of the end of my movement. With how things have been, this isn’t a big loss for me. They couldn’t have really gotten anywhere I’d want to go that I couldn’t reach on foot and unload. I’ll admit a second one to begin with would probably have gotten used.

Beyond that, the turn went fairly well. My position is better, French units are finally coming out from under concealment, and I’m finally causing casualties. I’m probably a full turn behind the schedule I wanted to keep, but I’m certainly not out of it yet.

Now where are those darn French Guns?

Situation East of the river, end of German Turn 3. Three trucks are in motion, the CX at the right is a French HS, the center DM is a French HS, and the ACQ is where the PzII is firing on a suspected Gun location.

“It’s turn 3, and I’ve managed to malfunction an HMG for the third time. T_T”

“Thankfully, though I don’t know how to shoot them, I know how to repair them. I’m hoping this one comes back on line fast, too.”

“Prep Fire nabbed another squad due to casualty reduction. That’s 7VP so far! Woo!”

“Turn 4, and I fear Rindis is failing a Personal MC (hasn’t broken, but I believe he’s Pinned). I nailed a 9-1 and another squad, giving me 10 VP total and he’s only CR’d a single squad. He’s now getting reckless and making errors. The tank has driven forward to try and clear the 16N1 woods, but I revealed an ATG and promptly Shocked it. I expect it to die my Prep Fire, and with luck, a truck.”

“I have managed to successfully malfunction an HMG for the fourth time this game during Defensive fire. I’ve been fortunate in that I’m repairing them straight away, but this is ridiculous! This is getting as bad as the time I rolled 20 boxcars in a 6-turn game. My only saving grace is Rindis’ attack has become disorganized. Can he still pull it off? Yes, but it will take some work.”

I think I ELR’d to a 6+1….

I just could not come up with a something that would get me where I felt I needed to go, and not lose everything doing so.

The good news is I figured on loosing the PzII as soon as I found a Gun…. Armored tactics are not something I’ve had any practice with, and this is my first time I’ve had an AFV that had to worry about other than MGs.

Now if I could just get my infantry game back….

“If Rindis didn’t fail his MC last turn, he’s struggling with one now.”

“Turn 4 opened with me failing to repair an HMG for the first time, so I was worried about how much fire I could drop this turn. Rindis is finally deploying for an assault on the 16N1 woods, and I’ve got several squads adjacent to my units and a tank up front. My Prep Fire needed to count.”

“Rindis’ first mistake of the turn was leaving a truck (towing the INF gun and MTR) in LOS of an HMG. I missed, got ROF, then turned it into a burning wreck. The next ROF malfunctioned the gun, so I’ve no active HMGs on board. Not good. My ATG in X1 fired next, getting multiple ROF and finishing off his Panzer and destroying a truck. Infantry fire broke a squad and a HS and battle hardened one of his leaders to a 9-1. I’d be a bit worried by that result except for the fact that I’ve now acquired 23 VP. 2 more and it’s over.”

“I think Rindis’ attempt to attack on a wide front is what initially hurt him the most. With squads spread out across the board, I’ve been able to break units away from leaders, which has his officers trying to rally units rather than direct fire. In addition, since he’s spread out he’s not been able to direct effective return fire against my units. I think a more concentrated assault would have worked better.”

“Sorry, still no pictures.”

I am going to call it… after one more spiteful fire phase. I’m a bit tempted to drag it out a bit, to get a better feel for a few things, but I don’t think it’ll tell me much at this point, and I’m certainly not getting across the bridge without giving up the final CVPs.

If I can find time, I should go back and fiddle with turn 4 some, and try to figure out what to do.

I began with not a bad plan. But it was a bit too much for the starting forces. The general idea was to have some flankers to try and keep his flanking forces occupied while I tried to start reducing the defenders in front of the bridge. I think the real mistake was having an extra squad out behind the Z hedge. Spreading out that far left me too vulnerable to taking losses in the center, which I promptly did.

Of course, the real mistake was feeling too much time pressure on turn four, and trying to force the foxholes. I needed to take another turn for it. I don’t really know if I could afford that turn, but I could certainly afford it much more than the losses I took. Also, part of that rush involved me changing plans in the middle. I decided against my earlier idea on the moving the truck towing the INF and carrying the 81mm MTR (which wouldn’t be the same vehicle if I’d realized that I had more than one…). Whether it would have been any safer continuing to slog through the wheatfield is hard to say. I probably could have kept it safe from all the currently known Gun positions, but there’s still two out there that I haven’t seen….

“I think you definitely needed to get your Guns unloaded and deployed, and started dropping Smoke on 40D1 and around the woods to start blocking LOS and permit your infantry to assault. Your radio also needed to get into play. Once you got units forward, it was frightening how fast the French folded.”

“If you wish to reverse roles and try again as the French, I’m game.”

…Patch’s guesses about my personal Morale Check were off. The real problem (reflected in my lack of reporting) was failing the PMC in the first MPh where I walked my best leader, squad and MMG into a firelane, not realizing that Grain Hindrance would not apply. The dice promptly punished me with a ’2′, and my heart was not in the rest of the scenario. Some of the later events showed that this was indeed not a game-killer, but it was hard to see it that way, and I still struggle with keeping reverses in perspective. Of course, I’ve seen Patch do it on occasion too.

The broad-front attack is a theme you’ll see a few more times. I think… that may be trained into me by strategic-level games (which is my usual interest). My instinct is to try to ‘tie down’ troops away from the main action to keep it from being reinforced. In ASL, the attacker usually needs most everything supporting the main thrust so that it can continue after being blunted by enemy fire.

Timing issues on pressing ahead (like in turn 4 here) have been a recent problem for me too. Here, I was feeling pressured by the fact that it seemed like I had gotten nowhere for three turns, and wanted to have time to put pressure on the far end of the bridge before trying to cross it (with a -3 FL down the middle of it) instead of being forced into a last turn rush across. As it was, I didn’t get that far.

At some point, I certainly do need to give this one another try. The parts of the scenario where I wasn’t blundering into rules and setup errors were very interesting, and it needs a proper go.

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

Again, long after I thought I’d be done and get it out the door, I’ve released the next version of the Federation & Empire Vassal module.

Download it here:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents/F&E 1.3.zip

The changelog for this version is longest one yet; it’s a pretty massive update. Here’s a quick list of the highlights:

* The ISC extension is updated for the actual published version of ISC War.
* The scenarios are now bundled into the module, so the zip is just the module plus extensions as separate files now.
* The capital charts are completely reworked so that you should be able to run a capital assault just from them.
* The racial charts and battle mats have been updated and look better.
* A lot of markers have been added as memory aids for combat. This includes handling hidden information functions such as which of multiple maulers is actually mauling.
* Added a bunch of carriers with heavy fighters, and separate counters for all the HDW (and similar) modes.
* New squadron counters for the Theater Transports, for when they’re working as a permanent team.
* A new extension (“Extras”) includes just about every unpublished ship that I have official stats for.

So, go download and enjoy! …And tell me what bugs and mistakes remain.

Oh, and I should warn you that the combined module & ISC extension are a pretty huge package. The main ISC scenario (“Driving Winds”) is also pretty massive, so you will need to give Vassal more memory space than the half-gig default. Go into the Vassal module manager, and the the module itself and select “Preferences” from the File menu, and change “JVM max heap” to 1024 (from 512). Otherwise, you’ll probably be able to load, fiddle around, but not save anything big with the ISC….

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

Well, okay, yes, it is a Cretan victory. I’m just bitter.

The gang got together for a 5-player session of Advanced Civilization on Sunday. We’re getting more practiced at this, and got things going very smoothly. We drew for order to chose civs in, sat ourselves down, and had a very fast moving morning.

I got first choice, and decided upon Thrace, while Patch took Egypt, Dave took Babylon, Jason took Assyria, and Mark took Crete for lack of any position more enticing.

I did my normal job of abusing Thrace’s generous AST schedule and heading for Greece’s high concentration of city sites. Jason headed directly south with Assyria, while Dave maneuvered around him, leading to Assyria stretching from Lake Van to Palestine, with Babylon stretched 0ut around it from the east, to the north, and around into Anatolia. Mark’s Crete ended up primarily colonizing western Anatolia, jostling with Babylon, and my colony across the Bosphorus, with a small presence in Attica and Morea (we also ended up splitting Euboea).

I ended up with a very solid start as I got lucky in early trade card draws, and with a little dealing, got some solid 4 and 5-card sets, which allowed me to purchase three Civ cards at once, and then two more two turns later.

At this point I had a very solid lead, but as I pointed out at the time, having an obvious lead as we broke for lunch meant I was in for a miserable afternoon with the ‘biggest bulls eye’ award.

Well, it wasn’t miserable, as I never experienced quite as much destruction from disasters as I expected, but I had a hard time getting my feet under me again, and spent several turns stuck at four cities, which largely halted progress. Mark had largely caught up, and kept causing problems, with both of us stuck at the entry to the Early Iron Age (working on all those cards), while the rest of the table spent time stuck at the entry to the Late Bronze Age. We actually had to go back and sort out the AST at one point as we realized we’d been forgetting it after no one had moved for 2-3 turns, and every one was in Late Bronze now.

Mark had had a weak looking start as Crete, but benefited from Civil Wars in Egypt and Babylon, which gave him some foreign city sites that stayed up for a long time. (He got one city in the deep desert of Egypt, and then one near the Nile through Treachery, and Patch didn’t manage to get rid of the Cretan population and then the cities until after Mark got a couple from Babylon.) This did a lot to power him into a very solid second and start passing me by the end of the day.

By the time we had to pack up, I was still only at eight cards, and had muffed my trading on the last round and shut myself out getting any truly good deals. Though I might have been in a good position for the turn after, if there had been one. Mark, however, managed to pick up card 9, and finally passed into the Iron Age before we had to pick up for the day. In addition, I ended up with a Treachery from Patch that I couldn’t get rid of as I had traded myself into a corner.

Final Scores:

So, yet again, I placed second (7 out of 8 times now), though this time I had a fairly clear lead for a while. I do believe this is Mark’s first win in our group.

We’re thinking about trying to arrange a Saturday where we can go much later than the normal 5 PM and try to get to the final end of the game.

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

Norwich’s A History of Venice is a good and thorough work covering from the initial colonization of the islands of the Rialto to the city’s fall to Napoleon (roughly 420 to 1797), but I found it a bit disappointing. However, I spent most of the book wondering why. Partly, I think, it is because there are very few personalities in the book. Norwich himself actually complains of this on two occasions—there’s just very few places in Venetian history where you can say anything about the personality of someone.

However, I think the main problem is I was hoping for a history of the Venetian state, and the book is really a history of the city, though restricted to that period where it was a state. Which is to say that except for those occasions where outside action impinges directly on one of Venice’s holdings, those holdings don’t show in the book. It feels like a stage play with one set—Venice—and news from abroad is sung by the Greek Chorus. There’s no sense of how the overseas empire really worked.

But, Norwich loves the city of Venice, and that love shows through on every page. One thing that is tracked lovingly through the pages are the buildings and monuments of Venice. When a new building goes up, there is a footnote telling what part of it is still visible today. When a Doge dies and is put in a tomb, there is a footnote giving where it was, and where it was moved to if anything happened to it. Visiting Venice with this book in hand would be a real treat.

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

I have a few things I want/need to write and post. But they’ve all been big, and I haven’t been able to convince myself to sit down for a long stretch and pound some of it out. But I took part in the big survey over at Paradox last month, so I received the free copy of Cities in Motion going into the weekend and want to share some thoughts.

I’m not a big fan of city builders and the like, sandbox games tend to be something that I just don’t stick with for very long. But there’s some interesting things with this one.

First, it isn’t really a city builder. SimCity et al. put you in the city board office; you’re zoning areas, working out the main street grid, and working out the infrastructure. Instead, you’re only dealing with mass transit, more like in OpenTTD.

But it isn’t that either. OpenTTD and A-Train and the like have cities as little things, and you’re establishing transit links across the countryside. CiM is concentrated on single urban areas, leaving you to manage bus lines, tram systems, and the expensive subways. No trains (at least, not under your control) or airlines here.

It is also mostly oriented around a campaign, so you are given scenarios and a constant stream of goals to accomplish. In keeping with it being published by Paradox, this is more of a sim than its cousins, with each map being a particular city (mostly Western/Central European, with NY, SF and Tokyo appearing in expansions). However, this also leads to trouble as the behavior of the lines in the game don’t really match with expectations, with the need to have a bunch of small interlocking lines to make make money with bus routes instead of long sprawling ones. (Or is this just the inhabitant of the land of failed mass transit speaking?)

At any rate, an interesting technical wrinkle is that the passengers get on the transit system with particular destinations in mind, so success also rides on satisfying those. I know that OpenTTD was pondering how to put something like that into its model the last time I looked.

And then late Sunday night, I finally got around to trying out Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun. As is usual with Paradox, the first reaction is that of being overwhelmed. The more so in this case because it is more detailed than the usual, being kind of all the concerns of Europa Universalis with all the concerns of Imperialism added on top.

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

Mark came over on Sunday for a day of gaming. He’s been busy lately, and this was arranged on a fairly ‘last moment’ basis, but we had a good time with Paths of Glory, which is on the list of ‘familiar with, haven’t gotten a good feel for it’. We’ve both played Pursuit of Glory, so we know the system (with occasional lookups to make sure the two don’t do one particular thing differently), but he hasn’t played PoG at all, and I just have one partial game with Jason under my belt.

But things went very smoothly, and we got through 5 1/2 turns in one day with neither of us being familiar with the cards, or what we could expect from turn to turn. Mark wanted the Central Powers, and lead with the standard Guns of August opening.

When I played Jason (also as the Allied Powers), he suffered from shifting his focus around too much. He started trying to crush Serbia, and I managed to keep generating crises on all the other fronts that kept him shifting troops around and never finishing off any particular project. Mark did not suffer from this, but I’m not sure any coherent direction ever emerged.

The main action tended to be on the Western Front, but I would guess that with more activity and determination, this could have turned into quite a problem. Certainly, the first turn ended with destruction of the BEF and a flipped Belgian army retreating from Brussels. But I had made sure I had an Allied RP, and the Belgians moved back at the beginning of turn 2, soon followed by the British 1st Army. The “shot trap” of Sedan has proved quite deadly indeed, I pushed Mark out of there twice, nearly destroying a full stack in the process the second time.

Meanwhile, he had more luck at the southern end of the line. Belfort fell midway through the day, and Nancy a turn or so after that. Of the initial fort line, only Verdun remains. At least it is the site of my only successful entrench attempt, and so has a level 2 trench.

Meanwhile, the Russians had been steadily pushing on the Eastern Front. I had been trying to keep Mark somewhat off-balance and worried about RPs, but the Germans just generate RPs too easily (especially now that he’s played Rathenau). So I’ve been slowly sliding over to a policy of trying to drain the Austro-Hungarian army. The Russians advanced into Czernowitz fairly early, and played Romania early to extend the front line. After taking Lemberg and advancing into Przemysl (haven’t managed to destroy it in two siege phases so far), Mark finally reshuffled the entire AH army, abandoning Cluj, which I had been threatening to cut off for some time. As it is, AH is still thin on the ground, and is out of reserve corps, with 9 corps and 3 armies in the eliminated pile.

I got Italy on turn 4, and had quite a decision to make. Mark was not making particularly fast time towards Total War, and I contemplated burning it for 5 Ops and trying to cycle back to it in a hurry before going to Total War myself. However, this being Mark’s first time, there was nothing on the borders beyond the at start AH corps. So I played the neutral entry and besieged Trent and Trieste. A German army was hurried down and kicked me back out of the former, but Trieste has been taken. The GE 6th Army may become a major problem, but so far he can’t advance for fear of being out of supply.

And that’s about where things stand. I’ve copied everything over to Vassal, and we plan to continue in on-line sessions every Wednesday.

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

Late last year, I picked up Empires of the Silk Road, as it looked very interesting.

And it is, I highly recommend it as an extremely well done history of a part of the world that most people just don’t know about from pre-history to the current date.

But—this book is not for the faint of heart. If you want some light informative reading, you will find the book overwhelming.

This especially holds true in the prologue and first two chapters of the book, where the footnotes and endnote references fly thick and furious. With all the flipping back and forth, and integrating the three different bits of text together, it can take over a quarter hour to get through two pages.

The reason for this is that for the early parts of the book, Beckwith is an expert holding forth on the more obscure parts of his field of expertise. He is well aware that almost everything he has to talk about hinges on specialized knowledge, and the footnotes and endnotes contain clarifications, and when he argues against the conventional interpretation, the general line of logic that leads to his conclusion.

That said, he does make some assumptions of knowledge. If you don’t know about linguistic reconstruction (and I’m lucky that I’ve run across it before), you’ll be wondering just what he’s talking about at many points, and what all those stars in front of words mean (which is a symbol for deduced, but not attested form of a word). As it is, many of the notes, and all of Appendix B, go pretty heavily into the field, and there are pronunciation glyphs I’ve never seen before.

Speaking of Appendixes, there are two of them, to go with voluminous endnotes, a Prologue, and a Epilogue. Appendix B goes into the reconstruction of the names of various peoples from Chinese sources, working out likely earlier forms of the names, and where those names can be equated with names in non-Chinese sources. Appendix A goes into his reconstruction of the initial diaspora of the Indo-European people, and the initial branching off of Proto-Indo-European into daughter families. I recommend reading it before Chapter 1, and Appendix B before Chapter 2, as they are heavily referenced in those sections. The Prologue is concerned with the “First Story”, which is a story cycle common to many Indo-European cultures (including the Romans) as a hero/foundation myth. The Epilogue is about the concept of ‘barbarians’ and how the modern conception of such is not only inappropriate to an understanding of the peoples of Central Eurasia (as he takes pains to point out during the book), but is inappropriate to an understanding of the original term, and some of original sources, but is especially inappropriate to use with Chinese sources, where several different terms for ‘foreigner’ that have little or no pejorative implications, are usually translated into English as ‘a kind of barbarian’.

The main part of the book is a history of Central Eurasia, or, more properly, the “Central Eurasian Culture Complex”. This history is delineated by broad cultural borders that change over time, not geographical ones.

I have to admit that there are large sections of the book where I am an unarmed man against some of his assertions. In general, I think his construction of pre- and early history are sound, but I don’t know enough to raise many objections. My main problem is that he seems to be a bit too strong of a Diffusionist for my tastes, asserting that the chariot was only invented by the Indo-Europeans, and allowed them to impose themselves on the various peripheral cultures.

The bulk of his book spends some time pointing the importance of trade, and the fact it is generally the peripheral civilizations that try to restrict trade, and the Central Eurasian civilizations often attack with the stated demand of opening up trade again. The Age of Exploration is looked in the light of one trade system (the Silk Road) being replaced by another (the Littoral System), with the current backwardness of the area resulting from the collapse of trade in the area.

The last couple chapters turn into a screed against Modernism. Again, I’m largely mentally unarmed against his assertions, but I judge he paints with entirely too broad a brush. He sees Modernism not just as a new movement that overthrew previous traditions, but as a movement that relies on overthrowing the old, and therefore has led intellectual life down the blind alley of continual revolution without trying to move forward with the results of any of those revolutions. He then ties that into to efforts of “Modernist” regimes to destroy the cultural past (as examples, the Soviet efforts to destroy religious community and the Taliban’s destruction of Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan).

Again, I do highly recommend the book. I have some potential problems with it, but it is far more important than those problems. I would certainly like to hear from people who can talk to my concerns better than I can, but in the end it’s biases are fairly clear, and the value of a history that ties together the events of such a large area ranks very high, also the bulk of the most interesting points of the book have not been touched on by me here. Finally, the notes do a valuable service in pointing out places where further scholarly study are desperately needed, and I hope that some of these gaps are directly addressed in the future.

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

Lost to the West is a very good readable brief history of the Byzantine Empire, and I recommend it as such to anyone who would like to familiarize themselves with the subject.

However, the subtitle “The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Saved Western Civilization” suggests a particular thesis for the book, which it does not follow. Byzantine culture is brought up on occasion, as well as the rise and fall of education during various periods. However, ‘saving Western Civilization’ only comes in at the end with the population fleeing the Ottoman Empire, and bringing copies of various Roman and Greek works that had lost in Western Europe.

I’d kind of like to see a detailed look at just how certain works have been transmitted down from ancient times to today, but that is a specialized subject, and not part of this book. Similarly, there is only passing mention, at the beginning and at the end, of how ‘Byzantine’ history has been ‘lost’ to Western culture, not least because of how it has been somewhat artificially removed from ‘Roman’ history.

But it is good, light, general history, and if you enjoy it, I highly recommend the author’s podcast, <i>12 Byzantine Rulers</i>, which was done to go along with this book. Conversely, if you enjoyed the podcast, you will enjoy the book.

Originally published at Rindis.com. You can comment here or there.

Once upon a time, this blog was new, and I was just beginning write my thoughts for the benefits of posterity and anyone else who happened by.

Around the same time, something else was new to me: MMORPGs. I’ve been a gamer of various sorts for a long, long time now, but MMOs were something I avoided. And then a roommate got into WoW, and I fell into the trap a month later.

So, anyway, a lot of the early portions of this blog are posts talking about what was going on with me and WoW. As time passes, the number and frequency of these posts declines, until I stop talking about WoW at all. However, I didn’t stop playing WoW, or at least, not for years later. Meanwhile, the other major component of my posting, talking about the board games I’m playing, continues straight through to the present.

While I did not officially discontinue my subscription to WoW until December, I pretty much did not play it at all during 2011 (with some very limited exceptions). During last year, I did talk about WoW with Smudge a lot.

Both of us were unhappy with the game. This was probably harder on Smudge, who had invested more time and emotional energy into it than I had.

One of the things I wondered about was how much of what I liked about WoW had to do with novelty. For me, there will never be a ‘first MMO’ again. There will never be the process of discovery of how to go into an instance and be a productive member of a group. There are certain things where I can’t go back again.

A lot of that latter process is what my early blog posts on WoW are centered around, which is actually the second wave of enthusiasm for the game. The initial wave, was the general exploring the large expansive world, and all the different options the game presented. The wheels came off the wagon when my main hit about level 40. The world was too big, and I found myself struggling to remember where I was, what I was doing, or assimilate any new information, and getting very frustrated in the process.

Ordinarily, I would think that I probably would have backed off, and come back and poked at it as interest and spare time revived, and someday worked through it. However, Smudge and I were regularly playing together, and Dunain and Blanc were adventuring and questing together, and Smudge was pressing us on past my ability to keep up.

The arrival of some of our friends on the server, and the resultant activation of the guild, followed by steps into a lot more instances and group play, brought my interest back. Shortly after that, the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, came out. In retrospect, this was probably my favorite era. Some of the storytelling was coming together, the environments were great, and many of the dungeons were stellar (I still have fond memories of Sethekk Halls and ‘Fun Time!’, and heroics…).

After this, my enjoyment starts falling off. I spent a fair amount of time with Wrath of the Lich King, but I never got as involved. Dunain was there every week, he and Blanc spent forever going through all the questing (as normal). But I spent almost no time on my alts.

My primary alt for about three years at this point was Farmishi, a paladin who had always had something of a split build in back of her idea. Dunain had ended up as a Marksmanship hunter (even all through BC, when Marksmanship was largely ignored as not doing competitive damage with the other two skill trees—he still did well, and had the utility of various special shots), but with Farmishi I split between Protection and Holy, and found later that I had independently discovered what was being called the ‘Survivadin’: doesn’t do a lot of damage, but is extremely hard to kill.

I was proud of Farmishi. She could solo things that Dunain couldn’t consider. She soloed an instance boss once when the rest of the party fell over at the start of the fight. Really high damage she couldn’t deal with, but anything that relied on lots of low-level attacks was right up her alley.

And they pretty much killed Survivadin and, likely, all other reasonable cross-specialization builds in LK. Not directly, Cataclysm did that, with it’s insistence that most of the points you’ll ever have will be put into one tree before you can put anything anywhere else. So, I hardly played Farmishi at all. Everything that I’d spend years building up had been taken away. And I think it stopped me from doing much on the rest of my constellation of alts.

So LK was just the Dunain Show. (Or really, the ‘Blanc and Dunain Show’.) And there were a lot of good things in that expansion. But, it was harder to be happy with it.

Cataclysm ended up putting the problem into stark relief. Hunters were radically changed, which affected the last bastion of my WoW time. Now the general idea of creating yet another mechanism for how special abilities work (along with rage, energy, mana, and whatever it is that Death Knights use) is cool enough, and it is kind of odd that Hunters should be using magic… so conceptually, the idea is fine.

The problem is that Hunters went from having a system that required long-term management, to one that needed constant attention and management. If I wanted that, I’d already be playing a Rogue. Hunters went from a fairly satisfying class for me to a very unsatisfying class. Worse, my damage was awful, and I never did figure out why.

Not that doing less damage at higher level was much of a problem in most situations. Balance in Cata seems to be way out of whack, with world questing being insanely easy, tough dungeons being slightly tougher than world questing used to be, and heroic dungeons almost as tough as they used to be. The middle ground of challenging, but not insanely hard has disappeared right out of the game. This is a trend that started earlier, but really became egregious at this point.

Which is a shame, because the writing can still be pretty good.

While off of WoW, Smudge and I talked some. I have plenty of gaming interests, and spent some of last year catching back up on some of my primary interests in computer gaming. However, we were trying to find something to play together. There were a few possibilities, such as Trine, but there does seem to be a lack of multiplayer RPGs out there. (We tried playing Baldur’s Gate that way ages ago, but it started having blue screen errors where it was not recognizing that the disk in the drive was in the drive. I was tempting to try it again with the GoG version, which being pure download, should not have that problem.)

Over the years, we had tried out various other MMORPGs, mostly the free-to-play ones that have come over from Asia. None of them were very satisfying, and all tend to have okay combat engines, no real effort in plot or role. Kitsu Saga (the last we’ve tried of that sub-genre) was kind of interesting, since you generally pre-planned combat by setting up combos that would automatically cycle, and the crafting was done by giving little fox-spirits (Kitsu) jobs to do in gathering and crafting. You would also choose one to accompany you and provide bonuses in combat. For someone who doesn’t want a bunch of key-mashing (like me) it was somewhat attractive (and the fox spirits helped that!). The writing, however, was… not present.

Age of Conan went to a free-to-play model in 2010, and it did turn out to be surprisingly good. The art style works, the environments felt right, the writing was good, and the quest giving was especially nice, since it was all fully voiced, and you’d go through a conversation where you’d get plenty of choices on where to steer things, dig for more information, be rude, whatever. It really made the world come alive. Sadly, this is only true for the early part of the game (which I have yet to get beyond), after that, the voice acting stops, and the writing goes downhill. Also, the combat can be pretty button-mashy, since in melee you have to decide what direction you’re attacking from; surprisingly, I gelled with it fairly well (at least the lower level versions, it gets more complicated later).

Rift had a free weekend to celebrate the six-month mark of the game. They also offered the game for $5 that weekend. If I hadn’t been in the middle of the really tight part of the financial cycle, I might have bought a pair as a “just in case” measure. As a game it was very good, resembling a very polished and worked-over version of early WoW with extra options. The writing was ‘ehh’ at best, the quests were nothing new, and the monster design never got above ‘beaten with an ugly stick’. But, we were very tempted to switch over to Rift purely on the strength of the game engine.

And during much of the last year, Star Wars: The Old Republic was getting closer, and promising to be wonderful. Of course, we’ve heard those promises before. So, Smudge was staying cautiously excited, and I was looking on with a large dose of cynicism.

The best marketing campaign I’ve ever seen is BioWare’s open beta stress test. People got to play the game for free, and see just what it was going to be like. Smudge got in on it, enjoyed the early parts, hit the first instance and immediately said, “I’m getting this!” She got me in on the next (final) weekend, and yeah, it was good, it was fun.

I ran out of money at the end of the year, so I was a bit late getting the actual game. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it is very good, and I’m certainly going to get my money’s worth out of it.

Part of what makes it interesting is that it is an RPG first, and an MMO second. Much of the experience is very plot-driven. Each class has it’s own story, which you follow through to the endgame (or so I assume, I don’t know anyone who’s gotten there yet). You’re guided through the same locations (at least on a particular side), so there’s a lot of content that is the same, unlike some JRPGs where if you’re given a character choice at the beginning, each one probably only intersects with the others instead of paralleling them. This causes some trouble for going through several different characters (and their stories) at once, but it allows for you to group with friends (this is an MMO afterall), and experience it all together, which is one of the places where TOR shines.

Almost all the quests are given in voiced conversations, and I have to say the amount of work for various cues is impressive. There’s a lot of ‘yeah I see where this decision tree is going…’, but at the same time, NPCs will (occasionally) react to the character’s gender, or will acknowledge that he’s talking to a group. It’s some very impressive work, the bulk of the voice acting is quite good, and unlike AoC, it continues all the way through the game.

There are a number of places where the game is ‘just another MMO’, but at the same time, there’s a lot of ‘fun’ in the design. Going around with lightsabers is fun, playing a smuggler is fun (I understand that Sith/Jedi are the predominant classes, but whenever anyone talks about the classes, it’s ‘smugglers so much fun!’), the conversations are fun. Watching someone else’s combat from a distance is visually interesting (as opposed to just an exercise in recognizing the special effects going off).

So, I’m spending more time and thought on TOR than I’ve spent on WoW in years…. And I might talk about the ride some from time to time again.