Bad personal news

A close relative of mine

Update

Well, I left Kansas last week and I didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked while I was there.  I did get to four things,

10 years ago...

Over the Memorial Day Weekend

[Editor - I actually typed most of this on Memorial Day Monday 5/26, but due the crappy internet service at the hotel I am staying at, I could never log on to Google so I could post this, and I have tried several times since!  I finally got this posted the first time that I was able to have a good connection.  Sorry that this entry seems out of time, but it would have been right if I only had been able to posted it when I wanted to have done it.]

I hope that everyone had a good weekend and got a lot of

Monday, Monday…or "Illegitimi non carborundum"

Well, it looks like the next 10 weeks

Mayday, May Day!

As I mention above, my work hours suck.  It is not uncommon for me to work well over 12 hours a day,

Really, I do play miniature games (! or ?)

Sorry about really having nothing interesting to talk about for my hobby.  Really, sometimes I don’t even know if I do game or I just buy miniatures and rules to store in my basement.  Sigh…

Anyways,

Whimsical Wednesdays

Something I found during my travels...

This was part of a car wash, as it is not just enough to traumatize Fuffy by go through the car wash, now he has to suffer the humiliation of being washed in the public so everyone can see his sad face.

This is what I suspect it is like when it is in use

Work craziness & an exciting game of “We Must Tell the Emperor!”

Hello!  Sorry to have been away for so long.  Well, I am currently working in Kansas after working in Virginia for a week.  Needless to say, I have been crazy with work and I have not been doing much fun stuff for the last several weeks…well, that and having an allergic reaction to a spoonful of seafood soup.  I thought it was vegetable soup, so I didn’t sniff it or do a test taste of it on the tip of a finger.  Anyways, it caused some swelling of the hands, but luckily nowhere near as bad as my first allergic reaction to seafood about a year and a half ago.  From what I read, 60%+ of everyone allergic to shellfish, develops their allergy during adulthood.  Oh lucky, me!

So, because of my screwy work hours Virginia (sort of a split 1^st & 2^nd shift), and my night shift in Kansas, I didn't get to do much sightseeing, but in VA, I did see the Civil War Center Museum and Edgar Allan Poe's Musuem.  I was not able to pack my personal computer when I went to VA, but I had some room in my bag to pack a solitaire board game to give me something to do on my time off when there was nothing to do in VA.  I got to play a game of Victory Point Games’ ‘We Must Tell the Emperor!’, which is an Out-Of-Print game from their ‘State of Siege’ line.  It is a fun game and challenging.  You are the Japanese in WWII and must fight five armies (Chinese, British, ABDA, US Army under MacArthur, and the US Navy under Nimitz.)  Only one army, ABDA, can be destroyed and never return, but the other four could be knocked-out for a short period.  The game is broken down into three epochs, Early (Pearl Harbor to Midway), Middle (1942-43), and Late (1944 -45).

This game I did pretty well as Japan and it literary went down to the last die roll!  But, I was not able to end the war with favorable conditions, but forced into an unconditional surrender (historical ending).  Below are the several pictures from key points of the game.  In the first picture is the set up of the board where the Chinese, British, ABDA, MacArthur, and Nimitz forces begin.

This next picture is from the end of the Early War era.  As you can see, the ABDA army has been destroyed and both the British and MacArthur’s forces have been driven far back.  The Chinese are in their original start position after several advances and retreats, while Nimitz has made some head way.

Now the next picture is from the end of the Mid-War era.  Nimitz was driven back and I garrison the Solomon’s with a fortress unit at the beginning of the Mid-War era and held him there until the last turn of the Mid-War in which Nimitz finally took the Solomon’s back.  The Chinese where kept in check, but both the British & MacArthur were making a comeback.

This last picture is the end game.  This is also the last card of the deck and had I beaten of the allies from landing on the Home Islands, I would have won.  The Chinese where breathing at the doorstep, but they couldn’t make to for the final assault on the Home Islands.  It seem fitting that the last card was for the “Battle of Okinawa”.  So the final Allied advance was the British, MacArthur, & Nimitz!  The Home Island defenses stopped the British advance, but not MacArthur’s or Nimitz’s.  So with my actions for the turn, I attacked Nimitz’s first and drove him back on the first try (Yea, I got three more attempts to drive MacArthur back to win!)  Then I failed the next three dice rolls (Crap!), but realized that I still had one Kamikaze token for a free attack (Yea!) Then failed that roll (Sumofabit…) Then I remember that I get one free ‘Banzai!’ roll to defend the Home Islands, so this was it…either push MacArthur back to the sea or lose face from the Emperor…failed!   So close to winning…sigh, maybe next time I can place the Emperor in his rightful position as the Sun King.  It is a great little game for the grand strategy for the war. 

Finally, I ordered some more of the ‘State of Siege’ games from Victory Point Games, which I am eagerly wait:  “Cruel Necessity” where you play the role of the Parliamentarians in the English Civil Wars; “Hapsburg Eclipse” where you play the role of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WW1; and finally, “Mound Builders” where you play the role of the Mound Indians trying to keep your culture from collapsing in the North Americas.  I am especially interested in Mound Builders as the hub of their culture which was in Cahokia and I live within spitting distance of there! (Well, not really, but less than 20 miles for a crow to fly.)

Well, as of now, I have not had much time off in Kansas other than tonight, but I don't feel like trying to pay a solitaire game tonight.  But I am spending some time to catch back up on my emails, blogs that I follow, and some other sites that I try to keep up with periodically.

Be seeing you

Sapper

AAR: A Falklands’ Patrol, or Cold-CoC-ing a penguin

Well, it has been a bit since my last blog entry that had any real substance, but I got two more notches on my New Year’s resolutions; I finished another book and got my first game in for the year! 

So first up, I just finished War of the White Death and have now started up The Soviet Invasion of Finland, 1939-40 (Soviet (Russian) Military Experience) by Carl Van Dyke.  If you want to know about the Winter War of 1939-40, I will highly recommend this book, War of the White Death, and the previous book that I was reading, A Frozen Hell.  You really need to read both and read A Frozen Hell first, then War of the White Death.  A  Frozen Hell gives an excellent political overview of the events leading to the Winter War, background of Mannerheim, and the Finnish view of the war.  War of the White Death was written using former Soviet documents and gives an excellent and detailed account of the war from the Russian side of the war.  Matter of fact the author deliberately avoids covering the same material in A Frozen Hell and states that one should read that book for the political & Finnish accounts.

On to the ARR of the game!

This was the first time that any of us played TooFatLardies’ Chain of Command (CoC), so it was a learning experience with a lot time of me sticking my nose in the book looking up things.  I limited who I invited because this was the first time with this system and I wanted Curtis T. & Steve H. as they have played a lot of TFL games before, and Glenn W. as one who has not played a lot of TFL, but has been reading up on various CoC reviews and AARs on other blogs so that he was rather familiar with the system.  We ran the game at the Wargamers’ Cave in IL (Thanks, guys!).   All in all, it is a good system and everyone was catching on how the dice worked and how to do things in the game.  Everyone commented at the end of the game that this was a better system than Bolt Action, which I am taking their word for it as all of them had played Bolt Action and I have not yet.  Unfortunately, as I was spending too much time checking rules as this was the first game and I am not confident with my memory to not look things up (but with repetitiveness, comes confidence and I plan to be repeating this system), I did not make notes of what happen in the game to give a detailed AAR.

While CoC is designed to be for WW2, it is open enough that it can be used for pre & post WW2 games up to a point and some people are already trying to adapt it for post-Colonialism Africa and Cold War era games.  So this first CoC game was using my Falklands conflict figures.  If you go back to some of my previous posts, you will find my stats for the Falklands weapons.  The scenario involved a platoon of British Paras probing an Argentine defensive position.  I used the British Paras rules right out of CoC as their tactics at the platoon level had not changed since WW2.  For the Argentine conscripts, I used the Soviet infantry rules, except I did not give them those national characteristics.  Instead I made one section “Die Hards” as in most of my readings, there was almost always one group of Argentine soldiers that would fight it out and only killing them would stop them from holding on their little bit of the islands.  I also made them Regulars to reflect one of the better infantry regiments, the RI 25.  I also ran the scenario in daylight hours to keep the game simple for spotting for now.

As mention before, a platoon of British Paras were to probe up an Argentine defensive position.  The Paras went light and were not carrying their Carl G or LAWs.  I have not figured the stats for the Carl G or the LAWs was the main reason for not including them in the scenario, but the Carl G was reportedly bad for malfunctions in the very cold climate in the Falklands with only the Royal Marines that had been in the Arctic Warfare training having minimum problems as they had been trained on the proper care methods.  I decided to treat the M79 grenade launcher the same as the rifle grenade.  The extra men of the Para’s platoon headquarters was not available as I assumed that they would be on other duties, wounded, or etc.  This was also the case with the support section for the Argentine platoon.

The Para platoon was being pushed by Steve H. (running the platoon leader and two sections) and Curtis T. (running the platoon sergeant and one section).  The Argentine platoon was being pushed by Glenn W.  It was easy for Glenn to run the whole platoon since there was enough support points that all three sections started entrenched and really didn’t need to move for the game.

The game started with the Argentine conscripts having a Force Morale of 8 and the Para’s with 9.  Unfortunately, Steve did not roll very well for the number of turns to move his Patrol Markers before the game began, (I guess the Argentine troops were using their night vision effectively that night).  So the Paras had to start farther back and had to cross big gap to try to push the Argentine conscripts on a hill.  Steve made good with one section right away for setting up a base of fire on one hill top.  Shortly later, he was able to get a second section on smaller hill in the middle of the board to also provide a fire base.  Curtis moved his section up the one flank of the main hill held by the Argentine conscripts.  For most of the game the Argentine conscripts stayed in their trenches and traded shots with the Para.  The Argentine sniper was especially a troublesome follow for the Para until the Paras finally spotted him and eliminated him in a rather overkill sort of way!

The game ended with the Paras not being in a position to push at least one Argentine section out of their trenches and hurting.  The Argentine conscripts were in better shape, but their Force Morale was in dire straits.  I did not keep any notes during the game, but I believe that the Paras had lost 5 or 6 men out of the 27 and the Argentine conscripts lost about the same number of men, with one being a section NCO, out of 34 men.  The Force Morales were at 8 for the Para’s and the Argentine conscripts had a 4.  The main reason for the major drop in the Force Morale for the Argentine conscripts was the one section NCO was first wounded and later killed.  It appears that he was the most beloved NCO in the platoon because both times that Glenn rolled for the effects of him being wounded, then killed, it was the worst result that could be rolled for the effects on their morale.

I really like what I saw with this gaming system and plan to revisit it again later this year.

Below are some of the pictures from the game with captions below them.

Be seeing you

Sapper

The British Commander signalling his troops forward

Brits on the move

Argentine conscripts are dug in to defend what is theirs

The Para section that was laying down supporting fire for the advance

The effect rolls for the hits against the Argentine sniper!

An Argentine section abandoned their trenches to move into a position to counter assault

Game end - the Paras elected to abandon the attack as the Argentine conscripts in front of them were "Die Hards"