Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Diplomacy Game: Fall 1907 Results

Hello again Diplomacy fans.   Our 2016 game is now at an exciting end phase as the two superpowers, Turkey and Germany, grapple for dominance.   Startling amid the Falll 1907 moves was Turkley’s patronage of the sole surviving English unit to drive the German army out of Brest, keeping England in the game.

Germany’s Austrian ally is now an army in exile, as all of its supply centres have been overrun by Turkey.   Italy struggles to survive, keeping its toehold in the south of France but losing Spain and Tunis to its sometime protector and sometime predator, Turkey

Fall 1907 Moves:

Results for Fall, 1907 (Movement)
    
    
General Notices:
    
    
Order resolution completed on 24-Jun-2016 at 22:01:04 EDT
    
    
Order Results:
    
    
Austria:
A gal - ukr
A ven Holds
A war Holds
      
England:
 
 F eng -> bre
      
 Germany:
 
No order for unit at Burgundy. Hold order assigned.
 
A bel - pic;  A ber - sil; 
A bre Holds Dislodged from eng (2 against 1). 
A bur Holds;  F den - nth; A edi - lvp;  A hol - bel; A lon Holds
F  nwg - nao; A pie - mar Bounced with spa (1 against 1). 
A pru Supports A war; F stp/sc Holds; F swe - bal; A tyr Supports A ven
      
    
Italy:
F lyo Supports A spa - mar;  F rom - nap
A spa - mar;  A tus - pie
Failed because Germany: A pie - mar failed. 
        
Turkey:
F aeg -  ion; A bul - ser; A con -bul
F mao Supports F eng - bre; A mos -war Bounced with war (1 against 2). 
A rum Supports A ser - bud; A ser - bud
F tri Supports A tus - ven
Support failed. Supported unit's order does not match support 
 given. 
 F tys -tun; A vie Supports F tri; F  wes - spa/sc
 And the results.   In the retreat phase, the German army driven out of Brest opts to retreat to the fleshpots of Paris.

And here are the results.  Germany, Italy and Austria all have to remove a unit, while Turkey gains another three, thus vaulting into first place with 15 Supply Centres to Germany’s 13.   Still a horse race, but the Kaiser must be feeling the pressure now.


Results for Fall, 1907 (Retreat)


General Notices:


Order resolution completed on 29-Jun-2016 at 19:46:54 EDT


Order Results:


Austria:
Supply centers were lost. Units that must be removed: 1.


England:

Germany:
Supply centers were lost. Units that must be removed: 1.
Germany: A bre -> par

Italy:
Supply centers were lost. Units that must be removed: 1.

Turkey:
Supply centers were gained. Units that may be built: 3.


Supply Center Ownership:
Austria: Venice, Warsaw (2 total).
\England: Brest (1 total)
.France: None.
Germany: Belgium, Berlin,  Denmark, Edinburgh, Holland, Kiel, Liverpool, London, Munich, Norway, 
Paris, St. Petersburg, Sweden (13 total)
.Italy: Marseilles, Naples, Rome (3 total).
Russia: None.
Turkey: Ankara, Budapest, Bulgaria, Constantinople, Greece, Moscow, Portugal, 
Rumania, Serbia, Sevastopol, Smyrna, Spain, Trieste, Tunis, Vienna (15 total).

Adjustments:

Austria: 2 supply centers, 3 units. 1 unit must be removed.
England: 1 supply center is, 1 unit. No units to build or remove.
France:  No supply centers are, No units. No units to build or remove.
Germany:  13 supply centers, 14 units. 1 unit must be removed
Italy: 3 supply centers, 4 units. 1 unit must be removed.
Russia: No supply centers are, No units. No units to build or remove.
Turkey: 15 supply centers, 11 units. 3 units may be built. 

 

Monday, June 13, 2016

Chips, frites, et poutine

Salut!  I am currently in la belle province de Quebec.   If you don’t know Canada, it’s hard to explain Quebec and its relation to the rest of Canada.   Think of Scotland and England, or Texas and the rest of the US, and you have the general idea.   Quebecois, like Scots and Texans, speak their own language and think of themselves as a nation within a nation.   

Quebecers also like chips, or, as they call them, les frites, and they like their frites drowned in gravy and cheese curds, which they call poutine.  It looks like this.

I had some at a baseball game this weekend.   I’m not sure I would rush to have it again, but it was, as they say here, delicieux.      

I brought some painting stuff to pass the time on course, but since I am teaching the course, I have less temps libre than I would like.  I have however been working on my own chips, for the new edition of Sharp Practice from Too Fat Lardies.  I think you can guess which period I am painting them for.

I would like to post more photos of La Base des Forces canadiennes Valcartier, because there is some cool hardware here.   Sadly, I had to take this photo by turning my Macbook upside down and using the Photo Booth app, since Madame Padre has the family iPhone in my absence. It’s rather sad that there isn’t a military museum here, as Valcartier is an essential part of our army’s history.   Today it’s a vast base, home to a Canadian Army brigade and the famous Vandoos (the Royal 22nd Regiment) but in 1914 it was a sprawling field of mud and bell tents, where the Canadian Expeditionary Force trained in 1914 before leaving for Europe.   More here.

Home this weekend.  Hurrah!

MP

Saturday, June 4, 2016

The Grizzled: An Eerie Card Game About World War One

The Chaplain’s Retreat that I mentioned in my last post is over, and while there the Padre Geek Contingent played a lot of games.   I got introduced to an addictive boardgame called Lords of Vegas, a kind of Monopoly meets craps game where cuthroat intrigue and strategy can stand or fall on the roll of a dice.  There was a game about racing camels that involved shaking bespoke dice out of a cardboard pyramid.  That was fun.   

However, the game that hooked us all was a small card game called The Grizzled, a cooperative card game about soldiers trying only to survive in the trenches.

 

 

A game for 2-6 players, The Grizzled (an English translation of the word poilu, the French slang equivalent of Tommy Atkins or doughboy), features poignant artwork and some simple mechanics to create a quickly building sense of doom and menace.   The object is for players to survive a series of missions and come through the war unscathed, so they can all go back to their village where they were childhood friends.   As the missions surmount, players’ characters accumulate psychic wounds, called Hard Knock cards, that make it harder to survive.   Between missions, players can try to benefit one another through kind acts in a phase called the Recovery Phase, to help heal some of these wounds.

It’s a hard game to win.  We played it three times straight, and we lost each time, but there were many theories as to how we could have done better.

There’s a review of The Grizzled here.  One sad thing mentioned in the review is that the lovely art for the game was done by Tignous, aka Bernard Verlhac, a French cartoonist who was killed in the Charlie Hebdou attacks in 2015.  

The Grizzled isn’t a wargame, per se, but it is a very effective way to think about war and to empathize with those who have fought wars, which is one reason why many of us play these games.  Highly recommended.

Blessings,

MP+

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