The Ramparts and Ditch at Castle Douglas

Reports of Spring are so far greatly exaggerated in Regina, although we supposed to hit +6C this weekend.  I am hoping for a long slow melt off to minimize the flooding.  Here's three shots of our snow banks for posterity's sake.  I've included my daughter as a handy benchmark - she's 5'7" tall.

The walk up to our front steps (around a corner behind the daughter).  I have shovelled the snow off the roof (from up top) once and raked it clear (from the ground) several times.  Note the ice dam along the roof edge - our's is much smaller than others thanks to my snow clearing.

Basically Katie's in the same spot but it's a different angle looking towards the street.  The pile beside the driveway is one of the largest on the street and safely conceals our two vehicles from the right angle.  The house across the street has some nasty ice dams.

The big pile from the driveway side.  Again the benchmark is 5'7" so I'd guess that the pile is close to 6'.  I've knocked the top off it a couple of times.  The foot prints in the pile are from where I climbed up so that I could get a better angle for raking the snow off of the roof.

Happy St Paddy's Day

And let's remember that Banjos were cool way before Mumford & Sons or the Avett brothers.

Happy Pi day

Why We Drive A Subaru

Aka What Winter Looks Like, aka Why An Outdoor Game is a Ways Away Yet

I took these photos this week while walking to work.  Every year we have this on going discussion with my brother in law (who lives in Halifax and is an expert on EVERYTHING). It basically goes like this "you really don't need all wheel drive, front wheel drive does almost as well and uses less gas and any way it's not a problem once they plow the streets", "but they don't plow the streets", 'yeaj but once they plow them it's not a problem"....

Anyway we've had 1.4m of snow and we rarely see a snow plow on anything but a major artery.  So the snow gets compressed down (on our street the multiply daily school bus trips do it nicely) into 4-6" of solid ice.  Think of Sedimentary Rock being transformed into Metamorphic Rock and you get hte idea.

Typical side street moonscape driving.  The university student in the background gives context of the snow bank and drift heights.

A neighbour cleared the sidewalk (that's a pavement to you Brits) down to bare concrete.  At the curbside (sic there is a curb in this photo) she found that her sidewalk was a couple of inches below the current driving surface.

Here the city has cleared the ice away from a manhole cover - note the 6" drop below driving level.  This one sits in the middle of an intersection of two side streets.

Tough to see but for most of the winter there was a car parked here.  Note the second car under the pile of snow on the left.  Because the car provided shelter - the bottom of the hole is the original paved street level.  The top of the hill is the current driving level.

Old Stuff Day

So what is Old Stuff Day?  Well I got this via Bleaseworld, so I'll let him quote Warhammer 39,999.

"On this day, each blogger can go through their history and find posts that they’d like to shake the dust off and present again to the community at large. Some suggestions for content that would be good to post: 

* Posts that you considered special that didn’t receive as much attention as you thought they deserved
* Content that people liked in the past, but haven’t seen recently 
* Posts you might have created before your site received much traffic, and now deserve to be reshown
* Or any content you’re particularly proud of!"

It's the 2nd of March, there is 6" of ice (compressed from 4-5 feet of snow) on out street and I'm running out of room to put the snow from the driveway.  So now the weather from last fall doesn't seem so bad and I'll repost....

Outdoors Adventures

So an actuary, an archivist and a French literature prof walk into an open field...

Sylvain wanted to use his 1:1200 WW2 battleships in a Fletcher Pratt style game, so he decided that we would do it grand scale and play in a park.  With winter approaching, this was best done sooner than later so Sylvain, Curt and I went out to play with toy ships in the park today (much to my family's amusement).

Today's weather was, well bloody cold and miserable...Ok my picture didn't work but the weather network has the following readings at 2pm on October +6C (-2C with windchill), and winds of 43kph from the NW.

I had two USN battleships (USS Colorado and Arizona, based on neither ship being at Pearl Harbour on the 7th) while Curt  fielded the Kongo and Ise for the IJN, with Sylvain acting as GM.  After about 35 minutes of game time (about an hour and a bit of real time) we traded some hits with my eyesight proving superior to Curt's.  He decided to cut and run, which was quite alright with me.  I did my running sprinting across King's Road park chasing down ship logs and turning circles blown away by the gale force winds.

I am sure that Curt will post much better pictures but here are the ones off of my I phone.

Colorado (to the right) leading Arizona

Same ships but from a lower angle.

My fleet in line a head.

Sylvain and Curt by the IJN force from the USN position.

Sylvain takes measurements while Curt takes photos.  Note the paint roller shell splashes - very effective!

We're ranging in on the target.

Curt's shots are short but getting closer.

Rules discussion.

A hit!

Battlefleet

I got my PDF copy of Battlefleet by email this week and I thought I'd give a shout out to a couple of fellow bloggers involved in this production.

First of all, what is Battlefleet?  Well it's a damn fine publication and it's the journal of the Naval Wargames Society.  And it's a steal of a deal at £4 for an annual electronic subscription as its pages are chock full of useful articles and game ideas if you have any Naval inclinations at all.  Even if you are too cheap to put out the £4 you should check out their website which has great links, scenarios and a newsletter All Guns Blazing, all of which are (as my father in law would put it) free, gratis and at no additional charge.

And yes, the editor of Battlefleet did ask Curt, Sylvain and I to submit an article for a future issues based on our latest convoy game.  But don't let that discourage you from the publication - I'll admit that I had a bit of a Groucho Marx moment and wondered if I should be reading a journal that would accept me as an author!  But heck no they have much higher standards than that.

Ok the two bloggers are

1. Jeff at http://forhonourssake.blogspot.ca/ who has stepped up and taken the editor's role for the NWS - great first issue Jeff; and
2. David at http://dtbsam.blogspot.ca/  who contributed an article on a WW2 Med based action for General Quarters.  Good article David, I expect that I'll be subjecting my local gamers to a raid on Genoa shortly!

Convoy Action 1941 - The Final Act

We fought out the rest of the convoy action last night.  To allow Curt and Sarah the use of their dining room table, we marked the ships' positions with tape and rolled up the sea mat in the interim.  

When we rolled up the mat last week the situation was as follows. 

1. Sylvain had a Kriegsmarine raiding group of the Scheer, Lutzow and Hipper had attacked a convoy.  The raiders operated in a single group against the tail of the convoy, coincidentally attacking from downwind.  This allowed Curt to concentrate the escort and use smoke to shield the convoy, but allowed Sylvain to hit the escort hard.   The raiders were absolutely untouched but out of torpedoes.
2. Curt's convoy  of 8 merchantmenwas almost untouched but able to steam at full speed.  The  fast transport HMS Manxman was long gone on its merry way to Gib.
3. The close escort of 6 destroyers (3 H class and 3 Hunts), 2 C class AA cruisers was on its last legs.  Curt had used up all his chemical smoke and most of the ships were badly damaged.  The attack from the rear also gave them the chance for torpedo attacks, but while he placed these well and had multiple attacks they all missed. 
4. A cruiser squadron from the RN covering force (HMSs Gloucester, Ajax, Arethusa and Euryalus) had arrived on table but been hidden from German eyes by smoke until the range was very close.  Further RN reinforcements were possible.

Sylvain opted to continue to close with the convoy, giving Curt the option of backing off with the cruisers or placing themselves between hunters and prey.  Curt opted for the latter and they steamed for a close encounter of the nasty kind!  Curt focused his fire on the Scheer, while Sylvain split his between all four RN cruisers.  But initially the 11" guns of the raiders hit the light cruisers hard, while initially their heavier CA armour was proof to the 6" replies.  

Then a few key turns changed the entire battle around from a German victory to a British one.  As the range closed, the cruisers 6" guns were able to go through the Germans' armour and opportunities for torpedo attacks got better.  (One problem with attacking from astern is that your opponents fish close at 70kts and yours close at 10kts!)  The Scheer was hit several times and slowed while German fire had an off period and largely missed.  Next turn, the Scheer was torpedoed and clearly in trouble.  Curt split his fire between the two pocket battleships next turn, sinking the Scheer and badly hurting the Lutzow - knocking out both turrets and slowing her.   German fire was very effective in return leaving 3 of the 4 cruisers badly shot up and with rudder hits.

By this time, further British reinforcements had arrived in the form of 3 J class destroyers and 3 flights of Swordfish torpedo bombers.  We abstracted out the denouement.  The swordfish focused on the Hipper and the destroyers on the Lutzow.  The Swordfish attack missed and the Hipper got back to Brest undamaged, but the DDs survived close range fire to torpedo the Lutzow and leave almost dead in the water.  Sylvain opened the sea cocks before the Swordfish returned or the Warspite and Rodney showed up.

Photos are from Curt.   Again the German ships are by Sylvain and the British and merchants are mine.  

The sides close with the Scheer taking fire and on fire, but largely unhurt.  The convoy legs it at 10 kts.

Red post it notes mark torpedo spreads (a very useful game aid).  Despite them, things are still rosy for the raiders as the spread in the foreground is a dummy!

Curt launched two Walrus float planes to distract Sylvain, just before the hanger on one cruiser was wrecked!  We have the Gloucester, Ajax, Arethusa and Euryalus in line.

Scheer on fire, followed by the Lutzow and Hipper.

Torpedoes away!

Close up on the Scheer - a very nice paint job Sylvain!

Three flights of Swordfish escorted by Fulmars, all operating from HMS Eagle.  In the back ground is the Scheer, by this time the fire is the least of her problems!

Another close up of the raiders - like the glaciers you should see them before they go for ever.

All in all this was a good, challenging game.  At one point, Curt's wife Sarah wondered in and asked who was winning.  Sylvain replied that each side thought the they were losing!  For much of the game I worried that I had given Curt an assignment with no chance of victory (when I wasn't worrying that I gave Sylvain no chance) but he pulled off a major coup.  As GM I put the reinforcements on table to try and balance the situation.  In the end the Swordfish and J class in time to mop up the remnants, rather than stem the tide.