Come Cheer Up My Lads 'Tis to Glory We Steer

The naval game over at Clint's site http://clint-anythingbutaone.blogspot.ca is heating up and we should see shots fly next turn

Transposing Savo Island Pt. 2

OK let's work the key features into a 1941ish Med action.  One of the nice features from a gaming perspective is that the initiative swung back and forth between sides as did control of the air.

• Red should have an advantage in spotting and night fighting.  Translation the Brits are red and the Italians are Blue.  The combination of radar and RN night fighting training gave them a huge advantage early in the war.  
• Blue is escorting a fleet of transports that have successfully landed on Red territory.  The Italians didn't achieve this in history, but the possibility existed especially in the Aegean and on Crete.
• The Blue squadron is patrolling a straight that stretches from one board edge to the other, but there is an island midway in the straight so Blue needs to split his forces into two groups.  The Aegean certainly gives lots of opportunities for real or fictional locations that fit.  Translation Savo becomes the Greek Isle Savos.
• Red cannot linger and needs to get his squadron away in good shape to fight another day.   US air power ruled the skies over Guadalcanal and lame duck Japanese ships caught in the area come day break were quickly sunk.  Translation, replace US a Naval air power with the Luftwaffe.  This gives us a similar situation to the RN's situation during the assault on Crete.  They smashed a couple small convoys at night but paid a heavy price to the Stukas in the day.

So in summary with a have plausible location and forces to give a very similar balance to the scenario using forces from another theatre in the same period.

Transposing Naval Scenarios Part One

When I was in my teens, my guitar teacher used to have me transpose the chord progressions from Beatles tunes to different keys.  He did it as a learning exercise and also for practical reasons like finding a set of chords that worked in first position.  The exercise reminds me of something that gamers do regularly : take a scenario from history and use if in another period if setting.  C. S. Grant does that in his scenario books with games based on battles like Fontenoy, Thermopylae, Sedge moor and Flodden which can be used for ancient, medieval, hires & musket or modern eras.  When I am bored I like to think up ways of doing this with naval battles from history.

Case in point would be the Savos Island games our group (and the Mad Padre) played last year.  The genesis came from my reading a history of the Guadalcanal campaign (Neptune's Inferno).  There are series of nasty, brutish and short naval battles that have been played many times using US and Japanese fleets.  I wanted yo game the fights but didn't have the "right" ships.  In this situation there are two options.  The Sylvain option involves considering building the entire fleets for the Pacific War.  Yes he has threatened to build all of the ships required, but he may have been cured!  The Tim Gow option involves taking something on hand and making it work - much more to my taste, attention span and budget!  I had WW2 ships from the Mediterranean theatre.  A glass or two of red wine for lubrication and a think through and Bingo!  Savo becomes Savos and we're dealing with Italian amphibious operations in the Aegean interdicted by the a Royal Navy.

So here goes the Dummies Guide to Naval Transposition.  For simplicity I will use Red and Blue fleets in place of the IJN and USN.

Step One Identify the key features of the scenario

• Blue is escorting a fleet of transports that have successfully landed on Red territory
• Blue has detached a squadron to guard against Red's forces.  The Blue squadron is patrolling a straight that stretches from one board edge to the other, but there is an island midway in the straight so Blue needs to split his forces into two groups.
• Blue plots his patrols in advance and should move at economical speeds until contact us made. I used string to mark the patrol areas and scatter dice to note where the head of each column lies on turn one.
• The scenario takes place at night, spotting, identification and target acquisition will be critical.  There should be a chance of "friendly fire".
• Red has a force of roughly equal size to Blue but should have significant advantages in fighting ability and spotting ability.
• Red is ordered to pass through the straight and attack the transports.  Red plots his course in advance and follows his plots until contact is made..
• Red cannot linger and needs to get his squadron away in good shape to fight another day.  Historically US air power ruled the skies over Guadalcanal and lame duck Japanese ships caught in the area come day break were quickly sunk.
• In historical context Red wins if he exits the board yo attack the transports.  However, Red also wins by crippling the Blue squadron at low cost.  Historically, The IJN achieved the latter at Savo Island and withdrew without bothering the transports.
• Blue wins if the Blue squadron is able to sustain the patrol lines and the transports are safe.  Historically the USN achieved this in later actions in the campaign.

Now taking these key points and translating them will come in part two.

Not much shaking on the hill

Wow it's my first post in a month - talk about he dog days of summer!  Not much to report, and I think the only gaming has been Clint's plays by email/blog nappy naval game.http://clint-anythingbutaone.blogspot.ca

 I or my gaming group have travelling lately and it's  Regina Folk Festival this weekend.  Hopefully we play next weekend!

Cold War Music Box From the Other Side of the Iron Curtain

OK so I figured I ought to find a video that took a harder look at the "good guys" in the Cold War and thought immediately about one Billy Bragg, punk/socialist/folk singer.

Mr Bragg lets the US have it with both barrels and truth be told he scores a lot of hits with his shot gun splatter.   I figure a little introspection and self criticism never hurt anybody, but lets face it  I'd have taken the West over the East any day.  A lot of the points made in the 80s still hold true in 2014 - for instance with in the last 2 years PBS had a special on efforts to replace Evolution with Creationism in school biology texts.  So yes it may be land of opportunity but there's still a monkey trail on TV!

This video was filmed in the USSR in 1987 (well before the USSR ceased to exist)!  There's cool shots of Billy in neat looking hats and T-shirts, interacting with regular Ruskies and a steam train with a genuine Commie Red Star on it (how cool is that).  And my god Billy looks young and innocent.

And for all those young kids who wanna be rock'n'rollers:

1. Forget about overproducing and never underestimate the impact of one guy on a rhythm guitar.
2. Passionate singing trumps auto tune every time.

Now here's the song


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTneVU-E7Jo

There's a great interview with Billy on Q here.  He ranks on the list of rockers that I would like to chat with over tea in this case!.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa_LLnZ_qcA

Cold War Music Box Canada Day Edition

This week's Cold War Music Box selection is a Canadian classic (at least in Canada) and has been moved up a day to Tuesday July 1 for Canada Day.  More on the track later but first few words from our sponsors.

So What is This Cold War Music Box Thing You've Been Annoying Us With?
It started with my game of Funny Cold Wars with Tim Gow of Megablitz fame back in the first week of May.  In particular Tim made references to Top of The Ops circa 1979.  Coincidentally, I spent much time  both during and after my trip to the UK on airplanes with my iPod ear buds in and of course being a child of the 60s, a teenager of the 70s and a university student of the 80s, a lot of my play list came from the cold war era.  The game plus the music plus sleep deprivation led to Cold War Music Box.  Basically I come up with tunes from the Cold War Era and with Cold War related themes and load up videos onto the blog to torture my few readers.  This is likely a violation of the Geneva Convention, but heck the US got away with playing the theme from Barney 24-7 at Gitmo?

So Other Than Torturing Us With Your Taste in Music, What Else Have You Been Up To.
Travel mostly, and most of it work related.  Five days in Boston, five more in Portland Maine and three in Vancouver.   It was supposed to be three days in Portland but United Airlines decided to keep me there for two more due to thunder storms.   When you are flying from one regional airport (Portland) to another (Regina), it takes 2-3 legs and any delays mess your connections up.  I eventually took at 5am bus from Portland to Boston to get home.  When not traveling I have been either recovering from travel or catching up on stuff that got added to my list while travelling.

And yes when you're stuck in Portland Maine and it's piling rain you can do things like cue up several weeks post with annoying music videos.  On the plus side the seafood was excellent!


So Not Much Game Related Stuff Recently?
Reading yes, and a bit of reorg and a couple of board games here and there.  When I've been home often my gamer circle hasn't been.  Early July looks good for a couple of games and I'm due to do an El Cid game.

Ok Enoght BLather What is This Weeks Tune
Burce Cockburn's If I Had a Rocket Launcher a song that had the most ardent lefties (due to content) and the most ardent right wingers(due to wanting to use a rocket launcher) singing along.  During the Cold War era, the US and USSR didn't fight each other directly but rather through proxies in dirty little wars all over the world.  And if anyone can tell me which side's "Freedom Fighters" were worth supporting I'm a Dutchman (Sadam being the most obvious example).  Social activist super-hero Cockburn was in Central America doing aid work and saw the effects up close and wrote this decidedly non-peaceable anthem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7vCww3j2-w

Wet Weekend = Engineering Win

Regina is drying out after a very wet weekend - 91 mm of rain over two days following about 10 days of on and off rain.  Photos below.

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/regina/Photos+Regina+mopping+after+deluge/9986688/story.html?__federated=1

While neighbours were spotted lugging pumps and hoses about and pumping out their basements, ours stayed dry thanks to the work we had done a couple of years back.

We have a strange yellow orb in the skies (it burns the eyes) and it's scheduled to last 10 days.  Hopefully our very wet garden dries out before then.

Oh yes and Happy Canada Day!