Remembering PRESTAGS

Napoleon at Borodino

Of The FMW - Five Quintrains

Five Quintrains for Python. 

 

Of no boys weekend Python lament,

Because no forum for his news.

All his mates were absent,

The weekend, just empty pews.

So alone in Sydney he stews.

 

But not long did Python have to wait,

One mate his dates did send.

The other mate alas, a nasty ingrate,

No reply bad news portend.

So hope for Python  suspend.

 

But clever lawyer mate,

a cunning plan he did conceive.

Don’t worry about the date,

Just a new name to deceive.

Cause Thygo, well he’s naïve.

 

Instead of boys weekend, what is it,

Well it’s a cracker.

Why nothing but a simple Kanbra visit,

To the home of the duck caretaker.

Python at last, a merrymaker.

 

But what is the Python’s news,

He’s so desperate to impart.

Could it be some sexual blues,

That needs a heart-to-heart.

Poor old Bonaparte.

 

Of GAS Attacks And G-Shocks

GAS = Gear Acquisition Sydnrome.

A potentially serious disorder, common in PRESTAGS era males, and can be contagious.

Over the last six months I have managed to completely tame my field recording equipment GAS attacks, and much moderated my photography equipment GAS attacks.

Last week's purchase of a Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ90 was a relapse, and I blame Thygo because he is always tempting me with photography GAS ideas.

My new TZ90 is currently charging, ready for a test run sometime soon.

Nevertheless G-Shock GAS attacks have continued unabated, and I am expecting the arrival of another one this week. Bad Boy.

However, there are some G-Shocks that are beyond the reach of a GAS attack.

Unfortunately.

There is the 18 karat pure gold (as in real gold) G-Shock, model G-D5000-9JR (2019). Only 35 were made.

And there is the G-Shock MRGG1000HT (2016) "Hammer Tone".

This one was hand crafted using the tsuiki technique. Only 300 were made.

And there is the G-Shock MRG-G2000GA-1A (2019) hand-finished by Japanese swordsmith Sadanobu Gassan. Only 300 to be made.

But the one that I like the most, is the G-Shock MRG-G1000RT-1A (2015). This one is made from Titanium 64 alloy which is seven times harder than pure titanium.

Only 100 made.

Just dreaming.

I haven't forgotten, Python will want a G-Shock with a special background.

I think a white G-Shock in a white fridge next to a white Napoleon is pretty special.

 

Wars of Napoleon: Great experiences but average game

The PBEM club I joined (to learn Alea Jacta Est so I could train the readers of this blog as agreed at the last Boys Weekend) are about to give up on Wars of Napoleon (covered in earlier blogs, and featured in my right column image that never changes). While the chrome is beautiful...

..and the historical detail of units entrancing ...

...and the historical events put you in the spirit of the times...

..the victory point and peace system is horribly broken. In the game where I was France and lost Paris, the English lost 8000 vps because a sign was wrong. In the current game where I am smashing France as Blucher, I cannot go the peace without a risk of a massive penalty:

With my new strategy of controlling the territory around my armies with cavalry brigades, I would like to have another go as France, but while the battles are fantastic, there is no satisfying way to win the game.

The rest of the club is very happy with Advanced Tactics Gold (also covered in other blogs), the Napoloeonic team are out looking for something better. The Wars of Succession looks interesting,  but we are annoyed that it brazen claims to be the same game as Wars of Napoleon without the defects. Why not fix the original!

So while I am grateful for nine months of intriguing gaming, I am annoyed that I cannot get a sense of completion from any of the campaigns.

There is my 50 year old rant. I want lots of turns that challenge. What do the rest of you want?

First thoughts on Civilization VI

I have had a three games of Civilization VI - twice on warlord level to learn the system and once at prince level to get more challenge. In summary, it is a much easier game to win at but very entertaining all the way to the end.

Easier to win at because I won each game. However, each victory was a cultural victory. At the easier levels, you get more wonders and all the culture from them pushes you over the line. In the chart below you can see I am leading on all metrics except religion - I failed to prioritise founding a religion early enough - but cuulture is half way full while the rest are fingernails (see how much the Sumerian circle is filled in from the bottom on each case.

While a victory is a victory, you do not get a high score for a cultural victory.

Taking cities remains super tricky in this invocation of Civilization. However, as none of the AI opponents bother to upgrade their armies, it becomes straight-forwards from the Napoleonic era onwards.

What makes the game quite captivating is how many things you can do. Unlike previous Civ game, not every city builds the same enhancements. You tweak you city towards what you want to achieve: Arts and Culture in the centre near you capital, and Industry and Military towards the border, where you need them. Notice below my capital is far from the border so has a Colosseum, a Forbidden palace, and Entertainment district and the Theatre district, but the obligatory Ziggurat (cos I'm Sumerian).

There are now two research charts - civics and science, but they cross over a lot. What is super cool is that to get a step up on a research project, you get a practical exercise. if you can do that, you cut the research time in half. Force example, if you win a battle with a slinger, you get a leg up on archer. If you build three musket armies, you get a leg up on rifling. You can't possibly get all the leg ups, but you find yourself desperately looking for iron to mine, or a space port to build at certain times of the game. These sub-projects are fun, and often get you into trouble, which make things interesting.

Tip for new players: If you enter a village, you can get a bonus leg up. The Sumerians treat every barbarian encampment as a village, and there are no shortage of those, so Sumerians are a good power for your first game. You build a mobile army early and wander around the map hunting barbarians to get leg ups!

Also note down the bottom you can see where you are relative to everyone else. The English (Victoria) are trailing badly, but me taking their capital did not help!

There are also other project you can get into. You can collect books, art, relics and curios for your libraries and museums. I did not do much this last game as I did not want to win a cultural victory too quickly.

I was annoyed at not having a religion, so took the capital of someone who did and proselytised for them, but the game did not pay that. I think it should. After all, who owns Jerusalem!

The end comes suddenly (for a cultural victory). You are just about to make you next attack when a movie starts. (One of many nice animated sequences in the game. I paricularly love the "construction of a wonder" sequence.)

The chart shows that I pretty much lead from the Medieval period. Time to try a higher level of difficulty. I don't need to sleep!

Bigger than Jena Auerstedt!

Python Magnus has pulled off another stunning victory!

A French army of 130,000 (twice the size of Jena Auerstedt) met a Prussian army of 105,000 (slightly smaller than Jena Auerstedt) and won a crushing victory, but are now exhausted. We took five times the losses of Jena Auerstedt but inflicted almost three times the damage, or four times what we received. I have captured 7 battalions of artillery! There will be one more Prussian corps to locate, but I think they may be down for the count.

The Battle of Bitterfeld shall go into the history books as the greatest butchery battle of the Napoleonic era; one year before Jena Auerstedt!

Who wants to join be in a fun PBEM? (There is a free spot for Austria in one of the games.)

Napoleonic Quiz #5

What article of Napoleonic memorabilia sold for $2.4 Million in November 2014?

A nasty situation!

I have taken over from Austria-Hungary in 1805 in a PBEM to find myself in a disastrous situation:

Napoleon has captured Salzburg and Vienna and Ferdinand is retreating north with his army in disarray. To pour salt on my wounds, the Ogre of Europe is blogging about his victories, and my Archduke is agreeing with him http://thegeneralshq.org/discussions/won-game-2-aar-s#reply-5220! Any the Russians are asking my advice on what they should do!

But that is not the worst of it. My fool generals have split their forces and napoleon is in between them. He can destroy each piecemeal.

The lines show my plan of how to reunite my armies in Buda, but it will take some luck and forced marching (things Boney has in Spades!)

The French Army of Italy is chasing me out. If Boney moves south, I am done for!

 

I am two timing

We may have sworn a vow. We may have meant that there would be no other. But, a man has needs, and a wargamer is no different. And why can't I have another on the side. It's not like it means anything. PRESTAGS is still my first, but without a turn I am like a didgeridoo without a breath, a muslim without a prayer rug, and orthodox church without an orthodox Pope. I didn't want it to go this way, but there it is.

I have joined a PBEM as France playing Wars of Napoleon with The General's HQ club. There, I have said it. Now shoot me. Preferably with 12 pounders on the field of Austerlitz!

But now is the winter of our discontent! With 19th century armies, you do not march around in winter or you have 19th century starving stragglers. So for the first 12 turns, I just make plans.

I have spoken with my good ally King Charles IV of Spain, and we have divided up Europe in a more ambitious subdivision than Hitler and Mussolini ever dreamt of. (My dream is to have a Charles on the throne on England before long!) However, as long as he gets rid of Gibraltar, he will be my hero.

The game is being hosted by the Austrian player. I am being as nice to him as possible to start with since he will have to put up with my armies marching around his country and dissolving his Holy Roman Empire before long. I suspect he lives in Austria based on his timezone. I haven't got to know the rest of the players, but we are all polite and swearing we know nothing about the game but will do our best.

In the mean time I am sitting in Boulogne with a horde of flat bottomed boats waiting to get across the channel.

While I wait for spring, I build the forces I need for the coming summer of love. All of Europe is at peace with me apart from England, so I need to buy a fleet.

Or perhaps I need the Old Guard. They don't lose a battle until Leipzig in 1813 - 8 years from now.

Whatever I choose, these 5 minutes turns are not at all painful, so I have offered to be a stand in for another player in another game. No, I suppose I have a 45 minute EDEE turn to attend to. I could be half way across the map in that much time, not stuck in a stalemate!

EDEE - Its all about the ecomomy

Although I do not have half the cities yet, I have flown an explorer through Paul's island looking for a TR city to nuke. (A strategy he taught me, although it is more to strike at the morale of the defenders than to reduce transports, for which the air force does a grand job.) What astonished me is all these low but useful cities producing nothing! Nilch! Nanda! Niente! Apart from Bakes Beans for the front.

Notice also the oil resource being ignored! In my empire, the oil resources are so heavily exploited that I could put every city under production. But I wait until they hit 100%, as they grow quickly below that level and slowly after.

Now Paul may claim that is a 105% city is only going to produce a plane every 11 turns, but multiply that by 30 and that is 3 planes a turn that Paul can only dream of.

The end is nigh. Might I suggest something different for a change:

You Can Never Have Too Many

You can never have too many wargames.

Or bottles in the cellar.

Or Boys' Weekends.

Or cameras.

I bought myself Nikon's smallest camera, the S02, to accompany my big favourite, the P610. I learnt during my recent holidays in Malaysia that sometimes it would have been nice to slip out a very small and discreet camera rather than the Big Boy. Obviously the capabilities of the baby camera are limited, but the quality is still better than (for example) my larger mobile phone.

The baby Nikon is much smaller than the palm of my hand, and not much bigger than the Napoleons. Speaking of the Napoleons, Python gave me the emperor on the left, and Thygo gave me the emperor on the right. Are my friends trying to tell me something?

Have I equalled my mentor?

I am inspired by the genius of Napoleon.

In 1805 he had collected his Grand Armee in Boulogne (in the English channel) waiting for the weather or some unexpeced brilliance from his admirals to allow him to invade Britain. The English cleverly (and with massive bribes) formed the Third Coalition with the Russian and Holly Roman Empires, and these declared war on the French. The Austrians wasted no time and marched to the Rhine only partially mobilised, occupying Ulm, the capital of Wurtenberg. The Russians headed towards Vienna only after fully mobilising. The Austrians probably intended to await the arrival of the Russians and then advance into France together.

Napoleon saw the opportunity immediately to destroy the Austrian and Russian armies piecemeal, and ordered his forces to gather north of Strasbourg.

With the intelligence that the Austrians were in Ulm, he ordered Murat to march around in front of the Austrians and look like the whole army. Meanwhile Napoleon took his Grand Armee around the north (hidden by the Black Forest) and into Bavaria. He achieved complete surprise - the Austrians had not known he had even left the English Channel.

Here he had not only separated the Austrian and Russian forces, but effectively cut the Austrian Army of the Rhine from Austria - there was no way home and no supplies for an advance into France. After a few skrimishes, the encirclement was complete. The Austrian Archduke Ferdinand escaped and the General Mack surrendered (and unfairly got the blame).

Had Napoleon simply attacked the Austrians in Ulm via Stuttgart, they would have fought a fighting retreat back to Vienna where they would have been reinforced. Instead, the indirect move had thrown the allies off balance and they stumbed to their destruction at Austerlitz a few months later.

I am a fan of the indirect move in Empire too. When I make contact with hostile forces, I keep them interested in some island I can easily reinforce but my main force explores and takes neutrals elsewhere until I am ready for battle.

In this last invocation, I only fought a few running skirmishes, before I received the surrender notices (right). The most interesting front was with Falstaff, but was never more than 30 armies on both sides and only five cities changed hands. I think there were almost fifty neutrals still to take when my opponents saw that surrender was their only sane option.

Still, I think it is good that we skip the unbalanced games and enjoy the more even ones. (I am expecting to start right next to Paul in one of the games where he is the One, and to be annihilated in 15 turns, so perhaps he will then remember my mercy.)

Is anyone for a few cheaper versions of the current units that do not move so fast?

Where to in 2015?

A new year is always a good time for a high level review. I have been thinking about where to go in 2015 with regard to wargaming. High points in 2014 for me were:

1. Playing Space Empires on the Boys Weekend
2. Blogging four articles on how to play Space Empires
3. Blogging a game analysis of Reinforce the Right (the first months of WW1 on the Western Front)
4. EDEE Games Reports

The low points for me were:

1. Climate change blogging - lots of research spent and no progress made
2. Thygs in Space - the initial code is done, but I need ships (and drawing of ships), technologies and planetary names to go to the next stage. I fear the project is dead.
3. Waiting for EDEE turns - you know how it is when you are on a roll, and then have to wait four days and when the turn comes you can no longer remember why that transport is redeploying across the map.

So my goals for 2015 are:

1. BOYS WEEKEND
2. Set up every Prestags scenario and play a few turns. Take photos and blog about them.
3. Resume work on Moderni Agone, so I can do some games on line.
4. Write a few pieces on Napoleon and his tactics, starting with the Capitulation of Ulm.

Boys Weekend

Yes, it will happen.

Yes, I will organise it.

Yes, it should be in New Zealand.

Yes, it will go ahead in Canberra anyway.

Yes, Junior Prestags are welcome.

Yes, we will play Space Empires.

Play a bit of Prestags

The blog is dedicated to Prestags, and the games are simple to set up and play, so why not. As much as anything, it give me something to do when no turns are arriving.

I doubt I will be able to coax Paul away ffrom his computer, but a few solitaire scenarios should make this blog much more interesting and perhaps get us into some good debates. (Moves issue 2 has a fantastic debate on the range of ancient arrows. It reads like an email chain, but was done in old school posted letters. I am keen on posting that.)

I'll start with Chariot and see how we go. The lack of stacking in chariot should make it a very bloody game, where an E and a ½E have the same effect.

Feedback on good scenarios to set up are gratefully accepted

Resume work on Moderni Agone

Combining Prestags with the internet has to be an all around winner. However, the first thing I need to fix is the name: Paul hates it and Peter ignores it.

I really enjoyed coding this game up. Even now, I keep getting good ideas for it. (My latest is an odds randomiser - just before the odds are calculated, I roll two dice. On a 2, I add two to the attacker strength, 3-4 I add 1, 10-11 I subtract 1 and 12 I subtract two. This stops the unrealistic behaviour of getting your odds exactly perfect.)

I also think I am only a few weeks from having a really playable game and we might even get Peter involved.

Interstingly, my new job is coding a phone user interface in a browser, so is very similar to this, so I expect I will be much cleverer and faster in coding enhancements

Write a few pieces about Napoleon

I agree with Victor Hugo's analysis that Napoleon was a military genius who was also the worst kind of tyrant. However, it is good to learn, even from your enemy. I have loads of good Napoleonic games that will make great photo opportunities. I am impressed with the Moves #2 issue that does a great report on a historical play of their 1812 game (Napoleon's invasion of Russia), although without photos as that was too tricky ffor a low cost puplication in the 70s.

I thought I would start with the Capitulation of Ulm in 1805.

This is a true classic where Napoleon destroyed an Austrian army of 72,000 without fighting a major battle, just a few skirmishes. Similar to the German march through the Ardennes in 1914 and 1939, Napoleon used indirect approach in 1805 to maneover around the Austrians and cut them off from their line of communications. They were forced to surrender (60,000 taken prisoner) and Vienna fell shortly after.

BTW Paul, may I have a "Napoleonic War" category, or something similar?

What are your plans?

What are your thoughts on this piece and what are your plans for 2015?