Starship: Banquet Tent

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Matt Foster

It’s funny the stuff you learn if you go poking your nose into big, unmarked tents at Kennedy Space Center.

For our official Touristy Moment during a little camping trip over to the Space Coast, we decided to pay a visit to KSC yesterday. The weather was horrible, but it would be our last chance ever to see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad. So off we went.

Florida summer squalls never last very long, right? Or so we figured. I dropped the family off at the entrance in a thundering downpour, parked the truck, snugged into my big poncho and waded off across the flooded parking lot.

It rained pretty much all day, although the downpour slackened to a drizzle after 30 minutes or so.

Truthfully, the gray skies and morose drizzle sort of seemed to fit the occasion. Nine days until the end of the space shuttle program. Nine days until the end of America’s manned space program, with nothing much else on the horizon. For a space geek like me, that’s pretty depressing.

We rode a tour bus out to Launch Complex 39 and climbed the observation gantry. A few miles away, on Pad 39B, sat Endeavour — the “full stack” as they call it. Ready for STS-135, the mission being billed as “The Grand Finale.” Later, in the Space Shop, I eyed a couple of different t-shirts with “The Grand Finale” logo on them, but the idea of celebrating the end of the manned space flight progam just seemed too depressing to me. Instead, I bought a more defiant shirt with “I NEED MY SPACE!” splashed across the back.

“I hope we’re not about to enter another run like we had in the late 70s, after Apollo ended,” I said to my wife. We were sitting under cover at the Visitor Center playground, while Junior Crazy Boy bounced around and whooped it up.

“What’s that?” the Missus asked.

“You know, where we stick our heads up our butts because we’re feeling sorry for ourselves. We stop exploring. Stop wondering. Science goes into neutral.”

“No,” she pointed past my shoulder. “What’s THAT?”

I turned around. There, just behind the playground, sat a big tent. It was one of those extra-large tents with fancy windows, like caterers put up at outdoor wedding receptions and charity auctions.

“I dunno,” I said. “Looks like there’s something in there, though. A truck or something.”

“Go see what it is,” came my orders from HQ.

So I walked over and stuck my head in. Inside stood a couple of “prime contractor” engineering-types, wearing “prime contractor” polo shirts. They were standing beside a large-ish cradle truck that supported a big damned space capsule. It looked something like the recently scuttled Orion capsule, but a bit different. More angular.

“Come on in,” one of them said.

As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see that the capsule was accompanied by a bunch of stand-up banners — you know, the type of promotional stuff Prime Contractors like to put up at trade shows. It was a prototype MPCV. If you haven’t been keeping up with current events, that’s this thing:

The MPCV. (NASA image)

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/may/HQ_11-164_MPCV_Decision.html

This particular capsule had one of the hull sections replaced with plexiglass. Inside, the thing was packed with gadgets — computers, sensors, wires, connectors.

“It’s actually flown,” one of the engineers informed me. “We used this one for the first live test of the new launch abort system last month.”

OK. That would be this test:

“I was lucky enough to be in the control room for the test,” the engineer continued. “We’re a little late getting the capsule here because we recovered it in good enough shape that we thought about re-using it.”

I told him that I thought it was too bad they didn’t have a new booster lined up for the system.

“Well, we’ve got a full test flight scheduled next year on a Delta IV Heavy,” he replied. “The new booster we’re developing for it is scheduled to fly in 2013. It’s a lot more powerful than Ares, which could only reach low earth orbit. We want to go a lot higher than that.”

“The program is funded?” I asked, more than a little surprised.

“That’s what they tell me,” he said. “The new flight schedule for the MPCV is being announced July 8, after we launch Endeavour.”

So there it was after all, sitting in an unmarked banquet tent behind the playground. The future of manned spaceflight.

And, no. They don’t have t-shirts for it yet. But they do have little paper cut-out models, thoughtfully produced by Lockheed Martin. My kid snagged three of them.

All I can say is that I hope the real MPCV goes together easier than the paper model.

Temporary Insanity

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Matt Foster

Another little round of Real Life Interference isn’t the only reason this blog has again been too silent for a span of months. I’d also like to blame a bout of temporary insanity.

The primary symptom of the insanity was a sudden onset of time-consuming wargame complexity. For some reason — or lack of reason, more precisely — I decided to indulge in complex gaming exercises that I’ve managed to avoid for quite some time while still having lots of gaming good times.

Ah. Now I remember why, with few exceptions, tactical games set in the Pacific consume an inordinate amount of time.

Here’s a quick list of the new, somewhat fiddly, terrain types that appear in ATS Peleliu: coral outcropping, palm groves, bamboo, elephant grass, flimsy huts, casuarina forest, beach, shallow ocean, coral outcropping/shallow ocean, palm tree/coral outcropping, coral outcropping/casuarina forest, special anti-tank ditch, mangrove swamp, ponds, the japanese headquarters building, water cistern building, fuel bunkers, cave dugouts, airfield, airfield debris, pillbox/tunnels, aircraft hangar and fuel drum emplacements.

Name that terrain in ATS White Beach One.

Each special terrain type gets its own special rules. They’re usually a sentence, but some of them rate several paragraphs of combat, movement and line-of-sight effects.

On one hand, I understand the need for special terrain types. Landforms in the PTO were quite a bit different from the landforms found in ATS’ more “stock” European settings. On the other hand, I wonder if every single oddball terrain type needs its own specific blob of rules. If I played four or five PTO scenarios in a row, most of the terrain would likely become second nature. As it stands, though, I tend to flit from game to game on a regular basis, so the barrage of special rules means a lot of look-ups for me.

The terrain on the White Beach One map is also very close and cluttered. That means a lot of line-of-sight checks. When a number of stacks of playing pieces in close proximity are involved, those little sight checks can be pretty time-consuming as well.

Long story short, after one of my wife’s cats single-handedly defeated the Japanese defenders of Peleliu, I managed to get in a couple of short scenarios.

Then I really flipped the nutjob switch.

The next game to hit the table was “Birds of Prey,” from Ad Astra Games. Despite the fact that I’m a grunt at heart, I’ve always enjoyed the idea of air combat games. By “idea” I mean that I like all of the hardware, the sleek lines of beautiful jet aircraft and the mano-a-mano nature of play. What usually burns me out on them after a short spasm of air gaming is the complexity.

Yeah, I lost my mind for a while.

Birds of Prey is a very clever design that goes to great lengths to get the physics of air combat maneuvering “right.” It’s involved enough that I won’t even attempt a short description, but rather I’d invite you to look it up on BoardgameGeek if you’re curious.

I’ll just say that a lot of numbers are involved. A LOT of numbers. And some hefty 3-D imagineering using the game system’s “PHAD” (Pitch, Heading, Attitude Display). Once you grok the mechanisms of flight — which is enough of a challenge — you then face a daunting array of additional calculations in order to add in detection and weapons systems. Laminated play aids let you write out all of these calculations using a dry-erase marker. Individually, none of the calculations are that tough — but there are SO many of them. Even a “simple” one-on-one furball can easily take upward of 20 to 30 minutes to work through just one 6-second game turn.

I felt pretty satisified with myself when, after a couple of weeks, I got the whole thing to come together. After a few turns of serious dogfighting, however, it occurred to me that I was doing a whole lot of math and much less moving stuff around on a game map. The game is also very narrowly focused on only the “furball” aspect of air combat. Some of the more “grand tactical” aspects of air warfare that I really enjoy (hey, I wrote a series of college papers on electronic warfare…) are outside the scope of the game.

So back in the box it went.

Currently on the Big Table: “Semper Fi: Guadalcanal,” the PanzerGrenadier system sails into the Pacific. That’s something quite a bit less complicated. More on this one soon.

United States Marines:
The bad-asses of ATS

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Matt Foster

Before I dive into some serious cardboard bloodletting, I thought I’d have some fun (geek fun, but still fun) and dig a little bit deeper into something that’s caught my attention in ATS White Beach One.

ATS portrays US Marines as some pretty tough hombres. Since I’ve played a couple of other ATS titles featuring the Marines (Semper Fi! and Toktong Pass), it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it. But, finally, something this time pushed my curiosity button.

So I decided to take a look around some of my other ATS titles to see if the Marines were, indeed, the nastiest of the nasty that this game system has to offer.

Send in the Marines. Oh yeah.

I’ll confess that the first thing I discovered was that I have an embarassing amount of ATS stuff. I’m not a completist by any means, but my ATS collection consumes a fairly large shelf of the cabinet in my game closet. In case you’re not familiar with the ATS approach, many of the games are “complete,” meaning that each contains all of the counters needed to play. No single game is the only source for the core OOB for any particular nationality.

For example, White Beach One, Semper Fi! and Toktong Pass all contain several sheets of US Marine personnel counters. The upshot of this approach is that I’ve got a lot of unpunched counters — even though I’ve played at least a scenario or two from every game or module I’ve bought.

As it turns out, US Marines are indeed the baddest of the bad.

The counter format in ATS displays a personnel unit’s factors across the bottom as Firepower-Range-Morale. An infantry squad typically has four steps. when it takes its first casualty, you place a casualty marker on the unit and reduce the firepower and morale by one point each. The second casualty removes the marker and flips the counter to its reduced side. A third casualty result again places a casualty marker and a fourth casualty result eliminates the unit.

Finnish ski squads? Really?

Marine squads, as you can see, are rated 9-6-9 — which is the most potent combination of any squad in ATS. In all of the games of the ATS system, only Finnish ski squads (at 10-3-9) have higher firepower — although they’re somewhat limited by their shorter range.

My great-uncle was a BAR gunner.

In the OOB of a typical scenario, Marine firepower is usually augumented by at least one “independent” BAR gunner (which is treated as a leader for casualty results) and one M1919 light machinegun (a 5-8 light weapon) in each platoon.

Nazis. I hate these guys.

The “black” Nazi SS squads that appear in the Bunker expansion to ATS Berlin come close at 8-5-9, but they’re not very common.

Bunch of no-stat pansies.

Additionally, they suffer from the general uselessness of their higher-level backups. Old Adolph and Eva weren’t exactly well-known for their “follow me!” leadership.

The Marines at Peleliu, on the other hand, get Chesty Puller. The dude is so hard-core he gets an asterisk for his morale. ‘Nuff said.

Japanese squads are hard to dig out.

The Japanese squads that are the usual foe of Marines in ATS have their own very stony morale, but they don’t pack nearly as much firepower. Their stat line of 5-5-9 is frequently augmented with support weapons, however, and they benefit from a maddening array of fortified positions all too often. They make for some very tough opponents indeed.

Crazy enough to jump out of airplanes.

Giving credit where it is due, US paratrooper squads are also rated 8-5-9. They’re typically lighter on support weapons than the average batch of Marines, but their OOBs are liberally stiffened with good leadership.

More automatic weapons than Beau Geste.

The French Foreign Legion paratroopers that appear in ATS Dien Bien Phu are also fairly heavy hitters at 9-4-9. Their shorter range can be something of a disadvantage, but they frequently fight from entrenchments in the DBP scenarios and are very difficult to dislodge.

Ugly. And lots of them, too.

Finally, another common Marine foe appears in Toktong Pass– the large mobs of grunts from the Peoples’ Republic of Korea. At 6-3-6, they aren’t exactly born-again hard — but there are always a LOT of them in any scenario. I include them in this short survey primarily to illustrate why their lovely color scheme always gives me headaches.

Jumping into the Pacific

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Matt Foster

After a little break in the action to deal with a higher-than-usual volume of RLI (Real Life Interference) — caused by heavy sunspot activity, I guess — it’s time to get things cranked up again.

For the next few months (optimism: on) I’m planning to focus as much as possible on games set in World War II’s Pacific Theater of Operations, and on the history surrounding those games when I’m smart enough to figure it out.

As I’ve mentioned before, the PTO holds a lot of personal interest for me. It was the slice of world War II where all of the Foster Boys fought.

The map for ATS Peleliu is 24 x 24.

My Dad was born in 1930, so it wasn’t his war. Grandad Foster was a shade too old to fight and, besides, was employed in the strategic steel production industry. But two of his brothers fought in the Pacific, as did one of my great uncles on Grandma Foster’s side of the family. (Another relative flew as a volunteer for the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, but that’s a tale for some other time.)

Great Uncle Todd served in the 2nd Marines and fought on both Tarawa and Saipan. I keep the officer’s samurai sword he brought back from Tarawa under lock and key. Great Uncle Charles served in the 503rd Parachute Infantry. He fought both in New Guinea and in the Philippines, and jumped with the 503rd in their famous airborne assault on Corregidor in February, 1945. Great Uncle Preston was a Navy fighter pilot — but I’ve never been able to nail down the details of his service.

So, of course, I’m kicking things off by taking a look at game that has nothing to do with any of them.

“ATS Peleliu – White Beach One” is Critical Hit’s look at the 1st Marines’ early fighting in what would turn out to be the bloodiest battle in the Pacific War. It is not a complete game, as it does not include any of the myriad ATS markers needed for play. I own quite a few ATS titles, so that’s no problem for me — but I could sympathize with someone who may be disappointed in a $70 package (MSRP) that didn’t contain everything needed for play.

The new Japanese counters are very yellow.

The 24 x 24 game map covers a slice of Peleliu that includes a section of White Beach One and the area inland from it that stretches a couple hundred meters beyond the heavily fortified Japanese HQ building. The countermix is an odd assortment that includes a number of the ATS “standard” PTO countersheets (which premiered in “Semper Fi,” a complete game), along with a couple of half sheets with additional Japanese squad counters and USMC personnel counters that are emblazoned with the 1st Marine Division patch. There are also a couple of quarter sheets (or sixth-sheets, maybe) with counters for the Marines’ LVT-4 Amtrac and some new Japanese fortifications.

I call it an “odd assortment” because the mix of standard and new countersheets means that there are Marine squads both with and without the 1st Marines markings. The “plain” squads may not be needed, but I also couldn’t help noticing that the ATS “standard” Japanese counters are an orangish-tan color, while the Japanese squads on the new countersheets are a fairly bright yellow. Ack. Looks like the printer fumbled his Pantone color wheel.

Also note the size of the game map. Critical Hit’s promotional copy on their website says the game includes a 24 x 34 game map. In fact, it’s a rather tight 24 x 24 mapsheet. It also appears to be printed on a lighter, more coarse paper stock than my other ATS maps.

The package includes eight scenarios. Seven of them are set on D-Day, September 15, 1945, and one covers some of the fighting on September 17. Scenario 8 “White Beach Blood Red” is a monster, 18-turn scenario that starts with the inital landings. For the treadhead crowd, one of the scenarios covers the counter-attack launched by the lone Japanese tank company on the island.

Wurzburg Pentomic

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Matt Foster

After nattering on like a raving lunatic about fallout shelters, nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union, in all fairness I now need to provide a look at the game that set the Wayback Machine in motion.

“Wurzburg Pentomic” is one of two games published in Strategy & Tactics magazine issue 263. The other issue game is “Kabul ’79″. The games share the Cold War Battles series rules — but play quite a bit differently due to an extensive array of game-specific special rules.

Of the four games published to date in the Cold War Battles series, Wurzburg Pentomic is the only one based on a hypothetical battle. The basic premise is a Soviet invasion of West Germany some time in the 1950s.

The time period in which the game is set is a central element of the design. Folks old enough to remember SPI’s “Modern Battles” quad games will no doubt recall the original “Wurzburg”, a folio-sized game that covered a hypothetical Soviet-NATO battle in the late 1970s. Wurzburg Pentomic is set about 20-25 years earlier, during the US Army’s period of reorganization along what was then called the “Pentomic” division structure.

Under the Pentomic structure, each US division was organized into five battlegroups. Each battlegroup was theoretically self-supporting, which gave it the ability to operate fairly independently. This allowed the division’s combat elements to disperse more widely in what was expected to be a battlefield environment dominated by the threat of tactical nuclear weapons. The division kept some powerful artillery support under central control, but otherwise the battlegroups were equipped to fight with decentralized command and logistics.

Enough doctrine. On to the game.

Wurzburg Pentomic (“W-P” from here on out) is basically a folio-sized production. The two games in Cold War Battles 2 share a single, standard-sized map sheet. The maps are wedged onto the sheet along with some charts and tables, so neither map is symmetrical. Each game also gets exactly one-half of the standard sheet of half-inch counters.

There are a lot of positives to the game, so I’m going to get the bad news out of the way first. A couple of things in the package definitely aggravate me.

The map arrangement is a head-scratcher. A game-turn track and both CRTs (Mobile and Assault) are printed on the sheet. As a result, the game maps wrap around the gadgetry, leaving game-play areas with oddball sections and geographical enclaves defended by stalwart box borders and lines of type.

I’m a firm believer in leaving charts and tables off of game maps entirely. Maybe a turn track or other tracks/boxes that can be squared off with the map. But wrenching around the playing area to accommodate the CRTs is less than ideal — especially considering that the CRTs will usually be useless (as in “upside down”) for one of the players. Far better to print the tables on a separate sheet and square off the maps to avoid the “thick forest defended by typography” syndrome.

I realize printing CRTs on-map probably saves a page of the rulebook, but the “upside down” problem alone always justifies planning for at least one stand-alone sheet of play aids. Just for a tease, one of the CRTs is reprinted in the rules anyway because the on-map version is screwed up.

The next aggravation is as much a question as it is a complaint: Who ate crayons and puked on the countersheet?

Technicolor Commies and multi-hued Forces of Freedom.

Seriously. There are two sides in this game: Soviets and NATO. But the combat units are printed in about a dozen distinctly different colors. They’re not muted variations of the same basic colors, either. Each ‘command’ (usually a division) gets a nice, bright color all of its own. NATO units are variously drab green, forest green, light blue, dark blue, gray and tan. Soviet units are white on red, black on red, orange, yellow, white and black.

Ugh. It’s not the first time Decision has used a Crayola color scheme on game counters. Sadly, I doubt it will be the last. Are things like ‘formation stripes’ along the counter bottoms or ‘formation colors’ in the unit symbol boxes such advanced graphic concepts? Somebody loan them a Pantone color chart, too. Good heavens.

It’s a double-aggravation because in general this is a pretty good game. The map artwork is fine. But the color scheme for the counters is simply wretched. I mean, really. Orange?

Those production faux pas aside, I found a lot of game-play value in W-P. The ‘series’ rules are an adaptation of the old Modern Battles system. Zones of control are semi-rigid. Once a unit is in a ZOC, it can only leave via combat result or by expending half of its movement allowance to withdraw. Combat against all enemy units that project ZOC into a friendly-occupied hex is mandatory — although artillery barrage and/or air points may be used to ‘soak off’ some mandated attacks.

Combat is based on differential and the attacker usually chooses which of two CRTs to use: Assault (bloody) or Mobile (lots of retreats). Soviet combat strengths — attack strengths especially – are generally higher owing to their preponderence of armor. The designer, Joe Miranda, also notes that Soviet regimental-level artillery assets have been factored into the combat strengths, as those guns were intended to engage in near direct-fire support.

In the orders of battle, the US has more independent artillery units. Particularly useful are the Pentomic artillery battalions, which can split the fire of their ’5′ strength points onto as many as 5 different target hexes. Pentomic artillery is very handy for firing ‘soak off’ barrages so the US player can more effectively concentrate ‘normal’ attacks against his opponent. It’s also worth noting that as the game progresses into the later turns (9 total game turns), the US gains an increasing advantage in the amount of air support it receives.

The two US Pentomic-organized infantry divisions in the game — 3rd ID and 8th ID — gain additional advantages if/when the nuclear weapon optional rules come into play. Their constituent combat units are more resistant to damage from atomic attacks and they have a smaller chance of being affected by some of the game’s nuclear-related random events. The numerous US ‘leg’ infantry battalions can also take advantage of airmobile movement when helicopter transport is available.

Another interesting special rule in play is that units of different commands aren’t allowed to stack together. Elements of the ‘higher command’ formations — V Corps for the US, 8th Guards Army for the Soviets — are the only exceptions.

Each side starts with one or two commands on the map; everything else enters play through random reinforcement dice rolls. The US starts with 3rd Infantry Division and 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment on the map. The Soviets lead off with the 79th Tank Division. The entry of everything else is in the hands of cruel fate.

Because of the random reinforcement mechanism, W-P has a nice degree of replayability built in. Obviously, there’s a huge difference in play between a game where, say, the US 3rd Armored Division enters on Turn 2 and a game where it enters on Turn 6.

Radioactive Memory Lane

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Matt Foster

Because of the usual subject matter and the historical distance typically involved, it’s rare that the arrival of a new wargame here at the Swamp Bunker gives me pause for a personal stroll down memory lane. Recently, though, I’ve had one of the games from Strategy and Tactics 263 — Wurzburg Pentomic — on the Big Table and it’s sent me mentally wandering back to the days of the Mushroom Cloud Menace.

When I was a kid growing up in Clermont, one of our next-door neighbors had a fallout shelter on his property. This was circa 1969 and a lot of the nuke scare had passed, so the thing may well have been stuffed full of empty beer bottles — but still, there it was right in his front yard: A little reminder of the Great Game that was playing out on the global field between ourselves and our Soviet buddies sitting just on the far side of the polar ice cap.

These days it’s hard to imagine growing up in a world that was so sanguine about the probability of nuclear warfare. Clermont was dotted with family-sized fallout shelters. Some of the local public facilities like the library, city auditorium and the high school gym were still labelled with the appropriate Civil Defense signage. Most of the adults I grew up around clearly remembered that Florida wasn’t exactly Fun Central during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

We were beyond the era of “duck and cover” drills in school, but not by much. The high schools still taught a (mandatory) class called “Americanism Versus Communism”. Leonid Brezhnev was the bogeyman on the nightly news; less entertaining than Nikita Kruschev but also somewhat more stable, albeit in an under-handed, bogeyman sort of way.

The Cold War was in full swing and by my understanding at the time, the Soviets made great antagonists. Their alphabet was indecipherable and their spoken language sounded just plain weird. They had Siberia, T-62 tanks, borscht and advisors helping shoot down American aircraft in Vietnam. Bad. Guys.

Being a kid, of course, it’s not exactly like I walked around all day scanning the skies for the tell-tale contrails of approaching atomic doom. Nuclear devastation was a fairly remote concept. During a visit with one of my uncles who was a missile silo commander at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, I remember tooling around with him in one of their training simulators — completely oblivious to what I was ‘simulating’ when I turned my launch key at the end of our countdown. For me, it was just a very cool way to play at launching rockets.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, I’m really happy that my uncle wasted all of those taxpayer dollars and never had to do his job outside of a simulator.

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