Hex Maniac

Yes, I Thought That Might Attract Your Attention

First of all, no that is not a spelling mistake.  Secondly, WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! thank you, we can now continue.

     Okay, you may have been interested, bored or utterly repelled by Conrad's depiction of "The Great War In Europe" and his more recent running of the Italian Front, thanks to it being the smallest possible counter-mix.  This is where the hexes come in.  Art!

     Board games like these use the hex as a method of moving and ranging (apart from a few exceptions that use squares).  From playing two moves already I can see that there's not a whole lot of movement in this scenario, because there's a limited number of divisions available to both sides.  Whilst the Romans could devote all their resources to this theatre, they lacked coal and iron, two essentials for prosecuting war in the early twentieth century.  To the Austro-Hungarians (also Poles, Czechoslovaks, Galicians and also Italians) the Italian Front was always a secondary one, compared to the Ruffian front.  Art!

I cheated and nicked this from Wiki.  So sue me.

     Now, let me return to the "Reflections" section on "Official History Military Operations Italy 1915 - 1919", where they concur with my assessment of limited movement on this front.  Very big of them.  They also focus on the two big offensive successes of the war, in November 1917 when the Austrians shattered the Italian Second Army and forced a wholesale retreat to the Piave River, and the Roman's offensive of October 1918, which shattered the entire Austrian army and eventually routed it.

     Now, no wargamer evah looked at a set of rules without adding in their own house rules, amending the originals or removing some.  The GMT rules for Italy do not include any of the British divisions that were sent to Italy and which were there until the end - the 7th, 23rd and 48th.  Art!

     Ought I to add these in on the Reinforcement schedule?  There would need to be a few additional rules to reflect the difficulty of operating in foreign theatre in a different language, and the Roman inability to keep to march routes.

     ANYWAY let us now move onto another hex-and-counter wargame, one I've not even opened since purchasing it probably 10 years ago.  Art!

Yes it's South Canadian.  They mis-spelled 'Armour'.

     For Your Information, this is the campaign fought in North Africa in 1942, which was touch-and-go for a while in real life.  The Axis found out, to their unpleasant surprise, that the Eighth Army now had large numbers of the 6-pounder anti-tank gun, and the Grant tank, which packed a mighty 75 mm gun.

     ANYWAY I would like to present to you the contents of the magic box.  Art!

     Note the map with hexes, hence today's title.  

     These pictures also tell a story, because whoever originally owned this game had popped out a line of counters from their sprue, and had separated another.  Why does this matter?  Because there were counters missing.  Art?

     

     You can see the different colour where a section of the sprue has been cut out.

     Ooops.  Did I purchase a game with counters missing?  Well, one way to check is to have a look at the Contents list, which, rather bothersomely, didn't exist.  I then had to scrutinise the Rulebook, and Hay Pesto!  Art?

     These loose counters make up the missing ones from the counter sheets.  

     Phew.

     I can read the story here.  Someone bought this game, started to pop counters from the sprue and then got to grips with the Rulebook, which is neither short nor simple.  Then they gave up.  Sorry, matey, but yes this game is more complex than "Snakes and Ladders" or "Snap".  No, you can't play it whilst consuming a six-pack of beer.

     Their loss, my gain.  Mind you, I still have yet to play it.

The Haul

It was up with the lark this morning, then a trip to Babylon-lite, because this sober for a couple of months stuff is causing considerable usage of loose-leaf Darjeeling.  Sainsbo's in Old - sorry, Babylon-lite - is the only place one can purchase LLD for less than a minor mortgage payment.  Art!

     Only eight packets because the remaining few were so far back on the shelf they were beyond even my reach.  What's that behind the column of tea?  Art!

     Two small pumpkins, which I will remember to use before they go rotten from the inside out.  I also got new dried apricots and raisins, because the Best Before date on my current (no pun intended) raisins was from 2014, and apricots that look the colour of dried figs can stand to be replaced.

"A Walk Amongst The Tombstones" By Lawrence Block

Your Humble Scribe finished this last night, and it does have considerable divergence from the film, which I am kind of horrified to see came out 10 years ago.  It only just broke even at the box office, so that may explain why no more Matt Scudder films have been made.  In a way I'm glad of the divergence because it means one cannot second-guess the ending, or exactly how we get there.

     HERE BE SPOILERS!

Matt plus the resourceful and clever TJ

     Conrad suspects they conflated another of Mr. Block's MS novels, because in this novel there are only ever two psychopathic sadists.  Nor is there a gun battle amongst the graves at Greenwood Cemetery - which is where the title comes from.  Ray, the more cerebral of the killing twosome, gets horribly mutilated by one of the victim's spouses and left to die.  Peter, one of the Khoury brothers, does not have a background in either the Army or Afghanistan.  Matt does not recount the pivotal moment that led him to give up alcohol, either.

     I liked it enough to consider buying more from the series.

     Now, the dilemma I have is, should I get rid of AWATT having read it, because the details of who, how, why and what are never going to leave my mind?

"The War Illustrated Edition 197 5th January 1945"

A reminder that we are looking at photographs taken from the centre pages montage that TWI uses as part of it's format, and they are from the Burma theatre, instead of the usual European version.  Art!

     You may recognise a 25-pounder, which the narrative says had been captured by the Japs and then liberated again.  Probably too quickly for them to sabotage the gun in the most expedient way, which is to remove the breech-block and cast it into the nearest body of water, along with any detachable sights.  Art!

     This is a mule convoy en route to Mawlu, and they're using mules because most of their advance was through thick jungle, too thick for vehicles.  Note the lead mule is a medical one, as denoted by the Red Cross and the pair of stretchers perched atop it's back.

     Be advised that most of the soldiers visible don't seem to worry about malaria, which was a sustainable attitude thanks to the drug atabrine, a luxury unknown to the Nipponese.

Bake An Earthquake!

Not sure what the recipe ingredients would be.  Yes! we are back with Kyle of his "Geography King" Youtube channel, and he's moved on from meteorological disasters and has progressed, if that's the right word, to geographical ones.  Art!

     Here's a map from the South Canadian Geological Service, denoting progressive levels of earthquake risk.  The West Coast, Alaska and Hawaii are all red zones thanks to sitting on the boundaries of tectonic plates, where you can expect bags of earthyquakey experiences thanks to the subduction of the plates.  Art!

A lot of clean-up already done here

     There's not a lot you can do about earthquakes: enforcing construction law to mitigate effects is one thing - in fact about the only thing.  To date there is no reliable system to warn of impending earthquake.  Conrad would suggest following the British army's official advice about surviving a nuclear explosion - not being around when it goes off.  Sugaring the pill a little, Kyle chirpily informed that the last major quake on the West Coast was over 30 years ago, and then immediately salted the pill by saying that the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas are overdue for an earthquake.  Thanks for the reassurance, Kyle.

Finally -

Dog Buns!  Forgot to check for tinned Polish poppy-seed mixture today.  I did get poppy-seeds, that are not 14 years old so perhaps good to go.

     Pip pip!