Turn 3: Cold War turns Hot

Turn 3 considerably ramped up the pace of the campaign and conflict has broken out across the map. This was, in general, only to be expected as most of the various factions had either run out of neutral planets to expand to or were up against powerful and aggressive neighbors.

Here’s the current situation (click for larger image):

There are two major additions to the map:

Hyperspace Routes: these are indicated by the lengths of string. Once a system has been explored, those are the only ways in or out.

Jumpgates: These are the brass tacks. As per the show, onecan travel to any jumpgate from any other jumpgate.

Strategically, you can see that the fronts have solidified. The major upset was the acquisition of Rilus V (A6 on the map) by the Minbari, cutting the League of Non-Aligned Worlds off from the still-neutral planets beyond. Now the League needs to punch through to expand…always a rough deal against Minbari stealth and beam weapons.

Several battles are in the works:

Ve’fros (K9 on the map…hello Google users!): Bob’s Narn and the Drazi are fighting over a crashed ship on the Barren world of Soldan.

Carthage (G12): Scott’s Narn (henceforward the Tza’sol “Eyes of Blood” Narn…I know it’s Klingon. He picked it, not me) and the Drazi go head to head over a mining outpost.

Saguntum 3 (G2): The EA and Centauri draw first blood.

Caesar’s Folly(F5): The EA attempts to trap and destroy a sizable Centauri fleet.

Flux(F3): The Centauri deal with a raider base.

In addition, the Defiance system (F8) remains divided between Minbari, Tza’sol, and Narn (vanilla variety) claimants, though no side risked battle this turn. 

With five battles to be resolved, Turn 3 officially marks the end of the campaign’s “expansion” stage and the beginning of the “conflict” stage. The Centauri fight the Raiders on Friday…and an Earth Alliance “observer” will be there to record the action!

Once again, original Shannedam County map copyright FASA. No challenge is intended. Librarians are poor and not worth suing.

Uncle Sam and the Negro in 1920 Part 2: Drumgoole talks a lot

We are now at the “climax” of Uncle Sam and the Negro in 1920: the trial of Joseph Drumgoole which by this point has taken on “Trial of the Century” status. The prosecution has forensic evidence (the handkerchief and letter), the testimony of several witnesses including Mrs. Terry willing to swear that Terry and Drumgoole were supposed to meet, and the testimony of Ruth Taylor, who testifies that she saw handkerchiefs just like the one found on the body while working for the Drumgooles.

The court scene is pretty drawn out and punctuated by the black-face-inspired antics of Ruth Taylor and thus makes painful reading. In the end, Leila Anderson is the “surprise” witness for the defense and reveals that the whole thing was a plot by Ruth’s father and uncle to kill Terry and frame Drumgoole and thus get rid of the two people who annoy them most at once, using the hankie and “private correspondence” that Mr. Drumgoole conveniently and stupidly left in his jacket pocket during a clothes drive. How does she know? She overheard it when she was at Ruth Taylor’s (remember that vital plot point?).

Given that testimony from a pretty white girl trumps forensic evidence every time, the Taylors have no choice but to draw their razor blades and make a break for it. Fortunately, Red Hall is in the audience and singlehandedly and unarmed beats the snot out of the entire Taylor family. The case is dismissed, our hero goes free, Henry and Leila are permitted to associate again, and goodness and whiteness triumph in our unnamed future Northern city.

And you’d think that would be the end of the book. But no…oh no. For Mr. Drumgoole celebrates by taking everybody to his big National Party speaking engagement and YOU, dear reader, are his horrified captive audience as he goes on and on for the remaining 146 pages of the book. Being kind and merciful I will spare you a detailed description of this speech, since it’s really basically what the author’s been saying for most of the novel anyway (send all the black people to Guyana), interspersed with a few plugs for his earlier book 1791, A Tale of San Domingo. A few of the choicer points, however, are recorded for those with strong stomachs below:

• All the Jews the author knows are white, therefore Jesus was white, therefore Adam was white, and therefore white people are the “progenitor” racial type and all the other skin colors are “degenerations”
• Japanese people are actually white (and successfully empire-building in 1906 when the book was written) because they’re one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, as proven by the fact that their names sound so Hebrew.
• Intelligent black people are evidence that the author’s crazy degeneration theory is true (“retrogression”) and not a sign that black people might actually be intelligent.
• Anyone can become a doctor by faking some diplomas and lying about it a lot (actually he has a point with this one).

This is only a small sampling of the endless parade of crap contained in the remaining pages of the novel and it claws at one’s sanity to read it. Worse yet, Gilliam clues you in on which parts of his harangue you’re supposed to find most profound or amusing by relating where Drumgoole’s fictional audience cheers, laughs, or applauds. I mean even Mein Kampf, which is essentially a shrine to Hitler’s ego, did not include this kind of shameless self-congratulation.

Nor did it include awful, awful poetry at every chapter heading:

Trials at the bar, we have observed, are risky,

Wether the bar be that of law or whiskey.

Drumgoole’s causa goes on with a witness fresh and frisky.

For Ruth is here a testifying.

Lord grant that she may not be lying.

There’s much more in the book to be scandalized about: the crazy tongue twisters where Gilliam tries to demonstrate that he is a capital W Wit; the condescending and showy prose style; the attempts to render black speech which merely demonstrate the author’s inability to write dialect. But two posts are really more than enough to devote to this book. In some ways this one was almost a keeper by way of being an excellent example of early 20th Century extreme racial thought, though I would probably have moved it out of History, where I found it, and into Literature (it’s not great fiction, but it’s still fiction). However, time has rendered its own verdict on Uncle Sam and the Negro in 1920. The cheap pulp paper is brittle with acid damage, and the binding is almost completely deteriorated. Indeed, chunks of the book fall off every time it’s opened. This being the case, my conscience was salved and I removed it.

But don’t despair! If you’re really hungry to read you some E.W. Gilliam, the Internet Archive has digitized several of his works. Perhaps thankfully, Uncle Sam and the Negro in 1920 is not among them, but you can read the aforementioned 1791: A Tale of San Domingo. Or, if you’re of a truly masochistic bent, you can check out Robert Burns: A Play in Four Acts in which he butchers the Scottish accent the way he did African-American dialect in Uncle Sam. Either way you’re on your own: I’ve had all the Gilliam I need for a lifetime.

True Tales Special: Uncle Sam and the Negro in 1920

Today’s True Tales of Weeding is not for the faint of heart, and indeed if you’re easily offended you’ll probably want to skip this installment. The fact that today’s book was published and found an audience in its day says some pretty unfortunate things about where we’ve been as a society. On the bright side the fact that much of it today seems pretty ridiculous says some encouraging things about where we might be headed. You’ve been warned.

Our subject is Dr. E.W. Gilliam’s Uncle Sam and the Negro in 1920, published by J.P. Bell in 1906. It’s basically a racist polemic thinly disguised as a political thriller/crime drama. Gilliam himself is rather an enigma. The internet is surprisingly bereft of information on him. He has no entry in Who Was Who or any of the various Biographical Indexes(and we have several that were concurrent with the publication of his works). Indeed apart from his own writings, the only mention of an E.W. Gilliam I could track down was this excerpt from T. Thomas Fortune’s 1884 work Black and White. While I can’t say with authority that this Gilliam and our author are the same, his assertions that black people are vanishing like the Passenger Pigeon and that they form an unassimilable “alien race” are pretty much exactly what we’re going to hear harped on ad nauseam in Uncle Sam and the Negro in 1920.

So: our story opens upon the dystopian future-world of 1920 in a “large Northern city”, possibly Gotham or Metropolis. Why is bold 1920 dystopian? Not because of  fascist government, mind numbing drugs, or transparent houses…no, here the problem is black people. Attempting, logically enough, to escape the reign of Jim Crow in the South, a wave of immigration has swept North bringing with it vice and crime. The popular turmoil results in the combination of the “best elements” of the Republican and Democratic parties into a new “National Party”, which wants to buy Guyana and send all the black people in the US there (it’s funny how parties with these sorts of ideas like that “national” tag).

The first character we meet is our villain, John Terry, a Republican political boss. Terry is a mulatto from the Silas Lynch school of characterization, and is described by our author as “a bad one”. Desperate to hold onto his political constituency and not overly thrilled at the idea of being deported to Guyana, Terry uses his evil secret network the “Gentle Gymnastics” society, or “G.G.” to terrorize prominent local blacks who support the colonization scheme. As the story begins, Terry drugs, kidnaps, and tortures one John Glenn, a pro-colonization speaker, until he is willing to “kill God himself” to stop the pain.

We next meet our hero, the Hon. Joseph Drumgoole and his family. Drumgoole, a thinly disguised mouthpiece for the author, is a Virginia aristocrat by birth, but married to a Northern woman with whom he has produced one son, Henry. Mrs. Drumgoole has a serious distaste for black people, having had bad experiences with her last maid Ruth Taylor, who she was forced to fire for theft. Alone in the house, her hard heart is melted by a well-spoken young black girl looking for work, but this momentary weakness is given comeuppance when a black guy begging for food breaks into the house and attempts to rape her. She whips out a pistol and shoots him in the head, prompting a long digression from Gilliam about how all women should have guns, and about how lynching is OK under certain circumstances.  

We next get a glimpse of John Terry’s home life, in which the author portrays his family’s college education as a veneer over outright savagery. Terry’s spoiled son Abe breaks a vase and blames it on their servant, Leila Anderson. Terry, in a rage, strikes at her with a stiletto and cuts her hand, whereupon she drops her handkerchief and flees the room. After demonstrating his skill at employee relations, Terry tells his wife that he had actually found this stiletto thrust into his pillow. Terry’s wife observes this may be a threat from the mysterious “Wamee”. This drives Terry absolutely nuts, and he resolves to look into the matter.

Leila, by the way, is our heroine: daughter of a deceased Confederate officer (although the book takes place in the north everyone in it has a Confederate pedigree…even Glenn, whose father was a drummer boy in the Army of Northern Virginia) whose family has fallen on hard times, forcing her to work for the Terrys. Naturally, she and her mother have to keep this a secret, white people working for black people being such a perversion of the natural order and all. Leila is also Henry Dumgoole’s love interest, a relationship largely expressed via longing glances at the Episcopalian church.

Ruth Taylor, the discredited maid, gets ahold of Leila’s handkerchief from the Terry’s cook, and as an act of vengeance brings it to her old employer Mrs. Drumgoole while Mr. Drumgoole is off doing something or other. The revelation that Leila is working for the Terrys does not, as can be imagined, sit well, and Mrs. Drumgoole officially cuts the Andersons out of her social set. She snubs them at church in front of everyone, and though Henry desperately tries to show Leila he’s on her side, she doesn’t notice the rose he’s dropped and leaves with her mother.

Afterwards, Mr. Drumgoole comes back from Rhodesia or wherever he’s been, reprimands his wife for acting without telling him first, and sets out to investigate, only to discover the Andersons have moved on without leaving a forwarding address. Henry begins to pine, and when I say pine I mean pine in the way only a 19th Century Anglo-Saxon guy can pine. Fearful that he will waste away completely, the Drumgooles send him to the 1920’s future-mansion (it has the latest “electric plant”) of their cousins in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which in this far-off time has grown to be the chief industrial city of the South. Despite being plied with ponies, fishing trips, and opportunities to go see the new dam being built, Henry spends all his time with his pet squirrel, also named Leila, in a relationship both disturbing and dysfunctional. The squirrel finally gets tired of being slapped around every time Henry has a mood swing, and runs off to join its wild brethren giving Gilliam the opportunity to go on at length about how like blood calls to like.

Meanwhile, John Terry is roaming the underworld in search of his mysterious opponents. In the process, he hooks up with “Red” Hall, Adventurer, Soldier of Fortune, and all-around lovable rogue. Red signs on as his bodyguard, gives them both devilishly clever codenames (“Jean” and “Hal”) and proves his worth by beating up two guys who subject Terry to hours of biting sarcasm and witty repartee before finally deciding to just rob him. Terry is further convinced of the loyalty of his new buddy when a bar owner very conveniently seats him in a “whispering gallery” and he overhears Red proclaiming his loyalty to him. Terry decides to let his hair down and join his henchman in a drink, which turns out to be a bad idea since Red’s really working for the Wamee and the drink is drugged. D’oh!

The Wamee takes Terry to an undisclosed location and engages in some vigilante justice by terrifying his “superstitious Negro mind” with the pinnacle of 1920s funhouse technology, including mechanical skeletons, doors that open by themselves, and glowing swords. After this night of horror, which the author assures us is overseen by ”the most upright of men”, Terry stumbles off into a park near the Drumgoole house, where he is found the next morning with a stiletto in his heart, one of Mr. Drumgoole’s handkerchiefs under him, and a letter from Mr. D. in his hand. Shock! Agitation! Mr. Drumgoole is arrested and his trial becomes a political circus as the Republicans and the Nationals square off.

Having summarily dealt with both the most interesting character and the most interesting plotline in the book, the author turns back to Leila Anderson. Waylaid in the street by Ruth Taylor as part of an ill-defined and frankly contrived for story purposes kidnapping plot (responsibility for which the author neatly sidesteps by claiming that coming up with lame and nonsensical plots is a Negro trait and so he’s just being true to his complex and richly drawn characters), Leila is taken to her house which is next to the Taylor family’s bar where an awful assortment of black and poor people come to get drunk, eat sushi, or practice whatever other futuristic 1920’s vices they want to indulge in (“Would you like some Death Sticks?”). Leila conveniently overhears something of overarching plot significance and then is rescued by an equally convenient random policeman peeping into people’s windows.

Glutton for punishment? Continue on to part 2.

Kids’ Letters to Spiro Agnew

Today’s True Tales of Weeding spotlights a book which defies understanding in any conventional sense. The publishing world is full of decisions that seem at best ill-informed and at worst inspired by some serious drug use. Some of these ideas miraculously find a degree of success. Even by these standards though, it’s tough to figure out the train of thought that went into the production of Kids’ Letters to Spiro Agnew, edited by Bill Adler and published by Bernard Geis in 1971. The works by the same author listed in the book reveal a long history of successes with this theme, from the probably heartwarming Letters from Camp, to the poignant Dear Senator Kennedy, to the potentially disturbing Letters to the FBI and Dear Internal Revenue. But even with this in mind, one has to ask…Spiro Agnew?

For those of you who, like I, were born after the Nixon era and did not experience Watergate firsthand, a brief historical aside is probably in order. Spiro Agnew was a strong force in Maryland politics in the late ’50s and throughout the ’60s (eventually becoming Governor in 1966), and was the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1968 as part of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”. Once in office, he became something of a 1970’s Dick Cheney in that it became his job to confront opponents of the unpopular war in Vietnam and basically take credit for the less palatable policies Nixon was pursuing (Dick Cheney himself was, of course, also a 1970’s Dick Cheney but in an entirely different capacity). Though he aspired to the presidency, Agnew was eventually brought down by charges of tax evasion and money laundering, and resigned the vice-presidency in 1973. A swift rise and fall, a controversial aspect of a controversial administration, and worthy of some serious scholarly consideration or political examination, even in 1971. But does this sound like a guy whose rapport with the nation’s youth was material for warm fuzzy feelings?

And indeed despite the editor’s attempts to cover it up, there’s a certain…well…hostility evident in many of these letters. “There are millions of Americans who support you…but I can’t think of any offhand”; “…you are very popular in the Gallup Poll…but you aren’t doing so well in the Cohen poll. That’s me, Ralph Cohen, Age 7.”; “I saw pictures of you playing tennis and I think you should try bowling”; “Around our house you are a household word, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you what the word is.” 

Even more disturbing are letters from preadolescents discovering the first flowerings of love:

“Dear Mr. Agnew,

I like your voice. I like your smile. I like your eyes. I like your walk. I want to marry you.”

Love,

Betsy W., age 8

PS: Don’t tell Mrs. Agnew”

Keep in mind we are talking about THIS man:

Time for a shower…

Anyway, Kids’ Letters to Spiro Agnew manages to tell us nothing at all about the man except that he had image problems with just about everyone except eight-year-old proto-stalkers. It doesn’t even give us any idea how he answered, or if he answered his fan mail. And frankly, Spiro Agnew’s name does not resonate in the American consciousness to the point where letters from children to him are valuable. It might have some use in a term paper as a source of humorous asides, but apart from that it’s a waste of shelf space. I had no reservations about yanking this one from the collection.  

Rediscovering Three Kingdoms: Thoughts on Cao Cao

My summer reading project this year is to tackle the unabridged version of Luo Guanzhong’s epic contribution to Chinese literature, Three Kingdoms. Like many geeks of my generation, I first discovered Three Kingdoms, and Chinese literature in general, through Capcom’s beloved adaptation for Nintendo Destiny of an Emperor, and later through Koei’s venerable Romance of the Three Kingdoms franchise. I enjoyed all these games immensely, with their mix of political maneuvering, crazy implied martial arts action, strategic planning, and overall EPICNESS (that’s a real word, EPICNESS. And it always requires capitals). I was, however, interested in the story behind it all. It was obvious that Destiny of an Emperor’s storyline was seriously cut down, and Romance just sort of plunks you down in the middle of things and lets you do what you want.

I managed to acquire an abridged version of Moss Roberts’ translation at a library sale sometime in my high school years, which was full of great bits, but was choppy and difficult to follow. Which, I suppose is what happens when you cut five volumes down to one.

Anyway, flash forward to 2007 and me discovering that our library owns not a single one of the Chinese classics. Not a one, despite the fact that we have at least one multicultural literature class that emphasizes Asian writing. In the process of finding affordable translations of the Big Four (Three Kingdoms, Water Margin/Outlaws of the Swamp,  Dream of Red Mansions, and Journey to the West) to rectify this, I discovered that the full five-volume Moss Roberts translation was available for a surprisingly decent price. Naturally I not only ordered one for work, but I snapped it up myself.

So right now I’m about halfway through volume 1. I can recognize a lot of the classic stuff from the games and abridged version, like the famous Peach Garden Oath, Lu Bu receiving Red Hare, and Wang Yun’s crafty double-blind but now they all have context. For the first time the events are flowing together and it’s massively enjoyable.

Coming at the novel with a very “western” perspective, I find myself increasingly sympathetic with Cao Cao, traditionally the villain of the work. There’s a famous scene where Cao Cao and his new-found friend Chen Gong are on the run after trying to assasinate the tyrant Dong Zhuo, who’s usurped the throne of the Han. They take refuge with Cao Cao’s adopted uncle, who leaves them alone in the house with his servants while he goes to town. The two fugitives overhear the servants talking and someone says “Let’s tie ‘em up and kill ‘em.”

Fearing that the servants are plotting to kill them to get the reward promised by the tyrant, Cao Cao and his friend burst in and kill them all…only to find out they were talking about the pig for the feast.

Naturally, this faux pas necessitates a quick departure. All goes well until the pair runs into Cao Cao’s uncle returning from town. Reasoning that his uncle will call the authorities, Cao Cao kills him. When Chen Gong reproaches him, Cao Cao utters the famous line: “Better to wrong the world than have it wrong me.”

To a Confucian, of course, this brands Cao Cao as a villain. Not only has he killed an innocent man, but the innocent man was family. My perspective is a little more sympathetic. The man was on a mission to dethrone a tyrant in a society where law and order had broken down. He NEEDED to get to a safe place where he could rally the feudal lords…which is what he eventually did.

Bias? Possibly. But while Liu Bei, the hero of the book, has to worry about being a model of Confucian virtue, Cao Cao gets stuff done, which to the Western mind is a virtue all its own.

If you have any interest at all in Three Kingdoms, a good place to start is Kongming’s Archives. They discuss both the games and the novel, and have some useful notes for the beginner about translations and related works. It’s not exactly scholarly, but for heaven’s sake you’re following a link from a Babylon 5 blog…

The League Runs Screaming

Last Friday we gathered to digest the reply from Mongoose, and to have our first battle of the campaign. The rules discussion was productive, the battle anticlimactic.

Basically, we decided that doing things Mongoose’s way was too much trouble at this point, and to go with Twilight Imperium-style “Bring the House” battles. We’re still rolling scenarios randomly, so hopefully we’ll see some convoy battles as well, but for the most part we’re looking at straight-up slugfests for control of our strategic targets. Less flavor? Yes, sadly, on the combat side. But we still get to preserve the experience system which mitigates things a little bit.

All the rules discussion we’ve been having set my mind working on coming up with a different campaign system, using the Babylon 5 Universe map and working from the viewpoint of one large fleet rather than individual fleet movement. I suspect that by the time this campaign is over everybody else will not exactly be raring for another one, but it’s still an interesting design exercise. 

But anyway…battle and stuff! As I warned, the battle itself was not exactly epic, as the League’s tiny scouting force ran up against vastly superior Narn fleet elements:

  Only the Narn would use a Bin’Tak as a scout…

The League’s tiny scout element did the only sensible thing…deployed facing the edge of the board and ran like frightened schoolchildren.

And that was it…over on turn one. Not even a single explosion.

I suspect Turn 3 will be a little more action packed…there’s really nowhere for anyone to go except systems controlled by other players. At the very least there should be some serious EA/Centauri combat in the weeks to come.

EAS Xenophon…just out of the Proxima shipyards, primed, and ready for her first coat of paint…  

The Green Fairy Returns

My alcohol-expert friend passed on this interesting link: Absinthe is back! Well actually it’s been back in Europe for quite a while now, but the 1911 ban on wormwood-based drinks here in the US has kept it from being easily accessible for those of us without Canadian or overseas connections. Apparently in this case, however, ”adhering to the strict techniques used over a century ago, the result was not only a genuine, historically accurate product, but a product that also happens to meet US requirements relating to alcoholic beverages.”

Historical accuracy AND alcoholic goodness? Sign me up!

Sadly, this Lucid Absinthe Superiure is only available in the Sodom and Gomorrah of NYC and its environs so far. Given the glacially slow pace of the PA Liquor board in approving even less infamous drinks (Whither Pusser’s Rum? Whither Moon Rabbit Sparkling Sake?) for sale in its outlets, it will probably be a long while before I can nip on down to my local liquor store for some green inspiration.

Nevertheless, as a fan of the absinthe-fueled poetry of Ernest Dowson, I eagerly await that day. And when the Centauri come crashing through my borders and fire mass-drivers into my capital world, I will hopefully have it by my side to aid in the writing of poetry just as depressing.

RPGNet talks to Mongoose’s Upper Echelon

RPGnet’s Shannon Appelcline recently interviewed Mongoose’s Matthew Sprange. There isn’t much that directly relates to A Call To Arms, but Sprange’s thoughts about Mongoose’s licensing history and small print run ambitions are worth a read. The bitter little aside about the failure of the Babylon 5 novel deal is gravy.

Turn 2: Earth Alliance Retrospective

We’ve already looked at the results of the Turn 2 orders in general. Now that that’s safely out of the way, we can more closely examine the REAL question all my fans (I know there are at least 20 of you. I can see the blog stats) want to know: how did what went down affect me and the Earth Alliance?

First some fluff. The year (according to my interpretation of the campaign background) is 2261 and Babylon 5’s fourth season is well underway. As the Shadow War enters its final phase and President Clark tightens his grip on Earth I, an ambitious and well-connected Earthforce General (the fluff says “Admiral” is an affected title in Earthforce…I’m not sure yet wether my character is enough of a prick to insist on it or not) have been sent to a remote sector on an antipiracy cruise. Upon realizing that this sector is essentially “up for grabs” and that the problems at home with the Marsies and Proxies have essentially given me local autonomy, I begin to build up my own personal empire under the guise of safeguarding the EA’s interests…with the ultimate ambition of leading a fleet home and ousting that no-talent xenophobe Clark. I think “First Consul” or “Protector” sounds like an excellent title… 

As you may recall, my Raider-hunting mission led to my being stuck in Gustaviv’s Regret for the entire first turn of the campaign. As a result, Earth’s sphere of influence looked like this:

Not an impressive start for the future First Consul of the Earth Alliance! But that’s what you get for having to follow someone else’s orders.

On Turn 2, however, my raider problem was dealt with and I could expand wherever I felt the need. As I mentioned before, I formed “heavy” CV and scout groups. I did this for two reasons. Firstly, being in the corner means there are several worlds I don’t have to worry about competing for for a while, and secondly because being a turn behind I expected to run into opposition.

I therefore pushed south and east, ignoring the equally economically impoverished Minbari in favor of creating a strong front with the Centauri. My primary objectives were the Major Systems of Trader’s Paradise and Caesar’s Folly, with Moshelle and several of the minor systems being secondary objectives.

Results: mixed success. The EA “liberated” Trader’s Paradise without a hitch, and my minor world scouting missions were, as I expected they would be, unopposed. Unfortunately another of my suspicions was proved absolutely correct when Task Group Leonidas showed up in Caesar’s Folly to find the Centauri and Minbari already there. Battle was avoided this turn as the Centauri declined a confrontation over Caesar’s Folly’s only settled world, despite being present in equal numbers.

The really nasty surprise was waiting at Moshelle, where my re-enforced scout group TF 1.1 discovered a huge Raider infestation. They were present in such superior numbers that TF 1.1 had to hide in a providential ship graveyard and call for re-enforcements.

So when all was said and done, the new situation looked like this:

That lonely pin at the top is TF 1.1 hiding in Moshelle, and the multicolored array at the bottom right is Caesar’s Folly. Three new additions to the EA’s economy and two contested systems. Not bad, but nothing compared to the Centauri and League.

Counterbalancing this, on the theory that tiny powers should help each other out, I formed an alliance with the Minbari. This keeps my eastern flank quiet while I deal with the fanheads, and makes the battle for Caesar’s Folly a two-way instead of three-way issue. Yes, my EA political officer reminds me that official policy frowns on fraternization with the boneheads, but as that great sage Edmund Blackadder once said: “Needs must, when the devil vomits on your eiderdown.”

So…what next? Do I move in my reserves to Caesar’s Folly or exterminate the Raiders before they can drain off too many resources (d6 RR a turn for each player, in fact)? All shall be answered when Turn 3 rolls around. 

In Which We Appeal to Mongoose

Turn 2 provided us with another useful lesson for miniatures campaigners: make sure everyone’s on the same page before you start!

I had gone into this endeavor with the understanding that things would be along the lines of the campaign system as presented in Sky Full of Stars: variable Priority Levels, points values, and scenarios. Others in the group had in their mind more of a Twilight Imperium feel: full access to your entire fleet at all times. The first way encourages more balanced fleets, the second way quicker and more decisive results.

This split had direct bearing on our first major in-game rules issue. The campaign rules are written on a one-system-one fleet basis. What happens when you have multiple fleets (a common occurrence in a game our size) in one system? Are they considered one big fleet or several small fleets? Can they take one Strategic Target or several?

Well when in doubt, go to the source. Here’s what Mongoose told us:

In this instance, they may separate into smaller fleets to attack different system targets. The defending fleet may separate as they wish to defend these.

This is an interesting can of worms to open, as it basically replaces the old “one fleet-one target” system with a completely new way of doing things. Before, you didn’t have to worry about defending all your STs as long as you had the ships to cover them. Here, positioning enters the mix.

It also leads to another question: what happens when your fleet doesn’t have ships of the proper priority level for the scenario? Modify the PL? Or should fleets exist as abstract “points” with ships bought as needed? Again, here’s Mongoose’s interpretation:

The last option (points) is the one to use, however the way you have been playing it can certainly be made to work. Perhaps if a player cannot bring some of his ships to the battle the story could be that sudden repairs have delayed that ship entering the battle.

This, to me, is slightly unsatisfying. Making fleets abstract essentially does away with the XP dice system, Crew Quality increases, and the Other Duties table all of which are full of great fluff.  In essence we’d have to either give all ships a blanket CQ of 4, which is bland, or reroll crew qualities for every battle, which is unrealistic. It also breaks the repair system: if ships aren’t permanent why keep track of damage? 

One way around some of these issues might be to “pool” earned experience dice. These could then be spent as desired when making fleet lists, and ships with modifications could then be kept by the player for later use. These ships would be useable in only one battle per turn, and would be lost when destroyed.

Mongoose’s reply DID ensure that there will be a battle this turn, as their ruling allows the League’s fleets to go to multiple strategic targets. Thus, the virtual pages of this blog will soon be filled with the silent, deadly interpretive dance of space combat. Finally!