For treadheads: ATS Stonne Heights

Another item that arrived near the Big Table during blog off-season was the ATS title Ghosts at the Meuse: The Battle for the Stonne Heights. This one is another complete boxed game and features the fighting for the town of Stonne, France in 1940.

Of all of the battles big and small during the German’s 1940 invasion of France, Stonne is one that seems to attract a lot of attention. It has a number of historical points in its favor, I suppose. It was a tooth-and-nail struggle in which the French fought the Germans to a standstill. The terrain is interesting. It was a mixed-arms affair that featured a considerable amount of armor on both sides. The German attack was spear-headed by the troops of the Grossdeutschland regiment, a formation that generated a lot of ‘ink’ in Nazi propaganda at the time.

Also, over the last 15 years or so the historical view (in American eyes) of the 1940 campaign in France has been revised away from the ‘pop history’ view of unstoppable Nazi war machine versus totally incompetent surrender monkeys. These revisions toward a more accurate overview have generated new interest in the campaign from American wargamers – which is pretty much the market force that drives which topics appear in print.

Some years ago, Stonne was the topic of The Gamers’ Tactical Combat Series game GD (Grossdeutschland) ’40. It was an interesting, well-researched game that suffered to a degree from the game system’s inability to successfully mesh armored operations with infantry. A less interesting treatment of Stonne appeared a couple of years back as the issue game in Vae Victis magazine, a French-language gaming publication.

Critical Hit – the publishers of ATS – produced a Stonne 1940 module for Advanced Squad Leader some years back, and this new ATS title is an outgrowth of that project (fairly obvious, since Pedro Ramis gets the design credit in both games).

The cartography is updated from the earlier ASL module and uses a larger sized hexgrid in order to accommodate the larger ATS counter size. It does a nice job of capturing the ruggedness of the terrain in the immediate vicinity of Stonne. In this game the focus is entirely on the fighting in the environs of the town, which means the players won’t necessarily get a feel for the ‘big picture’ of Stonne’s dominating heights with regards to the Meuse valley.

Ghosts at the Meuse also introduces the 1940 French order of battle into ATS. It’s a generous countermix that certainly includes more stuff than you’ll ever use in a single scenario. For treadheads, I’m sure the centerpiece of the OOB is the French B-1 tank.

The appearance of the B-1 certainly provide ample opportunity for the ‘what if’ crowd to get their jollies by matching the French heavy against the general more lightweight German tanks of 1940. Unfortunately, while the B-1 may have carried more armor than the German AFVs and fielded a good gun (for the time), French operational doctrine just wasn’t up to snuff.

A couple of Stonne scenarios actually made it onto the Big Table before the summer caught up with me. I didn’t set up any of the ‘big’ scenarios, but it seems to be a well-done kit with forces that match up well and provide an interesting look at a pivotal fight in the 1940 campaign.

Burn in Hell, Eastern Standard Time

Today we need to stop all of this silliness about baseball, tabletop games and other leisure pursuits and turn our thoughts to a more somber topic.

I would like everyone to join me in a moment or two of quiet contemplation regarding Eastern Standard Time and HOW MUCH IT SUCKS.

I hate the time change. I hate it with a burning passion. There are few things I despise more than working to my usual quitting time and then getting home after dark. Is that right? Is that the birthright we inherited from the founding fathers? Is that what God intended when He commanded “let there be light”?

I think not.

Many years ago (Many. Years. Ago.) my mother worked as a secretary in the offices of Kinsolving & Kinsolving in Shelbyville, Kentucky. It being a rural area and all at the time (it seems more of a Louisville suburb these days), many of their clients were either large local farms or agricultural concerns. When the time change arrived, staff had to remember who among their clients would arrive at the wrong time for all of their appointments until the time changed back.

“My cows don’t set their clocks back,” as one farmer explained it, “so neither do I.”

Sound reasoning, if you ask me.

When the time changes, I know that I am doomed to at least two weeks of waking up exactly one hour before my alarm clock goes off. That really pisses me off. I like sleep. I NEED sleep. I DO NOT need to wake up an hour before my alarm goes off.

I understand that there are weenie-headed, whining arguments in favor of the time change. Usually some crap about kids waiting for school busses in the dark. Those arguments are all worthless. Is it still dark at 8 a.m.? That’s when kids are waiting for their school busses in my neighborhood. Eight o’clock. Not six o’clock. EIGHT o’clock.

Some bunch of yahoos in Minnesota wants to start school at 7 a.m., so the rest of us have to set our clocks back? Screw ‘em. They can change when their school starts. In fact, they SHOULD change when school starts. Several scientific studies indicate that kids do better in school when they don’t have to be there at the crack of dawn. Why? Because they get more sleep when they’re not waiting for school busses at 6 a.m.

Well, duh.

The first presidential candidate to promote abolition of the time change gets my vote. I HATE Standard Time.

ATS Toktong Pass on the waiting list

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been over a year since I last posted anything about one of my favorite tactical game systems – ATS. Well, as it’s been seven months since I’ve pretty much posted anything, I guess it’s not that hard to believe. Man, time sure does fly when you have a Junior Destructo Man running around the house.

So today a quick look at one of the three ATS items that landed near my Big Table during the course of baseball season: The new, complete boxed game Toktong Pass: Escape from Chosin.

This is the first game in the Advanced Tobruk Series to be set outside of the Second World War. It concentrates on the actions of Fox Company, 2/7 Marines at Toktong Pass during the Chosin Reservoir battles. You can read a bit of the history at this address

http://www.homeofheroes.com/brotherhood/chosin.html

or just Google around a bit for more information.

The game map, based on the historical terrain, covers a sizeable area around the heights that eventually became known as “Fox Hill”.

The color palette for the map is a bit on the dark side, but it’s easy enough to read. My only minor beef with the whole kit is the headache-inducing color scheme that’s been assigned to the North Korean countermix in the game. Here’s a sample:

Ugh. While you’re certainly not going to overlook them on the map, it seems to me that the colors might grate on players after a few hours of play. Actually, I think after a few hours the colors might induce epileptic seizures.

Other than that, it is a pretty interesting setup. Some post-WW2 hardware in the mix (most of which isn’t used in the Toktong scenarios), the North Korean troops are a lively bunch and the scenarios look pretty interesting.

Have I had time to set it up and play it yet? Nope. But I’ll get there.

Reports of this blog's demise are mildly exaggerated

Since the last post was made after the opening day of baseball season, I guess I’d better bookend the long, blog-less season by posting something of an update.

If you pay attention to baseball at all, you will know that Scott Boras did NOT take me up on my offer. Bob Wickman DID suck. The Braves pitching DID kill them. And, unfortunately, the Red Sox ended up getting a lot more media attention.

I think that’s that highlight reel in total, right there.

Baseball season is over. Now begins the season of our discontent.

As evidenced by seven months of assorted blankness and clever nothings, during hurricane season I lapsed into pathetic non-blogging. Too many other fun things to spend time on, I suppose. Work. Chasing the kid around. Baseball. Chasing the kid around. And more chasing the kid around.

With the sad absence of baseball a reality, perhaps now I’ll be able to bludgeon myself into keeping up with this widget to one degree or another. There are some interesting new games to discuss, and a couple of holiday ‘projects’ to document – so maybe I’ll get back into it.

Then again, maybe not. I am nothing if not lazy and unpredictable.

The long, dark winter has passed

Hey, it must be the start of baseball season because I’m bitching already! The Braves bullpen was butt-puckering! The D-Rays bullpen sucked! Woooooo!

Dangerously enough, I was thinking last night. If the morons in the federal gumment can’t see fit to make Opening Day a national holiday – they should at the very least make it illegal to play baseball games on Opening Day when everybody is at friggin work. I missed every decent game that was played yesterday. What was on TV when I got home? The Royals beating the crap out of the dipstick Red Sox. The dipstick Red Sox! Who gives a flying oily turd about the dipstick Red Sox?

So I had to read all of the game stories I could find today. Truthfully, I was surprised to read that Bob Wickman pitched in yesterday’s game. I figured his lard ass would have expired by now. I can say that because I think ol’ Bob has about the same buff athletic build that I count among my own unique features. I think I may even be a few pounds lighter nowadays. And yet he’s pitching for the Braves and I’m NOT pitching for the Giants, as per my earlier plan.

Yeah, I know. He can hit the strike zone in the 90s, but so what? Ever seen anybody hit my knuckleball? Ha! NOBODY has ever hit my knuckleball. It’s a minor issue that I’ve never actually thrown a knuckleball at a batter – the point is still that NOBODY has ever hit it. It’s all about spin, baby.

Cash in on a hot commodity now, Scott Boras. Just use the comments section below and I’ll have my people get back with you soonest!