The land of the deluded

The Missus and I were sitting around this morning with our coffee and wondering when, exactly, the shitstorm of stupid started. We didn’t manage to quite track it back to Ronald Reagan before the kid started torturing the cat, but we did manage to come up with a number of extremely aggravating thoughts.

Our first topic was what the hell has happened to the standard of medical care in this country that we’re now reading reports and statistics that look like they come out of a third world country? Ol’ Dr. Sanjay was on the TV talking about “What you should do if you’re in the emergency room and nobody is paying attention and you think you’re going to die.” That’s All American, ain’t it?

In the last 14 months both of our fathers have passed away, and I’ll tell you right now that out here in middle America their ain’t no “House” coming in with a miracle cure. Not even much in the way of “Marcus Welby” around to keep up with things.

So my wife asks me this morning:

“Why am I staying awake nights trying to figure out how to protect my Mom’s financial assets from the government?” Hmmm. Mostly because the government her parents (and mine, for that matter) paid taxes and social security to, supported and believed in would have her expend all of her assets (except domicile) before paying substantially for her medical care?

I notice that former senators and congressmen don’t seem to have the same concerns with their government-issue, taxpayer-funded insurance coverage.

Later on, driving in to work I’m listening to NPR and a little interview with John McCain about the economy. I’ll pause for a moment to point out that McCain is the only GOP candidate I have even a shred of respect for, and that’s because he’s the only one with enough of a moral compass to take a stand against torture as government policy. The rest are little more than slavering boot-licks that toady to a pack of self-deluded bigots who have forgotten so much of what America once stood for that they believe they are Americans.

But I digress.

So McCain’s solution to our economic woes is to reduce the corporate income tax rate.

That’s fucking brilliant. That will finally resolve the problem of that long line of corporate CEOs down at the bank who are all begging for loans to make the next payment on their Benz. Or have I missed something? My take on things is that a lot of what could be corporate profit (‘shareholder value’) is ending up in executive compensation packages.

Personally, I would like to be able to screw up my job so badly that my company loses billions of dollars in one quarter and then get fired with a multi-million dollar severance package. And I won’t even ask to use the company jet. Anybody else want in on that deal with me?

I don’t pretend to be a wizard at macro-economics, but please don’t shit on my head and then tell me everything will be allright if I’d only help you eat some more steak-n-eggs.

Feeding the monster

It’s probably some kind of mental illness. Try as I might, I can only go so long without springing for some new-ish type of wargaming stuff. The longer I resist the urge to purchase something, the bigger the explosion when I snap.

Up until the holiday season, I’d been doing OK for the last few months. But then those placed-months-ago pre-orders (Eisenbach Gap and Asia Engulfed) landed on my doorstep and it was all over but the shouting. I HAD to feed the monster again.

Fortunately, feeding the monster has become somewhat cheaper over the past few years as I’ve matured enough in my decision making to only focus on items that I might actually play someday. Gone are the days of large acquisitions based on vain hopes and distant fantasies. I will likely never play a four-map anything again. Heck, getting the oversized map of Red Star Rising onto the table is challenge enough.

Anyway, this is all a round-about introduction to the newest additions to my game closet. Chances are good that these games will get more mention in the weeks ahead because, as I said, they are all ‘players’.

The list of incoming titles is short: Corps Command: Totensonntag (from LNL Publishing), A Victory Lost (from MMP) and two minatures rules sets, AK-47 Republic and The Men of Company B, both from Peter Pig over in the UK.

Totensonntag will probably hit the table after I’ve had my fill of Eisenbach Gap. It’s got a small footprint, low unit count, short rules and it’s been getting very good reviews. The miniatures rules will have some lead time because I’ve got to twiddle up a way to play them. It’s very, very, very unlikely that I’m going to pony up for any kind of new figures, so I’ll need to put together a cardstock set for them. A Victory Lost is one of those mystifying ‘why didn’t I get this a year ago?’ games. East Front, interesting system, good reviews, comparatively cheap. Just never got around to it. Now I can.

Welcome to 2008

I can’t let the New Year get along too far without a blog post, I suppose, even if the post is to declare that there hasn’t been much going on that’s blog-worthy.

Real-life family matters (along with the usual Work Stuff) have been consuming most of my time. And I’m just old-fashioned-y enough that I won’t be discussing any of that online. I know there are plenty of bloggers out there who spill their guts to the world daily, but I’m not one of them.

I may have a bit of fun writing about my kid as he discovers the world around him, but that’s about my limit. Everything else stays on my side of the keyboard.

Sorry. Can’t help it. I’m Lutheran.

Eisenbach Gap: A closer look

Time to revisit the topic of World at War: Eisenbach Gap. I’ve managed to get in a few games of this over the holidays, so I’m able to comment about it intelligently.

The nutshell version is that I like this game quite a bit. It’s not very fiddly, plays quickly, has some interesting hooks and delivers plausible results. The physical production is a pleasant enough package, the rules are fairly well written and the game’s tabletop footprint is manageable without feeling restricted.

In a way it’s what I would call a “brave” design because of the combat mechanism. There is no combat results table. This game uses what I’ll call a little buckets o’dice system for combat. “Little” because players are never rolling more than four or five dice at a time.

It’s a design element that took some guts to include because games that use any form of buckets o’dice (BOD) resolution always seem to get a mixed reaction from the wargaming community. Maybe it’s a bias against the mechanism because it’s used in a number of miniatures games? I don’t know. If a designer does his math well, combat probabilities can be modelled just fine using BOD.

More likely, some gamers dislike BOD because the mechanism does introduce a higher element of randomness into combat resolution – or at least a greater perception of randomness. Odds- or differential- based combat results tables are frequently designed to contain randomness. It’s very rare to find a CRT that offers wild swings of fortune within a single odds or differential ‘column’. (Advanced Tobruk is a system that comes to mind, and that CRT has taken it’s share of flak.)

Sometimes that sort of ‘chaos control’ is used to compress the range of possible results and make game outcomes more “predictable.” Lack of a farily narrow predictability puts many gamers out of their comfort range – thus the knee-jerk negatives concerning BOD.

But I digress. In Eisenbach Gap, to be certain, there can be some swings of fortune. But I like that combat in the game avoids the Proving Ground Syndrome of 80 percent kills at 2000 meters. Sometimes a platoon of Abrams will fire on a platoon of T-72s and completely flub. Other times they’ll turn the whole lot of them into smoking junk. The odds favor the latter result (or something in between), but the lack of narrow predictability is a key component to the game.

In some other ‘modern’ tactical games, maneuver is generally undertaken only at great sacrifice. While it’s true that modern weapons systems are very lethal, I think under most circumstances it’s highly unlikely that they will ALWAYS achieve complete mission kills against enemy units.

I think Eisenbach Gap models this notion pretty well. Stupid tricks will get you hammered pretty quickly and exposing your units to enemy fire is a very risky proposition – but I think the game achieves the right chaotic balance (is there such a thing?) and provides a highly enjoyable gaming experience.

The great electrical conspiracy

One question I have (that will obviously never be answered) is this: Since AA and AAA batteries are all packaged in even numbers (2, 4, 8, 24 to a package) why do so many toys now require THREE batteries instead of two or four? WTF up with that?

Personally, I think it’s a kickback scheme cooked up by the battery manufacturers in order to reduce the usefulness of rechargeable batteries. Why? Think about it. Battery chargers typically hold four AA or AAA batteries. If you use batteries in threes, you’ve then got an odd battery flopping around that you’ll either lose or can’t keep charged properly. Oh, sure, you can buy (and charge) 12 batteries (that will give you four sets of three) – but then you’ve bought 12 friggin rechargeable batteries when what you really need is just six.

One of the toys the kid got uses (the Geotrax train set from his godparents) three AAA batteries in the train engine and three AA batteries in the remote control. Why not all AA batteries or all AAA batteries?

It’s a friggin conspiracy, I tell you.