Saga - I won a game!

Friday night was war game night with Spencer. We decided on Saga - 4 point armies and Clash of Warlords rules. Victory conditions are to kill the other Warlord.

We set up the battle field, some bits from both of our terrain collections.

My vikings in the fore ground and Spencer's Saxons in the background. We're fighting in the old Effilstan's pig farm... I just made that up now.

Spencer moved first sending his spear and shield warriors to the center of the small stead. I reacted by sending my bow-armed thralls to the small longhouse on the right for cover, the plan being they could snipe at the Saxons.

The Saxons then occupied some of the smaller buildings and the Warlord and a retinue of warriors stood strong in the center. Another Saxon warrior unit besieged the Viking thralls in the longhouse, casualties were dealt to both sides but the thralls stood strong defensively. They were not able to take any offensive measures as planned.

The Vikings then sent in a group of hardened warriors to meet with Saxon Huscarls and a shield wall. It was kind of a blood bath... on the side of the Vikings.

Both sides regrouped and the Saxon Warlord and his retinue moved forward more. The Vikings reacted by sending in the famed Val'Serkers who (rolling really well) bit well into the Saxon shield wall and lost only 1 Val'Serker. They then pushed forward on the lone Saxon Warlord, as the Saxon Warriors had to retreat, and with another excellent roll of dice they killed off the Saxon warlord as he killed all the Val'Serkers.

It was a good fight and I think I did things right when it came to running a Viking faction in the Saga rule set. Hit hard and hit quick and don't sweat the fatigue counters. No room for grand strategies here. Keep your eye on the victory conditions.

The drink of the night was:

Edit**

Thinking about the game more the one thing I did totally different was how I used my levies - the 12 "old men with bows" as I like to call them. As per Saga rules every faction gets "levies" or a cheap unit that usually has ranged abilities. They don't get many dice for attacks - 1 die per 3 minis - and are crap for armor and melee. Many battle board abilities are also only good for warriors on up nor do they generate a Saga Dice. On paper they just don't seem worth the 1 point they cost.

Historically these guys would be "old men with bows" ... or just peasants you handed a spear to and said, "Fight well man...". Not front line guys; Levies, thralls, militia, a sacrifice. These guys would have the family helmet maybe or a shield of their own, a knife and hand ax. That spear they were given or one they had on their own would be the best weapon they got. Slings were common too. I've read in some sagas about the legendary old retired farmer/warrior with his old crooked bow and how dangerous that man could be.

Spencer and I were talking about levies in the game. He's really effective at using Anglo-Dane levies. They can actually get a bonus die here and there when fighting ranged. Vikings levies? Not so much. I've never used my levies much nor effectively. Spencer brought up the idea of levies being great at occupation of certain terrain features like bridges or buildings and I agreed with that as I had not even thought of that until he mentioned it.

Levies, though thought of as your "ranged" option can still engage in melee whether it's offensive or defensive. Setting them in a terrain feature will give them some defensive bonuses making them not so poor as an open field levy getting hit by a unit of warriors or hearthguard. In the bridge battle we played a few months back they would've been great to set on one bridge to hold it, maybe backed by a hearthguard, while the bulk of your forces could be concentrated on the other bridge (there are 2 bridges).

This last game I tried it out and it seemed to work OK. Sure they were exhausted and could not fire bows offensively the whole game but they kept up in that a-frame  and did their job by both denying the building and creating an obstacle on the battlefield that could not be avoided.

The Great D&D-Satan scare of the 80s

BBC article - D&D turns 40 this year and a reminder how it was for some of us growing up in the 80s.
BBC article The Great 1980s Dungeons and Dragons Panic

I was caught up in some of this growing up. Got assaulted 2 different times for being a D&D player. I got bullied anyways because I was a fat nerd and not white. Many thought I was Hispanic (I'm half Thai) but that don't matter. I'm also not Christian, my household being predominately Buddhist. So, growing up in a white town was occasionally rough on a not white, buck-toothed, not Christian, Dungeons and Dragons playing fat kid.

** I got into Tae Kwon Do and then school football and wrestling. I got my issues worked out, the above being more a statement of events as opposed to some inner expose of some kind. I could bench more than some of the kids who beat me up by the time I was a senior in high school. Some of the guys that beat me up are dead now via drug overdoses and stupid drunk accidents. I'm doing all right.**

Not naming names -
There was this one kid, I was 13 or so at the time, that was in our D&D group for about a year. He molested some girl much younger than him. We, obviously, were freaked out by that when we found out about it. Some one in his camp (his Mom... him?) Pulled the D&D is Satan card in his investigation so we got picked to be questioned. The police and feds found nothing at our table after some interviews. All was good there. I was never even actually interviewed personally.

Investigators finding ZERO connection amounts to nothing in the eyes of circa 80s Van-Tucky Washington though. For about 6 months I was branded. I took my licks and came up swinging and did well. To this day I play Pathfinder. I enjoy the activity with good friends. Some of my best friends (who I SHOULD NAME as they are great people) have come to me via gaming. I game with my wife and hope to begin gaming with my 12 year old step daughter this summer.

Happy 40th Birthday Dungeons and Dragons and happy 35 year anniversary to me for keeping up with something I have been doing consistently and has brought me joy for that long (taking breaks for serving in the Navy and 2008-2010).

Workbench and urban garden

Sorry for the lack of blogging since my vacation. I've no active projects right now on my minis bench, not that I don't have anything to do. I'm just taking a break as the weather gets better and I can field a good army in either of the wargames I play.

It's spring, trees are sending out pollen to make baby trees, the sun shines more than not right now, I've got a garden going, and I've got an itch to do both kinds of camping I like to do - car and bushcraft. I just got my REI dividend (a bit more than $35) and I am in a weird quandary in that the things I want are at a range in price that are out of my immediate financial ability and the things I NEED are had and all in good working order.

One thing I am contemplating is getting a pre-built workbench at Home Depot and setting it up outside my apartment door. It'll give me a place to do more serious work like cutting lumber and plant potting and such. Also, I can set up our grill next  to it and the bench can also be a counter. Just some plans for this family guy tight on space.

Link to HD

It is outdoors and it does rain something fierce at times on top of the fact that the apartment has bad gutters and will fill up and drain right on the walkway, so I'm looking for a good coating to put on the bench to weatherize it some. If I waited for the gutters to get fixed (over a year now) I'd just never get this thing done. So fuck it, I'm going live.

As mentioned, I have a small urban garden. I picked up some City Picker planters from HD last month and me and my daughter got them all set up. We're growing all kinds of lettuce, snap peas and radishes, and some herbs like basil, chives, and some arugula. I have extra seeds so plan to get more planters going maybe. We also planted a little hanger pot with some flowers in it hoping that it attracts some lady bugs. The area we have to put planters is, at best, dappled sunlight from sunrise to 12 noon.

The cool thing about the planters is that they use SIP or submerged irrigated planter technique. In a nutshell there is a water reservoir at the bottom, you fill it, water is wicked to roots via the growing medium. Pretty cool stuff.

Vacation - San Diego

Was on vacation all last week with my family (wife and kid) and the in-laws (from Mississippi). Had a grea week in San Diego, CA. I have not been there since my Navy Days, would have been my 4th or 5th time there.

I was born in LA in 1971. Lived there until the mid 70s. Some of my very first memories in life were from when I went to San Diego with my Mom and Dad in 1975 or so. A few weeks ago my Dad came over for dinner and brought an old photo album that had pictures from that San Diego trip in it - mostly of Sea World.

In 1989 I joined the Navy and was shipped off from Portland to NTC/RTC San Diego for boot-camp. I left a week before Thanksgiving and graduated February of 1990. That was the year I missed the Holidays. I did not go back to San Diego after graduating boot and apprenticeship training until I was on the USS Shasta in 1993 while heading out on WESTPAC.

Until this last week I had not been back since 1993.

San Diego is beautiful, built for tourism in it's touristy spots. Mass transit is better than the once legendary Trimet here in Portland. Locals were nice to us. everything is well placed so we could have a vacation and stay out of the hair of the locals.

We ate at one restaurant that is Brazilian BBQ. You pay one price and you get an incredible salad bar (including salmon, mussels, fried bananas, and all kinds of leafy greens) plus the meat service where a "gaucho" comes to your table with skewers of rib-eye, sirloin, brisket, and flank all grilled over wood fire.

We went to The San Diego Zoo and had a ton of fun. We spent 7 hours there (or more) and only saw about half the zoo.

We went to the USS Midway Museum, the last time I was on the Midway was when I was a young 19 year old sailor on the USS St. Louis and the Midway had caught on fire after an accident and we had to provide a Rescue and Assistance team to her in 1990 in Yokosuka Japan. I was on that team. I didn't do much but it was pretty exciting none-the-less. We toured the ship and my wife and kid got a good taste of life on board a US Navy ship - very close quarters and not very comfortable. A lot of stairs (ladders as we call them) and hand rails and bulkheads and pipes all around you. We did a few parts and my wife and mother in law took a break while father in law and kid went with me and we did a thing for my kid where she'd go around and find answers to questions in a booklet and she could turn it in and earn her "wings". It was fun but everyone was getting tired.

 My kid being sworn into the USS Midway's Junior Wings.

The next day we went to Sea World. That was fun too, and the first time I'd been there since 1975. We saw the killer whales thing and walked around a lot and looked at all the sites. We ended our Sea World trip with "dinner with the whales" where you go have a nice meal and the trainers come out and have a Q&A and some of the whales are there. Gretchen (my wife) got some great pictures and we had a nice family memory.

The day after that I got my first Navy tattoo at Nittis Tattoo in Mission Valley. My artist was an apprentice and he did a great job.

Traditional American, back of calf. My first "Navy" tattoo 21 years after I got out.

Our last day there was spent on Coronado having lunch at the big hotel there and touring the city.