Again with the Snow and a What If?

Greetings o' frozen ones,

Another day in the house after spending 45 mins snow blowing the drift out of the drive way. It has stopped with the snow, but the winds are wicked cold with wind chills in the -10's. Brr. Even when I had the day off (Thanks Uncle Sam), I still had to drive The Other Half into the hospital for work. The base may be unessential, but the hospital is not. I find that amusing. I needed gas after dropping her off and I got stuck twice in the neighborhoods trying to get to the gas station. Luckily the Subaru is all wheel drive and a bit of 'back and forth' got me unstuck in a few moments. When the gas low light came on during the second stuck, I was a bit nervous. Lessons Learned: (1) Fill up with gas before a big storm, and (2) stick to the main roads and out of the side streets.

I played one round of Grind solo, but think it needs a second player to get a better feel... Some of the odd rules (plays and what not) need to be hashed out between a few folks to get a better understanding.

With the down time I've been playing Sid Meier's Civilization which is always good for burning hours and hours of downtime. I've always enjoyed the series and if I could only play one more computer game for the rest of my life, it would most likely be this one. Luckily, I don't have to worry about that too much! :-)

Break - Break

I found this video on-line:


I thought it was a real neat piece. I've always enjoyed alternative history stuff and this just feeds to that premise. My earliest encounters with Alt-Hist was the Marvel Comic's "What If?" that looked at different views of the standard heros. That led to the DC's Elseworld brand that did a much better job of treating the concept with an adult flare.

That led me to read the works of Harry Turtledove that has written may Alt-Hist titles. I haven't finished the Timeline-191 series, but I did enjoy Turtledove's approach.

That is about it for today... Stay warm!

jp
Cold is the suck

The Next Level...

Yesterday saw the start of the next level for Flames Of War slow grow league. The Italian Africa Recon Force continues its growth. I got my 600 painted up and I thought they looked pretty good. I put together Thursday (Happy T-Day) and Friday enough to field most of my 1250. This includes the M14 tanks, two big 90/53 AA guns, an additional L6 for the HQ, and a Mortocicli Machine Gun Platoon with a soloturn anti-tank gun team attached.

I played a game versus Paul's Kiwis using the break out scenario. I was the attacker since I was a mobile force and had to fight my way through his two quadrants to the one diagonal opposite my deployment zone. I opted to have my two Mortociccli platoons come in as reserves on the objective side of the board. Paul had to bring one of his two mech teams in reserve and choose the Shermans. My volume of machine gun fire did me well as I swooped in on his positions with my tanks and Paul's dice betrayed him to the end. I had a platoon on the objectives on Turn three with Paul's Shermans unable to contest them. It was a good educational game for me, allowing me to see the best way to deploy the HQ, broken up vice as a single platoon.

On Friday I also picked up a Dremel as it was on sale at Lowes. Since I've got Iron Fang to stick together, I wanted to replace the pole arms with something that wouldn't bend so much. I'll post how that goes.

A week ago, TJ dropped me a note to let me know that his local game store had Grind on sale for $35. That is below retail costs! He swung by on Friday since he and his wife were passing by and dropped off my copy! Sweet. I opened the box and peeked, but haven't had a chance to play yet.

jp
Ci siamo!