Happy Birthday George Washington

 I've really tried not to reshare or repurpose every blog post that catches my eye, but Jim Purky (Der Alte Fritze) painted up a new George Washington from his own Fife and Drum figures, and it's worthy enough to wish our first president a happy 294th birthday.  

I'm not much of a SYW or AWI fan, but I've followed Jim since he was pushing colonial teddy bears and capturing peanut M&Ms with his little girl.  That little girl is now old and in college, I believe.  Time waits for no man, so buy some figures, paint some more, and play a game. That's what we should be doing on Presidents' Day anyway.

(Kickstarter) The Spanish-American War 1898 by Compass Games

 The Spanish-American War 1898 is the latest Kickstarter from Compass Games.  It's a chit-based wargame for up to 2-4 players with some solitaire playability.  

Introduction to Wargaming--The Battle of Elchingen

The Kansas State University Game Lab is on YouTube, covering the The Battle of Elchingen

Post-Christmas Swag

 Christmas was exactly what I needed this year.  The girls helped with cooking, we baked, we make artisanal popcorn, and played games.  

Outside of one gift I got no miniatures.... sorry lead pile, you don't grow today!   

Sorry, no time to be John Larroquette in Stripes

The kids adored the gifts I got for them, and they learned getting practical stuff I and a few hear-strung gifts just hits the old-man 

Not shown:  My first socks and undershirt gift since COVID.  Maybe it's a Dad thing, but I'd rather take that money off my Christmas total.

Beware of Gnomes sign from Millie.  No comment necessary.

Tile-Lock Scrabble:  Maja got this after she learned Scrabble.  It doesn't hurt that the girlfriend is a Scrabble buff as well..

Dice:  I will never argue with Dollar Store/Dollar General Dice.

A Gnome Stick book: Bravo.

How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs  by Elizabeth F. Thompson.  A mid-November addition to my small list, thanks to a mention on Ken's Bookshelf on Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.

(Gnome Wars) What War to Fight?

If a Third Edition of Gnome Wars were to ever come out, there are a lot of things that can be corrected, updated, and expanded upon.  

Finding a conflict to fight shouldn't be one of them.  

Somewhere in the back pages of the Burning Plastic rules I helped create and heavily promote, the primary mentions something like, "It doesn't matter if it's the Planet Pluterax or the Toybox Rebellion you're recreating, so long as there's an excuse to have fun."    While there is plenty of material to fight Swiss vs Germans until you're blue in the face, scaling the gnome tech allows the player to be inspired by far more than Great War battles.  I could safely argue that, removing support weaponry and vehicles, you can easily replay any conflict Post-Napoleonic to Pre-Spanish Civil War.  

Wikipedia has nicely compiled the List of the Wars of the 19th and 20th  centuries.   I mean, there's nothing like a little beyond-wiki research to see how you can turn the Mejba Revolt  or war in the Kingdom of Kandy into the latest and greatest Gnome Wars game!

(Kickstarter) One-Page Bulge by Lombardy Studios

Lombardy Studios has launched a Kickstarter to do much more than reprint Steve Jackson's wargame of effective simplicity One-Page Bulge. 

For the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Lombardy Studios will make a full fledged boxed set.

One-Page Bulge  will be a solitaire and 2-player wargame that includes state-of-the-art graphics and the high-quality components that Steve and Dana's fans have come to expect. Sample art, video back story discussions with Steve and Dana, and more will be posted before and during the Kickstarter campaign.

The Kansas State University Game Lab

 I had the good fortune of having a gentleman simply lurk off to the side of my Friday Gnome Wars game at Historicon this past July.  Despite repeated offerings to grab him a unit, he simply enjoyed watching the chaos.  

That gentleman was  Brad Burenheide, Associate Professor at Kansas State University and the co-creator of the  K-State Game Lab.   The Game Lab is a creation out of the College of Education, a research and play organization that allows students, faculty, staff and members of the community to play a variety of games to look at their potential impact in learning and education.  A variety of card, board, role-playing, and miniature games are played with the purpose using them in ways to augment teaching, and learning in general.

It also helps that they can have a blast in doing so... which really is the underlying reason for the project in general.  

The actual website for the Game Lab can be found here.

Let's Talk About Henning

So, fun fact: My sister and her Canadian husband got married a little over 11 years ago in a civil service up in Boston, but their post-ceremony celebration that evening also had George Takei (oh my...) at the same bar.  

That summer, they had a get-together up in Boston with all the family and friends from far and wide.  The last activity we did the Sunday before we returned home was a visit 311 Broadway in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Why, you might ask?

I get the distinction of having my most famous relative headlining a Supreme Court case, Jacobson vs Massachusetts, a case where the Justices ruled compulsory vaccinations were constitutional because "the police power of the state may be allowed to constrain individual liberties through reasonable regulations when required to protect public safety."

So just to clear the air, Henning Jacobson, was not some wild anti-vaxxer by today's standards, or even the early 20th Century.  After two horrible experiences with the antiquated 19th century vaccinations in routine circumstances that left family members dead or maimed in both Sweden and the United States, and decided to hold his ground when Cambridge instituted compulsory vaccination 1902 during an outbreak in the community.  His case through the judicial process was paid for by prominent anti-vaxxers for the day.  

In hindsight, the new manufacturing process and administration of the vaccine at the turn of the century had been completely changed, with miniscule reactions compared to the prior methods, but to quote George W. Bush, "Fool me twice, won't be fooled again."  I'll also note that no family member who has taken the modern versions of the vaccine has come down with any reactions in the last 120+ years.  (I'm almost disappointed that smallpox was removed from the in processing inoculations for US Military between 1983 and 2002, so I didn't get it when I was in the military.  I'll gladly take it today, if needed, though I might pass if it still involved a live virus.)   Very similar to the last few years of COVID, a mixture of traumatic anecdotal experience (there weren't sufficient medical records to justify an exception, even if one would be accepted.) 

One of the other points of consideration I'd hope he did consider was his profession and its impact to the public.  As a pastor of a Swedish Lutheran church with a sizable congregation, I see a matter of personal and public safety to consider, although I add that there was nary a mention from the pulpit that researchers could find, and only a scant few amongst all ethnicities in the city objected.  

So why do I rant on about my Great-Great-Grandfather Henning, smallpox, and the like?  Because the congregation he presided over, the church he helped build was at 311 Broadway in Cambrige.  

When we visited, the church, now Faith Lutheran, as a grand old church with massive beams and fabulous woodworking built by Swedish immigrants.  Like most mainline Protestants churches, it's original congregation fled the city and a much smaller and diverse group took up their mantle.  

I've got to admit that when I introduced myself I still got a bit of the rock-star treatment.    I even got to meet an elderly woman who was actually baptized by him before he retired... and somehow had his old church desk in her house!  However with small little ones and a 5+ hour drive home, I couldn't take full advantage of the hospitality, just a chance to take some pictures, see some artifacts with ancestral ties and meet some very nice people. 

I had not found an opportunity to revisit the church in the following years, and as of Easter 2023, that opportunity was now impossible.  

Sometime after the Easter services last week, a fire started in the church.  All those magnificent beams?  All that fantastic woodwork covered in thick layers of varnish and lacquer?  Now it was all fuel for a fearsome multiple-alarm blaze.  

The congregation has been worshipping at different sites, thanks to the grace and generosity of other denominations in Cambridge.  

Recently, the current Pastor posted a video on Youtube, stating that the church was going to need to be torn down in the future, and reaching out for ideas as to uses for the property in the future.  It's not going to be as grand, but here's hoping they rebuild into something that has multiple uses in serving God in the community.  

When we returned home from our trip, I wrote a social media post mentioning how awesome it was that something my ancestor helped build and nurture might be something strong enough for one of my kids' grandkids could see one day.   Nothing lasts forever, and for most things, much shorter than they deserve. 

(Kickstarter) Louisbourg 1758 by Old School Wargames

Even with #ZineQuest and a deluge of STL file campaigns going on, there are still some interesting crowdfunding for traditional games going on.  

Louisbourg 1758 is a two player block game covering the siege of Louisbourg.  

From the Kickstarter:

Louisbourg 1758 is a two player game on the campaign to take the fortress. One side commands the British while the other commands the French. The object of the game for the British player is to occupy the fortress of Louisbourg with their army or occupy Louisbourg harbor with their ships. The French goal is to prevent the British from achieving their objectives by the end of the game.

Teaching Ferrets to Yodel: Teaching Wargames to Non-Gamers

It's tryouts this week for the local rec league I'm Vice-President of, so I missed one of the more anticipated presentations by the Georgetown University Wargaming Society:  Teaching Ferrets to Yodel: Teaching Wargames to Non-Gamers.

Luckily, GUWS has a Youtube channel, and are quite prompt in unloading them:

I greatly enjoyed this take on wargaming for non-gamers, especially the amusing fact that the non-gamers the presenter teaches are US Army officers. Even more amusing, they use Root, the fantasy game with cute little animals, as the introduction to wargaming.

There was some great advice provided (some that we already use in the Gnome Wars/HMGS Next Gen games), but plenty of ideas that I will consider applying

(Painting) Don't Ask About the Luger

 When I left for Historicon this year, I didn't have a look list of "must-haves," but with my final acquisition of the weekend, I made sure to pick up Veteran with Pick and Pistol from Brigade Games.  It had been the first picture on a recent email blast and it was just a cool pose.  

Of course, once I got home and looked him over, I realized, "What nationality is this dude?"

He was advertised as above, and alongside fairly generic armed civilians.

He is wielding a Luger, so that might make him obviously German, but the Wolfman Jack look seemed out of place. 

If he was a veteran of the Great War, filling in the lines from the deep reserves, I could buy that.  

But during my research, a Soviet soldier seemed to fit better.  With a little more research, a Soviet political officer fit the look.  Combine that with Ray Stevenson's character in the first episode of Ahsoka, and I think I have my dude, Alexander Mikoyan. 

And after yesterday's Tabletop Inquirer post, I darkened the eyes, no detail.

Definitely not your normal WW2 figure, rather I'm seeing him as a leader of a deranged Pulp faction of Soviet oddballs and secrets man was not meant to know.  He's been around since the discovery of Lovecraftian Ghouls during the Russian Civil War, he jumped sides and joined SV-8 during the Purge, and he's either so deep into occult research that he's eluded Stalin's purges or Stalin's minions are too afraid to try anymore.  

By the time of this picture, it's the pinnacle of the vicious fighting in Stalingrad.  No man of his pedigree should have been with 300 kilometers of the battle, but reports of agents of the Karotechia moving to the city caused him grave concern.  His fears were realized, as they were able to release some sort of ritual to turn the piles of corpses into re-animated killing machines that no human was able to control.  

One of Alexander's allies is a Deep One he calls Adrik the Rusalki.  A hybrid almost nearing his complete transformation, Adrik was picked up from a remote fishing village on the Pacific coast.  

Part of the three figure "Deep Ones Mutant Fishman" pack from RAFM

Alexander knows that Adrik will either go fully feral and attempt to slaughter him, or simply skulk off into the waters one day, but for now, whatever sliver of its humanity is still willing to help him, especially reading all those infernal books.

I have little use for either figure at this time, so I'll add them to the list of potential inspirations for the #CharacterCreationChallenge in January.

(Edit: I got some responses back, to help connect the dots on the pick guy.   Not only might my observation on German firearms be off, but these and the figures he was announced might be part of a little movie called Sisu.  (Note: Red Band Trailer, NSFW)  It's John Wick killing Nazis, if John Wick was a Finnish gold miner in 1944.  Heck, there's even a dog.)

I'm sticking with an Soviet SV-8 agent for now, and building up his league for Pulp Alley.)

In the Painting Queue - The bench has been a dumping ground for anything and everything over the summer, but five things  catch my eye:

1. Pulp Season 4 - One of two major roadblocks are actually getting completed. Watch out!
2. Mouslings of Yore - The Heritage Dungeon Dweller Mouslings from Reaper in the 90's are staring at me right now, with their big sad eyes.  
3. Gnomish Space Marines - The latest Macrocosm Kickstarter was the last thing I was working on before the bench became overwhelmed.  Gotta dig them out 
4. Zombie Car - No, not animated cars, rather, vehicles that need to be weathered for a zombie/apocalypse game.
5. Inflatable Yard Pirates of Doom - I think I figured out our Halloween game for the year...

Project: 350 -  After surviving #RPGaDay2023 and a month's worth of posts to write, we emerged in decent shape with 461 posts in the queue (308 drafts/153 scheduled) from 464 (312/152) back in July.  Actual plays are very caught up, so it's a bunch of games and painting for the near future.  The horror!

(Kickstarter) Horns of the Buffalo by Bill Molyneaux

Horns of the Buffalo by Bill Molyneaux is a current Kickstarter wargame recreating twelve battles from the Anglo-Zulu war.

From the Kickstarter:

Horns of the Buffalo - The Anglo - Zulu War of 1879 is a fast-playing, introductory level wargame with a series of engagements from that war between the Zulu and British Empires. Each battle is designed to be played in about an hour, while not losing the feel or flavor of the events simulated. While the rules provide everything you need to enjoy the many battles included in the game, many scenarios will have special rules to modify the series rules, to enhance the experience of the individual engagements. As with all my games feel free to adjust a rule or a scenario to make the game your game.

(Review) Watching Over Yellowstone

Unlike the regular Historical Wargaming buffs, I eschew studies in the bigger historical periods.  I read enough ACW and WW2 in high school and Napoleonics aren't my thing.  I much prefer the smaller campaigns, the less well-known events that impact society in different ways than the sledgehammer military events:  Lettow-Vorbeck in German East Africa.  The Samoan Civil Wars.  The Battle of Yellowstone.  

For over thirty years, the United States Cavalry were the caretakers and administrators of Yellowstone National Park.    In those early days, the soldiers maintained the park, aided and tried to control the growing tourism to the regions, and dealt illegal poaching and other operations that snuck over the boundary.  It was a different type of assignment compared to any other, stateside, and produced a unique set of challenges to the enlisted men and officers alike. 

In Watching Over Yellowstone, Thomas C Rust does not try to rehash the story, as it is already available.  Rather, he delves deep within the collected letters of enlisted personnel and civilians living near the park, entrusted to the Yellowstone National Park Archives, piecing together the how the men overcame loneliness, remoteness, and far too many opportunities for largely unsupervised shenanigans and hijinks, and far, far worse.    

Using the soldiers' letters personalizes them, and makes the reader seek out more interpretation and empathy as they are charged with desertion, drunkenness, and dereliction of duty. I'm still questioning how much of things were the overwhelming depression and loneliness that being so remorte does to a person, but at the same time, learning how much it took to walk to civilization (with a train station) and board a train, I'm beginning to question the mental sate of the men.  

The book is also chock full of new pictures detailing the Park during the US Cavalry's management.  If I do ever return to my Battle of Yellowstone game, I have considerably more source material for the table than I had before.

Watching Over Yellowstone is definitely worth 4 out of 5 gnomes.

Around This Time Sir Allen of HexKey Rose to Prominence

 

Happy Independence Day!

Leveraging Commercial Games in Military Education

Part of me wanted to write this whole opening paragraph about how the first sign of a society returning back to normal from some disaster is how the arts and general intelligentsia return, but that's a lie.  Since day one, numerous groups and organizations have actively provided concerts, virtual museum tours, and other events online for the betterment of the community, as well as self-preservation.

That all being said, I had my heart grow three sizes when someone posted about Georgetown University Wargaming Society  (GUWS) sponsoring an online lecture via Zoom.

Leveraging Commercial Games in Military Education was a two-hour lecture conducted by Mr James Sterrett, Chief of the Simulation Education Division in the Directorate of Simulation Education of U.S. Army University/Command & General Staff College.

First off, outside of the tedium of getting things set-up, it was a first Zoom meeting and as an audience member, it went perfectly.  Outside of the seamless mobile application, this is all technology I've seen and occasionally used for at least the last 15+ years.  Guess the push to online participation is like the first Model T to make it to Dogpatch.  Hopefully future uses will continue to work as smoothly as this one.

The one issue I've learned to expect/appreciate from the HMGS War College is that experts are not always great speakers and some of our hobby historians are short on material, but great on presentation.  I was absolutely delighted that neither situation came up here.  Mr Sterrett is accustomed to lecturing to, and working with mid-level Commissioned Officers from the United States Army, its sister branches, as well as international officers, so he could easily keep the attention of a mixed audience of military and civilians while going over the plethora of information provided.

I don't plan on teaching military history, strategy, and tactics in a military setting, commissioned or enlisted, but as I assist with the HMGS Teacher's Program, this was an abundance of tips and tricks, pitfalls to avoid, and engaging anecdotes of using various games, analog and computer, over the years.

Apparently GUWS does this weekly, and the topics are pretty awesome.  I heartily recommend checking out future events.

EDIT: The lecture has been posted to Youtube!

We've Been Planning for This Shelter in Place Our Whole Lives

Well before its throw-away mention on the Big Bang Theory, I was quite aware, and in awe of Campaign for North Africa. It may have been the first "new" game I learned about in my first job at a gaming store.  It's the direct inspiration for "The Great War" game that's been set up in the basement of Weird Pete's Games Pit for the last fifteen-plus years in Knights of the Dinner Table.  It's the ultimate guilty pleasure for a wargamer with all the time in the world, and an obsessive-compulsive desire to control the smallest minutiae regarding logistics.

... and if we're going to be trapped indoors for another two weeks, we should be cracking open boxes across the country.   If we start now, we can easily invest two-hundred hours into the game.  That's at least a tenth of the way to completion! (If we skip a few rules...)

Bloody White Baron by James Palmer

I was first introduced to the "Back of Beyond"  warfare in Central Asia and Mongolia during the 20's, largely associated with the Russian Civil War, from the Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog, but it was episode #239 of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff that sparked my interest in the period again, and specifically Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg (Ungern for the remainder of this review).

For my recent cruise, I got a copy of James Palmer's The Bloody White Baron to read, and was not disappointed.

Baron Ungern is indeed a colorful character, but he is also a brutal, sadistic man, who perpetrated, or at least allowed his men to commit, horrible crimes against the local population, Bolsheviks, refugees, as well as the Jewish population.  Even the most fervent Ungern fan/apologist who can explain the atrocities were simply more direct and efficient than the same acts committed by the Bolsheviks at the time, should have great difficulty explaining his actions towards Jews in Dauria and Urga that rival, or may even give pause to those orchestra the atrocities in Nazi Germany decades later, albeit on a much more localized scale.

Palmer spends adequate time covering Ungern's background and the eccentricities of Buddhism in Central Asia at a slower pace, before delving into the madness in a Post-Great War world.

Reading Palmer's book will allow me to venture into the original "source" material of Ferdynand Ossendowski's Beasts, Men, and Gods, which creates the initial legend of the Bloody White Baron to the world with more legend than impressive and honest truth.

Lego Battle of Rorke's Drift - Zulu stop motion

Sequencing the Viscount Eric Genome

Lots of distractions for this week.  More to come on that, but the high point thus far was that I have human DNA!

My wife got the whole family those Ancestry DNA kits for Christmas as a fun family activity.

Personally, I've had it pretty easy with the genealogical path.  My grandparents were pretty pureblood by all accounts, and my Dad's side of the family was always considered full Swedish up until his generation.  I figured I would be 50% Swedish, 25% Irish, and 25% Slovak, or some variation thereof.

Then I got my results this week:

 Norway?  England? Germanic Europe?

Obviously a popular commercial product might not be a be all/end all answer, but the grand map of overlaps helps explain it.

I'm not exactly sure what strange DNA those people in Denmark have that have eluded all my overlapping genetics.

My Swedish ancestors come from square in the middle of the big overlap of Norway and Sweden.  Some of the distant ancestors are starting to pull more Danish/Germanic surnames/patronyms, and I'm assuming a few English/Welsh and Scots started canoodling with the Irish ancestors.

I may have also uncovered an extension on my paternal Grandmother's side of the family.  Marriage records and such always mentioned my great-great grand parents, but the trail seemed to go cold.  Once a few of those DNA matches came up for other members, I pulled one that had the same surname in the same small mining town of my ancestors.  Reviewing records I realized that those folks were my grandmother's grandparents who lived a five doors down from her.... and who always were on the previous page of the census records. 

For me, the best part was my wife's horror that discovering her half-Welsh, half-German heritage was a mismash of cultures, no "pure" Germanic (only the England and Northwest Europe, which does cover Baden), and somehow she's 7% Norwegian as well. 

Even better?  The kids are more diluted Swedish, my little Millie ended up a full quarter Norwegian.

Explains everything.