Gallipoli

A book review. I suddenly feel like I'm back at school :)

My brother got me Peter Fitzsimons book on Gallipoli for Christmas.

Initially I just added it to the large pile of books that I currently have, but I thought about it some more.

It seemed appropriate to bump it to the top of the list with 100yr anniversary of the landings fast approaching.

So I started it and I hardly wanted to put it down. I've read Peter Fitzsimons books on Kokoda and Tobruk as well and I enjoy his writing style. As per his own words, his style is to write them more as a novel perched on a large body of historical fact.

I feel the style allows the story to flow better and conveys much more emotion, both from the writer and the person or event he is writing about. Peter's thoughts on a few items come through very strongly!

The book is clearly very Australian centric, but covers the ANZAC force as a whole along with key NZ and English battles well. He also covers the Turkish side well too.

I've read lots of history books and a number on Gallipoli, but I felt I gained more insight on how it came to be and the evacuation. It's hard to fathom how and why such old men were chosen to lead such a force. So much waste - just read about the Light Horse charge at the Nek or Hunter-Weston's battles for Krithia. As for the evacuation - a work of genius.

Overall, it's well worth a read if you are interested in Gallipoli.

I suspect most of today will be spent reading another book since we've a nice little storm moving in!

Thanks for reading :)

A sad day

My morning started today with awaking to the news that Sir Terry Pratchett had passed away.

A black Friday indeed.

I can't say I've read them all, but I loved every Discworld novel that I did read (and I have read a lot of them). Great satire. Such rich and amazing stories full of lively characters.

Sir Terry will live on through his novels, but it feels like there's a little less laughter in the world now.

It seems fitting that the last words posted to his twitter account were from one of the best characters (and my favourite) in Discworld - DEATH:

Rest in peace Sir Terry Pratchett.

Infinity continues

It was a slow start this morning after a late night last night watching the spectacular that was Groupe F: Skin of Fire...

(photos shamelessly stolen from the interwebs...)

Awesome show. What's not to love about guys in light suits covered in or surrounded by fireworks (including being lifted up by crane) during a massive fireworks display whilst a visual display is projected onto the entire side of the Auckland War Memorial museum!! Shame about the heavy downpour halfway through though. Still, the rain disappeared as quick as it arrived.

Crossfit was slow... then breakfast was slow.... then I finally packed everything.

And finally made it to gaming. But not before spotting this take of from Ardmore. Another new classic aircraft I haven't seen before. Not sure where it was heading off too....

Beech D18s:

I had the wrong lens on at the time, so the photo isn't the best.

Looked cool, but seemed to struggle to get off the ground! :) Hopefully, I'll get to see it again soon for some better pics.

Anyway. As I arrived at Mark's, Phil and James were starting a game. Mark was waiting for either Rob or I to get a list organised.

List making was slow.... So far Army 5 for Infinity is still not released, so we're still having to use pdf's, pen and paper. Gosh, the horror of having to write stuff and add numbers together! I think we've become to accustomed to great online army builders :) We both seemed to take our time... it was as if neither of us were keen on playing...

I managed to be slower than Rob in organising a list, so Rob played Mark first. Rob's Combined army would take on Mark's Morats. Training mission perhaps?

I took a few photos...

The table set-up...

The Combined forces advance...

Some Morat's...

What's that in the distance I wonder... nothing but red mist after a burst of HMG fire!

The Sogarat Lt tries to get into high ground....

... but Combined forces close in for the kill 

Dice are rolled. Mark's face says it all....

The Sogarat is dead. The Combined win (I think :) ).

Mark and I then played a game. Kill each other as quick as possible was the mission. I ran my Scot's with the exact same force as last week. Check it out here.

Mark had taken (if I recall correctly... Mark may post his list... although probably not since I've posted that pic of him :) )

Sogarat w/ HMG
Medic
4(?) Morat's w/ Combi rifle

Table set-up was the same. And we started....

I charged my SAS and Wulver forward. The Wulver to get into a good position. The SAS to take out one of the Morat's...

... but the Morat gets lucky. It's armour saves it from 2 chain rifle blasts and one of it's reaction shots gets past the cover and kills my SAS trooper. Bugger.

Then another Morat plays peek-a-boo with my Wulver.... but to no effect.

So the Sogarat climbs up onto one of building and unleashes with his HMG...

Result = 1 dead Wulver. 2 of my key troops are now dead. Unbeknownst to the Sogarat though, he'd moved into LoF of my Cateran.

But I miss.

So the Sogarat moves up to cover to get some protection and position himself nicely. That ends Mark's turn.

See that model at the bottom of my picture.... that's my AP HMP armed Grey. The Sogarat hadn't seen him either... he was too intent on dealing with my sniper.

I spend one of my special orders and combine the actions of the Cateran & Grey. The Grey spearheads the attack.

The dice are rolled....

Both my troops get a hit on the Sogarat.

The Sogarat gets no hits...

It has ARM 6 though. Crap.

The hit from the Grey is saved.

But the sniper's round gets through the armour.

I love T2 ammo... 2 wounds on the Sogarat.

I have 4 orders left and a bit of a predicament. I know the Sogarat has an automedkit. So there is a chance it could revive in Mark's next turn. I really want it dead though.

I look at my orders.

I look at the distance to Sogarat.

I look at the Morat in the distance that will get LoF during some of the move.

I look back at the Sogarat.

It can't get back up.

It's balls to the wall time.

I charge my Grey forward.

The Morat fires and misses.

I move my Grey again to get into position.

2 orders left.

I move and fire.

The only hit I get just pings of the Sogarat's armour.

Goddammit.

I move into base to base contact.

The Grey swings his sword and the Sogarats head comes clean off (coup de grace), but not before a round from the distant Morat finds it mark and fells the heroic Scottish Grey.

The game kinda winds down from here as neither of us can do much with our key assault troops dead. Although, I do manage to goad Mark into continuing our game of peek-a-boo with 2 of his Morat's and my Cateran.

The exchange of fire nets me another dead Morat.

End result... 99 pts of dead Morats vs. 97 pts of dead Scots. So slightly more Morats, but within the game rules, the close result means a draw.

All good fun and we're getting to grips with the rules again quite quickly. This time we'd experimented with using some of rules for zones of effect through creating saturation zones (-1 to your burst). It was interesting, but I think we need to play around with these (and low vis zones) a little more to get the right effect for the terrain we use.

Now it's back to Black Sails and the final 2 episodes of season 1. Can't wait to see what happens! Great series if you haven't seen it. If you've seen the TV series Vikings, then it's like that but with Pirates!! :)

Thanks for reading.

An old friend returns

It was the return of an old friend today... a game I haven't played for some time - Infinity!

Always loved this game. So quick. So brutal. And it's been too long since I last played it.

I think so long... that it hasn't even made it onto this blog!

With the recent release of N3 (V3 rules), it was time to get it back on the table as rules tweaks were looking pretty good.

Today was that today. I blew the dust of the terrain boxes and my Infinity bag of models and headed over to gaming.

When I arrived Mark & Phil were already playing, so on Rob's arrival we busted out a small 150pt game. Rob's Yu Jing vs. my Caledonian's (Ariadna sectorial aka crazy Scots!)

I took..

3 Volunteers w/ rifles (1 as a Lieutenant)
1 Volunteer w/ chain rifle
1 Volunteer w/ grenade launcher
1 Cateran w/ T2 sniper rifle
1 Wulver w/ T2 rifle
1 Grey w/ AP HMG
1 SAS w/ chain rifle

I think Rob took...

1 Hsien w/ HMG
Ninja
4(?) basic dudes

We just played "kill each other as quickly as possible" as we were pretty rusty on the old rules let alone having any idea on the new rules chagnes.

Rob had to deploy first and I would go first. The set-up...

The Hsien... one tough mother... he had me worried.

My Cateran and Wulver were in position to deal to him though....

Until some lucky shooting from a Ninja and one of the Yu Jing cannon fodder kills them in the first turn! Two of my key troops already dead. Uh oh....

My girl spec shoots a grenade onto the Ninja who just nimbly dodges out of the way.

I'm not very happy and am very nervous at this point.... especially when this happens!

Chain rifle to the face though! Luckily the SAS trooper manages to get a chain rifle shot of as the Hsien charges in and takes a wound of him. Even luckier for the SAS trooper... the Hsien misses his close combat attack.

Another round of close combat sees the Hsian fall (he missed, I hit) and I breathe a sigh of relief as the rest of my troops begin mopping up operations. Victory to the Scots!

Quite a few criticals were rolled in this game. It was quite amusing when the Hsien went after my Grey (4 dice vs. my 1), but we both rolled crits and then repeated it with the very next order. Luckily, under the new rules, they now cancel each other out :) Lucky for me anyway...

As we finishing our game off Phil and Mark had started another battle. This time over a large urban building. Looked like quite an interesting set-up - lots of room to room fighting and getting up close and personal!

Rob and I tweaked our set-up and played again with the same forces.

The Yu Jing advance is lead by the Hsien this time....

But this time my Cateran is ready...

The Hsien barely registers the flash before falling dead. A single T2 round from the Cateran's sniper rifle does the business. This pretty much hamstrings Rob.

His Ninja and my Wulver trade shots, but to little avail. Whilst the Wulver and Grey both take down one of the basic Yu Jing troopers each causing them to frenzy (now impetuous).

But, in all honesty, the Ninja is not in a good place  (was actually in tower... not on top!) to be effective, so mopping up of the other Yu Jing troopers begins. Another Scottish victory.

All in all a good intro back into a cool game. So far the rules tweaks look good and, so far, seem to have simplified things. We didn't get into too many tricky situations and most of the rulebook searching was just checking up on certain abilities.

Infinity season has now commenced! :)

But it was too hot for more Infinity today, so we changed games...

Rob had bought D&D attack wing (think X-Wing, but with dragons!), so we had a go at that.

Mark and I teamed up on evil side with 2 dragons each. Rob and Phil faced us with 2 dragons and a giant.

All good fun and my dragon's breath weapons did the trick eventually taking out Rob & Phil's forces. Mark's dragons helped a little bit.... :)

Thanks for reading :)

Lantern Festival 2015

It's Chinese New Year and here in Auckland there is certainly a large Chinese community!

And it's great since we get a cool festival like the Lantern Festival.

Rob, Mark and I popped along last night to the lantern only part of the festival (so no stage shows, food stalls etc) as it's generally a little quieter... or so we thought! Turns out the awesome weather attracted a rather large crowd... still, lots of good photo op's.

As for the lanterns... some pretty cool ones, some so so, many from last year, but a few new ones hidden around the place :)

I had taken my tripod, but didn't really need to. Most of my photographs were taken hand held with a very small f-stop and ISO on auto. Pretty happy with the results. Next time, I think I'll leave the tripod at home.

Here's the results....

I did try one with the tripod by the big dragons to get some ghosting effects... ended up with a lot of ghosts! Kinda shows how busy is was..

There was quite a good display of some birds/roses in the trees, but unfortunately the light was a little bright in one of the birds so I couldn't get the shot quite right...

And finally.... the weirdest one of all.... as far as I can tell it is banana's fighting shrimps with some turtles!?! I'm sure there must a good story here...

Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for havin a look :)