Monthly Archives: January 2017

Fishbreath Plays Total War: Warhammer

I fear we are too late.

Under the High King’s banner, we drove the grobi scum out of the halls of our ancestors. We chased them through the badlands and put them to the az, and now they will never trouble us again. Our diplomats traveled the whole of the world, drawing together the karaks and reforging the alliances of old. We stood side by side with men for the first time in a thousand years.

But while we looked south, Chaos fell on the world from the north. Kislev fell. Nordland teeters on the brink. Men fought men in the Empire’s heartland, and now tendrils of darkness reach the very gates of Altdorf.

The High King looks north now. Umgi and dawi alike are united under his command. So we march to the lands of men, az in hand, to face those who would bring about the end of all things—servants and champions of the dark gods.

The Empire is a shadow of its old self. The Wood Elves still make war on all who stand for order. Their stubbornness may yet doom us all. We are the world’s last hope.

– Elmador Oathforged

Warhammer is an excellent setting for storytelling.

You should need no further convincing, but in the event you do, let me elaborate. From its rather humble beginnings as a miniatures wargame, Warhammer Fantasy Battles1 developed a world full of timeless themes for war stories: dramatic final stands against insurmountable odds, the evil horde sweeping through the world to eradicate all that is good and right, brave men standing athwart the tide.

Total War games are story generators. Perhaps they aren’t as effective in that role as Crusader Kings 2, but they nevertheless make interesting alternate histories. Note I say ‘interesting’, as in, ‘huh, that’s interesting’, and not ‘compelling’, as in, ‘I cannot wait to see where this goes next’. Previous Total War games were interesting, but not compelling. Factions aren’t all that different, generals are more or less interchangeable, your enemies are the ones next to you, and your territory is whatever you can take.

Not so much in Total War: Warhammer. Factions are very different—some depend on siege weapons, some depend on strong infantry, some depend on movement and trickiness, and all feel almost like different games. Generals have a deep skill tree, and that helps to turn them from collections of bits into characters. (I didn’t even have to start the game to look up General Oathforged’s name.) Your enemies may be across the world. Chaos, remember, comes out of the north, and the dwarfs start in the south. You can’t take territory willy-nilly, either. Most factions have some territorial restrictions. Dwarfs, for instance, can only occupy territory which was originally dwarfen: the settlements in the central plains are right out, but old dwarfen settlements occupied by the greenskins are fair game.

Ultimately, though, the thing Total War: Warhammer has over previous Total War games is its setting. It probably isn’t quite correct to say that everyone knows Warhammer, but a lot of people know Warhammer. There are more people familiar with Warhammer, I would say, than the 18th-century history of the Netherlands2. Even if the numbers were equal, the Warhammer setting is a fictional setting. By their very nature, fictional settings generate stories more easily than historical ones. This isn’t to say that there aren’t interesting stories out of the Netherlands’ exploits in the 1800s—just that they aren’t as memorable or as frequent as the stories out of the dawi’s fight against the grobi, or the Empire’s strife with its neighbors, or the coming together of all the civilized peoples to stand against Chaos.

So, when compared to other Total War games, Total War: Warhammer has much deeper emotional impact because of its setting. Game systems reinforce this: I’m not just fighting a war of conquest, I’m fighting wars of conquest to rebuild the Karaz Ankor and reclaim what was lost to dwarfkind thousands of years ago. Or, I’m not just beating up on my neighbors to take their stuff, I’m beating up on my neighbors because they are to the south, they won’t stop fighting me until they’re defeated, Chaos is to the North, and the Empire is the first and best line of defense against the Ruinous Powers. Or, I’m not just swarming up out of the badlands because I’m looking for a scrap—well, okay. Maybe the greenskins aren’t the best example, but even if they do fight just for the sake of fighting, they have a reason for it. It’s what they do: beat up on anyone small enough to take a beating, then find the next biggest thing, rinse, and repeat.

That, in my opinion, is what previous Total War games were missing, and what Total War: Warhammer has in spades: context.

To hit on a few final, technical notes, battles play quickly, moreso than even the relatively quick games in recent Total War history, but the factions are varied, tactics are interesting, and the AI has a great sense for cavalry flanking maneuvers. The Creative Assembly finally got to cut loose and have some fun, and it shows here. Presentation is generally superb all around; the writers nailed the Warhammer feel, and the art design follows along. There are some spectacular battle maps, too.

Really, it’s the perfect union of theme and mechanics. I’m glad it took this long to happen, because they got it very right. Ordinarily, when I’m looking forward to a game, I build up a picture in my head of what it’ll be like. That picture is usually not altogether accurate, so when the game finally comes out, there’s a time of adjustment. The game may not be bad, but it isn’t what I’m expecting, and so in a sense, I’m disappointed. I never had that feeling with Total War: Warhammer: it is everything I had hoped it would be. If you like games that generate stories, the Total War formula, or Warhammer, you owe it to yourself to give it a whirl.

  1. May it ride eternal, shiny and chrome!
  2. Fun fact: your author’s next favorite Total War game is Empire, because he likes to be contradictory.

S&W M&P 2.0

It may have lost the US Army’s competition, but it’s coming to a gun store near you! The Smith and Wesson M&P M2.0 is being teased with videos and press coverage.

Offhand, it looks like they took the M&P that everyone loved and fixed the major gripes. Let’s review:

  1. The M&P had a stupidly smooth grip texture. No more! The M2.0 has a properly aggressive looking texture
  2. The M&P factory trigger is crap. Parts from Apex are required to bring it to the level of a *factory* Glock. NO MORE! The M2.0 is teasing a better trigger.
  3. Users who like pushing their pistols beyond 10 yards sometimes complained of poor accuracy. No more! S&W is teasing accuracy improvements
  4. Users like front cocking serrations, but the M&P didn’t have them, necessitating expensive custom milling. No more! The M2.0 has front cocking serrations from the factory

Admittedly on 2 and 3 we have to take their word for it until review copies drop. So I wouldn’t buy this without looking at a bunch of reviews from places that don’t mind being critical. It still has the option of a manual safety, if that’s your thing, and it has those great M&P ergonomics.

That said, it’s facing a lot of stiff competition from the VP9, PPQ, P320, and the new CZ P10. Plus, the Glock 17M/19M that won the FBI contract are likely to be dropping this year too.

As with any other pistol, I would be reluctant to buy the first few copies. I prefer to let other people find bugs that slipped past initial testing if at all possible. But that’s me.

UPDATE: Read about early reports from the range here.

Litmus Testing

As an armchair military theorist, I am not burdened by an obligation to tradition or entrenched interests. Similarly, I do not have an actual army to test ideas on with exercises or actual combat. And there’s always the temptation to think ourselves (as armchair theorists) better than the real staff officers of the world.

We may or may not be. But I think there’s something to be said about conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is conventional for a damn good reason. Just as cliches are cliches for a damn good reason too. In both cases an idea has survived repeated testing over time. We can conclude that it should be pretty good. Maybe not great, but certainly not bad.

So while the temptation to think we are the Basil Liddell Hart reincarnate, and that we somehow Know Better (TM) than every other military in the world is great, when we do we’re almost certainly being delusional. Avoid the temptation!

I’m often a conventional sort of guy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Often, if you put a little effort into it, you can often come up with some of the same reasons real armies stay with the boring. Let’s look at a couple of our crazier ideas:

Heavy Infantry Fighting Vehicles. This one is dangerous. Both the US and German armies had designs for heavy (about 62 tonne) IFVs in the early 90s. Both moved away from that plan, likely on cost and deployability grounds. So, much as I like this one (it’s even mine), it’s suspect on those grounds. Cost is annoying because it’s so hard to get a handle on cost at the best of times. Do note that the (US) Government Accountability Office study into the GCV and alternatives rated the Namer as considerably more expensive than the already costly Puma, to the point where even though you’d need more Pumas for a platoon, going with Pumas is the cheaper option.1

Fishbreath’s Ka-50. Yes, the Ka-50 is fun to fly in DCS. But the Russians haven’t been willing to put money into the single seat version, Kamov has made two-seat versions for the export market, and even those haven’t sold. So I strongly suspect that there are fundamental issues there, though I’m not enough of a helicopter expert to precisely identify them.

So there you have it. We’re not immune. We all think we’re brilliant. It’s totally fine to think outside the box, but do your homework. And be suspicious of ‘brilliant’ innovations that no one else has gone for.

As a side note, this is why I was so happy to hear these news updates. Time to see how some of my theories turn out in the real world.

1.) GAO reckoned that Pumas would cost $6.9 million and Namers would cost $11 million, and that each US Army mechanized platoon would require either four Namers or five Pumas. Personally, I’d go with three Namers or four Pumas, but either way, the fantastically expensive German IFV winds up cheaper, presuming the cost estimates are correct. Also note that the GCV was more expensive than either at $13.5 million, which probably bodes ill for the affordability of a heavy IFV, seeing as it needs weapons and fancy optics like the Puma and tons of armor like the Namer.

2016 Tafl Open: Liveblog

Tafl Open 2016: Server is now running

The OpenTafl server for the 2016 OpenTafl Tafl Open is now running at taflopen.manywords.press. Please see the README file included with your distribution of OpenTafl for instructions on how to use the server functionality.

Coverage begins at noon Eastern Time tomorrow, Monday, January 2nd. (That’s 1700 UTC, to be as clear as I can.) I hope to stream live here. A live blog post will be available here at the Soapbox, too. See you then!