Monthly Archives: January 2019

Wednesday What We’re Reading (Jan. 30, 2019)

Yup, it’s a Thursday entry again, but only because I spent yesterday’s lunch break working, last night finishing today’s scheduled post, and this morning attempting to resuscitate my laptop.

So, uh, anyone have favorite fictional AIs and computers? I think I’m going to need a new computer name in the near future.

Defense

Guns

History in Pictures (Mostly)

Technology

Grab Bag

Fishbreath Plays: Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun

The clunkily-named Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun is, at its core, a turn-based tactical wargame set on the battlefields of Asia during the Sengoku period, developed by Byzantine Games and published by Slitherine.

That sells it short, though.

The Sengoku period is a fascinating time in Japanese history, familiar to anyone who’s played a Total War game with ‘Shogun’ in the title. Competing daimyo fought for the title of shogun, de facto ruler of Japan. Usefully, at least for wargame designers, it was a century or so of near-constant war.

Sengoku Jidai has a number of expansions which extend it well beyond Japan in the 16th century, to China and Korea in the same era, all the way back to Japan in the 12th and 13th centuries. With the exception of gunpowder, warfare in those eras was broadly similar, so I won’t make too much of the differences. (Also, my interest in the era mainly runs toward the Sengoku period, and that’s what I’ve played extensively, so I’ll stick with talking about it.)

Gameplay

I can’t find a solid source to confirm or deny that the battlefield rules in Sengoku Jidai are based on a tabletop wargaming system, but it feels like they could be. They’re clean and simple.

Movement is on a square grid. Combat is pretty mathy, but comes down to Points of Advantage which affect the result, and which are gained or lost based on many of your typical wargame conditions. (Think spears against horses, rough terrain and disorder, morale, and so on.) Turning units is hard, as is shifting them long distances; they’re fairly slow, and 45-degree turns are about as much as you can manage without running out of action points. Units outside of their generals’ command range are even less mobile, an unusual but sensible design choice. Rather than stack up more combat modifiers, generals simply yield a more flexible, better-coordinated force. Works for me.

When units get into melee combat, they usually stay there for a few turns, wearing each other down and slowly inflicting losses until someone breaks. Once units get into close combat, you lose control over them, and even if your unit routs its opponent, you may not get control back—units automatically pursue routers, and may charge enemies in their paths.

There are good tutorials, both in the sense of tutorial missions and in the sense of tutorial popups explaining events as they happen, and between those and the elegance of the rules, it’s easy to get to grips with the system and start with the generalship.

Finally, for the cost of entry, you get a random map generator, a random battle generator, some historical scenarios, and some dynamic campaigns (simple ones, but enough to contextualize battles). Even the base game gets you the Sengoku Jidai campaigns and the Imjin War, I believe. If you enjoy the gunpowder- and artillery-heavy armies of the latter, I’d recommend picking up the Mandate of Heaven DLC, too, which buys you expanded Chinese factions and four more dynamic campaigns.

Presentation

I don’t have a lot to say here. The sounds are competent but uninspired, though the music is pleasantly atmospheric. The unit graphics are little groups of men and horses, more in the vein of counters than anything else. The landscapes are quite pretty, to the extent that they can be given the square grid they have to fit, and have a whiff of Japanese landscape painting about them in color palette and design.

One notable trouble spot is the lack of anti-aliasing, which is a bother for a game featuring spearmen aplenty. Another is that units don’t shrink as you batter them. A 1500-man unit of yari ashigaru looks the same at full strength as it does after losing 600 men, the only difference being a more tattered flag. As far as I’m aware, there’s no game mechanic which requires easy knowledge of a unit’s original size, so I count this as a flaw.

Verisimilitude

If you’ve read any of my previous wargame reviews, you’ll probably remember that verisimilitude is just about my favorite word in this kind of article. The point of a wargame is not to simulate every arrow and every man down to the smallest wound. The point of a wargame is to evoke a sense of place.

So, what is evocative about Sengoku Jidai’s gameplay? What puts me in the mindset of a field commander in 16th-century Asia?

First: deployment is crucial. On the scale of a battlefield, infantry is slow. Even cavalry takes a while to get where you want it. If you deploy your main body poorly, you can easily lose a battle you should have won. If you deploy your main body well, taking advantage of the terrain and the strengths of your units, you can win battles you might otherwise have lost.

Second: loss of control is rapid. Once the lines crash together, the outcome is largely out of your hands, except insofar as you contribute to key points with flanking maneuvers. As the general in command of an army, your responsibility is to deploy your forces well and, on the approach, meet weak points in the enemy’s deployment with strength. That seems accurate to me.

Like all the best wargames, when I get into the groove, it doesn’t feel like a game, in spite of the tabletop feeling of the rules. I give it my recommendation.

Miscellaneous

It’s available on Steam, but doesn’t work with Steam Play/Proton/Wine on my Mint 19.1 system, and as far as I know, doesn’t have high-DPI support.

Best-in-Show, SHOT 2019

Here, you’ll find our selections for most interesting things from SHOT 2019.

Parvusimperator’s Picks

Best Optic: Aimpoint Acro P-1

I like more options for my pistol optics, and Aimpoint has a great red dot sight track record. Seeing as there have been several revisions to the current sights targeted at the market, this late entry might still make a strong showing.

Best Pistol We’ve Been Wanting For Years: Glock 48

Seems a no-brainer to put ten rounds in something that’s Glock 19 sized, but thinner. For those who prefer carrying a slimmer pistol, are happy with (or legally restricted to) ten rounds, and want something to just work. Fortunately, Glock has finally delivered. I hope they put the time into getting this to work without issues.

Best Knife: Ka-Bar TDI Flipper Folder

Previous knives from the Ka-Bar/TDI partnership have been fixed blade. They’re generally well thought out and come in at a reasonable price. This one is also well thought out, also at a good price point. And it folds.

Best In Show: Walther Q5 Match SF

This had a soft launch before SHOT, but was there and was a star of range day. For more on this pistol, look at my write-up. This is also the product on this list that’s most likely to be purchased by me. I’m happy to see the best striker-fired handgun trigger get a cool steel frame for competition.

Fishbreath’s Picks

Best Glock In Disguise: Faxon Firearms FX-19

Building a polymer-framed striker-fired pistol is basically trivial nowadays. Start with a box of Glock parts and some calipers, and soon after, voila. Faxon Firearms gets bonus points for very aggressive styling and being known less as a gunmaker and more as a barrel manufacturer.

Best Video Game-Inspired Accessory: Radetec Glock Slide Shot Counter

Already known for round counters in smart grips, Radetec has gone further and made a smart slide which indicates whether there is a round in the chamber, how many are left in the magazine, and whether a magazine is inserted at all. Straight from the pages of your favorite dystopian fiction or the in-universe UI of your favorite sci-fi game.

Best Kel-Tec Vaporware: CP-33

Alternate heading: Most Innovative Magazine Design. The CP-33’s magazine is a double-double-stack design, which holds 33 rounds of .22LR out of the box, or 50 with an extended magazine. If only I could get one with a giggle switch.

Best MP5 Clone: Palmetto State Armory

It’s a true, roller-delayed MP5 clone, with nice Magpul furniture and a price tag HK would scoff at: $1100. I won’t be buying one, but it’s nice to see someone in America making a reasonably priced replica gun. I wonder if I could get them to do a Mauser C96 clone…

Best In Show: Franklin Armory’s Providence

A magazine-fed, manually-operated rifle where all you have to do is pull the trigger. By using a long pull and presumably a lot of leverage, the Providence trigger cycles the bolt and fires the next round all in one motion. A delightfully clever poke in the eye to jurisdictions with bad firearms law.

Extra: Hudson in Trouble

Original (Jan 24, 1249)

From SHOT Show:

This is the space reserved for the Hudson booth. It’s curiously empty.

If we dig, we can see why:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7754152/cambridge-valley-machining-inc-v-hudson-mfg-llc/

Hudson’s parts supplier alleges that they have not been paid. Hudson alleges that the parts were not to spec. It’s ugly, and the court filing goes back to September. I suspect that the parts supplier is too small to take the hit, and Hudson lacks the cash flow/line of credit to simply get parts elsewhere.

Regrettably, setting up a manufacturing business in the United States is very hard.

Update (Jan 24, 1308) (Fishbreath)

As it turns out, the first $15/quarter of PACER access is free, so I went ahead and registered, installed the RECAP extension to upload anything I view to the Free Law Project, and scored Hudson’s counterclaim. Here you go.

Journalism-ing.

Walther Q5 Match SF

Not quite a “New at SHOT Show” piece, since it came out just before, but cool nonetheless. Walther has introduced a new PPQ derivative. They’ve taken their excellent Q5 Match and put it on top of a brand new steel frame. It’s aimed squarely at the competition market, combining the PPQ’s fantastic trigger1 with a lot more weight to soak up recoil. This gun is intended to compete with pistols like the Tanfoglio Stock II and CZ Shadow 2, now that IPSC changed the trigger pull weight rules. Let’s take a look.

Q5 Match SF

Let’s talk through the features. It’s got the same slide as the regular Q5. So it’s got slide cuts to look cool, catch your eye in the display case, and keep the slide weight down so they can still use the same recoil assembly as the regular PPQ. It also has a really excellent optics mounting plate setup that’s very sturdy. It’s great at keeping the optic of your choice securely mounted. Factory sights are fiber optic front and black rear, in case you want to compete in a non-optics division.

That steel frame is the kicker, upping the empty weight to 41.6 oz. from the 21.9 oz. of the standard Q5 Match. Weight fights recoil. For competition, weight is good. The most popular pistols for Production are steel-framed CZ 75 derivatives. Even in Open, where compensators and porting are allowed, all of the top ten shooters in Open Nationals (and a whole lot more besides) have opted for a steel grip to add weight.

The stock trigger is about 5.6 lbs. or so. At least according to Walther. It’s smooth and nice though, so you’ll think it’s lighter. And if you actually wanted lighter, it’s a simple matter to swap two springs to get the pull weight down around 3 lbs. Contact Springco if you’d like a set.

A factory magwell is available for the Q5 Match SF as well, should you want one and be permitted one in your competition of choice.

Walter’s PPQ magazines are well-designed as well. For those of you interested in loading up, here’s a recipe that should get you 23 rounds. Start with the Walther mag body. Order the Grams spring and follower kit for a P320. Shave the tab off the follower that engages the P320’s slide stop, and it’ll fit wonderfully in your PPQ mag body. Add at TTI baseplate and you’re ready to shred.

As for the price, MSRP is a little high, but not unforgivably so at $1,399.99. A bit pricey, but it is a niche market that they’re going for. It’s roughly what you’d pay for a Shadow 2 with all of the Cajun Gun Works goodies.

And yes, I want one.


  1. Fishbreath and I agree it’s the best striker-fired trigger on the market. 

Wednesday What We’re Reading (Jan. 23, 2019)

Every time I think one of these is going to be short…

Notably, SHOT 2019 is this week, also known as Firearms Industry Christmas. There’s a little less on the table than usual that piques our interest here, so next week we’ll either do a pair of best-of articles, or reserve a section in What We’re Reading for it.

Press-Stopping Post-Publication Update

Defense

Guns and Shooting

American Sport

Grab Bag

Shorter 3-Gun Rifles?

The “traditional” multigun rifle has an 18″ barrel and a rifle gas system, to create a soft-shooting rifle with plenty of velocity for longer range shots. Is this really necessary?

If we’re looking at matches, a large number will be organized under 3 Gun Nation rules or United Multi-gun League rules. Both of these tend to favor bay matches, with lots of shortish (100 yards and in) shooting. Often, this will be offhand position (i.e. standing, unsupported).

As always, there’s a tradeoff here. Lighter weight will swing faster. Heavier will be more stable, but it will also fatigue you more. Also, where the weight is matters. Weight out at the end of a longer ‘lever arm’ (like a long barrel) will be more fatiguing than weight on a short lever arm.

Now, everyone is going to bring up the long-range component. However, our first point is that there really isn’t much in most 3GN/UML matches, especially if the match director doesn’t want to screw over the PCC folks. Second, you can shoot fine out to longer ranges. If you don’t believe me, go look at Loose Rounds taking an M4 Socom barrel out to 1,000 yards. And that’s without a low-power variable optic with some sort of BDC/MOA-dot/mildot reference for holds. As ever, if you know your dope, you can get your hits. Long barrels are not required for long range work. It will be a little harder with less velocity, but 3-Gun scoring is based on hits; there are no extra points earned for putting rounds in the proverbial X-ring.1

Going with the shorter barrel optimizes for more of the common shots and handling. Most of the time in most matches governed by one of the competing rulesets will be spent shooting up close, and a shorter barrel makes that better.

How short should we go? Well, certainly 16″ is becoming increasingly popular; and that’s the minimum non-sbr length. 14.5 is shorter and lighter still, though that requires either Form 1 paperwork for an SBR or a pinned-and-welded compensator. Shorter than 14.5″ is almost certainly going to require being a registered SBR. Which may or may not be worth the trouble. That’s for the rifleman to decide.

14.5″ has some weight benefits, but it does require being happy with your choice of muzzle device. These days, I don’t think that’s a tremendous burden. There are lots of really effective muzzle devices out there. Picking one and just practicing with the damn rifle is a good idea. Doubly so if you’re an inveterate tinkerer like me.


  1. Which the three gun targets don’t even have. 

Wednesday What We’re Reading (Jan. 16, 2019)

Now that parvusimperator is back with us, I can focus on this post more than usual. As usual, when I focus on something more than usual it doesn’t just get done. It gets overdone.

Categories arranged not in the usual defense-first fashion, but rather in the order they showed up in our weekly-news-stories channel on the company Hangouts Chat.

Американский футбол

Science

  • First we saw too few Milky Way satellite galaxies, now we see too many – An interesting case where refinements to the theory brought the estimated number of satellite galaxies down, while refinements to measuring tools brought the number of discovered satellite galaxies up. As always, a good read from Quanta. This story came from the daily news dump at Ambient Irony, a blog run by a Twitter acquaintance, which usually has some good stuff in the science/technology field.
  • Rocks: the next dark matter detector – When the next Einstein rolls around and upsets the luminiferous-ether-like consensus on dark matter, I’m going to be smiling very smugly from my little corner of the internet. (Or we’ll eventually catch a WIMP, and you’ll never hear from me again.)

Technology

Defense

The Акула/Typhoon-class boomers, in pictures

History

American Politics

Monroe Doctrine


  1. This is definitely the accepted plural. 

OH-58D Kiowa Warrior

Usually our procurement posts are all about buying shiny new stuff. And that’s fine. But sometimes you can get some “pre-owned” stuff for a great price, often from major powers who have decided they don’t want it for no good reason. Let’s take a look at one such item now: the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.

The OH-58D is a derivative of Bell’s venerable and popular 206 JetRanger. The -58D had a more powerful engine than earlier models, and added a Mast Mounted Sight. This globe-shaped module above the main rotor contained a thermal imager plus a laser rangefinder/designator, and allowed the Kiowa Warrior to observe the enemy while the fuselage is obscured by terrain. The OH-58D has two hardpoints that can take small rocket pods, Stinger missiles, or Hellfire missiles.

We should also take a brief moment to talk about the related trainer. The TH-67 is a Bell 206B-3 purchased for use as a primary trainer. It’s available with IFR-rated instruments if desired. It’s another great choice if we’re considering the OH-58, since we’d get some fleet parts commonality. Plus, it’s a common, reliable, and cheap civilian aircraft, and a trainer should be cheap and reliable to facilitate plenty of flying hours.

The Bell 206 family is very popular on the civilian market, and is still in production. As a result, getting spares shouldn’t be a problem. Current models (the model 206L-4) have a strengthened tailboom and improved gearboxes. Other options on offer from Bell include replacing the tail and tail rotor with those of the Bell Model 427, replacing the main rotor and gearbox with those from the Bell Model 4071, and upgrading to a bigger Honeywell HTS900 engine with over 800 hp.

Once we get our hands on the Kiowa Warriors, we can also start considering options for sensor upgrades in the MMS, tinkering with the communications suite, and adding a blue force tracker. As is, the OH-58Ds were very successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Army2 had wanted to replace them with the gold-plated and ill-fated RAH-66 Commanche and then the ARH-70, which also went way overbudget. Currently, the Army has no scout helicopters and is trying to fill the void with other things. Oh, and complain to Congress.

We’d like to take the perfectly good ones they’re trying to sell through the Excess Defense Article and Foreign Military Sale program.


  1. The Bell 407 and 427 are themselves derivatives of the 206 by way of the twin-engine JetRanger development projects of the 80s. 
  2. Who has never known what the words “good enough” mean when they can dream of “better.”