Category: Books, Movies & Magazines

08/3/16

GrogHeads Reviews Tidal Effects from Andrew Heller

Airboy reviews Heller’s follow-up to Gray Tide in the East ~

Avery Abernethy, 03 August 2016

Tidal Effects is the sequel to Gray Tide in the East. In the previous book the Kaiser orders the German Army in 1914 to respect Belgium’s neutrality after Imperial Russia and France declare war on Germany. The British Empire never enters World War 1. Germany and Austria-Hungary crush Russia and annex large portions of European Russia including all of Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltics. France is bled white trying to attack in unfavorable terrain. Germany gives France favorable peace terms taking several relatively useless colonies including Martinique in the Caribbean Sea. At the end of Gray Tide in the East Germany is the dominant land power in Europe.

Tidal Effects contains two novelettes: High Tide and Rip Tide. In High Tide several members of the Imperial German Foreign Service and a high ranking Naval officer manage to start building a substantial naval base in Martinique. tide-mapSubstantial progress on this naval base is accomplished without the knowledge of the Kaiser and the rest of the Imperial Cabinet. The USA learns of the base and must decide if they want to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Tidal Effects includes basics of naval espionage, isolationist politics of the USA early in the 20th century and foreign policy. The central conflict centers on the ability of the US President to get enough political support to keep the hugely powerful Germany from getting a foothold in North America without starting a major naval war. The Kaiser is maddened that his subordinates put him in this position but also wants to maximize the political and military gains possible from this situation.   The entire story is plausible given the military, economic, political and foreign policy situation in this alternate history.

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05/28/16

GrogHeads Fiction: Just When I Thought I Was Out

An adventure for your weekend ~

Jonathan S. Pembroke, 28 May 2016

I straightened my back and looked out over the churned earth and fresh-plowed rows of the field. I leaned on my hoe, wiped the sweat from my brow, and savored my accomplishment as the sun slid towards the horizon. I’ve always derived deep satisfaction from the labor of an honest day’s work and there are some things you want to do with your own two hands.fic-Pembroke-headshot

A slight breeze ruffled my hair, reminding me that the early spring evenings tended towards the cool side. I gave the field one last look and returned to my porch.

The top step squeaked but I barely heard it; in truth, I’d ignored the loose nail for so long it felt wrong to fix it. As I stepped up, Trio raised his head. His tail thumped a greeting against the boards. I stooped, scratched his ears, and sought my rickety rocking chair. My pipe lay in the seat. I stuck the tip between my teeth and focused my eyes on the bowl. A brief spark flickered and a stream of smoke rose from the tobacco. I inhaled, relishing the warmth as the sweet smoke filled my lungs. The breeze blew again, mixing with soft sounds of clucking chickens as they sought their roosts for the night.

Trio sat up, ears erect. A soft growl escaped his lips. “Easy, boy,” I said. He fell silent but continued to gaze into the trees. I shrugged; whatever was out there would show itself soon enough.

A horse neighed in the distance. A moment later, a party of riders emerged from the tree line beyond my fallow field. I counted nine. It was a large enough party to travel safely through the valley and enough to challenge me, had they caught me by surprise.

The band trotted up to my house without hesitation. The foremost wore the standard of a snarling white tiger on a field of green. He was a middle-aged man and rode with confidence. The group stopped and the leader dismounted.

Trio stood at his approach and growled again. Several of the man’s companions reached for their weapons but he waved them down. He stopped short of the porch and said, “Do I have the honor of addressing the Royal Mage Vetterex?”

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05/15/16

GrogHeads Reviews Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming

The new “big book of wargaming” goes under the GrogHeads microscope ~

Brant Guillory, 15 May 2016

Zones of Control is the book that wargaming has been waiting for.  Seriously.  And that’s a pretty grandiose statement, but the truth is, it’s a long-needed book from a hard-to-ignore-and-harder-to-impugn publisher that tries to comprehensively examine the breadth and depth of wargaming under one cover.  ZOC-CoverWhere previous ‘seminal’ works of wargaming – Simulating War or  The Art of Wargaming or The Complete Wargames Handbook – were concerned with specific facets of wargaming (academic explorations, professional uses, or hobbyists, for example), Zones of Control brings them all into one giant melting pot, and then sprinkles in the occasional dose of aesthetics, role-playing, and digital design.

“Wargame”

Interestingly, Zones of Control is able to swing such a wide arc precisely by avoiding the overly-pedantic and never-solved argument about “what is a wargame?”  It is conspicuously absent throughout the book, and there isn’t even a cursory attempt at it.  Avoiding that discussion allows the editors a wide range of latitude to include discussions of Twilight Struggle, Tunnels & Trolls, and battlefield re-enactors.  And truthfully, the book is much richer for it.

It is that very breadth that can make Zones of Control a challenge to review, however.  To what are we comparing it?  It’s scope alone puts the book in its own category among the wargaming literature.  There’s no comparable volume in the pop music world, whose attempts at a broad-scope literary volume end up more an inventory of artists than an exploration of types of music.  One might compare this book to something like a collected academic volume like the Communication Technology Update, but with technology and its markets moving as they do, that textbook is updated every 2 years. The collected essays of Zones of Control are almost “the greatest hits” of a year or two of erudite magazine articles from a flagship wargaming analysis journal, if such a thing ever existed.  Spread over 5 years of quarterly issues, rather than collected into a consolidated volume, the essays of Zones of Control might have have become the catalyzing agent around which a comprehensive cross-domain association of wargaming might have coalesced – a worthy literary companion to the Connections wargaming conference.  But to deconstruct the book and instead attempt to feature the writers over the span of several years would have cost the critical momentum needed to even publish the book at all.  Instead, we’re forced to hope that someone picks up the baton and starts a recurring publication as a companion to this volume.  But that’s putting the cart at least a mile or two before the horse that Kirschenbaum & Harrigan have saddled for us.

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05/13/16

The Zombie Apocalypse, Part 12: Do Your Shoes Match Your Bag?

Papa’s got a brand new bag! ~

Jonathan Glazer, 13 May 2016

If you have been reading this series faithfully, I hope you have come away with the observation that this is more of a practical discussion of surviving the zombie apocalypse aimed primarily at people who haven’t devoted their lives to every aspect of survival. za-12-magsWhen I was in Junior High School, I began reading survivalist magazines and that started me on the path towards building the right mindset towards being able to live through a variety of trying circumstances. I also thought that my parents would agree that stockpiling food, water, weapons and all the other stuff needed to be one of the few to help repopulate America Mark II would be a great idea.

As it turns out, I was not as persuasive as I thought. They were more focused on paying the mortgage and making lunches for us every day. As I “matured”, my interest in survival continued, but I realized that there was no way I could prepare for every eventuality and guarantee that my family and I would be one of the few that continued on with a full belly. If I lived in a rural area, my commitment to the cause would be greater because the lower population density and the ability to grow my own food would make hardcore survival into a real option. I have spent my entire life in a suburban environment which means my access to land and proximity to other people makes long term existence in dire times distinctly more difficult.

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04/15/16

The Zombie Apocalypse, Part 11: Red Dawn in our lifetime?

What to do when the movies come true ~

Jonathan Glazer, 15 April 2016

ZA-wolvI am going to take a slight departure with this installment and move in a different direction for the moment. Of course we must always keep our eyes open for the first sign of the dead rising with a taste for human flesh. But for now I want to talk about a more immediate threat. This one is very real and in the news daily. I am talking about the invasion of the United States by a human hostile enemy.

The United States Armed forces have always been accused of preparing to fight the next war by training to fight the last war. As Santayana is often paraphrased “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”, the lessons of prior conflicts must be studied, but that does not mean we will be fighting the same war over again. The United States Military command still teaches amphibious assaults, as executed on the beaches of Normandy, Sicily and the Pacific Theater of Operations throughout World War II. The reality is that while we do land troops in this fashion, such as in Somalia and a few other engagements, such landings are always unopposed. This is because technology has rendered the survivability of a true hostile amphibious landing to be not acceptable. Surface to shore missiles and man portable rockets along with increasingly sophisticated targeting systems mean that landing craft will be an endangered species by the time they reach a contested beachhead.

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