Chris Baer – Page 40 – Movement Point

Doctor Who Project: The Savages

August 1, 2023April 13, 2014 by Chris Baer

Though we know you only as a record in our charts of space and time, yet you seem to us like an old friend.

It’s not often that the Doctor is expected. Typically he turns up as an uninvited guest at best—and a meddlesome pest in need of eradication at worst—or else, as in “The Celestial Toymaker,” he is plucked from the time-space continuum against his will. Yet in Ian Stuart Black’s “The Savages” (Production Code AA), the highly advanced civilization where the Doctor, Dodo, and Steven land has been tracking the TARDIS and eagerly awaits his arrival. Very shortly, however, the Doctor turns into said meddlesome pest.

From the start of the four episode story, we see the central conceit at work: this highly civilized planet is also home to the eponymous Savages, whose spear-and-loin-cloth costume and speech patterns stand at odds with the funky helmets and futuristic stylings of the Elders and those who live in the City, where art and culture and scientific discovery reign supreme. Not much narrative effort is spent providing a cohesive back history for this planet—the City has no name, nor does the planet, and no dates are given. But quickly, we realize that not all is as it seems in this utopia. How could it be with those helmets?

The Doctor is at first warmly welcomed by the Elders, who have studied his travels through space and time and plotted his eventual arrival. “You are known to us as the Traveller from Beyond Time,” proclaims Exorse, one of the City’s guards, upon greeting the Doctor in the scrubland beyond the City walls. (Given that the Doctor cannot at this point direct the TARDIS in any direction at all, he somehow manages to conceal his wonder at their ability to do so.) The Elders wish to learn from the Doctor, even granting him a position as an honorary Elder. The Doctor seems eager to share his knowledge, as he too is aware of this civilization, apparently reputed far and wide for its advancement, but first he wants to understand how they have built this remarkable civilization.

The head Elder, Jano, tells the Doctor that they harness “only a very special form of animal vitality” to give new power to members of their community who are in need of it, forever keeping them full of energy. This “one simple discovery” has allowed them to create a miraculous civilization.

Dodo, in her customary function as plot device, gets separated from the guides showing her and Steven around the City and follows a secret passage to the laboratory where the truth is revealed: Animal Vitality is People!

From the Finland Station: The Finnish Trilogy (Mikugames)

August 1, 2023April 2, 2014 by Chris Baer

Board wargaming is something of a niche market to begin with: even the largest game companies, like GMT and MMP, have print runs measured in the mid to low four figures, and except for some evergreen series games, once a game has sold through its print run, it’s gone, available only on the secondary market. Smaller game publishers have even smaller print runs, leading to a general sense amongst wargamers that you buy when the games are available or your forfeit your right to complain when you spend five times the retail price at auction. At the bottom of the wargame production hierarchy (in terms of production quantity), you have the boutique producers, usually a single person with a single game that has been lovingly crafted and produced, for little to no personal profit beyond seeing the game in print. For boutique games especially, you have to strike immediately or risk never getting a copy—and for many gamers, that’s simply a fate not worth considering.

Selected Components from Vol. 2 of The Finnish Trilogy

Thus, I now own a copy of Volume Two, The Continuation War, of Mikugames’ The Finnish Trilogy, focusing on Finland during the Second World War. Produced over a ten year span by Mikael Grönroos, The Finnish Trilogy is a series of massive operational level wargames, very much old school in concept, with thousands of counters and a large map. Monster games like this just don’t get produced any more, particularly not on semi-obscure fronts. The rules are not old school, though, with lovely bits of chrome (ice breakers, echelon combat, flanking bonuses, and airbases built on the ice) and a modern sensibility. There are even custom dice for the combat resolution system and small map sections for individual scenarios.

Beyond the evident care in the rules and orders of battle, though, the production quality of the game itself rivals that of the big publishers (and quite exceeds it in the maps and player aids). Lavish yet (mostly) sensible use of color abounds, and the game promises to be a visual treat when set up as well as an intriguing game situation. The mounted, die-cut counters (eleven big sheets of 1/2″ counters in Volume 2) strike me as slightly thinner than most “professional” wargames, but not so thin as to be in danger of shifting around on plexiglass when playing. The counter artwork does fill the entirety of the counters, so I’ll have to be quite careful with my prized counter corner rounder to not remove vital information.

Counter detail from The Finnish Trilogy

I’m not entirely convinced by the decision to use Cyrillic for the Soviet headquarters and aircraft designations—anything that can interfere with a player picking up on the situation at a glance should be scrapped for better playability—and some of the Soviet color choices are difficult to read (brown unit icons with red lettering inside).

Still, it’s a handsome game and a real gem in my collection. So much so, of course, that I have Volume One, The Winter War, and Volume Three, The Lapland War, on the way as well now. With very few of Volumes One and Two remaining (and Volume Three sold out), it seemed the prudent course of action. Sometimes the game does go to the swiftest.

The Eleven Pound Railroad: 18OE

August 1, 2023March 14, 2014 by Chris Baer

Many games place the player in a particular role—grizzled space pilot, bouncing bird, dungeon keeper, omniscient general—from which the gameplay more or less follows. The 18XX series of games puts players in the role of a railroad tycoon, building track, buying trains, manipulating stock, and running routes. It seems rather sedate, but the gameplay in these rail games verges on the cutthroat, with players driving others into bankruptcy, forcing their tracks into convoluted curves and unprofitable runs to whistle-stop towns. Apparently, rail barons weren’t the nicest people on the planet. I’ve played my share of mean, backstabbing games, but the 18XX games are the worst (or best, if you will) of the bunch.

The newest entry in the 18XX series (which all share a commonly accepted ancestor in Francis Tresham’s 1829) is 18OE: On the Rails of the Orient Express, a two-map monster game recently released by Designs in Creative Entertainment, designed by Ed Sindelar and developed by Mark Frazier. The game covers railroad construction and operation in late nineteenth century Europe, centered on the Orient Express run. Funded on Kickstarter in the summer of 2013, 18OE proves that crowd-funding can be wildly successful if handled in a professional manner, and DICE really came through on that front. The game is, to put it mildly, stunning, not to mention the heaviest game in my collection at eleven pounds shipping weight.

18OE Component Close-Up

The bulk of the weight comes from the two mounted maps, covering Europe and European Russia, plus a mounted info/stock market board. The maps have a satin-like finish, and they look to be a treat to game on. It’s not an exaggeration to state that they’re the nicest mounted maps I’ve ever owned. The other components—stock and train cards, railroad charters, track tile counters—are similarly top notch, though the die cut tile markers are a bit thinner than I would have liked. I’m sure they’ll play well in practice, but as a wargamer, I’m used to slightly thicker counters. Perhaps it’s just as well, because I’m worrying about finding a shelf sturdy enough to support the box as it is. (And, sadly, the hexagonal track counters don’t fit in my new counter corner rounder, as the counters come out of the tree with just a bit of a nib.)

Rules-wise, there’s tons of chrome, with ferry crossings, national border transit rights to buy and sell, and multiple railroads to operate. Any game that lets me run both a Norwegian and a Romanian railroad is a winner in my book.

Multiple short scenarios (on single maps) give me much hope that I’ll actually manage to play this game, but even as a shelf queen, 18OE cuts a fine figure.

Doctor Who Project: The Gunfighters

August 29, 2022March 2, 2014 by Chris Baer

Ain’t it wonderful, honey, what a man’ll do for what he truly believes in?

Even the best of the Doctor Who historicals suffer one fundamental flaw: the historical personages tend to overshadow the Doctor and his companions, particularly when the history is well known. In the non-historical stories, the writers cannot afford to have our intrepid heroes off-screen for long, lest the audience wonder just why these generic aliens and anonymous humans are hatching plans to disengage the Framistat of Doom. In the historicals, though, a little bit of set dressing goes a long way, and there’s no compunction about ten minutes of, say, King Richard the Lionheart and his knights conversing about Saladin, or a humorous interlude between Priam, Paris, and Cassandra. Striking a balance between the historical figures and the Doctor takes some doing, and, to my admitted surprise, Donald Cotton succeeds in “The Gunfighters” (Story Production Code Z), despite some rather dodgy American accents.

On the face of it, the premise is about as wobbly as the accents and the bar prop in the Last Chance Saloon: the Doctor needs a dentist (there being no facilities for dealing with dental care on the TARDIS, nor even any painkillers, despite being a craft capable of travelling in four dimensions), so at their very next stop, they must seek one out. Our time travellers just happen to land in Tombstone, Arizona, shortly before the shootout between the Earps and the Clantons. Four episodes of horses and nooses and gunplay and dusty shot glasses are sure to follow, a feeling not diminished by the ever-present saloon ballad that kicks in right after the opening title music. And yet, much like the last historical, “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve,” Cotton’s story manages to be not about the events at the O.K. Corral so much as about the Doctor’s belief system, all tied together with a rather clever case of mistaken identity.

For you see, the Clantons are in town, along with a hired gun, to find—and then, as these things tend to happen, to kill—Doc Holliday, who earlier killed a Clanton brother. They’ve never seen Doc Holliday before, but they know of his fondness for liquor and gambling, so they wait for their prey to make himself known in the Last Chance Saloon. When Dodo and Steven enter the saloon to secure lodging for the night (needing a break from the bedrooms in the TARDIS, I suppose), they happen to mention the Doctor. The Clantons put two and two together to get five, assuming that they mean Doc Holliday, the first time in the series that the Doctor’s moniker has put him into real danger.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has his aching tooth extracted by Doc Holliday, who has that very day opened a dental surgery in Tombstone. Holliday gets wind of the Clantons’ intentions and, more importantly, their misapprehension, and frames the Doctor, giving him a gun belt and a revolver with Holliday’s brand engraved on it, claiming the Doctor’s just not dressed right without it. When the Clantons kill the Doctor, they’ll assume they killed Holliday.

Upon entering the Last Chance Saloon, the Doctor is quickly surrounded by the Clantons. The Doctor knows his American folk history (he’s a big fan of the era, apparently) and knows he’s in a spot of bother. Despite his protestations, the Clantons are sure they’ve got the right Doc. The Doctor draws Holliday’s revolver and the Clantons’ hired gun falls to the ground, shot. Holliday took the shot from a hidden vantage point, allowing the Doctor and Steven to disarm the Clantons. But how is the Doctor, a confirmed proponent of non-violence, to survive in an era and locale where bullets, not words, solve almost all disputes?

Counter Culture: Rounding the Corner

August 1, 2023February 11, 2014 by Chris Baer

I’ve long been a proponent of the view that much of the pleasure derived from paper and chit wargaming comes from the physical culture of the games, from interacting with the games rather than actually playing the games themselves. Most wargames are not ready to play out of the box: they require some effort on the part of the players to prepare them, most often punching the die-cut counters out of their trees.

Unclipped Counter. The horror!

While some publishers have made great strides towards the “punchless” countersheet, notably Legion Wargames, whose “Easy Punch” counters pretty much fall out of the trees owing to some extreme die-cutting, the vast majority of counters come with a stubborn attachment to their sprues. Once the counters are punched (preferably, cut out via hobby knife), they still exhibit nibs and bits on the corners—or, in some egregious cases, along the counter sides—where they were held to the counter tree and to each other.

Take our Climb 2 counter here, from Avalon Hill/Multi-Man Publishing’s Advanced Squad Leader. These don’t come out of the Plano very often, so perhaps one could be excused for dropping this counter, with its ragged, uneven edges, onto a game board. And indeed, there is a minor schism in the hobby between those who tend to these nibs, the clippers, and those who do not. I’ve examined the reasons to clip or trim counter corners in the past, and I am unabashedly in the clipping camp, for aesthetic reasons as well as practical reasons.

My tool of choice for years was a trusty hobby knife with easily replaceable blade. I’m minimalist in my trimming, trying to strike a balance between uniform counters and taking off as little of the existing counter as possible. Some people swear by nail clippers (hence, “clipping” counters), but they’ve always taken a bit more off than I prefer, and they strike me as being a bit imprecise. And don’t even get me started on counter clipping jigs. Clipping counters should not be a mass production project, even when one has thousands of counters to process—I like to examine the counters as I clip, particularly for operational level games with much variation between units.

But, after a recent trimming extravaganza to get a game ready for a wargaming convention, I was about ready to join the non-clipping camp. Four hundred counters, four trims per counter. Blah. That’s a lot of knife work, I made some poor trims towards the end, and my fingers cramped all day thereafter. Surely a better method exists?

Doctor Who Project: The Celestial Toymaker

August 1, 2023February 4, 2014 by Chris Baer

I’m not sure that I like these clowns!

As we near the end of Doctor Who‘s third season, the Doctor and his intrepid companions have confronted many foes since in 1963: dastardly Daleks, malicious Monoids, tetchy Trojans, and an aggressive Animus, to name a few. So perhaps we can forgive whoever commissioned Brian Hayles to provide the Doctor with his most frightful opponents yet in “The Celestial Toymaker” (Story Production Code Y)—clowns. And also an overgrown schoolboy, characters from a pantomime, and some living playing cards.

In fairness, the notion of the Doctor meeting an immortal gamemaster, the eponymous Celestial Toymaker, who seeks to entrap the Doctor for all time as a worthy opponent, sounds quite promising. With his mind alone, the Toymaker (Michael Gough) has the power to affect the TARDIS and the Doctor himself, making him a more dangerous foe than any the Doctor has yet met. And, more to the point, the Doctor has met him before and escaped.

While most of the stories to this point have featured lead-outs from the prior story, providing a thin narrative continuity, “The Celestial Toymaker” continues referring to the events on “The Ark” for a good portion of the first episode. The Toymaker has the ability to make the Doctor disappear and become intangible, changes taken at first to be linked the similarly incorporeal Refusians. It’s not until the Doctor realizes that he is confronting the Toymaker that he definitively dismisses the notion that the Refusians are involved:

Well, I don’t think it was the Refusians’ influence that made me become intangible. No! I think it was something here, and I don’t like the feel of the place any more than you do, but, ah, we have to face up to it. You know, I think I was meant to come here.

The Toymaker seems to have the measure of the Doctor. He realized that getting the Doctor out of the TARDIS was a simple matter of blanking the screens, knowing that his insatiable curiosity would lead him to investigate. And the Doctor, for his part, acknowledges that the Toymaker is a notorious figure who lures unwary travelers to his realm in order to trap them, for his own amusement. The Toymaker does seem to adhere to a particular set of rules, however, and he offers the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo the chance to escape, by winning his games, albeit games tilted to his favor.

A battle of wits between old foes should be in the offing; instead, we get electrified hopscotch and two episodes of a disembodied hand playing Solitaire. Oh, yes, and the clowns.