Chris Baer

Winter Offensive 2011 After Action Report

August 13, 2023January 18, 2011 by Chris Baer

Every year over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, droves of gamers (well, about a hundred or so) descend upon Bowie, Maryland, for Winter Offensive, the premier East Coast Advanced Squad Leader tournament, sponsored by Multi-Man Publishing, publishers of ASL and other fine games. After a hiatus of several years, I made the pilgrimage to the palatial Comfort Inn Conference Center, home of nineteen of the twenty Winter Offensives, determined not to play any ASL at all.

My relationship with the One True Game™ stretches back to 1996, and my first Winter Offensive was 1997. But ASL is a Lifestyle Game: if you play ASL, you don’t tend to play other games. So many scenarios to play, so many counters to clip, so many rules to internalize—there’s little time to play ASL competently (which is not to say well) and play other games also. In the mid-Aughts, I set the Planos aside to focus on the other, growing piles of games on my shelves, and stopped going to Winter Offensive.

But I hadn’t seen the gang in ages, and this year I decided to get back to Bowie to catch up with everyone. My plan was to start with a scenario from OCS Case Blue. Being a MMP product, Case Blue would allow me to occupy a table at this ASL fest without too many undue stares. Doug Bush, a frequent PBeM opponent of mine, plays a mean game of OCS and took me on in the first scenario, Edge of the World. It was, perhaps, an ambitious idea, and we put in roughly twelve hours of play over the weekend before calling it, with Doug’s Germans a decent percentage of the way to a win over my Russians in Grozny.

And why did we call it? To play nine hours of Advanced Civilization, of course, roping in some fellow crazies (and former Washington, DC gamers). Advanced Civ at WO'11

From left, you have John Slotwinski (Italy), Chris Chapman (Illyria), Scott “Muzzlehead” Calkins (Babylonia) taking in the span of the world, Doug Bush (Egypt), and yours truly (Crete), rocking a new Giroux Flyers jersey. This shot was taken early in the game, before the fatigue had set in, before the stress of trying to trade away a terrible Calamity Card had taken its toll, before the endless recriminations and broken alliances and fractured treaties had dropped a veil of enmity upon the table. Damn, that was a lot of fun . . .

Doug’s Egyptians wound up taking top spot by running to the end of the Archaeological Succession Table with a heady mix of Achievements, followed very closely by Scott’s Babylonians. My Cretans (that joke was funny for the first hour at the table) came in a distant third as we avoided most conflict but also failed to stunt the leaders’ growth, and Chris C.’s Illyrians were just behind me. John had to step out mid-game owing to another obligation.

Chris C. and I also managed to get in a game of Twilight Struggle, with my Soviets taking advantage of a hand full of Scoring Cards in mid-game to gain an advantage I was able to ride to the end.

And, yes, I sort of failed in my determination to play no ASL, as Joe Jackson, an opponent and all around good guy from way back, enticed me into playing a quick scenario in Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit, which utilizes a trimmed version of the full ASL rules. It’s not quite ASL, but it’s close enough, and I was almost tempted to start buying up all the plentiful ASL product on offer at WO. I managed to keep the wallet closed, but it was a close run thing.

In theory, Winter Offensive is a tournament. There’s a winner at the end, records are kept, prizes are handed out. But even when I was deep into the ASL scene, WO was never about the tournament, never about the win-loss record at the end of the weekend. It was always, and remains, about the camaraderie. This is not to say that winning and socializing are incompatible—every gamer wants to win, it’s the one immutable thread in our sub-cultural DNA—but winning is a temporary goal, wins come and go, and there’s always another match around the corner. It’s about the people you game with, the experience you create via dice and counters and choices. If you win a game and can’t tell a good story about it afterwards, you lost. And I had some good stories this past weekend…

Not Arrested by the G-Man: Mangialardo & Sons

August 13, 2023January 9, 2011 by Chris Baer

Somehow, I’ve managed to live on Capitol Hill for over fifteen years without being caught by the G-man. That would usually be cause for celebration, were it not that this particular G-man is the signature sub served by Mangialardo & Sons, a DC fixture for over half a century.

Loaded with salami, ham, provolone, mortadella, mozzarella, and more, the G-man is one of those sandwiches that causes rapturous responses in certain people.

A blurry G-man from Mangialardo and Sons

I have to confess that I’m not one of those people. The parts were good, but the sum total somehow fell a bit short for me. The meats and cheeses were fresh and of ample quantity—they take ingredients seriously at Mangialardo & Sons—and I got more than sufficient value for $6.00.

But the hard roll let down the sandwich, which fell apart as soon as it was unrolled from the correctly wrapped butcher paper. The oil and vinegar barely provided any mouthfeel, the spicing was bland, and on the whole, it seemed like an uninspired assembly. There was no art to the layers. I was the only customer in the store, so it’s not that there was a rush to put my sandwich together.

The store itself bespeaks volume business. Up front is a cash register, in back is the order counter and food preparation area, and the middle is essentially empty, to hold the apparently large crowds that gather for subs there during the short time window they are served each day. Even the ordering process has that pleasantly efficient gruffness that suggests they produce a lot of subs and don’t have time to linger over cordialities. So it’s obvious that there are serious G-man aficionados who make pilgrimages to this slightly out-of-the way location at 13th and Pennsylvania, SE.

I’m only about a fifteen minute walk from Mangialardo & Sons, and if Taylor Gourmetdidn’t deliver proper hoagies and roast porks, I’d make the walk more frequently, no question. Perhaps I caught them on an off day, so I look forward to another G-man (with a less blurry picture!), but I don’t know that this sub will arrest my taste buds frequently.

(Update 2014: New review of the G-Man posted.)

Up and Down in Moscow Town

August 13, 2023December 19, 2010 by Chris Baer

I’ve always been something of a transit buff. One of my earliest collecting targets was SEPTA timetables—bus, subway, and trolley, if you please. I live in a city with a good, if, at present, troubled, transit system, and there are cities I want to visit for no other reason than to ride their subway systems. Heck, I would buy a poster-sized version of the Singapore subway system map (.pdf) if I could find one—it’s a brilliant synthesis of information and design.

One city I want to visit primarily for the subway system is Moscow, with its glorious stations and sweeping transit lines. Said trip is not in the cards at present, so I was pleased to visit vicariously via a recent Washington Post article on the escalators of Moscow’s subway system by Will Englund (“In Moscow, escalators to carry the city,” December 14, 2010):

There are 643 of them in the Moscow Metro. This is a system, like Washington’s, with deep, deep stations, but, unlike in Washington, passengers here are rarely left to hoof it on their own up or down immobilized stairways. It wouldn’t work, because people don’t walk fast enough. At rush hours fully loaded trains run on 90-second intervals; it’s up to the escalators to get the passengers delivered, but just as important, to whisk them away again before they start bunching up and spilling off the platforms and onto the tracks.

The contrast between the subways in these two national capitals could hardly be more striking, as Washington’s Metro has grown notorious for escalator failures. I’ve walked the significant length of a stationary Tenleytown station escalator more than once, in both directions, and that was fifteen years ago. I do empathize with the difficulties facing my local system, though. Tight budgets and an overall infrastructure requiring constant maintenance due to its age (now almost thirty-five years old in the original Red Line corridor) stretch the escalator crews to their limits. Covering the exposed street-to-station escalators was a fine first step.

Washington has a great transit system, and as a resident and a transit fan, I can only hope that they figure out how to fund infrastructure repairs to get more robust escalators in place while simultaneously funding subway expansion. I can’t ride the trains if I can’t reach them.

(Image courtesy of swperman via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike License.)

Where’s the (Italian) Beef?

August 13, 2023December 1, 2010 by Chris Baer

Consider me a Sandwich Spotter, a bread-and-meat anorak, a man with a life list of sandwiches that needs to be polished off, an eater who considers Rick Sebak’s Sandwiches That You Will Like the Citizen Kane of food documentaries.

So, recently, after attending an event on the U Street corridor in Washington, DC, I decided to grab some take out for dinner. The obvious choice would have been Ben’s Chili Bowl, a Washington landmark and, beyond that, just a damn fine purveyor of chili half-smokes. But my preference that evening was for something different, a sandwich on said life list that I had not yet encountered: a Chicago-style Italian Beef. Lucky for me, a restaurant specializing in Chicago street fare just opened on the U Street corridor, ChiDogO’s.

I must emphasize that, since I’ve never had an Italian Beef, I can’t comment on the gustatorial veracity of ChiDogO’s version, but from my research, it certainly looks like the real thing. I ordered a normal size, juicy, with hot peppers, or giardiniera:

Italian Beef from ChiDogOs

The bread was nicely dense, capturing the beef broth that was ladled over it (the “juicy” part) without becoming a soggy mess even after a trip home on the Metro. The beef itself wasn’t overly spiced or flavorful, seeming more like a vehicle for the broth and giardiniera, but there was plenty of it, thinly sliced. The best part was undoubtedly that hot pepper mix, with celery and carrots adding a great crunch to the sandwich, just oily enough to counter the broth’s umami. It’s a study in contrasts.

ChiDogO’s other main offering is, as the name might suggest, the Chicago-style hot dog, though during my visit, on a Monday night, most of the traffic seemed to be for the Italian Beef.

I’m not entirely certain that I’ll make return trips to U Street just for an Italian Beef, but I enjoyed the sandwich and wouldn’t be averse to popping in if already in the neighborhood. For $6 and some change, an Italian Beef at ChiDogO’s makes a great deal and, as Alton Brown might say, good eats.

I hope that ChiDogO’s succeeds. It’s inexpensive food done well, in a small but efficient space with friendly staff. Washington, DC, needs more culinary expatriates like ChiDogO’s and Taylor Gourmet who bring their regional fare to the city. Now if only someone from the Buffalo/Rochester region could suffer a craving for a Beef on Weck strong enough to open a restaurant here…

Covering Gatsby

August 13, 2023November 25, 2010 by Chris Baer

On their blog, Penguin Books UK recently posted the covers for their new hardback re-issue of several of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s works. The foil artwork, by Coralie Bickford-Smith, is Art Deco in nature, echoing Fitzgerald’s times. The not-quite-symmetrical scallops on the cover of The Great Gatsby are quite striking, a commentary, perhaps, on the not-quite-harmonious contents within.

Every attempt at creating a cover for The Great Gatsby has to contend with Francis Cugat‘s iconic cover image, and I think Coralie Bickford-Smith takes the right approach here. Cugat’s image hews so perfectly to the novel that you can’t compete with it, and the Penguin cover instead takes a more muted, subtle tone—not an image but a feeling, a movement, an emotion.

And, one must add, the Penguin cover looks great with the other volumes in the re-issue series. Coherence of artistic cover vision within a series of books is so very important, and Penguin tends to get that aspect of series design correct, as seen in their Ian Fleming re-issues.

Tearing Down the Spectrum, DIY Style

August 13, 2023November 5, 2010 by Chris Baer

The desire to obtain a keepsake, a memento, of a cherished place, roots deeply in the human heart. The entire picture postcard and souvenir industry relies on this need.

Sports fans in particular cherish the arenas, the stadiums, in which their teams do battle. What baseball or football fan (gridiron and association) doesn’t seek out a grass clipping or artificial tuft of astroturf from the field of honor?

Ice hockey fans have a slightly more difficult task, since ice melts and goals are inconvenient to get home. But with the impending demise of the Spectrum in Philadelphia, the current owners have decided to let people loose. Tomorrow, November 6th, you can enter the Spectrum floor for the low cost of $25 and have the run of what’s left for three hours:

Items available for the “If You Can Carry It, You Can Keep It” event include Spectrum folding chairs, used televisions, some office furniture, couches, computer equipment, and other collectibles. Items are first-come, first-served. Patrons will be allowed to take as much as they can carry (up to four chairs per person) with no re-entry into the arena. Tools and hand carts are prohibited.

The Flyers’ last game in the Spectrum is long since past, so perhaps with this controlled ransacking there’s no chance of the demolition Phillies’ fans wrought on Connie Mack Stadium on October 1, 1970, in the last game played there, when fans carted off bleacher seats. It doesn’t look like fans will be able to get into the actual stands and take railings, signs, and the likes, making this event more of a glorified garage sale than a smash ‘n’ grab, but it’s still a fitting way for the old arena to go out, Philadelphia style.

(Image courtesy of Doug Kerr via a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.)

(via Deadspin)