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Showing posts from June, 2016

Playing Cassino '44

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The situation near the end of the game.  Notice all the disrupted and demoralized units.  This game mechanic successfully recreates the confusion of the battlefield. Leaders have to help rally their troops while other leaders continue to direct the attack with fewer organized units as the attack continues. A British air unit bombards one one of the Nashorn platoons, disrupting it and allowing the British tanks to close range on the position.  Nashorns have an 11 firepower with a 9-hex range. Sherman's have a 5 firepower and a 6-hex range.  It is an important tactic to not leave the British armor exposed to the Nashorns without putting them within range to fire back at the weakly armored German units. The scenario begins at 3:30 AM, so darkness is a big factor with the initial British advance.  As mentioned in my previous post on Cassino '44 , leaders are the most important pieces in the Panzergrenadier series .  Setup has to carefully take the positioning of leaders in

Re-watching Northern Exposure

For me, television in the 1990's was dominated by two programs, the X-Files (which I have blogged about earlier ) and Northern Exposure .  Even though it only made it half-way through the decade, Northern Exposure  was entertaining, humorous, and even pioneering. I videotaped the episodes, beginning before we moved into our current house, and re-watched many of them about ten years later, in the first decade of this century. Times and technology being what they are, I transferred these tapes to a digital format, after my second viewing. Beginning right after New Year's Day, Jennifer and I decided to watch the whole series, from start to finish again.  It wasn't exactly 'binge watching' as it took us until late-May to get through all 110 episodes.  Generally, we watched two episodes a night but most nights we watched no TV at all. Anyway, the experience was entertaining, each of us remembering different aspects of the show and sharing in conversation about it thro