The Alamo!

Between February 23 and March 6, 1836 approximately 182 Texans held off roughly 1500 soldiers of the Mexican Army.  Few battles in American history have had such an impact on the psyche of people.  There are a lot of reasons we find ourselves drawn to this battle. 

First, it was a battle against the odds and that is something that appeals to Americans at an almost genetic level.  We are a country built by underdogs and admire nothing more than someone facing incredible odds.  These men didn’t have to make a last-stand, they could have departed.  It is part of our culture and the besieged men of the Alamo represent that to all of us. 

Secondly what appeals to us is the characters involves.  I've read William Davis's book, Three Roads to the Alamo which is the definitive biographies of the main characters (Crockett, Travis and Bowie).  While Hollywood has painted these men as heroic, they were all flawed in some way.  Yet they made a stand and fought until they were killed. When you read the stories of these men you discover that Bowie and Travis were flawed, they are like every other human being, caught up in extraordinary circumstances.   

 

Colonel David Crockett in particular resonates with people.  Here was a man that had made a mark in the world already.  Yet somehow events conspired to put him at the Alamo at the time of the siege.  It is hard for us to imagine a modern-day former congressman putting his/her convictions on the line the way Crockett did. 

 

Third, there is a spirit of independence in what the fighters at the Alamo fought for.  I have always maintained that one of the mystiques of Texas is that it was its own nation and never forgot that.  The Alamo was a struggle for freedom, which the US still manages to embrace from time-to-time. 

Militarily when you study the battle, there isn’t much to it.  When you look at any heroic last stand from a pure military standpoint, they seem cut and dry.  But last stands like this are rarely that simple or easy to comprehend looking at weapons, tactics, or manpower.  They are about bravery and conviction in the face of death.  That is why the Alamo appeals to us to this day. 

 

So, as you wait for March to come in like a lamb or lion - remember those brave men who fought to buy their country time and for Texas to be free.  

The Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame – Harriet Quimby Award

Sometimes life throws you a pleasant surprise.  In my case, I recently learned that I was to be honored by the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame with a Harriet Quimby Award on May 11. Also receiving the award will be Warren Benjamin Kidder.  I’m deeply honored by this award. 

Harriet Quimby was a Michigan-born journalist writing for magazines like Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.  An adventurer at heart, she became the first female to be given a aviator’s certificate and the second female to be given a pilot’s license.  She was the first woman to fly across the English Channel in 1912 and died later that year in an airplane accident. 

The Kalamazoo Air Zoo, where the Hall of Fame is located, is a great museum and when my books on aviation come out, I always make a point to speak there.  I will be there at 1:00pm on May 11 discussing my latest aviation history book, The Bad Boy. 

When you are a writer the honors and accolades are few and far between.  I’m glad I’ve been able to draw attention to aviators of the Great War in the books that I write, especially Lost Eagles which is about a Galesburg Michigan airman of the Lafayette Flying Corps, Frederick Zinn.  Zinn went on to create the system for tracking, locating, and identifying missing airmen. 

If you are in Kalamazoo on May 11, please feel free to stop by my presentation or better yet, grab a ticket and show up for the dinner and awards ceremony.  http://www.airzoo.org/news.php?menu_id=9&news_id=1&article_id=358

Review of Balance of Power

Okay I’ll preface this review with a disclaimer.  I do freelance writing and game design with Catalyst Game Labs.  Now that that’s on the table, let me also say I didn’t have anything to do with the game Balance of Power and I’m actually a little ticked they didn’t include me on the playtest.  Why?  This game rocks. 

I’m an old school Risk player and on the surface this looks like Risk.  It’s allegedly set in 1815, but that only provides you with the context of the game map.  The game comes with a hard backed map of Europe.  Each player (up to six) has a bag of 45 game pieces broken down into Kings, Generals and Bankers.  These three pieces represent the balance of power in the game – yes I realize I used the title of the game in the description – cool eh?

There are six quick reference cards to help you with the rules.  The rules are pretty darned simple.  You can move – duplicate – or attack.  Generals eliminate Kings.  Kings can take out bankers.  Bankers can take out Generals.  Simple so far?  The pieces are thick wooden material – top notch quality. 

Winning the game is done on points.  You get a point for controlling enemy territory.  When you occupy a capitol with one of each of the game tokens, you get three points.  Depending on the number of people playing you need to have anywhere from 30 to 18 points to win. 

The rules are remarkably easy – I’ve actually covered almost all of them above.  This is the kind of game you can jump into in about fifteen minutes.  Best of all, it’s more simple than Risk which means you can play it with your kids (or grandkids). 

When I dug into the rules I kept wondering, “where are the dice?”  There aren’t any.  Attacks take out the enemy, plain and simple.  But you don’t need them.  This game is all about strategy.  Despite its simplicity there are nuances to this game that are important.  You have to have the right kind of units in the right place in order to successfully attack.  Play is fast, for the most part, and can be vicious.  The games I’ve played with it have lasted no more than an hour.

This is one of those sleeper games that is a great guilty pleasure.  More importantly there’s a bit of cunning and strategizing that comes into game play.  It’s fast – it’s fluid – it’s fun.  Balance of Power trades accuracy for ease of play and does it remarkably well. 

My rating – five out of five stars.  

The Bad Boy is finally released!

It has been a long journey but my book on Bert Hall (The Bad Boy, Fonthill Media) is out in hardcover. The digital version will be forthcoming shortly. This book was one of the more challenging ones for me to research and write given the colorful nature of Bert Hall. Hall was a chronic exaggerator and teller of tale tales, which made getting to the truth (or as close as you can get with Hall) a difficult exercise.  Difficult - but fun.


Hall was a member of the French Foreign Legion at the outbreak of the war and transferred into the French Air Service - eventually becoming one of the original members of the Lafayette Escadrille. Hall was at one point or another a movie star, producer, technical consultant, writer and director; an aviation mercenary in China; an arms dealer; a convicted felon; a race car driver; a gambler; a bigamist, and a few dozen other roles in his life. He had the distinction of being kicked out of the Lafayette Escadrille, yet was an accomplished aviator. Hall managed to find himself at the right place at the right time throughout his life. He was in Paris when WWI broke out. He was in Russia during the revolution. He was in China during the civil wars there.

I'll be doing a presentation on Hall's life at the semi-annual meeting of the League of WWI Aviation Historians in March and an event on May 11th at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo.

I was drawn to writing his life story after my work on Lost Eagles. He was a lifelong friend of Frederick Zinn, the subject of that book. I came to appreciate that Bert Hall was a force of nature. If I could sit and have a drink with any members of the Lafayette Escadrille, Hall would top my list (followed closely by Thaw and Luftbery). He was, by all accounts, a "bad boy," and there is something romantic and fascinating about such a man. A reprobate? Yes. Despicable? At times. A rogue? Of course! An adventurer? Definitely.

Writing about the Lafayette Escadrille is intimidating. It is the holy-of-holy's in terms of WWI squadrons if you are American. Putting my foot into that water was something I was excited about and dreaded. At the same time it was impossible to tell Bert's story without telling the story of the formation and early months of this unit. Over the decades some historians have diminished Bert's contributions, usually at the prodding of Paul Rockwell. I had to go back to source material and really reconstruct what truths I could find about Hall. In the end, I was pleased with my results.

People have asked me do I admire Hall? I certainly don't admire how he led his personal life. Professionally, Bert Hall was the Howard Stern of his day - the master of self promotion. He did remarkable things in remarkable times - which makes him interesting. I admit a tinge of envy at how he literally lived in the moment and changed his career with wild abandon. He was a man that did not perceive limits and lived his life accordingly. Bert lived his life by not dwelling on what others thought of him - how many of us could do the same?If he were alive today I have no doubt that he would have a reality TV show of some sort…and it would be a damned sight better than many of the other shows on.

I Invite you to read the book for yourself and form your own opinions.   http://www.amazon.com/The-Bad-Boy-Aviator-Mercenary/dp/1781551308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359832473&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bad+boy+pardoe

Review: JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation

This book was penned by one of the lead detectives on this infamous murder case, Stephen Thomas. Like many people, I figured that I knew a lot about this case. I was wrong. I only knew the snippets that the media presented over the years. I personally always suspected the Ramsey's as the culprits. The fact that they shielded themselves from prosecutors and police with a wall of lawyers seemed suspicious to say the least. But in fairness, I didn't really know the inside story until I read this book.

First off, the officer who penned this book tells a story of prosecutorial misconduct in the handling of the case that is appalling. Yes, the police made mistakes - those are detailed too. But in the end this is the real story of a six year old girl killed on Christmas Eve whose killers were never brought to trial because of the egregious failings of the DA's office. The police, in this telling, were hindered at every turn by the DA's which should have been working with them towards a common goal.

The Ramsey's most assuredly were responsible for the death of their daughter. They lied, misled, and misdirected the media and the public with false cries of being cooperative. The case has been so badly handled it is doubtful that a conviction will ever occur.

My only critique of the book at all was that by the end, I almost felt that the author was beating a dead horse. Then again, from his perspective, I'm sure it felt that way. Yes, we got it, the prosecutors were morons.  It's a minor nit on an otherwise outstanding book.  

The book contains new information we didn't know about the crime, the circumstantial evidence that points to the Ramsey's, and a real insider's perspective of the crime. It is well worth picking up and reading.   I give it four out of five starts - a worthwhile read.  

Leviathans Mega Battle

The opening move - British on the right, French on the left 

I was one of the writer's and consultants on Leviathans from Catalyst Games Labs. Some close friends of mine and I decided to do a big game to really get a better feel for fleet actions. By big, I mean two of the game sets and boards - one each of the fleet boxes, and the ships we had won at GenCon over the last two years. We're talking eight battleships six cruisers and twelve destroyers facing off. We went with two even fleets, French (run by the dads) and the British (run by the kids). I'd love to tell you about some glorified scenario I had crafted for this battle, but in reality it was designed to be a slugfest on a squadron/fleet level.  We wanted to toss everything we had into the fight to see what a massive engagement was like

Both sides entered the map on the first turn…out of range. It became apparent that we should have used two more map boards because it was tight quarters for both sides. The British attempted to maintain some sort of line formation where we broke the French into three groups. We were not into formations but broke our force into three squadrons.  We charged up the center with three of our battleships, a flanking fleet of destroyers and cruisers on the left - with another pack of destroyers and a battleship on the right. The ships on the left, with only one exception, were devoid of torpedoes. Their mission was to draw off the smaller ships, we knew the boys could not resist what seemed like easy prey.

The nimble French destroyers skirt to the rear of the Leviathan I 

Turn three as seen from the French side of battle.  Notice that  Jean Bart creeping up the right side of the board in the upper corner?  

The boys attempted to maintain a staggered line formation with the larger number of their destroyers on our left.  Line formations are great, until torpedoes start to streak across the table.  The formations were shattered quickly as the dashing French admirals unleashed these deadly weapons.  The second turn unleashed the first round of "torpedo hell" God love the French - our destroyers are fast and we have lots of torpedoes. Both sides took a little damage and gained some respect for torpedoes going forward.  The damage that the torps inflicted would linger for many turns. 

On the left, one of our French destroyers, the Pelletier, was completely surrounded by the enemy. Everyone poured in shots at point blank range, but she only lost an armor slot! Thanks to the nimble French speed, this minks sprinted out of the cluster of enemy ships on the next turn and swung around to the rear of the British battleships on the left.

You learn to respect bracketing and saturation fire with the big ships. Respect it - fear it.

In the center, a nasty spread of British torpedoes hit the French battleships - especially the Paris, taking out her forward guns in just a few salvos. Attempts to evade the torpedoes only left the battlewagons hugging each other. Across the board the French torpedoes hit their marks all over the British fleet, including one that hit one of our own ships (such is the fate of those in war!)

On the right, the French squadron commander Kevin drove his fast moving destroyers behind the Leviathan I (we had a couple of Leviathans out there!) and savaged her aft. Likewise on the left, a pair of French destroyers did the same to anther British battleship. The British were learning the hard way that the fast French destroyers could wreck havoc in their rear. Engine slots on the battleships were getting mangled quickly, slowing the beasts down which the British sent a pair of destroyers to attempt to deal with this threat.

The British, as it turned out, drew first blood. One of the French destroyers, the Grenadier, wandered out in the middle of crossfire from two British battleships and was horribly mauled but still in the air. She was one or two shots away from a keel breaking.  Her captain, valiantly swung around and rammed a British battleship. While brave, it was a pointless gesture that only scared the crap out of the British captain and scraped the paint on her bow. The destroyer, already on her deathbed, went down with all hands. Rumors have circulated that her captain was seen personally at her wheel as she careened downward.  If you look really hard at the miniature, I swear you can see him.

I broke off one of our lesser cruisers on our left flank to get the attention of the British destroyers.  Oh, it got their attention all right.  For three turns three-to-four destroyers circled her, firing at every angle.  The ship must have looked as if it had been dropped in a running garbage disposal, the damage was so bad.  Yet somehow, she managed to shrug off the assaults.  More importantly, she occupied the British destroyers, tying them down in a pointless battle, preventing them from doing what we were doing, getting in behind the battleships and wreck havoc. 

The fact that this was still in the air after three turns of this abuse was amazing

They were surrounding me like sharks

For three turns our destroyers peppered the British battleships.  Of the four, three had suffered at least three engine hits in the aft, turning them into massive, slow moving targets.  By turn four, the battleships began to get into range of each other.  The torpedoes…well, both sides got hit by at least one of their own shots while trying to dodge the enemy.  The torpedoes were whittling down the big ships, especially the British. 

When the big-boys got into action, the results were staggering.  The Medusa I, already limping from destroyer shots to her aft, was the first to go down – a victim of one of the Paris class ships we had run up along the right side of the board.  The image of the ship crashing 10,000 feet down into the French countryside was very cool. 

The British responded brutally.  I had run the Paris right up between two of their ships.  I managed to get in my salvos before the Paris got hit on both sides with massive broadsides.  Her keel shattered and she too plunged down on the unsuspecting French cows in the fields below! 

We came up on the Leviathan I which now limped along at one movement point, and savaged her from one end to another  Cries of “I want her penetrated!” and “savage her!” were made but we quickly realized that out of context, they were the wrong things to say (My bad).  In the end, a French destroyer with a mere 75mm cannon, plunged a salvo in that shattered her keel (the only thing still intact on the ship) and broke her.  In fifteen minutes, three battleships had dropped from the skies, leaving big holes in the map. 

The British destroyers still circled my poor cruiser on the left, but failed to take her down.  Our destroyers on both flanks riddled the remaining two British battleship rear-ends, killing their boilers and leaving them moving at one movement point. 

The remaining three French battleships were slightly damaged but in no danger for another turn or two.  The same could not be said for the British ships which had been hit by the Paris and Jean Bart II and our spunky destroyers.  We toyed with continuing the game but with most of the French ships still having torpedoes, and the British ships only able to limp along, it was going to be slaughter.  Victory to the dads – victory to France! 

The final look of the battle.  Those huge gaping holes once were filled with the pride of the British and French Air Fleets

Lessons we learned from this.  We could have used another map or two for movement.  That would have changed the nature of the game.  Also we used two full sets worth of torpedo markers for many turns.  Two identical sets of launches and targets made for some confusion.  We came to the conclusion that attempting to mentally calculate each torpedo launch and target and trying to move around them is impossible when you have that many.  Sure, we got hit with our own weapons, but it was realistic-ish.  We didn’t use the screening rules this time, but we will next time since that will change the dynamic of the formations. 

The biggest lesson which I knew from playtests was to get to the rear of the battleships and tear them up.  Sure, it will cost you a ship or two but if you can hamstring those battlewagons, they cease to be as big of a threat. 

The total time to play this was six hours.  Six hours of pure fun!  

Geek Magazine - A Review

A review of a magazine?  Sure. Finally those of us out there that are proudly self-proclaimed geeks have a magazine that can embrace as our own – Geek.  They have cranked through four issues so far and the magazine is proving itself to be iconic in the nerd community. 

What makes Geek tick?  First off, it’s unabashed in its embracing the lifestyle of its readers.  What that means is that the magazine has coverage of movies (sci-fi, fantasy, and action/thrillers), television, comic books (bingo!), space technology, online/mobile/system based gaming, music, technology toys and gadgets, and even books.  Yup, all of the elements of the geek lifestyle get some sort of play in the magazine. 

The articles are crisp, picture/graphic laden, and really add to the articles.  The writing is top-notch but is far from dull.  Many of the articles are laced with pop-culture references that often leave you chuckling, even when the tone is serious.  Thanks to Geek, I learned about the Polar Lights 1/350 scale model of the USS Enterprise which I now proudly own, and I’ve jumped back into reading comic books after a year hiatus.  I find their articles on cosplay to be entertaining, even though I don’t indulge in this aspect.  This is the only magazine I read cover-to-cover. 

Are there any shortcomings with the magazine?   Two come to mind.  I’m a fan of the hard copy of the magazine.  When you subscribe, you can only get it online for your mobile device.  No biggie.  The other is that it doesn’t cover RPG’s or board gaming yet…though the last issue did have an article on Dungeons and Dragons in NYC.  I would love to see a standing column covering this part of my nerdish lifestyle because it’s an aspect of our geeky-community that is deeply ingrained.  Not to mention I write in that industry.  

I give this magazine five out of five stars.  Go buy Geek, or check them out online.  http://www.geekexchange.com/  You will NOT be disappointed.