Life during COVID-time (or, Who was that masked gamer?)

Apart from my requiem for The Panzer Depot—in OCTOBER, I haven't blogged for some time—at least I haven't posted a blog for some time. I've begun several, but through sheer indolence and torpor (habits I learned from my cats), I've left them in varying states of unpublishabilness while I devoted myself to other things, mostly not involving brushes, paint, and wee lead soldiers. Blogging for me is often overly ambitious and involves much work. I, like water, tend to flow downward along the path of least resistance. I am fluid.

This post is my attempt to make amends and catch you up on my gaming (and other pursuits) on the first anniversary of our "14 days to flatten the curve" lockdown, which may just be coming to an end possibly this year (or next, or 2023...). That's not a lockdown, it's a sentence.

Naval gaming under canvas

Dave Schueler set up a canopy on his front lawn with some tables under it to provide a mostly flat, even surface for naval gaming.

Since Kevin Smyth got us enthused for 1:1250 pre-dreadnought action, we've played several games and collected, or expanded, our wee navies. We've had usually four players in our games: mostly Dave Schueler (obviously—unless he wanted to watch us from the window), Kevin Smyth, John Gee, and me. Eric Donaldson has joined us on occasion as has Michael Koznarsky; Bill Stewart has appeared to lend support and encouragement, even though he was mostly engaged in l'affaires domestiques, which prevented his staying to play.

The games have given me a chance to shake out my collections of ships and spurred a rash of naval appropriations to keep ahead of the arms race. My once Great Wee Squadron is now truly a Great Wee Fleet.

Battle of the Yalu

Decades ago, I bought the complete Japanese and Chinese fleets for Yalu from Houston's Ships. Now long unavailable, they've been a treasured possession, although I only partially completed building/painting them. John Gee also has the complete fleets, which he—lacking my exquisite sense of torpor—has completed. We both finally got our ships in action.

I supplied all of the Japanese main battle line along with two Chinese cruisers and one of the battleships. John supplied all the rest of the Chinese plus the Japanese flying squadron and the Akagi and Saito Maru, which not strictly part of the Japanese line.

We used Fire When Ready with the ADV/DBV calculation of 1 box of ADV/BDV = 300 tons. This still made for some very fragile ships—especially the Chinese—but also made the game manageable. This was the largest number of ships we've used in a game, it's the Jutland of the Sino-Japanese War.

The Japanese flying squadron was pounded hard at first, but sustained the damage well and gave back some of its own. It took a few turns, but the Japanese main battle line slowly entered the board. 

As it did, the weight of Japanese shot was telling. Although, it wasn't so much the weight as the volume. Most of the Japanese ships were armed with 4.7" QF guns—and plenty 'o them. The Chinese had larger guns, but fewer and were mostly devoid of any QFs.

John Gee made a great effort to escape with his squadron by attempting to cross the Japanese T, but in the end, he fell victim to superior Japanese fire as his fellow Chinese navy players had. The Japanese flying squadron was pretty much wrecked; the main battle was nearly unscathed.

Battle of the Philippines - 1898 (hypothetical)

Having amassed a goodly amount of Japanese and German pre-dreads, I was eager to get them in a fight with each other. As a kind of one-off opportunity a week after our Yalu escapade, Dave offered his lawn and canopy and he, John Gee, and I got together and gamed my hypothetical German vs. Japanese in the Philippines scenario.

The Japanese had  Fuso and Tenryu as outpost ships covering the flank of a Japanese landing in the Philippines in a free-for-all in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. Backing them up were Chiyoda and Akashi, which could start to roll for entry on turn 2. The German squadron was three Gazelle-class cruisers (Gazelle, Nymphe, Arcona) and Geier.

My idea was to see if the four Germans could take out the Japanese in detail or if the Japanese outpost ships could survive long enough to form a stronger battle line with their reinforcements.

Fuso covered herself in glory. She withstood the combined fire of four German ships and rammed two of them (doing about as much damage to herself in the process). Fuso benefitted from an armored belt (9" of wrought iron) and the fact that although small, she was stout and heavy.

The Germans were getting badly shot up while the Chiyoda and Akashi were fresh. Fuso was also no worse for wear, although she'd lost most of her already slow speed. Tenryu wound up a burning wreck. In the end, the German effort failed. They were too damaged to continue. 

DAZzling

Amidst our great COVID hunkering down, I've been spending a lot of my hobby time (and money) on the 3D art stuff using DAZ Studio. It's surely addicting. I'm finding new things to explore with it all the time. I started out thinking that I'd focus on sci-fi themes, which I have done, but I got sidetracked into fantasy themes in late August. The catalyst was a sale on daz3d.com with stupidly low prices for assets to use creating centaurs in DAZ. As long-time readers of this humble blog may recall, I'm big on centaurs. Armed with my new toys, I've created and rendered some scenes that I'm pretty happy with.

 

I still feel pretty amateurish as a 3D artist, however. There's much to learn, especially about lighting a scene and getting the effect you want. 

I see other artist's 3D work and wonder how they got the effect they did—although post-render work in apps like Photoshop, Topaz, etc. can add much to an otherwise simple render. I typically tweak my images in Photoshop after I render them, but it's mostly things like color balance, levels, brightness/contrast, denoising, etc. Although, I'll often add in dust or fog effects, plus backgrounds in renders that have a transparent background.

Buying assets to use when building a scene is a lot like buying minis. There's no lead pile per se, but I have many GB of digital assets I have yet to use. I just bought them because they looked cool and maybe I could do something with them—and they were on sale. As with minis, I can't quite keep from buying new things, but I'm starting to feel as glutted with DAZ assets as I am with minis. The best idea for both, is to make the most of the surfeit I have before buying more, but then...

Blogger blues

Blogger has "improved" itself. With most cloud services, the phrase "We've updated our service!" is as ominous and foreboding as hearing "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

One of the reasons I've crapped out on my blogging duties is that Blogger went all "New Coke" in their editing tool. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a phrase that's apparently unfamiliar to the good people who develop for the tool. Some of the things I did to get the pages to work like I want are now not possible; getting images to format correctly, especially, is a source of unending chagrin. So, in several cases, I started to write a big, extensively illustrated blog post and then got too frustrated to continue. 

This "improve until failure" model is all the rage now. I realize that the need to innovate or die motivates change, but can we just admit to ourselves that not all change is good change? I'm still working through accommodating myself to the improved, i.e., dysfunctional, Blogger. I'll get that figured out just about the time they screw it up improve it again. Hey, it's "free" (that is, free only in the sense that if the product is free, you're the product).

Zoom zoom

Will Depusoy started a Saturday evening Zoom and paint thing. It basically got people from the Cascadia Tabletop Gamers group (formed around gaming at the Panzer Depot) together over Zoom to chat while painting. It took a while before I joined, but liked it so much that I extended it to my own gaming group of Kevin Smyth, Dave Schueler, John Gee, Eric Donaldson, Michael Koznarsky, Mike Lombardy, and (if he ever attends) Bill Stewart.

It's been a great boost to my gaming/painting. With my productivity way down, the couple hours I spend painting and chatting on Zoom contributes hugely to my output (about which more in a later blog). It's also the best means to keep up with the people I don't see much anymore because we can't game together.

Since we started Zooming and painting, I've gotten more active in painting at times other than Saturday nights. Our convention, Enfilade!, is tentatively scheduled for Labor Day weekend (moved out from Memorial Day weekend). I need to get my aborted Enfilade! 2020 games back on track. You'd think that having 18 months prep time, I'd be sitting pretty, but I'm only now getting myself in gear again.