A kick in the Spratleys

Saturday saw another gathering of the TWATS, again in reduced numbers due to work and personal commitments. I was in the chair and had decided to give Shipwreck an airing. I’d bought this rule set years ago, alongside the Freeplay ‘88 supplement but never got round to putting anything on the table,,, as I hadn’t anything to put on the table. However, last year I bought an 8 pack of snap together plastic ships off Wish. The eight ships included are the Hood, the Liaoning, a Type 54A frigate, a Burke-class destroyer, a Tico-class cruiser, a Slava-class cruiser, a Sacramento-class supply ship and what the packaging refers to as a Kilo-class sub but I think it’s a Seawolf-class SSN. Quite liking these, I bought another pack from Amazon in December. In each instance, the price was just over a tenner for the eight. With these, I could put a game on.

The toys for the game

Joining me on Saturday were Shaun and Andy, who played as the Chinese and Americans respectively. The scenario was a simple one: a US Navy supply ship, the John Lewis (wait, there’s more) is damaged and drifting after a typhoon savaged the area. The Chinese have claimed the waters as theirs and the US Navy believe they are international waters. The Americans have dispatched a surface group of one Tico (the John James Fenwick) and two Burke-class destroyers (The Thomas Marks and Michael Spencer – told you there was more). The Chinese were heading to the Lewis with the Liaoning freshly out of trials accompanied by two Type 54A frigates. Due to the poor weather, there were no flight ops (in other words, I have no models yet for helo’s – that will change). In addition, there was a Russian Slava-class cruiser in the area due to meet up with the Chinese for joint exercises after the two countries signed a friendship pact.

The US Task Force as the game started

The set-up gave the Chinese a bit of a head start in the race to the Lewis but both sides started at flank speed for the first few turns. The Lewis was using its radar and data-link to keep the US group informed of the Chinese location, whilst the Fenwick alone had its radar active – the destroyers Marks and Spencer were under full EMCON. As the two forces approached the Lewis (and each other), the Americans were very vocal in telling the Chinese they were in international waters on a rescue mission. The Chinese in turn were pretty loud in proclaiming their socialist friendliness and willingness to escort the Lewis to a Chinese port since they were in Chinese waters.

The Chinese Squadron

As the ships closed the distance, the Americans detected the Chinese force first, the two Type 54A’s ahead of the carrier. I made Shaun roll for the Slava to make an appearance, which it didn’t.

In turn 6, the Chinese declared they were going to have to board the Lewis in order to "rescue" the crew. The Americans did not take this well.

The Chinese frigates surge ahead, the John Lewis in the distance

Turn seven saw the Chinese get painted by the Lewis’s fire control radars for their Sea Sparrow missiles. Whilst not dedicated anti-ship missiles, they could still cause some damage. The Chinese ignored this and approached closer still, though by this point, they had activated their radars and finally saw the Fenwick and her escorts. As an aside for our northern England readers, rumours that the Fenwick was equipped with an advanced chaff substitute called Window were just that, rumours, though the thought of Fenwick’s Window being a distracting was quite apt.

The Americans, and rough seas for the Spencer

Turn 9, and the US commander at sea gets a message from Pacific Fleet Command – the Chinese should not get closer than 3 miles and that permission to fire was granted. Of course, when told this, Shaun brought one of his 54A’s to within one mile. Finally, some shooting started.

Closer...

Closer still...

Very close now...

Dude! Personal space!!!

Now, I quite like Shipwreck’s mechanic of movement turns lasting 10 minutes of game time but when firing occurs, this is sorted out in up to six combat turns before another movement turn can be started. It neatly takes into account missile speed and distance as well as being neat when trying to figure out what is going on. Needing relatively low dice to get hits due to the way the Sea Sparrows were balanced for anti-ship use, Andy fired to at the closest 54A and missed. Similarly, an attempt at Phalanx fire also failed, though that was more of a desperation shot. Once that had been decided, it was the next movement turn.

"Western belligerence" was claimed by the Chinese, as they launched boats with marines on to grab what they could from the Lewis. When asked what kind of boats they would be (as there were no models for them), the reply of "don’t know but don’t say they are from Taiwan or we will fire" seemed very apt. The Americans were given the all clear to fire at will (poor lad) and the Fenwick and Marks each launched four Harpoons at the two frigates. The Lewis joined in with its remaining 6 Sea Sparrows at the the nearest frigate. It must be noted here that the Liaoning was keep its distance. The remaining frigate tried its hand with 76mm cannon fire against the Lewis and missed. Both, however, unleashed their entire payload of 8 C802 missiles each at the Americans, divided equally between the Fenwick and the Marks.

Vampire, vampire, vampire!

Another intermission here as I kind of cocked up. I didn’t read the ship cards properly which limited the number of SAM’s that could be guided at any one time. However, my defence is that modern day Standard missile/AEGIS combo’s are much more effective than even these rules have them (originally written in 1999) so I let both sides fire whatever they wanted at their respective incoming targets. So let that be a lesson, when you cock up, cock up so that both sides are receive a fair benefit of the cock up.

Another shot of the missile action.

Pretty fair exchange here

So, the first set of SAM’s went up. Andy fired three Standards per incoming missile so 24 from Marks and Spencer. Even with a miscounted points value (again, my cock up but again, fair to each side), all but one of the C802’s was shot down. In response, the Chinese only managed to down five of the eight incoming Harpoons. Final result – one hit on the Marks, one hit on the port Type 54A and two on the other. The 54A with one hit took light damage and lost it’s now empty C802 mount. The other 54A took a crippling hit first, then sunk with the second hit. The Marks took it’s hit head on, leaving it crippled and down a Phalanx mount.

At this point, I enacted the third rule of the TWATS. The first one is "The umpire is always right, especially when he’s wrong". The second is "refer to rule one" and the third is "the umpire is a TWAT". And so I was. I took Shaun to one side and asked him if he wanted to call upon the Russians for help. He said yes, so on one corner of the table, the Slava appeared as did four missile tokens, each one representing four SSM’s. Yep, the Slava had shot its entire load, eight at the Spencer and eight at the Fenwick.

Ain't I a stinker!

Onto turn ten and the remaining 54A tried again with its 76mm to hit the Lewis, more bum dice here from Shaun. An emergency message from the Varyag claimed that an unfortunate error had meant the launch of all of the Varyag’s SSM’s. Totally an accident and unintended(!). However, whilst Andy was prepared to rescue survivors from the sunk 54A, he knew he had been well and truly kippered. Not that this was to stop him. Cleverly (and totally unintentionally), he bypassed the multiple missiles per target rule and had the Spencer and Fenwick each fire one SAM per incoming missile. As each ship was acting individually, I ruled that this would have no effect on the accuracy of the missiles and with a total of 32 against 16, the incoming Russian barrage was dealt with smartly. At the end of this combat round, a quick check of the ammunition situation revealed that the Fenwick was down to 106 SAM’s and the Spencer down to just 34!

Turn 11 saw the Russians once again claim a technical malfunction and also making a pretty sharpish withdrawal. Whatever the agreement between the two governments, there was little appetite for a further missile exchange, especially as the Americans still had a good number of Harpoons left. The surviving 54A also turned tail and joined the Liaoning in leaving the combat area, not even helping to rescue their own sailors, something the John Lewis was more than willing to do. Everything else would be sorted out at the UN.

The first run for a rule set is always just a case of seeing if the game mechanics work. In the case of Shipwreck, whilst the scenario was simple, it revealed that they aren’t half bad and with a little updating to to take into account current day weapons capabilities, will see future use. One thing that was remarked upon was the possibility of adding politics to mix. Several years ago, Andy and I ran a political game set in "not Iraq", with multiple sides and backstabbing a plenty. Something like that, with ulterior motives and the like would suit this well as it would add an extra layer to just rolling for missile fire – indeed, once the missiles start flying, there is not much more to do than hope you get good AA fire rolls. We would need more players (the previous political game had 9 including the two umpires), but in that case, it would be one player captains one ship with national orders assigned to each ship captain. Hmmm, with a bit of thought, that could be a go-er.

One thing that will be added to (after the York Vapnartak show) are helicopters. Tumbling Dice do a good range and whilst they are light on Chinese types, that can be worked around. They would also give a bit more subtlety to the hunt. Some fixed wing would also not go amiss, especially with the carrier. This could even lead to a campaign…

Some of you might be thinking, having seen the pictures that the scale of the models looks wrong. And to be fair, they all seem to be scaled so that the actual model size is about four inches. True, that leads to some funny looking size comparisons but to be honest, it wasn’t an issue here as the all measurements were made bow to bow. The models themselves are quite decent and when you consider how much I paid for them, it was enough to put on a game. True, the painting is a bit iffy and some of the fittings were rough and included a fair amount of flash on some of the pieces, but for the price, it would be churlish to complain. Main take away here is that it doesn’t have to cost the earth to put a game on and they made a decent impression on the (green) sea – a props issue that made not much difference to be honest. They were also easily visible, something that smaller scale ships would cause trouble with in the slightly gloomy light as the afternoon waned.

All told, I enjoyed this game. It was nice to try something different and there is room for expansion later on. Both participants also enjoyed it (so they tell me, though they both were well versed in political double speak by the end of the game :-)). As always, the fine hospitality of Eric and Jean at the Commercial was much appreciated, as was the Consett Ale, and the Beef Butties and Chips were well served. Empty plates and full stomachs all round and a satisfying afternoon of gaming.

Note: For non-UK readers, Marks and Spencer, John Lewis and Fenwicks are the names of department stores in UK. Fenwicks is particularly popular in the north-east of England for its Newcastle store where a large Christmas display window (hence the chaff/window reference) is set up each year. And yes, bad jokes will continue is future games I run :-).

Mary Poppins Returns

It was with some trepidation that my good lady and I ventured to the local cinema recently to watch Mary Poppins Returns. At the risk of sounding all soppy, the original is still one of the best movies of my childhood and has pretty much stood the test of time, ignoring the seemingly ever present need for some people to find offence in everything. Nope, taken as what it should be, the original Mary Poppins is a classic and the belated sequel was something we both wanted to see. As it turned out, we had nothing to worry about.

Set many years after the original, MPR sees the Banks children all grown up, with Michael recently widowed with three children of his own. A short preamble to set up the conflict of the story (they will lose their house, 17 Cherry Tree Lane, in a few days due to a failure to keep up loan repayments), we’re quickly into the film proper.

MPR is reverent almost to a fault towards the original and matches it beat for beat. The situation may be different, but each event in MPR mirrors MP. This is no bad thing as it helps reinforce the theme that people repeat the same mistakes, just as Michael Banks has effectively turned into his father.

The animated sequence in the first half of the film is an equal to the country stroll and fair ground of MP, and it’s very pleasing that Disney kept the original animation style with nary a CGI creation in sight. The visit to Mary’s cousin, a hilariously over the top Meryl Streep, is as good, if not funnier than the visit to Uncle Albert and it’s only the lamp-lighter bike sequence at the two thirds mark that doesn’t measure up to the originals firework dodging chimney sweeps.

The music takes many cues from Mary Poppins and whilst there are new original songs, they don’t (yet) feel as if they match the classics such as A Spoonful of Suger and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. However, the Big Ben section at the end of the film is something new and adds greatly to the finale.

Acting wise, Emily Blunt is very good as the new and improved Mary Poppins, with the right level of strictness and control to match the knowing glances to her reflection and her uber-controlled manner. If I have one complaint here, it’s maybe that her accent is just a little too plummy, but that’s quickly overlooked. Lin-Manuel Miranda is good as Jack, the lamplighter and Dick Van Dyke replacement. True, his accent does slip a little and it does feel that he’s trying a bit too hard but he’s nowhere near as bad a Dyke famously was. Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer play the older Banks siblings with warmth and familiarity (and boy, can Whishaw sing), and the three child actors playing the younger Banks are very well cast and avoid the stereotypical annoying child syndrome. Colin Firth is scenery chewingly evil and Julie Walters adds a touch of humour as Ellen the Cook. The cameos extend from the aforementioned Streep to David Warner as Admiral Boom and Angela Lansbury as the Balloon Lady – it’s balloon flying at the end of this film, not kites, though the kite from MP does play a pivotal part in the story. Comment must be made about Dick Van Dyke, who nearly steals the film as Mr Dawes Junior (he played Mr Dawes Senior in MP). Sprightly and energetic, the few short minutes he’s on-screen are near perfect.

If it sounds like I am waxing lyrically about this film, then yes, I am. At a smidge over two hours, it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s that long and I spent most of the film with a smile on my face, the end result combining something new with a lovely call back to nostalgia. Whereas the original could be called a little twee in places, MPR avoids that saccharine overload and is tonally note perfect. This is a bright and breezy family film, devoid of bloat and fluff and neatly captures what made the first film so good. It is also devoid on any cynicism, something that most family films seem to have in buckets these days. Heartfelt and uplifting, MPR is Disney at its best, and I can see this film joining the ranks of classics in future years. And no, this is not me going soft in my old age, just enjoying entertainment as it was meant to be – entertaining.

The Amstrad NC100 - portable perfection?

A new year has arrived and this being the first new post of the year, I thought I'd begin with a retro-tech post, forward looking and all that malarky. As some of you may have noticed, I have a bit of an interest in old tech. More specifically, the tech of the early 1980's to early noughties. This encompasses the period of first generation consumer computing tech hitting the market to the final generation before the homogeneity of today's smartphone culture, where two operating systems and an almost identical form factor have combined to remove almost any individuality from the market. Indeed, where there are modern day unique devices: The Astrohaus Freewrite/Traveller, the Gemini handheld and even the open-source Pandora-derived Pyro, these tend to be small scale production models with prices commensurate to their niche appeal.

In part, this interest stems from growing up looking at such devices and thinking they were the dog's danglies (and some actually were for their time). It's also in part in seeing how much technology has developed and whether or not the original device designers got it right at the time but no-one noticed. There is also the self imposed challenge of seeing if tech discarded as obsolete fifteen, twenty or even twenty five plus years ago can still cut it today. Obviously, I am not going to try and run Pocket Internet Explorer from a 1998 vintage Windows CE palmtop or lug around an Amstrad PPC-512 portable from 1988. That would just be silly. No, it's more a case of if the device and software can still be used today, can they be used in a genuinely productive manner.

As such, it's time to talk about the oldest piece of retro-tech (outside of games consoles) that I own: The Amstrad NC100. Launched for the princely sum of £199.95 in 1992 (that's about £406 in today's money), the NC100 is an A4-sized slab of plastic with a qwerty keyboard, mono-LCD screen and 64kb of RAM. Powered by the ubiquitous Zilog Z80 processor racing at 4Mhz, you could expand the memory via PCMCIA cards of up to 1Mb (wooooo!!!) capacity. Four AA batteries offered a twenty hour lifespan, you have an RS-232 serial port for PC connectivity and a parallel port for printers. Primary applications include a word processor, calculator, diary and organiser. It even has BASIC for any programming needs and a terminal emulator/XMODEM ability for file transfers - indeed, a reviewer at the time of launch typed her review on the machine and filed back to the office via a 300-baud modem link. Take that you youngsters with your high speed fibre :-). In short, this was a device I really wanted when I was a teenager and I finally have my hands on one now, including it's original packaging which has not handled the passage of time too well.

In not too bad a condition considering the age.

Back when packaging was practical and informative.

First things first, the look. It follows the design of the Cambridge Z88, another device that found heavy use in educational and journalistic circles due to its ease of use and portability. It's a slab of black plastic, yes, but livened up by brightly coloured function keys that allowed shortcut commands for the built-in software. Why? To make it easy to use. That was the design brief from Mr Sugar himself (to the point where he wrote the introduction to the manual - so the story goes). And by and large, they did it. True, a younger user would struggle (where's the screen to tap away on?), but within ten minutes of switching the NC100 on, I'd figured out pretty much every menu and that was just by trial and error.

Everything that came in the box.

Build quality is fairly good. There is a bit of creaking if you really try and bend it but otherwise, it's a solid machine. Less hollow sounding than the Alphasmart 3000 I am typing this one and, dare I say it, a bit more durable. The manual is very detailed and handy for perusal but I get the feeling that new owners of the machine were meant to switch it on and get on with it.

The main menu - simplistic and clean

Although basic, the screen does its job well

The screen is basic, very basic, with 80 characters per row and 8 rows visible on-screen. it's not going to win any beauty contests and the text is rather small, but it does the job, unless it's dark. No back-lighting here but that helps with the battery live immensely. The follow up NC200 offered a half-clam-shell design with a built-in 3.5 inch floppy drive and a bigger, back-lit screen. You also got a spreadsheet, database and some games. The downside here was the move to C-cell batteries and the inability for the device to access the floppy drive if the batteries were even slightly below a full charge.

Organiser applications.

Calculator.

What the NC100 does benefit from is the keyboard. It clacks reassuringly like a typewriter, it's not overly loud but the sound is pleasing and not overly plasticky like most modern keyboards. The keys have a good amount of travel and spring back with just the right amount of tension. Honestly, this is the best non-desktop keyboard I have ever experienced for its size. Sitting down and bashing out a couple of hundred words was effortless and rather enjoyable and the only fault I can mention with the design is the slightly iffy angle of the screen which made viewing it a little bit of a chore. Other than that, the NC100 is superbly designed.

This brings me to the major issue with using it today. Whatever I type on the machine is held in battery backed up RAM. Finding 1Mb or smaller PCMCIA cards has proved a tad difficult and where I have found one, the prices being asked are eye-watering. There is the option of a serial cable so that will probably be my preferred method of transfer, but that may take some playing about with terminal programs and the like. Sadly, the NC100 pre-dates plug and play (even the hated Windows 95 idea of P&P) and lacks the easy transfer option of the Alphasmart. If only there were a way of combining the keyboard of the NC100 with the slightly more modern tech of the Alphasmart...

In a way, it's a shame. the concept is sound, the tech is good enough and the implementation excellent for its time. Yet, because of its age, it's not easy to use today. However, there are workarounds and with a bit of care and effort, I can see the NC100 lasting a good few years yet. What would be really good is if instead of going down the big-business data collection route of Google with their Chromebooks, or the bloated and relatively poorly performing budget Windows laptops or even the tablet/keyboard hybrids that are neither fish nor fowl, someone put together a low cost typing device that follows the mould of the NC100/Alphasmart/Z88? Think about it, a decent low power screen (doesn't have to be colour - in fact it shouldn't be to preserve battery life), in an A4 format with an ARM chip, a couple of GB of storage and the ability to run off either removable lithium-ion batteries or AA's. Using a basic operating system with applications saving in modern file formats, I think there could be a market for this device. Less fragile and cheaper than laptops, a better typing experience than tablets, what's not to like?

It won't happen, not least when you have the likes of the Astrohaus Traveller which offers something similar but in a clamshell format and a price that's just scary ($238 when the Indiegogo campaign launched, $349 (£270-ish) now - though comparing to the inflation adjusted price of the NC100, that's not too bad). It also doesn't help that if such a mythical machine were available, it would need to retail for $150 or less, and that would have to make it a relatively high volume, low margin product and I don't think the volume would be there, not compared to Chromebooks and tablets. Of course, it would be a niche product and by its very nature, lack the "perceived" value competitors offer.
As for me, I'll keep using  the Alphasmart and, when I have the cabling, the NC100. They are specifically focused machines with cracking battery lives and decent (in the case of the NC100, brilliant) keyboards. For simple text entry, nothing comes close. Sometimes, it's true, they just don't make them like they used to.