CKII: Eadfrith the Cathar

Last time, the Mercian empire went through a sequence of short-lived queens until Emperor Eadfrith the Great (1173- took the throne, nominally on the death of his mother in childbirth, and for real when he came of age. He got things started with moving the capital to Damietta.

Once the court was established there, my court chaplain discovered he was really into a heresy called Catharism. Finally, a chance to try running a secret cult! Sadly, as I've understood it, you can only ever belong to one secret society at a time, but then again, the Mercian hermetic tradition was broken during the Interregnum, so what the hell. Besides, Mercia is the largest Catholic realm in the world, so if I could flip at least a large part of it, we might be on our way to supplanting Catholicism altogether. It's a long shot, but hey, we'll see.

Meanwhile, Eadfrith became King of Norway.

Unfortunately, he also became insane and appointed his horse chancellor. It's the syphilis ("Great Pox"), I'm afraid.

**

At this point, I took a longish break from the game, for life reasons, but also because if I'm honest, running a secret cult turned out to be kind of boring. The first problem is that you can only belong to one secret organization at a time, which is a real shame, because it means I had to give up Hermeticism to become a Cathar. The bigger problem is that there's not a whole lot of interesting things to do as a Cathar. Now, I'd love to be able to convert my entire realm to Catharism and achieve full gender equality, but the way you go about it is occasionally sponsoring a secret community in a province, or trying to recruit a character. Neither of these is very interesting in itself, and being a secret cultist gives your character stress. When you combine the stat loss from giving up the hermetic grimoires, it's just a bad deal in pursuit of an outcome that may never happen, and like I said, is boring.

I'm bummed about this because it would have been really awesome to kick out the pope and replace him with a Cathar woman, but unfortunately I'll have to try that some other time. The paradox of a secret cult seems to be that converting a smaller realm is easier, but then that leaves you a potential victim of your more orthodox neighbors; converting a larger realm is just dull and time-consuming.

On a broader note, since I graduated I simply haven't had the time to immerse myself in Crusader Kings any more, and with several new DLCs and lots of minor updates out since I last played, I'm afraid I don't think returning to this game feels like a good idea. I think I need a completely new campaign to figure out how everything works again! I'm fondly dreaming of getting the kind of 9-to-5 job that would let me do some proper gaming, but I'm really not sure if those actually exist any more.

Still, building Mercia on the Nile was great fun, and I'm happy I did it. I'm also vaguely interested in the board game, although the reviews have been kind of mediocre. Anyway, Crusader Kings 2 is an amazing game, and I wish I had more time to play it.

Warhammer 40,000: Zootopia's finest

This is a slightly strange story that starts with a wedding. We were invited to attend the wedding of two of our very dear friends last summer, and the dress code was "legendary", with a strong suggestion of cosplay or at least costume. We ended up going with a Star Wars theme; my partner wanted to go as Revan, and I'd always quite fancied an Imperial officer's uniform. I think we did a decent job of it; here's a picture.

I bought the uniform from an online store, who assured me that it was up to 501st Legion standards, and I believe it was! But when I searched their online store with the term "imperial officer", I got a whole bunch of Star Wars uniforms - and an Officer Hopps cosplay from Zootopia.

Now, we love Disney movies in this household, and Zootopia is an especially delightful one. Also, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense if Zootopia belongs to the Imperium. You'd think that population counter in Bunnyburrow would lead to big problems - unless they regularly ship a regiment of rabbits out to the Imperial Guard. I mean there must be stranger abhumans out there, you'd think.

Since I'd already used Eureka Miniatures rabbit samurai for my Stormbun Eternals, it wasn't much of a stretch to try bringing them over to Warhammer 40,000 as well. Here's a Chirikov Rad-Guards Scout Sentinel, being piloted by one of Zootopia's finest.

I am very happy with this model. The cockpit section is Dark Red, with the inside and some of the panels in Red; the legs are Red and Gunmetal Gray, washed with watered-down Black Glaze, which I think worked excellently.

**

Of course, I didn't stop there. To return to Star Wars for a moment, I've already used several models from Fantasy Flight's Star Wars: Imperial Assault in 40k, and I was wondering whether their AT-STs could be used as Sentinels. I bought a copy of the General Weiss Villain Pack to find out, because not only are AT-STs cool, but at a measly 20€ at our friendly local board game store, they're cheaper than Sentinels!

Also quite a bit bigger, it turns out. But if they're cheaper than Sentinels, then they're a lot cheaper than Armiger Helverins. The crew compartment is in Light Grey, with the metal bits on the guns in Gunmetal Grey. I wanted to make the legs a bit darker so I did what I did with Star Wars: Rebellion and painted them in Dark Seagreen. That came out a little bit too dark for my taste, so I painted some of the raised bits London Grey.

For the command Armiger, I found I had exactly one metal aquila left over from another project, so I stuck it on the front. I then sawed off General Weiss's head, replaced it with an Eureka rabbit's, and behold: General Hopps.

Delightfully, all three AT-STs I mean Armigers, pictured here mid-painting, fit perfectly into a Feldherr 90mm raster foam tray, with room to spare.

I really can't recommend Feldherr enough. Here's the finished squadron:

We've decided to run them as House Hawkshroud, although I'm thinking I'll name them the Loyal Zootopian Lancers.

**

I'll be honest: of all the conversions I've ever done, the Sentinel and General Hopps are right up there with Rebellion Captain Phasma as the models I'm most proud of. These are all fairly simple conversions, painted to, well, my ability; but I couldn't be happier with them.

Finnish army anti-tank guns in the Winter War

The unsuccesful Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939-40, known in Finnish as the Winter War, is one of the more famous conflicts in military history. An especially iconic image of the war that encapsulates the popular notion of the desperate Finnish underdog is Finnish soldiers trying to stop enemy armor with improvised anti-tank weapons. After all, by all accounts the Molotov cocktail got its name in Finland during the war, and stuffing cloth down the neck of a bottle of flammable alcohol was one of the most effective anti-tank measures available to Finnish infantry units; the other methods, like jamming a log into an enemy tank's running gear, were if anything more suicidal.

Why was the Finnish army so ill-prepared for the Soviet armored threat? The core reason is what I talked about in my thesis: Finnish officers wrongly believed that armored forces couldn't operate in Finnish terrain. But even after this belief was dispelled, the army still failed to acquire anything like sufficient quantities of anti-tank weapons. I explain why in my latest peer-reviewed article, which is also my first publication in English, in Tekniikan Waiheita, available online here.

**

Also, just to celebrate this article, here's a Warlord Games 28mm model of the 37 PstK 36 that the Finnish army failed to procure in proper numbers.

I took the advice of the Warlord Finnish paint set, and painted the uniforms in Medium Sea Grey, with Chocolate Brown accessories. You may notice I've taken an ahistorical liberty by giving the gunner a Statuesque Miniatures head, complete with a later Finnish armored brigade beret. We still wore second world war-esque greys when I was (very briefly) in the military, and I thought they looked very smart with the black beret! These days it's all camo all the time. The gun is in Luftwaffe Camo Green, which is somewhat darker than it should be, but I like it.

Since I mostly intend to use this model in Warhammer 40,000, as a Rachkoi-pattern lascannon, I've also omitted the third crewmember. Where are they, you may ask?

Fraternizing with the enemy at a Blood Bowl game!

LotR LCG: A long-expected quest

He waited for an opportunity, when the talk was going again, and Tom was telling an absurd story about badgers and their queer ways - then he slipped the Ring on.
- The Lord of the Rings, book I, chapter VII

Now that my Tolkien-reading project has gotten well into the Lord of the Rings, it's about time we got started on those saga expansions as well. Each of these saga quest posts will go through two adventures, incorporating the standalone scenarios that fit into the campaign; this post, for instance, deals with the first quest in the Black Riders expansion, as well as the Old Forest standalone quest.

John Howe: The Black Rider, 1985

**

A Shadow of the Past

In the very first quest of the campaign, Frodo flees Bag End, and everyone gets stabbed by Ring-wraiths and dies; the end.

In practice, you have to quest your way to Bucklebury Ferry while avoiding the Nazgul with Hide tests. It's the same as the Escape tests in the Dead Marshes, back in the Mirkwood cycle, i.e. an extra round of questing, and to be honest, it wasn't a great mechanic then, either. Here you have to quest, have questers in reserve if you need to take a Hide test, and in case that fails, defend a Nazgûl twice.

We tried this with three players, and it was not easy. The Ring-wraiths aren't impossibly tough, but when you have to defend multiple attacks by them, and somehow at the same time put together a fair bit of questing and hiding, it's a lot to do, especially when not really running ally-heavy decks. I guess a Leadership/dwarf swarm deck would find this much easier going, and I can kinda see why they were so popular back in the day.

I do want to say that the location cards are, again, absolutely lovely. But after several attempts, I don't really see why people think so highly of this quest.

**

The Old Forest

In the first of the standalone quests that can be included in the saga campaign, our heroes get lost in the Old Forest.

Basically this is the Hills of Emyn Muil, but with trees; you cycle through different quest stages until you've gathered enough victory points to advance to the last stage, where you have to quest while being attacked by Old Man Willow. Sometimes Tom Bombadil can show up.

I thought this was a decent quest, but I feel it's let down a bit by the enemies being kinda boring, and by being a bit arduous, especially in the last quest stage where your threat is skyrocketing and you're defending constant attacks from trees. The Old Forest is one of my favorite parts of the Lord of the Rings, so I really wanted to like this quest, but it's not really something I see us returning to any time soon.


So, in all kind of a mixed bag to start the Lord of the Rings saga; one quest we definitely weren't impressed with, and a slog through the Old Forest. Maybe I'm being unfair, but it feels like the saga quests have been hyped as the best thing ever for so long, and I really feel quite underwhelmed by the first two.

**

As long as we're playing saga quests where Fellowship Frodo is around, I'm definitely adding at least one copy of ally Sam. Given how kickass his hero incarnation is, ally Sam is a bit of a disappointment, but the Frodo discount makes him a one-cost ally with two willpower, which is one heck of a bargain.

Back when we played The King's Quest in the Wilds of Rhovanion, I was very disappointed when traveling to Lost Armory let us search for a weapon or armor attachment, and I didn't have any! I decided I have to fix this, so I'm bringing a Ranger Bow for Idraen.

Also, now that we're on the subject of hobbits and searching for attachments, I've had ally Bilbo in my deck for quite a while, but I've never had a pipe he could fetch! So I've decided to see whether Dúnedain Pipe would be a more fun way of getting card draw than Ancient Mathom.

56 cards; 29 Spirit, 22 Lore, 5 neutral; 22 allies, 12 attachments, 18 events, 2 side quests. Starting threat 28.

Arwen Undómiel (TDR)
Idraen (TTT)
Rossiel (EfMG)

Allies: 22 (15/6/1)
Jubayr (TM)
Northern Tracker x2
Súlien (TCoC)
Elrohir (TMoF)
Lindir (TBoCD)
Rhovanion Outrider (ToTD) x2
Bilbo Baggins (TRD)
Galadriel's Handmaiden (CS) x3
West Road Traveler (RtM) x3
Elladan (TMoF)
Gléowine
Mablung (TLoS)
Warden of Healing (TLD) x3
Gandalf (OHaUH)

Attachments: 13 (4/8/1)
Unexpected Courage x2
Light of Valinor (FoS) x2
A Burning Brand (CatC) x2
Cloak of Lórien (CS) x2
Dúnedain Pipe (TBS)
Ranger Bow (AoO)
The Long Defeat (TBoCD) x2
Magic Ring (TCoP)

Events: 19 (8/8/3)
Flight to the Sea (TCoP)
A Test of Will x3
Elven-light (TDR) x2
Heirs of Eärendil (TDoCG) x2
Leave No Trace (EfMG) x2
None Return (AtE) x3
Daeron's Runes (FoS) x3
Keen as Lances (EfMG) x3

Side quests: 2
Double Back (EfMG)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)

Lord of the Rings saga expansions with Fellowship Frodo when the hobbit deck isn't around sideboard:
Sam Gamgee (TTitD) x1

Let's Read Tolkien 60: The Stairs of Cirith Ungol

Gollum was tugging at Frodo's cloak and hissing with fear and impatience.

Frodo and company leave Ithilien behind, and enter the Morgul Vale. Soon, they sight Minas Morgul: former fortress of Gondor turned abode of the Ring-wraiths. They're transfixed by the horror of the city, and drawn by the Ring, Frodo momentarily loses his mind and starts stumbling toward it, but Sam and Gollum stop him.

The trio begin making their way up a path on the north side of the valley, but they're only a part of the way up when the Witch-king marches his army out of Minas Morgul. For a moment, the Witch-king stops, sensing the Ring, but Frodo manages to grab hold of the phial of Galadriel instead of putting it on. As the army marches on, Frodo weeps, believing he has tarried too long, and Sauron's armies will destroy everything.

When the army has marched past and the gates of Minas Morgul are shut, Sam rouses Frodo. Gollum leads them to a seemingly endless stair cut into the mountains. After a long climb, the hobbits reach a crevice along the stairway, where they talk and rest for a while. Gollum vanishes, and returns to find Frodo and Sam asleep. In a moment of tenderness, he touches Frodo, but Sam wakes and rebukes him for "sneaking". Gollum immediately returns to his old self and sneers at Sam. Frodo offers to release Gollum from his servitude, but Gollum insists he must lead them further, to the tunnel.

**

The description of Minas Morgul at the very beginning of the chapter, and especially Frodo's heedless running toward it, strongly recalls the House of Silence in William Hope Hodgson's Night Land. I wonder if Tolkien ever read it? I thought the otherwise disappointing Middle-earth: Shadow of War had a charming portrayal of Minas Ithil before it fell, even if the timeline made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I talked about the Fall of Frodo earlier, when he used the Ring to demand Smeagol's submission. There's a highly significant choice of words here on the same theme, when Frodo sees the chief of the Ring-wraiths before Minas Morgul:

And as he waited, he felt, more urgent than ever before, the command that he should put on the Ring. But great as the pressure was, he felt no inclination now to yield to it. He knew that the Ring would only betray him, and that he had not, even if he put it on, the power to face the Morgul-king - not yet.

Who, exactly, is speaking here? Is the narrator conveying Frodo's thoughts? Is he really thinking ahead to a future in which he'll be strong enough to use the Ring to defeat the chief of the Nine? Maybe this explains why Frodo's plans for getting to Mount Doom are always a bit vague: maybe he had already decided against actually destroying the Ring.

In another literary association, although this one is chronologically impossible, the titular stairs remind me of the Thousand Steps that Stephen Maturin climbed on the fictional island of Pulo Prabang in The Thirteen-Gun Salute. I wonder if there's some theological meaning to the various ordeals Frodo and Sam go through on the journey to Mordor? I'm afraid I'm not enough of an expert in Catholic hagiography to tell; my theology education was boringly Protestant.

Finally, the scene where Sam rebukes Gollum was identified by Tolkien as a key moment for Gollum: "the tragedy of Gollum who at that moment came within a hair of repentance - but for one rough word from Sam" (Letters 96, also 181). I don't really find this at all convincing. Frankly, if Gollum was "within a hair of repentance" but is eternally doomed by Sam being a bit rude to him, I'm not convinced he was ever going to manage to repent if that's all it took to deter him. I read the scene as a tragic misunderstanding and an example of the internal conflict in Gollum - but nothing more.

Next time: I'm afraid it's spiders.