Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Dark Souls Trilogy Tournament: Final Results

Congratulations to Team Otzdarva for the 1st place finish; Team FaraazKhan takes 2nd place!



Commentators:
  • DS3 - Decc, JoeDD, McRaptor
  • DS2 - BBGainz, JoeDD, McRaptor
  • DS1 - LadyZoe, SuperTatchi, JoeDD, McRaptor

Just Like The Good Old Days

On Saturday I got to run one of the Scenarios that we are planning  to run at Huzzah with actual players. (Honestly, despite their not appearing in any of the pictures.)
Surprised! (But not very) The British allied Hussars scout ahead. 
The terrain was quickly improvised on Saturday morning using my old cloth and a few bits. I was planning to slide the hills under the cloth since they don't match but at the last minute remembered that single metal 40mm miniatures don't stand well on unsupported thin cloth slopes. I also only brought what I could carry up 3 flights of stairs in one trip.
Oh! Look what we found!
We had several players lined up but on the day only 2 were able to make it. Luckily 2 is enough!

Random selection gave Brent the French ambushers while Martin took charge of the British convoy.  Victory for the British meant getting both wagons through the pass and over the bridge. If the British got 1 over the bridge or withdrew both wagons safely then the game would be a draw.

The pictures give a general idea of how the game went. The French chose to focus on denying the British the passage they needed while hoping to grab at least 1 wagon when their army routed. The British pushed doggedly ahead into the meat grinder, replacing spent units as needed and making the most of their numerical superiority.
The British infantry pushed ahead into the pass, one unit at a time while the 28th made repeated attempts to  push the enemy light troops out of the broken ground, falling back to rally when needed.
  The game played like I remember MacDuff games from the 90's: fast, furious, hard to predict but also long and indecisive.

Sighhhhh. This is why I had dropped one of my favourite parts of the rules which is that shooting and combat weakens units by removing figures temporarily on the assumption that the player, as overall commander, does not yet know if they are permanent losses ie: killed, wounded or run away or only temporary losses due to fear, fatigue, temporary ammo shortages etc., etc.. I liked the theory but in practice it was a right pain in the arse.

I suspect one reason I clung to the system (apart from liking how it worked) is that I took so much flak for it in the 90's when gamers were used to all wargame "casualties" being dead or wounded and some didn't like having some "come back from the dead" as it were.

I haven't had that sort of complaint much since the Lardies came out with their Shock concept so I can probably pack in the ego side of the question and look at the functionality in multiplayer convention games with  lots of units and figures and limited time. In theory I still like the idea but even when players understand the rules and implications it has two serious drawbacks: the logistics of tracking temporary vs permanent casualties and the difficulty of knocking units out of the game if they are well handled means that a convention game will often run out of time before a decision is reached.
As light failed the fight still raged. The convoy was forced to fall back safety. Tomorrow would be time enough for another try.  
So I have decided to let the issue sleep and revert to the ancient custom of morale tests with casualties which can be removed or marked once with no need to differentiate between temporary and permanent hits. This worked well for the 2014/15 games and I a have no doubt that it will do so again.

The fact that this also makes it easy to play the game with fixed multi-figure bases is merely a happy coincidence.


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Bitmain's IPO lapses

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March 26, 2019
LUXURY BLOCKCHAIN: LVMH, the luxury brand conglomerate which owns Louis Vuitton and other high-end labels, is preparing to launch a blockchain to verify the authenticity of its goods. Code-named Aura, the platform is expected to go live in May or June, sources told CoinDesk. Beyond just tracking its own brands’ goods, however, LVMH is hoping to bring its competitors onboard as well by giving each participating firm equal ownership over the platform. Full Story

LIGHTNING STANDARDS: The open-source WebLN standard, a new bitcoin standard for simplifying payments over the Lightning Network, has been adopted by two of the more popular lightning wallets (Lightning Joule and Bluewallet) and apps like Lightning Spin. WebLN decreases the number of steps a user needs to take to make a payment, a key step for a technology where it is still risky to transfer real money. Full Story

DRAGON HACKED: Singapore-based DragonEx says cryptocurrencies belonging to users and the exchange have been stolen due to a hack discovered Sunday. While the company has yet not disclosed a total value for the heist, the attackers appear to have taken as many as 20 different cryptos, including bitcoin, ether, XRP, litecoin, EOS and tether. Appealing for help in tracking and recovering the stolen cryptos, the exchange said some funds have already been found and that it is cooperating with police over the breach. Full Story

NO IPO: Crypto miner maker Bitmain’s application for an initial public offering has officially lapsed, meaning the manufacturing giant will not be going public anytime soon. An update on the HKEX website, where Bitmain filed, showed that its IPO application had been shifted to the “inactive” list, after its initial prospectus was filed Sept. 26. In a blog post, Bitmain said it intends to “restart the listing application work at an appropriate time in the future,” though it did not specify when this might happen. Full Story

STABLECOIN INTEREST: Crypto lender Cred is partnering with TrustToken to let holders of the dollar-pegged TrueUSD stablecoin generate returns on their funds. TUSD holders can now take part in CredEarn, which pays back interest for loans of assets to Cred’s platform. Holders can transfer their assets to Cred for a minimum six-month commitment, and according to TrustToken’s David Steinrueck, they can get “up to” 8 percent in return – though legally, this isn’t guaranteed. Full Story
RANGE BREAKDOWN:  Bitcoin fell to $3,920 yesterday as expected, confirming a downside break of the recent trading range and shifting the short-term trend to the bears. As a result, the cryptocurrency risks falling below the 30-day MA, currently flatlined at $3,883. The bulls will be hoping that the price bounces up strongly from the 30-day line, but still need a UTC close above $4,055 to revive the recent rally. Full Story​
BEST OF THE BEST

MISSED GOAL? Last July, the Gibraltar United football club announced it would become the first professional soccer team in the Gibraltar Premier division to “pay players in cryptocurrency,” promising to include such payments in every player’s contract by the next season. However, this initiative appears to have – at the very least – stalled, reports The Next Web. Quantocoin, which players were supposed to be paid in, has yet to begin trading on any crypto exchange, and few people have downloaded the project’s app on the Google Play Store.

THE REST

REGULATORS' CHOICE: CME Group chairman and CEO Terry Duffy believes that regulators might be more willing to accept fiat-backed stablecoins for products than cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, according to an interview with Business Insider. Duffy explained that government groups are likely to look askance at cryptocurrencies with finite supply, and convincing regulators to become comfortable with products based on such assets will first require concrete use cases.

TOKEN SALE SALE: Ivan Komar, the founder of a crypto project called Sponsy, is trying to sell it on eBay for $60,000, according to the Financial Times. Asked why, he explained that "We hired a lawyer and that was a big mistake for us. Because our lawyer basically told us that we should not launch any ICO before we built a real product that might have some users." If he had to do it all over again, Komar said he would try to run the token sale first before worrying about a product. 

WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER

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