Tag: Review

Review: Only War Core

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Only War Core Rulebook

Deciding to look back at the Warhammer 40k tabletop RPGs whose mechanics ended up adapted to Rogue Trader, the choice of Imperial Guard RPG Only War was not exactly a hard decision. Since that army has been my absolute favorite faction by a parsec from the moment I found out about the franchise, I was eager to see how playing them in a character game as opposed to a wargame worked out.

You can practically see the writers trying desperately to make the experience both true to the Guard’s limitations and playable/fun. I trust I don’t need to go into that much detail that an individual guardsman, even an elite one, is at or near the absolute bottom of the galactic food chain. There’s also the reason why Twilight 2000 was set in a scramble rather than in a war-their life is a very regimented existence with little chance for straying beyond orders.

Thankfully, the solutions are fun and interesting. Characters are part of a beginning chosen/created regiment that has set base gear and characteristics. NPC “comrades” are present to act as additional laser sponges-I mean, partners in war. More can be achieved, but only at the cost of chancing the logistics system (as unreliable and risky as it sounds). The regimental system itself allows for everyone from Tempestus Scion commandos to primitive worlders with swords and animal hides.

So yes, I recommend Only War to anyone who wants to be real serious and face the grim darkness of the far future without the need for power armor or super-enhancements.

A Thousand Words: Groundhog Day

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Groundhog Day

It’s Groundhog Day, and the holiday brings two famous events to my mind. One is the time that then-New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, in an event that symbolized his less than stellar mayoralty, fatally dropped a groundhog during a ceremony. The second is of course the Bill Murray movie that is the subject of this post.

The film has a simple time loop premise, to the point where, when describing any other work of fiction with such a cycle, you can just say “like Groundhog Day” and people will understand. Main character Phil Connors goes on a loathed news assignment to Punxsutawney, finds himself snowed in, and then finds it’s the same day again and again and again and again.

What makes it a classic is that it works as both a silly and profound movie. You get both spiritual self-reflection and a man stealing a groundhog before driving off a cliff. The cast of Bill Murray and Andie Macdowell is excellent, and the whole thing is probably one of the greatest holiday films ever.

Review: Earth Fire

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Earth Fire

The ninth Survivalist book and end of the de facto first arc is Earth Fire. It takes the “western Fist of the North Star” theme to its climax as John Rourke prepares his shelter for the firestorm engulfing the world and moves to stop the main Soviet antagonist from using the other suspended animation shelter in Cheyenne Mountain.

I’ve mentioned many times that this was an ideal stopping point for the series. Take this perfectly fine arc and the beginning of Book 10 where Rourke wakes up after the timeskip and sees the Eden Project spaceship lifeboat return and you have an excellent self-contained narrative. As it stood, the series kind of meandered on, becoming first a pet sci-fi setting and then hurriedly sputtering out after 1991.

In fact, later arcs would render this much less important via retcons. Here the Soviet Politburo is shot down as they attempt to reach Cheyenne Mountain because they don’t have a viable shelter of their own. Later on it turns out that the Soviets indeed had an underground city after all! And the Argentines, and the Icelanders, and pretty much everyone! How about that!

Still, this is a fine piece of ridiculous 80s excessive men’s adventure, and can be appreciated for what it is. The later sourness doesn’t make this any less sweet.

Review: Small Arms For Urban Combat

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Small Arms For Urban Combat

Russell Tilstra’s Small Arms For Urban Combat seems at first glance to be just what the title says. It’s a nonfiction reference book about various small arms and their usefulness in urban war. However, it turns out to be a lot more shallow than that.

Sadly, this is less an analysis and more of a “Basic first guide to small arms”. While not bad by itself, it would have been a lot better with a more honest title. The urban warfare part feels like an afterthought.

A Thousand Words: Half Past Dead

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Half Past Dead

2002’s Half Past Dead was Steven Seagal’s final effort in mainstream cinema before he collapsed entirely into sus no-budget cheapies. Both a rip-off of the earlier and far better The Rock in the exact same setting (Alcatraz) and the general “Die Hard in a ______” trend that was several years out of date, it did not exactly breathe new life into his career.

A story of supervillains storming Alcatraz (see what I said about that other movie), the film is notable for two things besides just having a washed-up Seagal in it. The first is how desperately they tried to go for the “Edgy Extreme” trend of the late 90s and early 2000s, dragging in rappers and garish overcut camera angles to try (unsuccessfully) to put lipstick on the pig. The second is that this is one of the first appearances of the ubquituous Steven Seagal Stunt Double, used for as much as they could get away with. The “Stunt Double” would reach new heights in Seagal’s later films where it would be used not just for any mild exertion, but for things like walking peacefully.

Amazingly, one of the few highlights is “49er 6”, the femme fatale villain played by a 40 year old soap opera actress (Nia Peeples). She apparently relished doing her own stunts, and that is a far cry from Seagal the Double-Man.

As a time capsule/MST3K-style so bad its good, you could do worse than this movie. But I wouldn’t put it anywhere near the top of the cheap thriller pyramid.

Review: The Occupation

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The Occupation: A John Warren Novel

My Amazon recommended reading list is filled with all kinds of postapocalyptic wilderness guerilla commando survival books. And none are portrayed as pulpy as Jerry Ahern’s Survivalist. While I generally had little interest in such novels, it got to the point where I figured I might as well try one out. So I chose WJ Lundy’s The Occupation.

Starting with a boilerplate Evil Woke Corporate Dystopia (complete with Evil Foreign UN Peacekeepers to round out the League of Evil), it of course ends up with rural guerilla resistance. And in what I suspect is a common theme even though I’ve only read a little of the genre, it’s very heavy on the tactical maneuver minutia. Like it’s mercifully restrained in detailing the various models of guns involved, but in terms of execution it’s rather different. Which isn’t the worst thing.

And neither is this book. It could be better, but in terms of 51% entertainment, you could certainly do a lot worse.

Review: The Last of the Dog Team

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The Last of the Dog Team

William W. Johnstone said that of all his many, many writings, The Last of the Dog Team was his proudest work. This is yet more proof that his ability to judge what made a “good” book was lacking. As if the dozens and dozens of terrible slop on paper wasn’t enough evidence.

Anyway, The Last of the Dog Team is about Terry Kovak, a poor boy turned supercommando. Or rather, it’s mostly about his, uh, “love life”. See, he has the magic power of making women want him desperately. If he really was a secret agent, he’d be perfect for Romeo Gambits. The plot, such as it is, is of a violent lunatic (ie, Kovak) killing people in his hometown, in Southeast Asia, and in Africa before returning to a reluctant retirement and then dying of natural causes.

The prose is bad and erratic even by Johnstone’s standards, veering between Exclamation Points!, long syrupy purple prose, and lines like “He felt drained-which he was. He felt sick”. And yet the key factor is its pretentiousness. It’s clear that Johnstone wanted to write some sweeping epic saga of a man’s life yet had simply no idea how to do so without throwing in another sex or killing scene. This sort of overreach (much of the Ashes series is a redneck convinced he’s Larry Bond) is something WWJ had and many other bottom-feeder thrillers (including the later “William W. Johnstone’s” did not.

Since this was an early book of his, I could forgive Johnstone if he got better. He didn’t.

A Thousand Words: Rogue Trader

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Rogue Trader

I figured I’d beat all three main paths with the new Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader computer game before I formally reviewed it. Well, now all three are beaten and I can write this.

In short: Rogue Trader is the best and most fun I’ve had with an RPG since Fallout New Vegas. The grid RPG gameplay is good enough, the game does 40k’s setting justice, and the characters are incredibly memorable, from three-eyed princess Cassia to “Team Fortress 2 Heavy Weapons Guy only Scandinavian” Space Marine Ulfar.

So what’s bad besides bugs that have been (generally) fixed by the time of this review? First, one third of the route is tacked on. I refer of course to the Heretic route, which is a shoved-in mess that tries to either ignore or tiptoe around that zero of your characters would follow an obvious Chaos worshiper and where you do 97% of the same things as more heroic Imperial or independent characters without incident. Second, the endgame is a little worse in terms of plot and (more importantly) level design than the first act.

Still, this is an amazing game for those who want to be either uncharacteristically good for 40k or just want to boltgun down everything in their path. Either is possible.

Review: Interception

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Interception: The Secrets of Modern Sports Betting

Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow are two of the sharpest (word choice deliberate) and most experienced minds in sports betting. This made me have very high expectations for Interception, their most recent book on the sports betting ecosystem. I’m delighted to say that it only took a few pages for it to outright exceed them.

For me specifically, it was a little less of an experience in that I already knew most of the plain facts stated within (the tricks you think will work will not, sportsbooks offer far more markets than they can realistically handicap so they use restrictions to ‘counter’, etc…) But I still found it enlightening and illuminating. And for a newcomer it’d be vastly more so. The one thing I had against it was how its tone was a little snarky for my taste, but that’s a mild stylistic complaint.

Anyway, you need to read this to understand sports betting and how it’s going. This book has also made me ever-more convinced that a modest minimum bet liability law would be extremely beneficial to the sports betting ecosystem, but that’s a topic for another post. As it stands, it’s the best sports betting book I’ve read.

Review: Pilot Error

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Pilot Error

The first Fuldapocalypse review of 2024 is of a nonfiction book by pilot and aviation commentary Sylvia Wrigley. Pilot Error looks at the plane crashes where it was obviously the pilot’s fault. And not being unlucky or something, but just really, really bad.

There’s a reason why most of the crashes in this book are private light planes and why many are not fatal. It’s because Wrigley is by her own admission trying for dark humor and some of the most horrendous crashes like the pilot trying to land blindfolded for a bet/dare on a flight with dozens of passengers are not funny but just horrifying.

So in this you get drunks, idiots, and drunken idiots. It’s enough to make you glad that 99.9999% of the people in a very demanding role are not like the ones in this book.