What's Happening?

Howdy folks! What's happening: I am currently playing an Early Access game called Soulmask. It is an open world survival crafting game similar in nature to Conan Exiles. In my opinion it is superior to Conan in a lot of areas, and it seems clear to me the developers took a good amount of inspiration from that game in developing Soulmask.

Yesterday was a dark day for this country with what happened in Pennsylvania. An innocent person was murdered and another gravely injured, while a piece of absolute shit got exactly what he deserved. There will be an investigation as to how someone got that close to such a high profile target and managed to effectuate an attack before being neutralized. The results of this investigation hopefully will result in tweaking of security protocols for protectees, no matter what their political affiliation may be.

God bless the family and loved ones of those affected, and God bless the United States of America.

Soviet Union National Focus

The following list after the page break is the current National Focus path that I am using for the Soviet Union with Joseph Stalin as the leader. While the all important Desperate Measures focus is chosen immediately after the start of Operation Barbarossa, it is because significant battlefield preparations have been ongoing for some time and other focuses were required to be done in a certain order to hit historical dates as closely as possible. The following list is a work in progress as this game is ever evolving however, it has successfully gotten me the beginning of the war with Germany.

Hears of Iron IV

I have been doing a lot of games as the Soviet Union, attempting to mirror real life events and timings as closely as the game will allow. Not all of time though, playing as Trotsky or one of the other principals to overthrow Stalin in time to still have to deal with Operation Barbarossa certainly spices things up. The most recent build I am working on refining has the ultimatums for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania by August 1939, and the Winter War by November 1939.

However several recent games have resulted in Finland ceding territory and no actual combat resulting in a White Peace having occurred. Throw in the claims on Bessarabia in May 1940 and Operation Countenance by September 1941. Fighting a war with Iran with or without the aid of the British while at the same time holding back the Germans is quite a challenge to gear up for, considering all of the hideous debuffs the USSR starts the game out with.

Overall I been having a lot of fun with the game and once I hone my focus, research, construction and templates I will posts those lists here for anyone that may want to try them out.

Twitch Livestream

Today I will be doing a livestream on Twitch of Flashpoint Campaigns Red Storm "The Pied Piper Scenario (NATO)". Stream starts at 12:00 PM EST (weather permitting) and will be posted to this blog after the broadcast has ended. Video link.

2020

This year has been a clusterfuck for a lot of people. My wife and I are both blessed to have full-time jobs so, we have been able to deal with the pandemic rather well. I hope everyone has a safe and happy holidy season whatever you may celebrate. On the gaming front I am heavy into Conan Exiles, a sandbox surivival crafting type game. It is a lot of fun to play and I have managed to put in a couple of Twitch streams on it. The past couple of months my presence on that platform has been light but I most certainly am not giving up on streaming. Maintaining a set schedule just didn't work for me in the long run so, now I stream when I can and when I feel like it. Take care everyone and I hope you all have a productive and fruitful 2021! :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

To all please have a happy and safe holiday season :)

2019 was kind of an odd-ball year for me. As with 2018, most of my focus was with trying to build my Twitch channel. That had the unfortunate side effect of reducing my time available for this blog and in particular after-action reports.

And I made a colossal error in deleting my entire library of YouTube videos. This was not an accidental click of a button, but an intentional act in admittedly a poor reaction to YouTube's new terms of service and the legal threat posed by radical new implementation of COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), a law passed in 1998 that is now the bane of anyone wishing to be a YouTube "influencer".

In reality I overreacted to the perceived threat of facing fines as the vast majority of my content was wargaming related. This is why a lot of content (in particular the Video label) is now missing from this blog. I reverted all of those posts to draft so as not to make the blog look abandoned.

Which in practice it has been abandoned in the past two years. I aim to correct that in 2020 by attempting to strike a balance between my Twitch live streaming, my YouTube uploads, and my after-action reports or other wargame related content here.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!!

Sharp End Gaming

Chris over at Sharp End Gaming is a longtime war gaming friend. Please check out his newsletter and consider subscribing (which is completely free and only requires an email address): Sharp End Gaming.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

To all please have a happy and safe holiday season :)

SITREP

Hello everyone! Just a quick update on me and this blog. First, the blog: It is not dead, or abandoned. I am just trying to figure out what to do with it. Back in May I became an affiliated streamer on Twitch, and part of the agreement (this is all public knowledge so no NDA stuff here) is that they receive first rights to each broadcast. This means I cannot dual-stream to YouTube any longer. I can still post videos there; however, it must be at least 24 hours after the initial broadcast on Twitch.

Civilization VI Quick and Dirty Review (Updated)

I got this game as part of a recent Humble Bundle and have toyed around with it a bit. This morning I tried my first earnest game and immediately ran into a well-known yet still unresolved bug, where unit combat sounds stop working. Well, they will work for one engagement, and then not work for the next two, then work for the next, then not for the next, etc. Basically, it is a dice roll whether or not the combat sounds will work for any encounter.