Breaking Fortress Holland No. 12

Welcome to Winter Wargaming, and Breaking Fortress Holland Part III.

This map depicts the whole invasion of the Netherlands. Our path runs along the northern branch of the large, branched arrow, the fourth large arrow up from the bottom: note Mill, Den Bosch, and Waalwijk, all objectives we’ve hit and bypassed. This scenario centers around the final land push toward Rotterdam. Follow the smaller, northern branch from the end of the large arrow, and you come to our area of operations.

Our objective is to secure two crucial sets of bridges. The Moerdijk bridges, at the south center of the map, are our main objective, worth 52 victory points, more than the rest of the map put together. A secondary objective, at the north edge of the map, is the Dordrecht bridge toward Rotterdam. In effect and in execution, this is Operation Market Garden writ small. Fallschirmjäger will parachute in at the Moerdijk and Dordrecht bridges, and along the Moerdijk-Dordrecht highway.


This is a reconnaissance photograph, taken of the Moerdijk bridges shortly after the parachute landings. The white dots in the fields to the south of the bridges (at the top of the picture) and to the northeast of the bridges (bottom left) are German parachutes.


This is the Moerdijk rail bridge, from one side of the Hollands Diep. It’s about 1.5 kilometers long.

This scenario begins on the morning of May 10th, which is at the very start of the invasion of the Netherlands: our forces are just crossing the border to begin the attack on Mill. They’ll turn up between 48 and 72 hours into this four-day scenario, which covers the whole of the time from the start of the invasion to just before the Dutch surrender on May 14th. Further reinforcements will arrive from Rotterdam, where more paratroopers and air-landing infantry attack, at the same time as our paras are touching down.

Mechanically, we’ll be conducting this scenario in the mostly same manner as the first two: I’ll present three options, and you’ll pick from them. In what is primarily an aesthetic change, Guderian will be replaced by Kurt Student, Luftwaffe general and commander of the Fallschirmjäger. Since it’s a longer scenario, we’ll be making decisions together every 24 hours, instead of every 8 hours. Since we have nothing on the field, and since the initial starting position isn’t very interesting, the choice will be simple today. I’ll be playing in the middle of the week and posting the first report and next scenario next weekend.

In the first day, the only troops on the field will be two battalions of paratroopers, and two companies of air-landing infantry. The paras land either near the Moerdijk bridges, or at the midpoint of the Moerdijk-Dordrecht highway, at Tweede Tol. The two companies of infantry arrive from the north, just northwest of the Dordrecht bridges. With that in mind, here are the options:

von Rundstedt – divide the paratroopers between Moerdijk and Dordrecht, to guarantee that our forces from Rotterdam will be able to enter the fight.
Paulus – maintain a reserve of paratroopers at Tweede Tol, to reinforce Dordrecht or Moerdijk as necessary, to provide flexibility in the face of enemy reinforcements.
Student – send nearly all of the paratrooper force to Moerdijk, leaving as small a force as possible to capture the Dordrecht bridges. Holding the door open for reinforcements is our main task.

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And we’re back update

After some super-annoying messing around with the server, Many Words is back up for the foreseeable future, on a higher-spec VPS on a better node which doesn’t cost me any more per month. The only thing we lost was my StarMade server database, which isn’t super-important.

Keep your eyes open for a Winter Wargaming post, coming soon.

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Winter Wargaming update

You may have noticed that it’s a Tuesday, and there’s no story post. There are two reasons for this. For one, I have almost no backlog. For another, it’s Winter Wargaming season!

Now, I’d been planning on starting a long-term project—one of the most ambitious I’ve ever embarked on. Starting December 7th, I’d been intending to run a once-weekly real-time Pacific War AAR, using the 1992 Gary Grigsby classic, Pacific War. I discovered, however, that some enthusiasts (for a game nearly as old as me) are working on some further developments by patching the raw assembly. This is, for one, hardcore (as parvusimperator put it), and for another, likely to improve the experience for both you, dear reader, and me. As such, that project will start next year.

In its stead, we’ll be wrapping up Breaking Fortress Holland, with the final scenario in tukker’s excellent pack. As you may recall, if you’ve been following Many Words for more than a year, the last scenario failed to finish. I’m playing from an earlier save, and hopefully, I’ll make it through to give myself a result with which to tweak the reinforcement schedules. Expect an opening update this weekend.

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What If: The Long Retreat Wasn’t?

This is, obviously, some alternate history. See the commentary post for more.

The sounds of revelry blanketed the fields south of Syderskogholm, at times almost seeming to echo from the mountains to the south. The army had returned victorious over the marauding ontr, and the only fitting response was an impromptu feast. The city and the farmers both had opened their larders, and most of their contents were now roasting over a hundred open fires at a hundred different homesteads, ringed by crowds of soldiers and city-dwellers alike.

It was heaven for a girl like Sif, or any other street kid with a knack for lightening pockets: coin flowing freely, as the city folk paid for food and the homesteaders paid for beer. Enough of the latter was going around that she’d already nabbed four coin purses previously owned by some very inattentive people. She couldn’t remember ever going outside of the walls before today, and had never been all that interested in seeing what the countryside held. She wasn’t completely sold on the oppressive openness of it all, but she could ignore that on a day like this one.

She skipped down a road, keeping an eye on a few well-dressed men ahead of her. They had the look of merchants, the sort who had a lot of money and didn’t often notice when you took it from their belts. The men turned toward a tumult of conversation and laughter, along a small side road leading to a farmhouse.

It was just the sort of place she’d pictured: a solid-looking house, small, probably cozy, separated from a barn by a dirt yard, in the middle of which was a bonfire, tall as a grown man. Off to the side, a boy about her age slowly turned a pig on a spit over a more reasonably-sized fire.

Sif slowed to an amble, and made a show of wandering toward the bonfire, as though she had not a care in the world. She even stopped to smell a flower. She thought that was a nice touch, although the

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the men pass a few coins to the boy, who pulled a cleaver from the stump next to him and hacked off a few pieces of pork for them, before going back to the crank. Sif watched the men turn toward the fire. They’d have to pass through a crowd around the barrel of ale. They’d never notice someone brushing past them there. She headed that way, slipping past other people in the crowd, never going quite straight for her marks.

A hand caught her shoulder, turning her around to face a bland-looking man of middling height, with brown hair, a narrow nose in the middle of a narrow face, and a sharp chin. He wore simple dark green clothes. Worryingly, a sword hung at his side. Something about him made her teeth tingle. She thought about running, but he spoke before she’d quite decided to. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Sif tried.

The man raised an eyebrow and went on. “The man on the left has a dagger, and very limited patience for street thieves. I assume you prefer your blood inside?”

Sif blinked, and the man ushered her out of the crowd. They ended up at the fence surrounding the farmyard, next to a field, and five or ten yards from prying ears. As they got there, Sif finally managed, “Who are you?”

“My name is Falthejn Arnarsson.” The man leaned against a fence post.

Why am I still here? Sif thought to herself. He doesn’t look that fast.

“Run if you like,” Falthejn Arnarsson said. “I wasn’t planning to turn you in.” Before Sif could ask the question, he added, “Yes, yes, how did I do that? I’m a magiker. I see things before they happen.”

Sif thought for a moment, then looked the man in the eye and said, “How many fingers am I going to hold up?”

“Three, but now you’ve changed your mind to two.” Falthejn smiled. “You’re quick on the uptake. What’s your name?”

“Sif,” Sif replied. “Didn’t you already know that?”

Falthejn nodded. “It’s polite to ask. Unlike some of my peers, I find politeness important. For example, my saving your life.”

“Why did you do that?” Sif said. “You don’t know me.”

“I had the feeling this would be a fascinating conversation,” Falthejn replied. Sif gave him a close look, and he raised his hands. “Honestly. When you see the future, you learn to trust feelings like that. For another, well— let me ask you this.” He rummaged in his pocket, and tossed her a small wooden cylinder, covered in runic carvings.

She caught it. It made her ears buzz, and she didn’t recognize any of the runes. Something must have shown on her face. He held out his hand, and she returned the object.

“It bothered you?” Falthejn said.

Sif nodded. “Like there was someone shouting, but I couldn’t quite understand it. Or like there was a fly around my ear.”

Falthejn pocketed the cylinder. “Are you on your own?”

Sif bristled. “I have my friends.”

The magiker pressed his lips together. Sif was pretty good at reading people. She knew he’d heard what she hadn’t said. “What if I told you,” he said, “I could promise you a better life than picking pockets from winter to winter, only just pulling in enough to keep yourself from freezing to death?”

It was all Sif had ever known, but she’d seen what the alternatives looked like, and she did want something better. The days when she could disguise herself as a boy and survive on other people’s poor knot-tying skills weren’t going to last forever. “What are you saying?”

“If that little trinket got to you, you’ve got an inborn knack for magic. Travel north with me, to the Jewel. Any guild would have you.”

Sif the Magiker, Sif thought. There might be something to that.

Heart beating a little faster, she said, “Tell me more.”

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Commentary: What If The Long Retreat Wasn’t?

It’s Thanksgiving, and that means two things:

1. Your author is going on a break of at least one week.
2. He didn’t realize that he didn’t have enough in his notebook for a regular post today.

So you end up with this, instead, which is probably a nice surprise: it’s just a hair over a thousand words, which is like five updates in one.

Since it’s Thanksgiving-time, I thought I might try something feast-inspired and happy. (Note: minor spoilers follow.)

Although it’s a good ending, I don’t know if I’d call it, in the fashion of visual novels everywhere, the true ending. You’ll just have to stick around and see the end of The Long Retreat for that.

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The Long Retreat No. 56

Sif opened her eyes, a sense of wrongness gnawing at her. High overhead, the moons shone amidst a blanket of stars, their light filtering through the branches. Falthejn was sitting up in his bedroll, keeping watch toward the hedges. They’d talked about a watch schedule earlier, after Falthejn had told them that some ontr magiker could keep him from seeing things. That concerned her less than she thought it might have. Falthejn seemed to have a plan, and had assured them he could still keep track of the ontr, and could still fight, if it came to that.

Sif closed her eyes again, but the feeling didn’t leave her. She sat up. Falthejn turned quickly, hand going to his sword, which laid sheathed beside him. He saw it was her, and relaxed. Sif did, too. She tried to avoid scaring armed men.

“What is it?” he asked, voice low enough so as not to disturb the others’ sleep.

She lifted a shoulder and looked at her hands, folded in her lap. “Something feels off.”

To her surprise, Falthejn frowned and stood, picking up his sword by the sheath. “Off how?”

“Wrong, I guess,” Sif replied. As Falthejn walked past her toward the steep dropoff away from the road, she got up and followed him.

A few steps from the edge, he stopped, holding out an arm which caught her in the chest and brought her to a halt. “Wake Alfhilde,” he whispered. “Tell her a fight is coming. Quietly.”

Sif turned and ran on her tiptoes. Behind her, she heard the rasp of metal on leather. She knelt next to Alfhilde.

Alfhilde’s eyes were already open. “What was that?”

“Falthejn says a fight is coming,” Sif whispered.

Lightning-fast, Alfhilde was on her feet, taking the axe from its place next to her, and prowling over toward Falthejn.

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The Long Retreat No. 55

She had another choice. Falthejn’s warning about magic stuck with her. Even with all the risks, the life of a magiker seemed good enough. If he had told her the truth about her chances, she had a chance to do something, and to be someone worth remembering. Danger didn’t scare her, not really, and she’d always been the one, among her friends from the city, willing to jump in, to lend a hand. Sif the Magiker, she thought. She could see that.

She leaned back against a tree, pulling her bedroll up to her neck and shifting to a more comfortable spot. She closed her eyes, then opened them, in a way. The world was so beautiful, if you knew how to look. She could see the way that power flowed around Falthejn, and the strength of the bond that Hrothgar and Alfhilde shared. She saw the spirits of the forest flitting around the trees, and the color of the wind as it rustled the branches overhead. She reached out a finger—not a real one, she reminded herself, willing her body to stillness. She touched a branch twenty feet overhead, and felt he ripple it pushed into the fabric of the world as it moved.

She smiled and opened her eyes. It was peaceful here, in ways she better understood now. This place was a place of refuge. She blinked, unsure where that thought had come from. Magic, she guessed. Neat. She toyed with the idea of looking around some more, or pushing her mind’s eye further out from the camp, but suddenly, she was very tired, and the sun was further down than she’d remembered. She laid down, closed her eyes, and was soon asleep.

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Encrypted!

From the Subject Alternative Name field of the new Many Words certificate:

Not Critical
DNS Name: manywords.press
DNS Name: soapbox.manywords.press
DNS Name: softworks.manywords.press

You can now access any of the listed Many Words sites with HTTPS, if you’re concerned about the NSA knowing that you read my writing. Thanks, Let’s Encrypt!1 I’ll probably write a little piece at the Fish Bowl about them one of these days.

1. Exclamation mark in original nonprofit name.

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