Montag, 15. Februar 2016

The flats are marching in stop-motion


I did a replay of the scenario shown in this blog post, but this time tried to create a stop motion animation instead of just one single photo per turn. Here's the result:


The order of battle is the same as in the first playthrough of this scenario. The first and second line of the Prussians have been improved to a 3 bataillon first line with the grenadiers on the flanks, and a single Fusilier bataillon as second line.

The (non-written) orders were the same as in the first playthrough, so the general sequence of events was similar, too.

I did re-use most of the die roll results from the first game, in particular the devastating first volleys fired by the imperial infantry, to get a similar overall result as in the first battle. This was also helpful for the stop motion filming (see below).

So it is no surprise that you will recognize some main points from the first battle, like the wide sweeping flank movement of the Imperial cavalry, the defensive line on the hill, the devastatingly effective volley fire of the imperial infantry etc.

You will also notice some changes, e.g. the Prussion infantry wheeling to form line of battle even earlier, more frequent use of square formations to defend against the cavalry threat, and the Cuirassiers actually charging home, first riding down one square and then being shot to pieces by another one.

Note that I did indicate some musket fire from the squares by some cotton wool - although the game rules don't allocate a separate die roll to defensive fire from squares, they do implicitly include it in the melee results of cavalry against squares as you can see in the second attack of the Cuirassiers.

Regarding the stop motion technique, I really like the outcome.

I took 12 photos per Shako turn (i.e. 1.5 inch per step for cavalry, .5 inches for infantry in line). Even at low frame rates of 5 pictures per second, the motion is fluid enough to feel like a movie rather than a slide show. This works out to a bit more than two seconds per Shako game turn, which makes the minis move fast but not dash across the table too blindingly fast.

It is much better to play a scenario through without stop motion filming first, take photos after each turn and then more or less reproduce the battle in a second playthrough, using the first play through as story book. In the stop motion, you want all units to move simultaneously although the game has Igo-Hugo mechanics, and you want to fluidly include volley fire and melee results in the same X photos per turn that would be taken up by just plain movement in less eventful turns. You also want to complete formation changes before the end of the turn in some cases (even if they take up the whole turn as per the rules), i.e. before a unit that just formed square is hit by an attacker. In fact, I noticed that it is hard to spread out formation changes like left turns or forming square over 12 individual motions.

I still have to work on
  • picture quality (better camera)
  • less shakiness (keep the camera in place without interruptions, get a remote trigger to actually close the shutter to take photos without camera vibrations)
  • right balance of
    1. frames per second (I think the fluidity of motion at low frame rates of 5-6 pictures per second is better than I expected) and
    2. the effective movement speed in inches per second of video (no matter how smoothly the minis move over the table due to the length of each individual step, if they zoom around too fast it's hard for the eye to follow the movements and catch all of the events on the table).
  • better approach to zooming in on the action, and changing perspective. In general, I like the fly in effect created by moving he camera tripod a couple inches after every shot, but again it makes the picture very shaky. Maybe it's actually better to keep the camera perspective fixed completely, or to make hard cuts with a bigger repositioning of the camera at key junctures where some text might be introduced into the movie anyway to separate scenes.
  • the smoke effect to indicate units firing - in principle, it works much better than I anticipated and is more necessary to show what's going on than I thought. I also like the animated effect of the smoke drifting away and eventually vanishing from the table. I just need to make the smoke move less - the current movie looks like it's taking place in weather conditions of extreme autumn storms...
  • smooth movement (no stop-and-go, no erratic changes of facing and speed, no riding backwards) for the brigade commanders.

Mittwoch, 10. Februar 2016

SOM Negro League plans: Teams

In this post, the question is which six historical Negro League teams do I want to use as namesakes and ballpark locations for my replay league?

I will not work with historical rosters, but some considerations apply:
From the SOM player guide, I read the following teams with pitchers ballparks
  • Chicago American Giants (Schorling - biggest ever -   and Comiskey parks)
  • Baltimore?
  • Indianapolis?
  • Forbes, Griffith(?), Greenlee (Pittsburg)
  • NY Lincoln Giants?
  • Kansas City
  • Memphis Martin Park
Hitters ballparks
  • St. Louis Stars (short left field)
  • Detroit (acc. to ballpark effects)
  • Hilldale (same)
Initial candidate list:
  • Kansas City Monarchs (Satchel Paige and many other high profile players)
  • Chicago American Giants (Rube Fosters team)
  • Hilldale Daisies (hitters park)
  • Lincoln Giants (in the hitters park "Catholic Protectory" in the Bronx starting 1920)
  • Cuban Grays (Dihigo, no home ballpark?)
  • St. Louis Stars (Cool Papa Bell, hitters park)
  • Homestead Grays (played in the Pittsburg pitchers' parks)

Montag, 8. Februar 2016

SOM Negro League plans: Draft

So how do I distribute the 103 players from the Stratomatic Negro League set to the six teams I want to start in my replay?

I do want to use the small rosters (about 15 players) described in the guide book for the Stratomatic card edition. That means I can easily get six teams worth of rosters out of the available 100+ cards, with a few cards left to account for position imbalances across the set and a chance to bring in a few "free agents" during the season.

I need
  • a good mix of player qualities across teams, esp. a good spread of the big names and HOF caliber players
  • a way to give each team some identity (focus on pitching, hitting, defense, versatility...)
  • each position covered with at least one way to substitutein case of injuries
I'm thinking of this approach:
1. seed each team with one or two players strongly associated with the team
2. sort the remaining players by position and strength (se the primary positions indicated in the player nots of the guide book to identify the main positions played)
3. write down one or two priorities for each team (strong pitching, deep rotation, offense, defense, hitting vs speed...)
4. draft the remaining players according to team prios and the need to have at least one player per position

Let's see whether sorting the player cards along these ideas will yield six teams that can field a proper defense.

Here are a few notes on the obvious and not-so-obvious candidates for an initial round of seeding teams with one-two high profile, possibly team related names:

Candidates to seed teams
  • Bell, Cool Papa (St Louis Stars, CF)
  • Charleston Oscar (Indianapolis ABCs, 1B/CF)
  • Dihigo, Martin (Cuban Grays, OF / RHP)
  • Gibson, Josh (Homestead Grays, C, top hitter)
  • Mackey, Biz (Hilldale Daisies, C / everything, hitter)
  • Page, Satchel (KC Monarchs, RHP)
  • Rogan, Bullet Joe (KC Monarchs, CF / RHP) - I'll probably not seed him so I end up with six seeds and no double seed for the KC Monarchs
For the record / for cross reference durnig drafting: the other HOFers
  • Brown, Ray (Homestead Grays, P)
  • Brown, Willard (KC Monarchs, OF)
  • Cooper, Andy (KC Monarchs, LHP) - seed?
  • Dandridge, Ray (Newark Eagles, 3B) - seed?
  • Day, Leon (Newark Eagles, RHP / UT) 
  • Foster, Andrew Rube (Chicago American Giants, RHP, in HOF for later mgr career, too)
  • Foster, William (Chicago American Giants, LHP)
  • Hill, Peter (Chicago American Giants, CF)
  • Johnson Judy (Hilldale Daisies, 3B)
  • Leonard, Buck (Homestead Grays, 1B)
  • Loyd, John H Pop (Bacharach Giants, SS)
  • Mendez, Jose (KC Monarchs, RHP / SS)
  • Santop, Louis (NY Lincoln Giants, C)
  • Smith, Hilton (KC Monarchs, RHP)
  • Stearnes, Turkey (Detroit Stars, CF, HR hitter)
  • Suttles, Mule (St. Louis Stars, 1B, hitter, bad defense)
  • Taylor, Ben (Indianapolis ABCs, 1B)
  • Torriente, Cristobal (Chicago American Giants, 1B)
  • Wells, Willie (St. Louis Stars, SS)
  • Williams, Smokey Joe (New York Lincoln Giants, RHP, one of the two best ever) - seed?
  • Wilson, Jud (Baltimore Black Sox, 1B/3B)
Other: Smith, Chino (New York Lincoln Giants, RF, great hitter, died at 30 so no HOF)

SOM Negro League plans: League format

My Stratomatic Replay of the 2013 MLB season has been on a rather long hiatus, first due to other projects, and now I've lost access to the game stats and scoresheets I had stored on the iscore website after a refresh of the tablet I use to score :( I'm not sure yet whether and how I will continue the 2013 replay (I could just continue with the standings I have documented here, and the limited stats and game history I have recorded on paper, or I could redefine the games I played so far as a kind of spring training and start the regular season over again).

But the pause in the 2013 MLB replay made me think about other, possible projects, and I revisited the stack of Negro League player cards that I bought some time ago. The idea would be to create a handful of teams via some kind of draft of players, and then play a short (fifth of a full) season with a similar approach as for the 2013 replay schedule.

However, even if I go for the smaller rosters of about 15 players per team, the cards in the set will only be enough for about six teams, so I'll have to look at was to make that work (without any reference to historical league structures, the players are a mix from five or six decades, anyway...). So here are a few options I've been toying around with.

The goal would be to come to 32 or 33 total games per team so I can compare the resulting counting stats with the benchmarks one has in mind for modern day 162 day MLB seasons by simply multiplying with five.

I could also try to play a double header or three and squeeze the whole schedule into a calendar month to keep the pitching rotations busy and avoid that teams have the chance to start their aces nearly every day.

1. Six teams, one division (35 games per team, 105 games overall)

If each team plays each other team seven times, there is a 35 game season for everyone - a bit too much for the simple comparison but manageable total of games.

2. Six teams, two divisions (32/33 games per team, 96/99 games overall)

To get closer to the easy "x5" comparison to a 162 game season, I'd need each team to play nine games against the two teams in their own three team division and five games against each of the other teams.

Having two divisions would also allow for a nicer championship finals between the division champs.

An alternative could be to play 7 games within the division and six outside for a total of 33, but that would mean the intra- vs inter-division games are too close, or ten games within and four outside for a total of 32, but that way many of the team-against-team series could be tied.

3. Five teams, one division (32 games per team, 80 games total)

This would mean 8 games against each other team for a total of 32 (again, many chances for tied team-vs-team series) and a more manageable total. It would also mean more rest days for pitchers because each day one team will have to sit out.

Obviously, splitting five (or less) teams into divisions doesn't make sense anymore.

4. Four teams, one division (33 games per team, 66 games total or 39 games per team, 117 total for a fourth of a full season)

This would allow larger rosters, but also less differentiation between teams (e.g. pitching heavy, offensive vs defensive focus etc.), and less variation as most teams will rely on the HOF level stars and not need the rest of the players so much.

Now that I look at the list, the option 2 (six teams in two divisions) looks best, even though such small divisions look a bit artificial on paper.