EnclavedMicrostate在2022-12-19~2022-12-25的言论

2022-12-25 作者: EnclavedMicrostate

原文 #Reddit 的其它文章

986: What’s up with comments on r/AskHistorians being deleted recently?, submitted on 2022-12-19 05:00:29+08:00.
987: During ww2, why were the Marrocans were (excuse my french) so horny?, submitted on 2022-12-19 06:04:37+08:00.
988: Was there always an age requirement for being in law enforcement in the US?, submitted on 2022-12-19 08:59:24+08:00.
989: I’m terms of demographic, cultural, and economic impact, how comparable are the effects of the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland and/or the Irish Potato Famine to that of a Nuclear War?, submitted on 2022-12-19 09:04:19+08:00.
990: Medieval History by Victorian Historians?, submitted on 2022-12-19 10:13:12+08:00.
991: Why were white civilizations so much more advanced than other ethnic civilizations such as Asia and Africa?, submitted on 2022-12-19 15:06:25+08:00.
992: Mindless Monday, 19 December 2022, submitted on 2022-12-19 20:00:08+08:00.
993: How important was Shogunate mismanagement compared to Western influences (America forcefully opening Japan in 1853) in starting the Bakumatsu?, submitted on 2022-12-20 04:43:56+08:00.
994: Should the Liao-shen campaign have failed, or NRA counter-offensive after the Liao-shen campaign failed, would it have been possible for the KMT to win the Chinese Civil War?, submitted on 2022-12-20 19:12:22+08:00.
995: Why is porcelain historically relevant?, submitted on 2022-12-21 16:11:45+08:00.
996: On the topic of dragons, I once heard that Marco Polo reportedly wrote about seeing dragons kept as pets in China. does anyone have any information about this? is it possible there was a kimono dragon type of some kind that has long been extinct and forgotten?, submitted on 2022-12-22 07:47:32+08:00.
997: What was the first multi sided civil war?, submitted on 2022-12-22 08:19:41+08:00.
998: What were the most significant events and developments in world history during the 20th century and how did they shape the world we live in today?, submitted on 2022-12-22 09:44:32+08:00.
999: Is there some way to compare the how powerful the UK is now compared to when it was an empire?, submitted on 2022-12-22 10:45:08+08:00.
1000: HRE Survival Possible?, submitted on 2022-12-22 12:07:02+08:00.
1001: Is there a historical example or famous quote or saying about either always sitting in the corner or avoiding people getting behind your back?, submitted on 2022-12-22 12:09:14+08:00.
1002: Highlander now uses sword, submitted on 2022-12-22 12:10:05+08:00.
1003: Weekly Economy Thread - December 23rd, 2022, submitted on 2022-12-22 23:52:27+08:00.
1004: Laws like Ethnostate or State Religion should boost attractiveness of accepted pops migration., submitted on 2022-12-23 02:02:19+08:00.
1005: Is Kings of War the most popular non-GW wargame after Bolt Action ?, submitted on 2022-12-25 01:08:18+08:00.
1006: The celebrated French author Alexandre Dumas was one-quarter Black through his father, the general Thomas-Alexandre. Did he ever face any discrimination due to his background, and did it affect his writing? Is there a strand of progressive advocacy in Dumas’ works?, submitted on 2022-12-25 10:32:33+08:00.
1007: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of December 26, 2022, submitted on 2022-12-25 23:00:15+08:00.

986: What’s up with comments on r/AskHistorians being deleted recently?, submitted on 2022-12-19 05:00:29+08:00.

—– 986.1 —–2022-12-19 09:00:51+08:00:

Wikipedia editors can be notoriously bad at distorting secondary sources, especially because the site’s policy of ‘balance’ can lead to fringe academia being presented as a legitimate challenge to mainstream consensus. I get this a lot with Qing history issues (my primary field), as Wikipedia articles tend to heavily push the ‘Sinicisation’ thesis, which is still backed by a number of Chinese historians and more traditionalist-minded historians in the West, but which is basically discredited among basically every specialist in the field post-1990. There’s also a case where Wikipedia invented a historiographical school from thin air in the case of the ‘Qing conquest thesis’, which as far as I’m aware is an attempt to synthesise a handful of Chinese articles from 2005 to 2010 (all of which are now inaccessible due to link rot) and argue that they form a cohesive position. You also get cases like Jaxa, in which there are citations of some Polish secondary sources that seem to suggest the existence of a real state called Jaxa, but there are no links to digitised versions that would make it possible for someone to easily check if the claims being made are genuine.

So yes, Wikipedia requires you to cite secondary sources, but it has no mechanisms for ensuring that you aren’t misrepresenting what your citations say.

987: During ww2, why were the Marrocans were (excuse my french) so horny?, submitted on 2022-12-19 06:04:37+08:00.

—– 987.1 —–2022-12-19 10:56:20+08:00:

We have, using the moderator discretion powers set out here, removed this question because we feel it is in bad taste. AskHistorians is a curated space, and the tone of the subreddit - and ensuring it remains a welcoming place for all participants - is very important to us. Questions phrased in this way tend to disproportionately attract discussion which has no place on our forum.

We recognise that this was likely unintentional on your part, and that you had no desire to cause offence with your question. We also recognise that the question may well be on a subject of legitimate historical enquiry. We are not trying to discourage you from asking questions, but to reflect on how you might phrase it in a way that encourages healthy discourse on our subreddit. If it’s not clear to you how to do this - or you aren’t sure what the issue is in the first place - we strongly encourage you to contact us via modmail to discuss it.

988: Was there always an age requirement for being in law enforcement in the US?, submitted on 2022-12-19 08:59:24+08:00.

—– 988.1 —–2022-12-19 10:53:42+08:00:

Please repost this question to the weekly “Short Answers” thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn’t mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the ‘Short Answers’ thread would be “Who won the 1932 election?” or “What are some famous natural disasters from the past?”. Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be “How did FDR win the 1932 election?”, or “In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?” If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

989: I’m terms of demographic, cultural, and economic impact, how comparable are the effects of the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland and/or the Irish Potato Famine to that of a Nuclear War?, submitted on 2022-12-19 09:04:19+08:00.

—– 989.1 —–2022-12-19 11:38:52+08:00:

Sorry, but your submission has been removed because we don’t allow hypothetical questions. If possible, please rephrase the question so that it does not call for such speculation, and resubmit. Otherwise, this sort of thing is better suited for /r/HistoryWhatIf or /r/HistoricalWhatIf. You can find a more in-depth discussion of this rule here.

990: Medieval History by Victorian Historians?, submitted on 2022-12-19 10:13:12+08:00.

—– 990.1 —–2022-12-19 11:39:13+08:00:

Welcome to /r/AskHistorians, and thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, however, your post has been removed as the title does not appear to be a question, or otherwise fails to conform with the technical requirements we have for the title of a post. Depending on what you are intending to post, please consider the following:

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If your intended submission does not fit any of these, or if you believe this removal is a false positive made in error, please reach out to the moderator team via modmail

991: Why were white civilizations so much more advanced than other ethnic civilizations such as Asia and Africa?, submitted on 2022-12-19 15:06:25+08:00.

—– 991.1 —–2022-12-19 15:27:59+08:00:

992: Mindless Monday, 19 December 2022, submitted on 2022-12-19 20:00:08+08:00.

—– 992.1 —–2022-12-21 08:25:50+08:00:

I will not stand for any slander against Wade-Giles. W-G is a perfectly cromulent way of rendering 19th century Beijing Mandarin using the phonetic conventions of English orthography, and as a result is much less likely to create confusion over pronunciation for English-speakers. What it also emphasises is that Mandarin consonants tend to have aspirated/unaspirated distinctions rather than voiced/unvoiced, which Pinyin ironically obscures.

993: How important was Shogunate mismanagement compared to Western influences (America forcefully opening Japan in 1853) in starting the Bakumatsu?, submitted on 2022-12-20 04:43:56+08:00.

—– 993.1 —–2022-12-21 18:50:57+08:00:

it’s quite hard to imagine Satsuma and Chōshu defeating forces many times their size without modern rifles and artillery

Admittedly this is outside my usual specialism, but my impression is that at both the strategic and the tactical level, both the numerical advantage and technological disadvantage of Bakufu forces seem to be overstated. According to Hōya Tōru’s chapter in The Meiji Restoration: Japan as a Global Nation, Satsuma and Chōshū each fielded around 11,000 modernised troops, while the Bakufu itself had 24,000 modernised troops (though this figure doesn’t account for allies like Aizu); in the same book Harold Fuess relays figures from Nanbō Heizō indicating that the overall Tokugawa alliance had around 75,000 rifles compared to 60,000 for the restorationists (presumably both sides were acquiring considerable numbers of spares). Both figures seem to suggest a higher absolute number of not just troops in general but indeed rifle-armed ones on the part of the Tokugawa forces, but one that was not overwhelming.

On the tactical side of things, I am mostly going off Totman here, but I went through his numbers at one stage and it seems like the actual forces committed at the battle of Toba-Fushimi, which seems to be the one real point of reference we have to go on, were much closer to parity than the superficial figures suggest, although in a way this slices both ways. Wikipedia opts to present the numbers as 5000 vs 15000 or a 1:3 ratio favouring the Tokugawa forces, but doesn’t specify how; my own count from Totman would put the Sat-Chō force at 3500 at absolute minimum if we include the defection of Tsu, while only 6000 or so troops from the Bakufu expeditionary force were actually committed during the battle, which means less than 1:2 in their favour. That said, of those 6000 or so, it seems like nearly 3000 of those were modernised hohei or sappei forces, which would mean that until Tsu’s defection, the definitely modernised components of the Bakufu force outnumbered the entirety of the then-extant Sat-Chō forces, which presumably had at least some less well-equipped allied contingents besides the more modernised ones from Satsuma, Chōshū, and presumably Tosa and Saga.

Given the seeming technological parities, Toba-Fushimi seems less a triumph of superior equipment and more of superior positioning: during the first phase of the battle, Sat-Chō were mainly defending river crossings, and Tsu were fortuitously deployed in a position to cut the Tokugawa line of retreat when they defected. Even then there seem to have been considerable risks taken on the imperial side: from what I gather, effectively all of their reserves in Kyōto were committed following the first day’s fighting, which would have left them extremely inflexible, and it was fortuitous that it seems like the Bakufu commanders didn’t really start moving reserves up from Yodo until they were already being counterattacked and losing the initiative. This may just be Totman trying to be generous to the Bakufu of course, but my read at least seems to be that the battle was decided by command decisions rather than arms shipments.

994: Should the Liao-shen campaign have failed, or NRA counter-offensive after the Liao-shen campaign failed, would it have been possible for the KMT to win the Chinese Civil War?, submitted on 2022-12-20 19:12:22+08:00.

—– 994.1 —–2022-12-20 21:13:40+08:00:

995: Why is porcelain historically relevant?, submitted on 2022-12-21 16:11:45+08:00.

—– 995.1 —–2022-12-21 16:33:38+08:00:

Hi there - unfortunately we have had to remove your question, because /r/AskHistorians isn’t here to do your homework for you. However, our rules DO permit people to ask for help with their homework, so long as they are seeking clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself.

If you have indeed asked a homework question, you should consider resubmitting a question more focused on finding resources and seeking clarification on confusing issues: tell us what you’ve researched so far, what resources you’ve consulted, and what you’ve learned, and we are more likely to approve your question. Please see this Rules Roundtable thread for more information on what makes for the kind of homework question we’d approve. Additionally, if you’re not sure where to start in terms of finding and understanding sources in general, we have a six-part series, “Finding and Understanding Sources”, which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay. Finally, other subreddits are likely to be more suitable for help with homework - try looking for help at /r/HomeworkHelp.

Alternatively, if you are not a student and are not doing homework, we have removed your question because it resembled a homework question. It may resemble a common essay question from a prominent history syllabus or may be worded in a broad, open-ended way that feels like the kind of essay question that a professor would set. Professors often word essay questions in order to provide the student with a platform to show how much they understand a topic, and these questions are typically broader and more interested in interpretations and delineating between historical theories than the average /r/AskHistorians question. If your non-homework question was incorrectly removed for this reason, we will be happy to approve your question if you wait for 7 days and then ask a less open-ended question on the same topic.

996: On the topic of dragons, I once heard that Marco Polo reportedly wrote about seeing dragons kept as pets in China. does anyone have any information about this? is it possible there was a kimono dragon type of some kind that has long been extinct and forgotten?, submitted on 2022-12-22 07:47:32+08:00.

—– 996.1 —–2022-12-22 12:21:55+08:00:

The first thing you have to understand is that Marco Polo didn’t write anything. The Travels of Marco Polo (originally titled Description of the World) was written by Rustichello da Pisa, an Italian author who is otherwise known for writing about Arthurian legends, who was in prison with Polo for a while. The accuracy of his recordings of the stories Polo told him is, in a broad sense, perfectly reasonable, but exact details can be sketchy, it’s generally assumed and understood that Rustichello was punching up the descriptions POlo gave him. Unless you’re reading Rustichello’s original text in the original Franco-Venetian, it then had to go through one or more translators, some of whom had a tendency to try to correct ‘errors’ or remove ‘obviously made up’ things, like the unicorn (rhinoceros).

So, this can be quibbled with slightly. The Polo manuscript tradition is somewhat complicated and above my pay grade for the most part, but my understanding is that there are some manuscripts of the Book of Wonders which are generally regarded as having been amended by Polo during the 25 years that he lived as a free man – and an affluent one at that – after his release from Genoese captivity. And, quite apart from things like corrections, discrepancies across manuscripts accrued for a number of other reasons, as you note. With all that in mind, it seems pertinent to ask if the ‘serpent’ passage in question is consistent across manuscripts, and if not, then whether it can actually be understood in terms of embellishment, either one by Rusticello which was later excised by later associates of Polo, or one that emerged in later versions of the manuscript with greater distance from the original source.

997: What was the first multi sided civil war?, submitted on 2022-12-22 08:19:41+08:00.

—– 997.1 —–2022-12-22 12:22:22+08:00:

998: What were the most significant events and developments in world history during the 20th century and how did they shape the world we live in today?, submitted on 2022-12-22 09:44:32+08:00.

—– 998.1 —–2022-12-22 12:18:14+08:00:

This submission has been removed because it violates the rule on poll-type questions. These questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focused discussion. Questions about the “most”, the “worst”, “unknown”, or other value judgments usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers. For further information, please consult this Roundtable discussion.

For questions of this type, we ask that you redirect them to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory.

999: Is there some way to compare the how powerful the UK is now compared to when it was an empire?, submitted on 2022-12-22 10:45:08+08:00.

—– 999.1 —–2022-12-22 12:22:16+08:00:

This submission has been removed because it violates our ‘20-Year Rule’. To discourage off-topic discussions of current events, questions, answers, and all other comments must be confined to events that happened 20 years ago or more. For further explanation of this rule, feel free to consult this Rules Roundtable.

1000: HRE Survival Possible?, submitted on 2022-12-22 12:07:02+08:00.

—– 1000.1 —–2022-12-22 12:20:15+08:00:

1001: Is there a historical example or famous quote or saying about either always sitting in the corner or avoiding people getting behind your back?, submitted on 2022-12-22 12:09:14+08:00.

—– 1001.1 —–2022-12-22 12:22:55+08:00:

1002: Highlander now uses sword, submitted on 2022-12-22 12:10:05+08:00.

—– 1002.1 —–2022-12-22 15:12:21+08:00:

With regards to Highlanders, the game is a little vague on whether its Highlanders represent Scottish irregulars of the 17th and 18th century like Montrose’s royalists or the Jacobites, or if they are more representative of the regular Highland regiments of the British Army which began being raised in 1739. The latter would absolutely use bayonets rather than swords, whereas the former were, as you would have observed, skirmished with muskets and closed with swords. Given that the Highlanders in game are mercenary troops I think you can make a strong case for the former, but I’d still caution against the idea that all Highlanders drew swords in melee.

—– 1002.2 —–2022-12-22 23:38:03+08:00:

No, I’m just saying that historically, both existed albeit at somewhat different times, and that the vanilla version is therefore also historically accurate as well as your mod’s.

1003: Weekly Economy Thread - December 23rd, 2022, submitted on 2022-12-22 23:52:27+08:00.

—– 1003.1 —–2022-12-29 20:33:07+08:00:

So did nobody decide to bring up Froot collabing with obkatiekat today? I’ve followed Katie since early October and this collab seems to have popped up completely out of nowhere.

EDIT: Not sure about the downvotes? Was just using a roundabout way to draw attention to a collab between a small indie I follow and a VShojo member whom I also follow…

—– 1003.2 —–2022-12-29 22:07:36+08:00:

It was mainly that at one stage I saw myself at -3 and was like ‘is this a controversial opinion?’

1004: Laws like Ethnostate or State Religion should boost attractiveness of accepted pops migration., submitted on 2022-12-23 02:02:19+08:00.

—– 1004.1 —–2022-12-23 10:43:40+08:00:

even with the loyalists and authority bonus there isn’t many advantages of having ethnostate.

Yeah, funny how that works.

1005: Is Kings of War the most popular non-GW wargame after Bolt Action ?, submitted on 2022-12-25 01:08:18+08:00.

—– 1005.1 —–2022-12-27 00:20:21+08:00:

Depends on where you are. My wargaming activity has been UK-based and this is literally the first time I’ve heard of KoW.

1006: The celebrated French author Alexandre Dumas was one-quarter Black through his father, the general Thomas-Alexandre. Did he ever face any discrimination due to his background, and did it affect his writing? Is there a strand of progressive advocacy in Dumas’ works?, submitted on 2022-12-25 10:32:33+08:00.

—– 1006.1 —–2022-12-30 13:49:11+08:00:

Thanks for the links! I was looking for an answer that more specifically addressed the younger Dumas’s writings that the above three don’t touch on at great length; still holding out hope though!

—– 1006.2 —–2022-12-31 10:39:22+08:00:

Goodness me, a simple ‘thank you’ hardly seems sufficient, but I’m too floored to offer much more! So, thank you!

1007: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of December 26, 2022, submitted on 2022-12-25 23:00:15+08:00.

—– 1007.1 —–2022-12-27 10:23:23+08:00:

On the purely My Immortal front, I know there’s a video that isn’t Sarah Z that goes into I’m Not Okay in some detail, but I forget what it is. More recently though, Strange Æons did a pair of videos on My Immortal, one where they argue that My Immortal probably isn’t a trollfic and was likely genuinely written by an American expatriate in Dubai, and another where they cover the later spurious authorship claims.

As for ‘video that keeps digging deeper’, I think Strange Æons’ Snapewives video may also fit the bill. Folding Ideas/Dan Olson’s recent video Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins is a similar though perhaps not as overt kind of descent down the rabbit hole. I also quite like Lady Emily’s video on the Family Dollar game show. I’ll also take a second to bring up Mia Mulder, who does some videos on gender, some on history, and a few on both! More specifically though, her videos often look at conspiracy theories about one or the other subject, which is invariably a rabbit-holey kind of thing. IMO her Tartaria video supersedes my own r/badhistory writeup from 3 years ago.

—– 1007.2 —–2022-12-27 12:42:44+08:00:

Also check out Michael Hobbes’ new, concurrent podcast, ‘If Books Could Kill’, which goes after poor-quality, high-circulation nonfiction books – Freakonomics, The Population Bomb, Outliers, etc.

—– 1007.3 —–2022-12-27 22:46:53+08:00:

I was skimming slightly too quickly and I needed to re-read this because for a sec I thought you meant that Mystery Flesh Pit National Park had a contiguous narrative involving explicit individual characters, rather than describing a fan work (which makes loads more sense).

—– 1007.4 —–2022-12-28 15:23:55+08:00:

So this is something that is one part scuffle, one part ramble, and one part prompt, (and as it turns out longer than a single comment), but my big distraction today was thinking about the samurai skirmish wargame Test of Honour, which led down a load of rabbit holes, not all of which I have explored in full.

Before I can get into Test of Honour (henceforth ToH), it seems necessary to at least briefly describe its original publisher, Warlord Games. Warlord is one of the big names in wargaming, especially historical gaming, having been founded by ex-Games Workshop employees John Stallard and Paul Sawyer in 2007. Warlord later managed to scoop up Rick Priestley, the original author of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40,000, after he left Games Workshop in 2009; Priestley, who now co-owns the company, has since written several sets for Warlord including Bolt Action, Black Powder, and Hail Caesar, which are all pretty standard introductory rules for their respective periods. With a lot of historical games, it’s not particularly typical to have what I’ll call ‘vertically integrated’ systems where a single manufacturer produces rules and miniatures and you have to use particular miniatures with particular rules as, after all, you can’t copyright history the way you can a fictional IP. Now, every once in a while, Warlord does try to do that with a licensed range or comes up with an original IP: Rick Priestley’s Beyond the Gates of Antares for instance has been its major ‘in-house’ IP, but you can tell it’s been relegated to a somewhat secondary position based on the fact it doesn’t even have a top-level tab on Warlord’s store page anymore. But, as Warlord Games is primarily in the historicals market, its business model has to be rooted in the awareness that A) there are alternatives to their rules out there, and B) there are alternatives to their miniatures out there.

So, this leads us back to ToH. ToH, written primarily by Graham Davey, is a skirmish game set in Japan’s Sengoku period (roughly 1450-1620), and is intended for forces of around 10-20 figures, with ‘hero’ and ‘companion’ figures operating individually while ‘followers’ usually form squads of 3. While I have not had a chance to play these rules, I do have them, so as a quick summary: Activation is done through drawing tokens from a bag, with players alternating: drawing a hero or follower token allows you to activate one of the appropriate figures or groups of figures; drawing a Fate token leads to playing an event card that can have effects on gameplay. Most actions in the game involve doing a Test of [Skill] – these skills being Aim, Agility, Strength, Wits, and Honour. When a figure or unit takes a test, you roll the number of dice indicated under the appropriate skill listed on its stat card, using a game-specific dice set. These dice have, if I am not mistaken, one face with two swords, two faces with one sword, two blank faces, and one with an X. To pass a Test you need to get at least three swords and not have more crosses than swords. Combat entails a succession of such tests: the attacker makes a Test of Aim, the defender – if possible – makes a Test of Agility to see if they can dodge, the attacker then makes a Test of Strength to see if they inflict a fatal wound or a light one, and finally the defender – if a hero – can perform a Test of Honour to reduce a fatal wound to an Injury. A lot of this revolves around game-specific card decks for stats, events, Honour and Dishonour effects, and Injuries, so you do really need to buy the physical paraphernalia to get it working.

When ToH first came out in 2017, competition came from two fronts: rules and figures. On the rules front there were a few options, most prominently Craig Woodfield’s Ronin, published by Osprey Games in 2013 with a supporting range by North Star Figures, but essentially miniatures-agnostic; there was also Torii, released by Zenit Miniatures in 2016, again somewhat miniatures-agnostic but tied in with their existing fantasy-inspired Kensei setting; and there was Daishō, an independent set by Charles Murton and Craig Cartnell from 2017, to name the ones that spring to mind. On the figures front, the market for samurai minis was honestly pretty saturated: Perry Miniatures, North Star, The Assault Group, AW Miniatures, Zenit, Dixon, Kingsford, and Black Hat, to name just some of the ones I can dig up (by which I mean found on Andy of Tiny Hordes). Not all of them are very good mind you, but still, Perry in particular offered and still offers a mostly comprehensive range with good quality scuplts and very good relative value for money, and so Warlord would basically have to try to compete by offering niche and/or setting-specific figures.

On the rules front, ToH was pretty well-liked. A lot of the hobby news sites and blogs I found were positive about ToH, and generally liked the systems. That said, there were dissenters: some users of Lead Adventure Forum’s Adventures in the Far East, largely devotees of Ronin and Daishō, found it a bit clunky and in one case reached some kind of terrible equilibrium where units would advance to contact and then immediately ‘bounce’ off without fighting. But as said, the rules were not disliked on the whole, and had the advantage of also being backed by, well, Warlord Games, arguably the next biggest wargaming company after GW, so seem to have had a decent amount of purchase after their mid-2017 release.

On the figures front, this got a little trickier. In 2016, Warlord Games all but acquired Wargames Factory, a manufacturer of multipart plastic miniatures based in the US. Wargames Factory is still technically an independent LLC, but Warlord has the exclusive rights to distribute Factory miniatures globally, so it is now functionally a Warlord imprint. Factory’s range included four sprues for feudal Japan: Ashigaru missile troops, Ashigaru spearmen, Samurai infantry and Samurai cavalry. The Factory minis are fine and definitely competitively priced, but the criticism they can be a bit ‘flat’ is not entirely unwarranted. These could be bought individually, or bundled in a discounted starter set for ToH with the rules, dice, and cards. But now, we can finally get to the background to the gripe that led me to this post: Warlord also produced some new minis for ToH, which we can divide into two types.

Type 1 are what I will term ‘bonus figure kits’: these are where there’s a sprue of Factory plastic minis bundled with a Warlord metal figure, which itself comes with a set of metal headswaps with which to convert those figures over. The Masked Men are the Ashigaru spearmen sprue with a warrior monk leader and with oni mask headswaps; the Samurai Cavalry are the, er, Samurai cavalry sprue with a special masked commander and helmet-less head swaps; the Pauper Soldiers are the Ashigaru missile troops with a special kneeling hero and straw hat head swaps; the Ronin are the Samurai infantry with a tetsubo-wielding hero and various helmet-less head swaps; Chobei’s Renegades are part of an Ashigaru spearmen sprue and part of an Ashigaru missile troops sprue with a hero and… bare head swaps; and finally the Daimyo’s Retinue were Samurai cavalry again but with helmet swaps this time, while the Daimyo himself goes bareheaded.

Type 2 are what I will call ‘fully original sets’: entirely new, all-metal figures by Warlord. There were Bandits and Brigands, the Dojo Assault Set consisting of a swordmaster and 7 ninjas, Onna-Bugeisha (female samurai) with two armoured naginata-wielders, three unarmoured archers, and two unarmoured melee fighters, and a Seven Samurai set.

But then, something happened. Why exactly, I am not sure, but in early 2019 Graham Davey split off from Warlord Games to form his own company, Grey For Now Games (henceforth GfN), taking Test of Honour with him. That year, the game would essentially get a relaunch, with a second edition of the rules that dealt with a lot of the issues people had with the first, a new line of minis commissioned directly by Grey for Now that could be used as starter or expansion forces, and collaborations with North Star Figures and Footsore Miniatures’ existing feudal Japan lines (North Star stocks GfN and Footsore figures and vice versa). But what of the Warlord Games figures? Well, aside from the Seven Samurai, which were stocked by GfN until they ran out, all the ToH-specific minis that Warlord had produced were discontinued. So, no more oni mask head swaps, no more bandit gangs, and critically, no more Onna-bugeisha.

—– 1007.5 —–2022-12-28 15:26:05+08:00:

Or was it? Because in December 2018, Warlord Games released Warlords of Erewhon, its new fantasy setting; this in turn got a samurai expansion in summer 2020 – as you do – which saw most of the old ToH exclusives re-released, and often with additional sculpts to form larger unit packs. There’s a new, enlarged Bandits pack, the Ninjas are back but without new sculpts, most of the heroes have reappeared in a heroes pack. The mounted figures haven’t yet reappeared however, nor, as far as I am aware, the head swaps that came with the original run of expansion sets. More critically, while Armoured Onna-Bugeisha are back, as are Onna-Bugeisha Archers, there is as yet no sign of the two unarmoured Onna-Bugeisha from the original pack.

And this is where it affects me personally. Because I have, for a while, been attempting to put together a force that can be used as the Aizu Women’s Brigade (as depicted in – TW for blood – this modern rendering), which requires largely unarmoured figures. Sharp Practice would require 12 figures, The Men Who Would Be Kings 16; and while two figures still doesn’t cover all of that by any means, it would have been nice to have been able to have them for the sake of variety.

So I guess to also give something to respond to, a couple of ideas:

Are there interesting cases in your hobby of someone trying to make the New Big Thing that will outcompete all the alternatives on the market to become the New Standard, only to end up just creating a new competing standard amid all the existing ones?
Are there interesting cases in your hobby of someone making a thing, then pulling it from circulation despite probably not losing money on it, in a way that has caused intense personal frustration, either as someone who had been using the thing or as someone who latterly discovered the thing that might be useful?

—– 1007.6 —–2022-12-28 18:48:41+08:00:

Terry Farrell has never officially declared why she quit, and while there is the explanation from the scheduling conflict, that in turn still requires explaining why she wanted to go from full time to part time unlike the rest of the cast. That is almost certainly to do with Rick Berman, but again, she has never officially said anything on the matter.

Separately, on the matter of showrunners it is worth distinguishing between the overall Trek showrunners (i.e. Berman and to an extent Brannon Braga) from the individual series showrunners, as DS9 was largely an Ira Steven Behr project after S2.

—– 1007.7 —–2022-12-28 21:34:14+08:00:

#ReceptioGate could have been over in a day: Rossi could have taken a minor L by citing her sources, and while Kidd could reasonably have still called plagiarism it’d have been a harder fight for him. Instead Rossi has doubled down in the most ridiculously escalatory way possible. And then did it again, and again, and again, and now everything is on display and everything is on fire and it’s glorious.

—– 1007.8 —–2022-12-31 00:13:40+08:00:

Search harder.

—– 1007.9 —–2022-12-31 02:59:50+08:00:

A little further up the thread you’ll find quite a few more recommendations in reply to this comment.

—– 1007.10 —–2022-12-31 11:57:25+08:00: