I have already done a review of the CZ-85 Combat, but here’s another in the CZ stable that I finally got a change to shoot a few times in the last week: the CZ-75B SA (single action).
I had fired a few different types of CZ over the years — the original CZ-75B, the new CZ-75 P-01 compact, and the CZ-75 P-07 polymer frame, in addition to my own CZ-85 Combat, which I bought for duo-tone finish and the full ambi controls. (Being a leftie is a pain in the ass, sometimes…) Spurred on by his delight with my CZ-85, a colleague of mine bought himself the CZ-75B SA for a pretty reasonable price ($550 or so.)
Like the other pistols from this manufacturer, the fit and finish are tops. CZ uses an all-steel frame and slide, with the slide fit inside the frame to give a lower bore to grip axis. This makes recoil absorption a breeze, and the CZs are all very easy shooting weapons. It has the standard 16 round magazines, a safety only lever — no decocking mechanism, and is otherwise indistinguishable from the normal -75s. The difference is the single-action only trigger, which is probably the nicest of all the CZs I’ve shot. There’s a lot of takeup, as with all of its cousins, but the release is light (guessing 4-5 lbs or so) and sharp, and reset is quick and audible.
Thanks to the fantastic trigger, the low bore axis, and the superior ergonomics of the grip angle (John Browning got it right, Glock…), the pistol is an incredible shooter. Sub-2″ groups at 25 yards unsupported were possible, and at normal engagement ranges for a pistol (3-10 yards) with a quick draw and panicked rate of fire, we still could put 3-5 round strings in a 3×5 card out to 10 yards.
We haven’t fed it much outside of the Blazer Brass on the range, but if my CZ-85 Combat is anything to go by, it’ll eat just about anything you throw at it. Mine is particularly found of the steel-cased Russian stuff, Brown Bear, Wolf, and Tula, but has fired everything from the lightweight Pow-R-Ball up to 125 gr. without issue. The only ammo it doesn’t like is the aluminum-cased Blazer.
Finish is the standard CZ black polycoat with black plastic grips. It’s a fine looking piece and the polycoat is durable — mine has slight holster wear from seven years of use and close to 5000 rounds through it. With care in your handling, I suspect it will stay good-looking for some time to come.
I highly recommend this one — the trigger’s even better than the CZ-85, and I may have to look into whether I can get this trigger mod for the -85.
Last year, I rode the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride here in Albuquerque on my Triumph Thruxton, Trixie, in my kilt (Campbell of Argyll) to help raise money for prostate cancer, and took the prize for “most distinguished gentleman” last year.
Lamp dem gams, ladies!
The ride is n again this year, and once more I will be mounting my trusty steed from Hinckley, England to try and save a few poor buggers from cancer. So help out and throw a few samoleans their way, would you? My sponsor page is http://www.gentlemansride.com/rider/blackcampbell
This is an odd question in that it can be taken a multitude of ways. I think I’m going to go with the game campaign that most surprised me…
In 2010, my game group blew apart due to my divorce. About half of it remained intact, and we had to start a new set of campaigns to account for this. The one that most surprised me would have been out Hollow Earth Expedition game, which was set in 1936 Shanghai, a few months before the Japanese pulled the trigger on their invasion. The characters were a tough, unprincipled archeologist who had a reputation for being more tomb raider than scientist, his action-first, thinking later sidekick, a half-Chinese gangster, and an 12 year old female Chinese street urchin.
Rather than stumbling along, the adventures just flowed — from the introduction of the McGuffin, evidence of and possible means to find a mellified man, to trouble with the Japanese and other gangsters, to Nationalist politics where they had to rescue the president of China from his generals (and in the doing uncover the Terracotta Army a few decades too early.) They travel into deepest China to a monastery, battling an old sect of warrior-monks led by “a woman who cannot be killed”, found the mellified men, the girl accidentally ate a piece and was possessed by the spirit of an ancient warrior who wants to rule all China, to a final showdown in the underground tomb of the first Sovereign Emperor and his terracotta army.
The birth of my daughter and the moving away of several players brought the campaign to a close, but it was a good stopping point. We had another couple of adventures where the first two characters were battling Nazis to find a “lost Illuminati treasure” that first looked to be in Virginia, then turned out to be buried under Ben Franklin’s house in London.
Overall, the speed and ease of the plotting, the level of fun had, and the creativity of the group seemed revitalized by the changes it had gone through, and makes it one of my favorite campaigns I’ve ever run.
No contest: Atomic Robo by Evil Hat. If you want to know why, hit up the comic’s site at Atomic Robo.com and read the whole thing for free. Then go purchase the graphic novels, you cheap bastids!
Day two of the #rpgaday2015 conversation, “Kickstarter Game You’re Most Pleased to Have Backed” was a easy. I’ve only backed three Kickstarts, so far — two from Modiphus — the Transhuman book for the Eclipse Phasegame (mostly because they do such nice work) and Mindjammer, Sarah Newton’s immense sci-fi transhuman setting for FATE; and from Exile Games, Revelation of Mars (for Hollow Earth Expedition) a book I’ve been waiting for from when it was first teaser a good five years ago.
It’s a tough one — I’m much more excited about RoM than the other two, but was disappointed by the length of time it took for them to get it out the door. (I’ve got the eb0ok, but am still waiting on the physical products, at this time…) Modiphus, on the other hand, blasted Transhuman and Mindjammer out the door in quick order, seems to be shipping the push goal products at a good clip, and the company has been superb with their communication, so I think I’m going to have to go with Mindjammer on this one.
And honorable mention goes to a project I missed the Kickstart on, but did a pre-order as soon as possible, and that’s Chronicle City’s translation of Clockwerk’s German-language, Ubiquity-powered Space:1889. That setting thrilled me enough in 1989, when it came out that I’d run some version of it from 1990 to 2008-ish, when we started dabbling with Hollow Earth and Battlestar Galactica. It also inspired me to go into history (something I should berate the game producers for..terrible life choice!) and to study the Victorian period for my master’s work.
I stumbled across a video analysis of Steven Spielberg’s underappreciated Artificial Intelligence the other day on Slashfilm.com. I remembered thinking that the initial reaction of movie-goers showed a lack of attention or understanding of the film’s ending, in particular. (They’re so obviously not aliens…they’re evolved robots.) There was a lot of BS pushed about how Spielberg had tacked on a fairy tale ending, when point of fact, this part was Stanley Kubrick’s — the moviemaker whose idea this project was.
Here’s the video analysis of the picture’s motifs and themes. It’s worth the time.
Now, for a bit more analysis — mine, this time. We’ll start a comment on the filming style of the film. Kubrick’s style was to present a “moving picture in a frame.” There are a lot of tracking shots in his films — usually following or preceding a character as they move through a set. The action happens on either side of the primary focus, or behind them. An example might be the interminable kid-on-Big-Wheel scenes in the hotel of The Shining, or watching Frank Poole jog through the carousel of Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I think the latter is much more effective for establishing the completeness of the carousel set.)
Spielberg turns this on its head. He follows characters through sets, but is rarely straight-on to their front or rear, and in the Flesh Faire set, he tracks with a worker through the set, but the character moves left to right, but always in the center of the action while the background setting unfolds. It is the same idea as Kubrick’s “moving picture in a frame”, but it is more kinetic and interesting to watch than Kubrick achieved in his films.
This blending of style, as well as the use of color palettes and the circular motifs mentioned in the video show an excellent melding of the two filmmakers’ styles
The relationship between Gigalo Joe and David is also intriguing in that joe is obviously not sentient…he doesn’t have true emotions, but emulates them well. He is a creature of instinct, programmed behavior, much like Teddy, the Super Toy bear, is. But he has a clarity of intellect that is on display in one of the more interesting scenes in the movie, when — after having gotten a hint as to where to find the blue Fairy from Dr. Know — Joe attempts to protect David, in my interpretation, from the reality of his existence…that David’s quest may lead to disillusionment.
It’s a wonderful moment of self-awareness. Joe is so close to being “real”, and his desire to protect his kind from humans shows the seeds of the altruism that the future robots show in the final act. He also foreshadows the final act with his observation “…in the end, al that will be left, is us.”
It’s a dark, fatalistic view of humanity, but also of existence in general, and it continues through the allegedly “sweet” ending. Found by the future robots, David is a link to not just understand the “why” of existence, but shows the desire to have a connection with their “parents.” They are altruistic, but they also show a certain lack of empathy for these long-dead humans when they, horrifically, resurrect David’s mother for his perfect day.
She is now the robot — an incomplete person created to salve the emotional needs of David, the same role he was to play for Monica. She is as much a slave as he was. And while he is able to achieve her love for that one perfect day, it is still ephemeral, still transitory — just as it was before Martin came home. When she dies, the implication of David “going to the place where dreams are made” implies his death, or at least a growth beyond the need for this obsessive, destructive love he carries through the movie.
This is not a happy ending. It is arguably even more awful that what David went through.
Lastly, let’s consider the sidekick character that I view as the real protagonist of the piece: Teddy. The Super Toy is introduced as a means to distract David from his fascination with Monica, and he becomes David’s constant companion and protector throughout the movie. He attempts to protect David when he is competing with Martin in the food eating “fight”; he provides guidance when the two boys are competing; he “saves” David from the flesh Faire by bringing attention to him; he is with him throughout the movie, even sitting through 2000 years of being trapped in the ice. An consistently throughout the film, like a good dog, he helps his “boy”…and is conveniently forgotten when David makes connections with Joe (Teddy is chasing after them at the flesh Faire as they effect their escape), he is left with Joe when David discovers the other versions of himself in Manhattan, he makes is possible for the future ‘bots to bring Monica back, he is an afterthought while David plays with Monica in the final act, and when David goes to the place where dreams are made (whatever you interpret that to be…), Teddy is left to sit on the foot of the bed, left behind.
It’s a terrible moment. Like Joe, Teddy is not sentient; he ‘s more of an animal — a very smart machine, but not a person. He is a slave with no choice but to serve his master. While he cannot love David, his devotion is love-like, and as for everyone in the movie, it is destructive, obsessive, and ultimately, unrequited.
Another night of our side plot about Pegasus and her small task force causing havoc for the toasters back at the Colonies on Thursday. In this episode, we had some housekeeping from the aftermath of attacking the Boneyard and cutting out an older battlestar, Ares. The small escort they’ve had with them since the Exodus began, Demosthenes, is so battered as to be deadlined. The old, great Ares and Pegasus, too, require serious repairs. To find some respite, they have retreated to Ragnar Anchorage to repair, refit, and provision.
Ares‘ automation systems are unique — the Cylons didn’t use a hybrid, like the Seraph would, but a complex series of computers that use biomimetic materials, but aren’t biology. Their surveys of the Colonies have shown the Cylons are building old-style raiders, rather than the biomechanical ones the Seraph fielded. The characters were curious as to why? Is there some kind of ideological reason? Cutting the ties with their skin job masters? Or maybe they can’t do the biomechanicals?
While the ships are under repais, Admiral Cain doesn’t want to waste time and let their OPTEMPO slide. She assigns some of the senior officers with ground combat training to make contact with the resistance movements on Aquaria and Libran — the two worlds that look to have the most successful and cohesive movements, and have the lowest concentration of Cylon opponents. They need a beachhead for work from, and the commander of Aegis — a PC named Philip Oscari — gets the Aquaria mission.
After a dangerous low-altitude atmospheric jump (LAAJ), they hard land in the snows of Aquaria and quickly make contact with suspicious resistance fighters armed with a collection of hunting rifles. Soon after, they are aggressed by “steel wolves” — sleek, wolf-like robots with razor claws and teeth. They are fast, light, and designed for snow operations, but the hunting rifles and automatic weapons soon make short work of them. They are, however, the harbingers for the “centaurs” — centurion bodies mated to snowmobiles. They don’t get a good look at these that night; they are too busy escaping to the “Complex” — a series of underground caves with hot springs in the mountains outside Kyros, the nearby city.
Here they find thousands of people — children to adults — living in the labyrinth, fed well on reindeer and other game and fish. They are led by a historian and politician, and a bunch of local hunters. They also have a Two, which they use to ascertain if the crew are “human’…apparently, they know the 12 models of skin jobs (or fleshies, as they call them), but there’s a new kind of skin job, and it’s worse than they can imagine. They didn’t get into that too deeply, as the night’s session concluded.
This year, I’m going to attempt to jump in on the RPGaDay ( #rpgaday2015 ), a month-long attempt to get gamers talking to each other about games. This is the brainchild of David Chapman, over at Autocratik. Here’s the subjects in the chart below, and I’ll try and cover them as best I can (although I’m going to be away on a motorcycle trip for a few days this month.) Readers, commenters, casual visitors — throw in your thoughts in the comments and help make this more successful than just me moving my fingers on keys.
Click to embiggen…
Today’s subject: “Forthcoming game you’re most looking forward to.”
Easy — after a long wait, I’m looking forward to running a campaign using the Revelations of Mars setting for Hollow Earth Expedition. I’ve got some ideas for combining this with the defunct China campaign from HEX I was running a few years back, allowing the main character to make a return, hunting down an ancient artifact that was recovered — now stolen in classic McGuffin format — a family member kidnapped with it for the other PC, and that will lead to Nazi punching, Commie punching, the Himalayas, and a gateway to Mars…
Last Thursday, we had our next “episode” of the BSG campaign, where we are following a side story of what happened to Pegasus (in our continuity), when they returned to the Colonies to keep the Cylons busy while the fleet headed for Earth.
One of the elements I threw at the characters were that their Cylon prisoners all “feel” a presence — the means by which they uploaded seemed to be trying to make a connection to them. The players, of course, know this is about the time of the Blaze (Hades) reaching New Ophiuchi and attempting to reboot an old sliver of the TITAN, Hecate.
Worse, reconnaissance of the Colonies shows the Cylons, freed from their Seraph masters, have been busily setting up infrastructure to make power, and more centurions and old-school raiders. (The assumption is the method for making the biomechanical ones is either beyond them, ideologically dissonant, or takes too long.) They find out there are resistance movements on nearly all the Colonial worlds, but that the situation is more chaotic than expected. Rather than humans vs. the bad guys, there are Seraph-human alliances, but also widespread human on human post-apocalyptic “gang” warfare. Pulling everyone together to fight the toasters might prove more difficult than they expected. They also find out the Cylons are firing up some of the old materiel the Colonials had in storage, which gave us a new setting location GMs might find useful: the “Boneyard.”
After the Cylon War, the Colonies didn’t need as many ships in operation, and many of the old vessels were pretty battered. Fortunately, space is really big, so they mothballed a large swathe of their old warships at the Cyrannus Military Aerospace Repository (C-MAR) or “Boneyard.” Positioned at the barycenter of the four suns, it’s a stable, gravitational liberation point. C-MAR consists of a massive anchorage for parts, ammunition, and other storage, and is surrounded by ships spaced in a arc around the station, spaced 200 miles or so apart, that occasionally have their positions stabilized by tugs. There were, at the time of the attacks, about 150 escorts, tenders,flatops and other mobile docks, and other light vessels from the first War to the present in storage and in various conditions — from a parts ship waiting to be cut up for scrap, to ships that could be restarted and made ready with a few weeks work. Also here were five salvageable “heavies” — two of the surviving Columbia-class from the first war: Athena and Atlantia (which had been replaced with a Mercury-class), as well a post-war build Columbia, Ares. There was also the “death ship”, so called for her myriad failures that caused her eventual decommissioning — a Minerva-class named Hera.
The Cylons were restoring Athena, Ares, and Atlatntia to operational status, and the place is only defended by raiders on CAP. It was decided to go in and destroy two, and attempt to “cut out” one of the ships. They chose Ares to grab, used their escort Demosthenes to carry shuttles with nearly every marine they had, and a large, armed DC team. They jump in, Pegasus and Hecate banging away on Atlantia and the still-crippled Athena, maneuvering on her reaction props only. The ships are moving slowly, and their combat response is lackluster — they suspect the ships are mostly automated. They quickly destroy the latter, but the Cylons try to ram Pegasus, and succeed only in glancing off of her (still does a lot of damage!)
Meanwhile, the PCs aboard Aegis make their attempt to shield Demosthenes assault on Ares, first hitting the landing bays to clear out the few raiders aboard the old battlestar. This turned into a good dogfight, while Old D launched her boarding party. Problem the first: Ares was mostly complete — her engines are online, the FTL is operational, and she’s got ordinance to throw. There was a good fight that with judicious use of plot points by the PC commanding the ship lead to no damage to Aegis and Ares’ guns disabled.
The boarding party, with had a “10” along to help them with the automation, meets solid resistance, but they have numbers on the Cylons. The 10 is able to gain access to the ship’s network the Cylons established and trick the centurions into repelling a fake assault in a place that Aegis could hit with their guns (the arm to the flight pods.) He’s able to get the FTL up and running, and they take the ship with relatively low losses.
We ended the night there, as we had run late and the wife and daughter were wanting to get to sleep…
Last week’s game was primarily a “let’s talk about our feelings” and planning episode. Tonight, we should be getting down to the business of killin’ toasters.
The Black Campbell 