So, obviously this is a lie, but I think it’s interesting that they’re having to resort to this particular lie. Until now the argument has basically been “Ooooh, spooky scary antifa protesters!” as justification for their extreme tactics, unwarranted use of force, concealed identities, and all of the other bullshit. The fact that they’re now having to raise the spectre of evil scary cartels going after them tells you that the public isn’t buying the “scary protesters” line at all. Portland, in particular, have demolished that idea with their dancing frogs, street parties and naked bike rides.

“I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

No argument on any of those points, I think you nailed it. My concern however is that we’re seeing a lot of stuff in the media talking about Russia’s readiness for another conventional war, and while that assessment is accurate, it needs much better framing than it’s currently getting. When Zelensky is running around saying that Russia is gearing up for another invasion, that’s just blatant bullshit. I get it, he needs to fearmonger to keep the weapons to Ukraine flowing, and I respect the hustle, but I worry that people are being worked up into this fear of Russian “escalation” that’s going to actually lead to more people pushing for appeasement out of fear of what Russia can do.

Yes, they’re not a paper tiger, and if pushed into a conflict with NATO, they could certainly make that conflict a brutal and bloody one (especially if the US sat it out), but that’s not the same thing as “Putin will nuke the world if we so much as look at him funny”, which is the message that people are getting from the current discussions around Russia’s military capabilities. There needs to a better, more informed, more nuanced conversation about the realities of Russia’s ability to prosecute a wider scale war.

And I think it is important to discuss the fact that Russia is currently losing this war, despite what their gradual battlefield progress would suggest. That matters because we need the average member of the public to understand that an end is in sight. Our continued support can see Ukraine through this, and there is a version of events where Russia is forced to capitulate and agree to at least somewhat neutral terms for an armistice. No, Ukraine is never going to be rolling tanks into Moscow, but that’s not the only version of victory possible. We need people to understand that in order to justify the resources we’re supplying to Ukraine (resources that are, it must be emphasised, currently allowing us to tie up and potentially defeat a major threat at a fraction of the cost of a conventional war).

See, my question here would be “Why is combat boring in your games?” Because I see a lot of people try to fix D&D by focusing on making the most interesting board game possible, but roleplaying games aren’t board games, they’re stories.

For me, combat in systems like Shadowrun, D&D, WFRP, Storyteller and so on is boring because it brings the game to a crashing halt. The fact that it can takes hours of table time to play out a few rounds of combat in most of those systems is, to my mind, a far bigger issue than their relative quality as tactical gameplay experiences. Shadowrun tried to layer on more and more special moves and manuevers and combat abilities in the name of making combat more “interesting” and the effect was the exact opposite as so much more of the game became looking up the mechanics for the specific action you’re trying to take.

Combat should be fast and vibrant, and sometimes really scary. A firefight in Shadowrun - my go-to because it’s the game I run the most - should feel like a shootout from Heat or Ronin, or a John Wick movie. And it’s impossible to make anything feel like that when it takes an hour for everyone to get a single turn in.

This is just my take at the end of the day, but I don’t think the solution to boring combat is more or better rules. I tried that for years and nothing ever worked. What did work was finally shifting to more narrative focused systems with minimal, versatile rules that allowed me to treat combat just like anything else in the game. That way I could stop focusing on tracking hit-points and initiative, and I can make combat flow into the rest of the rest of the story in a way that feels natural, fluid, and visceral.

Thank you for clarifying. I think I have a better grasp of your argument now.

First, I’ll try to offer a clarification of my own; when I talk about Russia’s preference for rapid breakthrough operations, I’ve been using the term “doctrine” very specifically. What you’re describing is not doctrine, but strategy. Doctrine is neither strategy, nor tactics, but it informs and guides both. I don’t disagree that the current Russian strategy is one of disposable conscript assaults, but I suspect that strategy largely arises from the failures of their doctrine in the face of the realities of the conflict, and is not as deliberate a choice as you seem to think. I don’t think there’s really a way for either of us to be proven right here, as we’d need to be in the room with the Russian generals to say for sure.

Most FPV drone kills are not first strikes against moving troops. They are more often used to to prevent recovery of a disabled vehicle or to finish off someone who’s wounded.

I’ve read the linked account previously. It’s an excellent and informative read, but it’s value is deeply limited. Unfortunately, I can’t provide many of the countervailing sources that I have access to, because I’m working from direct conversations with people with significant expertise and first hand knowledge, as opposed to documentary sources. I get that that’s a claim anyone could make, and I’ll freely acknowledge that I have no way to back it up. Trust me or don’t, your call. But basically Jakub is speaking from a very limited, anecdotal view of the battlefield. His account may well be true for where he was stationed and what he was doing, but the broader statistics have shown that FPV drones have become the primary source of battlefield casualties, on both sides. This doesn’t mean they’re the primary mode of attack, per se, but they are the mode that is most consistent in creating casualties. This article from Kyiv Post covers it well, and while I don’t consider them an unbiased source, the statistics cited actually come directly from the Russian MOD, and I can’t see any value to them in lying about this; overstating the effectiveness of Ukraine’s drones would, if anything, make Russia look worse here. According to Russian figures only 20% of battlefield casualties are caused by artillery, and only 4% by small arms. This pretty directly contradicts the claims Jakub makes in his account. I think it also largely speaks to how the war has more or less become a stalemate. Attacks from both sides are limited; even the Russian “human waves” aren’t so much waves as very small groups of soldiers, as Gen. Ben Hodges describes in the video I linked earlier.

Don’t forget the context: I replied to a comment saying that Russia could never threaten another country because it was struggling so much in Ukraine. I don’t mean that it’s “slowly winning” to mean, “I am very confident that, without other changes, Russia will win, but it will just take many years.” I mean that Russia is advancing, able to maintain an effective fighting force and remains a real threat.

OK, so more broadly here, I think there’s actually a lot we agree on. Yes, it would be deeply foolish to see Russia as a paper tiger, and yes, regardless of where we differ on Russia’s state of play in Ukraine, the fact remains that they are certainly able to maintain an effective fighting force outside of that conflict, and would absolutely be able to prosecute additional limited conflicts (we’ll get to that in a moment) while maintaining their position in Ukraine. But there are reasons for that that I think undermine some of your argument.

Basically, the problem for Russia is that they’re not really able to fully commit to the war in Ukraine. This isn’t a “total war” for them, and Putin lacks the ability to convince the Russian public that it should be treated as one. That’s a key difference between Russia and Ukraine right now. The Ukrainian people will accept significant hardship if it means victory, because victory is the only path to survival. But for Russia, this war is Putin’s nation building project, and maybe a chance to flex a bit and show off their prowess on the world stage. The average Russian isn’t ideologically committed to the conflict, and isn’t about to accept, say, food rationing in order to win this fight. Thus, while it’s true that a significant portion of Russia’s overall military capability remains at their disposal, that’s because it is politically untenable for them to use it. Even their apparently endless manpower isn’t truly endless; conscription waves come at a significant cost, both in terms of political capital (Russian elections may be a fraud, but dictators still only rule because people allow them to, as many kings and tyrants have learned throughout history; Putin is a keen student of history and painfully aware of this fact), and in terms of the economic impact of sending a generation of young men to die in a war instead of allowing them to contribute to your workforce. These costs are growing unsustainable for Russia, and as Ukraine’s strikes on their gas refining capabilities continue to bite that will only grow worse.

While I agree that Russia could, in theory, commit significant resources to a wider conflict, there would need to be a reason for them to do so. This is why I say that Russia would have the ability to prosecute additional limited conflicts. That rules out almost every potential target they have at present; an invasion of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Turkey, or Japan would be a total war with all of NATO, and that’s a fight that they would lose. Without the ability to conjure up some existential threat that would make such a war seem completely necessary to the Russian people, there’s simply no way for Putin to move in that direction without facing down a full scale public revolt. Either in the short term or the long term it would guarantee the collapse of their government, either because NATO marches on Moscow or their own people do. I’m not saying this lightly; I have friends and loved ones who would likely be the very first in the line of fire if Putin did decide to open up a broader conflict. But I simply do not see a realistic version of events where a broader war with NATO is something that Putin can risk.

They’re right, but God do I wish it was anyone but them saying it.

The Russian thirst for poorly trained conscripts cannot be adequately explained by corruption and poor reporting obscuring what’s actually happening.

I’m really not sure why you feel this needs any further explanation. I’ve already covered how their doctrine is failing them, and it’s resulting in troops being pushed into the meat grinder instead. If you’re confused on some particular point, maybe try asking questions instead.

But throwing cannon fodder at the guns to reveal where they are, then shooting them with something else - that never stops working as long as you have cannon fodder.

75% of battlefield kills in Ukraine are made by explosive equipped FPV suicide drones. These can attack from any position and angle, and can loiter in an area for a long time, so the notion that they’re revealing the position of enemy guns with these attacks does not hold up to the reality on the battlefield. It may be the belief of some of the commanders that that’s what they’re doing, but if so, they’re wrong.

But it’s also working in the sense that it’s gradually pushing Ukraine back.

I covered this in my first reply in this conversation. If you’re going to repeat arguments that I’ve already countered, without offering any additional counterargument or support for your claim, then I might as well try to have a debate about quantum physics with a toddler.

No arguments there.

Yeah, parrying needs serious work. I don’t think I’ve been able to make it happen even once.

Everwind is fantastic. Fixes just about every complaint I have about Minecraft, and I say that as someone who bought Minecraft back in alpha. There are things that could be improved, but even where I think there’s room for improvement the baseline always seems to be “It’s already better than Minecraft”. For example I really feel like the combat could do with a dodge mechanic and harsher stamina management, but that’s based on comparing it to stuff like Dark Souls. Even in its current state it absolutely clowns on Minecraft’s combat.

The artstyle is lovely, the building and crafting feels really good, the range of furniture and decorations you can build is massive, and you get to build and fly an airship. And that’s not an afterthought, it’s a core part of the game and feels really, really good.

According to whom?

Funnily enough, experts on Russian battlefield doctrine. The ones I talked to all work in the CAF, but you’re welcome to search up your own sources on the subject. This guy was the commander of the US armed forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017, so I’d say he probably knows his stuff, and his analysis aligns with that of the experts I’ve spoken with; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qjrYpDDWS4&t=1s

If you’re trying to understand the disconnect between their doctrine and what’s actually playing out on the battlefield, it’s surprisingly simple really. This is what happens when you have an inflexible command structure that relies exclusively on doctrine and rigid adherence to chain of command (eg, individual soldiers are basically just machines to operated by their superiors), mixed with a huge amount of institutional corruption and an unwillingness to report the basic facts of the situation on the ground because it’s politically unfavourable to admit that things aren’t going to plan. The doctrine says “Smash a hole” so they try, and fail, repeatedly to smash that hole. That leads to waves of men being thrown at targets to no effect because if you haven’t smashed the hole you can’t move on to step two, so you just keep on repeating step one.

Gaining ground isn’t the same thing as winning, a lesson that the Russians should be all too familiar with, as it’s how they beat the Germans in WW2 (though a more accurate point of comparison would be Germany’s failure against the West in WW1; they held significant ground in France at the time of their surrender. It wasn’t that their lines collapsed or that they were outmanoeuvred on the battlefield; it was their economy that could no longer bear the weight of the war). It is, in fact, an extremely effective strategy to slowly cede ground at a cost that is too high for your aggressor to bear, and that’s exactly what Ukraine is doing to Russia. This doesn’t mean Ukraine is guaranteed to win, but their success largely depends on the continued support of their allies in Europe and North America. Whereas Russia has no real clear path to success at this point.

Russian doctrine relies on punching a hole, moving and exploiting that gap to create a salient and outmanoeuvre your enemy. Ukraine has gotten too good at entrenching, and is creating deeply layered defences that the Russians have no way to break through in a decisive fashion, and Ukraine is being extremely careful with it’s manpower, whereas Russian continues to waste theirs on pointless attacks and dispersed operations. We’re seeing constant footage and reports of Russian sections consisting of only 2-4 men attacking over open ground with no vehicle support, and getting picked off as they come in by Ukrainian machine gun positions and FPVs. The Russian economy is grinding to a halt under the weight of the war; they held out a lot longer in the face of sanctions than anyone in the West predicted, but the choices they made early on to keep the economy flowing are now turning into major pain points (massive interest rate hikes to control inflation now turning into a serious lack of investment and consumer spending, dumped foreign currency reserves used to float the rouble now leaving them with no fallback for the hard times ahead, etc). Ukraine has developed new long range attack drones that can strike deep into Russia, opening up all of their industry, and particularly their oil refining capabilities, to attack. Russia is so big that they simply cannot defend all of it from aerial attack, and Ukraine’s intel is good enough that they can continually shift their focus to wherever Russia isn’t defending.

This is why Putin is eager to talk peace now. He would love to, as you describe, stop with their current gains. That would actually constitute a win. The longer this goes on for, the worse it gets for Russia, while Ukraine can continue to hold out for as long as we continue to stand with them and keep them supplied. Their manpower losses are serious, but manageable if they continue with their current strategies, and while Russia continues to hammer their infrastructure, Ukraine has superior - and more efficient - air defence and most of their manufacturing happens outside of the country where Russia can’t hit it.