collins355
Cosmic Mongoose
Bottom Line: a mixed good, bad and ugly product for a niche audience that basically serves to extend the Armies and the Fleets of the FFW products.
I picked this up because I'm a saddo military-oriented Traveller gamer and so acquire anything of this nature out of compulsion. First thing to note is that this is solely a lore book - there are no new rules as such, no adventures and very little in the way of new equipment (none of it essential). And it is very directly a book about military stuff - all 127 pages of it. So, for those of you I know are on this forum who have no interest in such products, read no further as this book definitely isn't for you.
Roughly half of the book is a discussion of various military tactics and ways of organising and operating (i.e. doctrine in military-speak), plus an analysis of the FFW from a grand strategy viewpoint. The other half of the book is a description of a single Imperial military unit (The Duke of Regina's Own Huscarles) - more about that choice later.
The doctrine chapters feature more of the diagrams we've become familiar with from MGT products like the Armies and Fleets books. Stylized depictions of military operations such as System Defence or Orbital Bombardment. In some ways these help with comprehension of the text, but in others they are so simplified and cartoonish as to be a bit vapid. Overall, the tactics and operational techniques described in these chapters are mostly sound, but really don't demonstrate in-depth consideration of what warfare might be like in the 57th Century OTU universe. We still lack, for example, a detailed consideration of what the impact of battlefield meson artillery might be on planetary combat (although perhaps given MJD's retcon of the Imperial Army to TL12 that is no longer an issue!) Even the treatment of the impact of grav technology on warfare has been done better elsewhere (e,g, the analysis in GURPS "Ground Forces" or the earlier analysis by FASA for their Renegade Legion RPG or in Dwarfstar Games classic "Grav Armor").
The FFW discussion and accompanying maps at times seems a bit repetitive of the existing MGT FFW splat book. It is also very much the FFW according to MJD. I can see that MJD is also trying to address the issue we have raised here on the forum: Why did the Zhodani start this war? What is their objective? In the end, I find his explanation sub-standard, but YMMV.
There is repetitive outlining of standard Imperial and Zhodani military orbats for basic units - we've already got them in other products. More importantly to me, here we see MJD overwriting the military organisation outlines given in another MGT 2e product - "The Third Imperium" by Chris Griffen. I don't know if this is intended to be a correction of Griffen's work, and maybe that is between them and MongooseMatt, but as a customer I would like a better degree of transparency if a product which is still being sold for a princely sum on Mongoose's website is being overwritten and superseded at least in part by MJD's FFW products.
The description of the Duke of Regina's Own again sees MJD run roughshod over earlier work. The choice of this unit itself is a curious one. Why rehash something that has been outlined in numerous Traveller products since first covered in Classic Traveller in the early 1980s? Surely there are opportunities to explore new units and new protagonists from the FFW? Moreover, Mongoose has already published a description of this very unit in own its Journal of the Travellers Aid Society - presumably now consigned to the dustbin.
MJD spends many pages outlining a whole host of additions to the previously standard description of the DRoH in canon. There are battalions after battalions detailed. But, anyone with a familiarity with MJD's earlier work, such as his excellent GURPS "Star Mercs" has to wonder whether these are just a collection of military unit outlines that he had in his locker and has re-purposed as disparate components of his vastly expanded DRoH.
A final nit is the reappearance of the Zhodani "Naval Special Landing Force". If one is to overwrite previous canon (the Zhodani have Marines in earlier Traveller products and character generation systems - see for example CT/Adventure 7: Broadsword) then surely use imagination and create something unique and new, rather than a rather unimaginative rehash of the Special Naval Landing Force of the mid-20th Century Empire of Japan.
I picked this up because I'm a saddo military-oriented Traveller gamer and so acquire anything of this nature out of compulsion. First thing to note is that this is solely a lore book - there are no new rules as such, no adventures and very little in the way of new equipment (none of it essential). And it is very directly a book about military stuff - all 127 pages of it. So, for those of you I know are on this forum who have no interest in such products, read no further as this book definitely isn't for you.
Roughly half of the book is a discussion of various military tactics and ways of organising and operating (i.e. doctrine in military-speak), plus an analysis of the FFW from a grand strategy viewpoint. The other half of the book is a description of a single Imperial military unit (The Duke of Regina's Own Huscarles) - more about that choice later.
The doctrine chapters feature more of the diagrams we've become familiar with from MGT products like the Armies and Fleets books. Stylized depictions of military operations such as System Defence or Orbital Bombardment. In some ways these help with comprehension of the text, but in others they are so simplified and cartoonish as to be a bit vapid. Overall, the tactics and operational techniques described in these chapters are mostly sound, but really don't demonstrate in-depth consideration of what warfare might be like in the 57th Century OTU universe. We still lack, for example, a detailed consideration of what the impact of battlefield meson artillery might be on planetary combat (although perhaps given MJD's retcon of the Imperial Army to TL12 that is no longer an issue!) Even the treatment of the impact of grav technology on warfare has been done better elsewhere (e,g, the analysis in GURPS "Ground Forces" or the earlier analysis by FASA for their Renegade Legion RPG or in Dwarfstar Games classic "Grav Armor").
The FFW discussion and accompanying maps at times seems a bit repetitive of the existing MGT FFW splat book. It is also very much the FFW according to MJD. I can see that MJD is also trying to address the issue we have raised here on the forum: Why did the Zhodani start this war? What is their objective? In the end, I find his explanation sub-standard, but YMMV.
There is repetitive outlining of standard Imperial and Zhodani military orbats for basic units - we've already got them in other products. More importantly to me, here we see MJD overwriting the military organisation outlines given in another MGT 2e product - "The Third Imperium" by Chris Griffen. I don't know if this is intended to be a correction of Griffen's work, and maybe that is between them and MongooseMatt, but as a customer I would like a better degree of transparency if a product which is still being sold for a princely sum on Mongoose's website is being overwritten and superseded at least in part by MJD's FFW products.
The description of the Duke of Regina's Own again sees MJD run roughshod over earlier work. The choice of this unit itself is a curious one. Why rehash something that has been outlined in numerous Traveller products since first covered in Classic Traveller in the early 1980s? Surely there are opportunities to explore new units and new protagonists from the FFW? Moreover, Mongoose has already published a description of this very unit in own its Journal of the Travellers Aid Society - presumably now consigned to the dustbin.
MJD spends many pages outlining a whole host of additions to the previously standard description of the DRoH in canon. There are battalions after battalions detailed. But, anyone with a familiarity with MJD's earlier work, such as his excellent GURPS "Star Mercs" has to wonder whether these are just a collection of military unit outlines that he had in his locker and has re-purposed as disparate components of his vastly expanded DRoH.
A final nit is the reappearance of the Zhodani "Naval Special Landing Force". If one is to overwrite previous canon (the Zhodani have Marines in earlier Traveller products and character generation systems - see for example CT/Adventure 7: Broadsword) then surely use imagination and create something unique and new, rather than a rather unimaginative rehash of the Special Naval Landing Force of the mid-20th Century Empire of Japan.
