A Gnome's eye view of ECC-VI (long)

The title is probably accurate. I do believe I was the shortest (full grown)
attendee of the Con. I won't comment as to whether any of the adolescents
were, in fact, taller than me.

Thanks to all Indy, Jon, & Jerry particularly for assembling a great Con. It
was great to be there again after missing two in a row. My only regret was
having to turn into a pumpkin at midnight on Saturday.

I thoroughly enjoyed all the games, peeking at the goings on on other tables,
and putting real faces and voices on some of the folks I had still as yet only
interacted with virtually. and will have a longer AAR of Interrupted
Negotiations put together hopefully sometime this week.

I played 3 games at Table 1 which happened to be in the middle of a swamp. The
water dripping from the ceiling (from the unending rain
outside) was _mostly_ collected in a series of garbage cans, but the
rug squished and pooled under the feet of anyone caring to step on it. The
tables and players stayed dry, but we should have draded tables
with some of the SG/DS games where the wet terrain would have added
realism to the game. Spaceships to not go >squish<. Ok, well maybe Sa'Vasku.
OK, probably Phalon (eww) But none of those were in the games I played.

Here's a mini (as in small, not miniature) report from the games in which I
participated:

War Without End - After driving up from Baltimore in some of the worst
dreck I've ever had to drive through, I was ready to blow something up and
thought I had my chance as a Shadow squadron sent to take out Babylon 5. We
used Aaron Newman et all's enhanced B5 sourcebook rules and it was great fun.
Both my Battlecrabs ships got frozen by telepaths at different points and
destroyed out of range of B5 itself (one due do double catastrophic threshold
(Aaron: "Don't roll a six," Noam rolls a 6; Aaron "Don't roll a six," Noam
rolls a 6)), but did do some flaying
of the Army of Light before going down. The shadow spitball-launched
fighters were outnumbered by the AoL's pretty significantly, but gave good
accounting of themselves. The weakest Battlecrab (Jim Bell had both the
"youngest" and "oldest" shadow cruiser) made it to B5 and did it's best to
take it out solo at the end of the game, but the station was still standing,
if badly hurt) by the end. It looked like a wash at the end. Somewhere in
there one of the Shadows managed to take out Lyta Alexander (Damn those
telepaths anyway), but I'm sure another of my
dark colleagues - Jim or JP - can fill in those details. The AoL was a
varied and erratically formidable foe. It was fun to see two Sharlins
eviscerated by the Beams of Great Mayhem and Jerry Han look like an
Indy clone with his dice. :-) It was less fun to plasma net a Vree
saucer into close range only to discover we had pulled it to where we were in
the range of the game's only area effect weapon. But no one
said shadows were overly _smart_...  Thanks, Aaron.

Space Battleship Yamamoto: Allied powers against the Imperial
Neo-Japanese. We (the allies - NAC, NSL, and, would you believe, ESU)
outflanked the main line of heavy Japanese ships, flayed Gofu-tron
(Tofu-ton?) alive in a fighter swarm the turn of his arrival on the
board (almost on top of some ESU capitals), obliterated the
mecha-fighters in a dogfight/slaughter festival and converged on the
base in a sweeping and masterful display of righteous power. Thanks, Jerry.

Interrupted Negotiations: A testy standoff between the New Israelis Islamic
Federation and the mediating UNSC is interrupted by a Kra'Vak
attack. The UN SDN-X Neptune, already damaged by sabotage falls to the
power of withering K-5 fire, and the other ships of the UN contingent
follow, though hang on long enough to finish off a Ti'Dok and a Si'Tek. The
Islamic Federation accounts for itself but at a distance with Heavy Beam fire
and in the knife fight with massed B2's. They take out a Ti'Dok and score
significant damage on several other KV ships, and
escape (with the still-hidden saboteur). The New Israeli's prove hard
to hit, and soft on the touch with stealth hulls and lighter armaments,
scoring no kills, but also taking the least damage of the human forces. and
controlling the space at the end game. The KV forces hit a mixed bag. Force 1
targeting the UN scores pretty much a total victory, taking out all the UN
ships with their own fire and leaving the field
with all ships in decent shape. KV2 (targeting NI) fares not so well -
the Ti'Dok falling to IF fire (of all things) and the two Si'Teks limping away
(quickly) with a few hull boxes to spare. (Note to all:
The Teske field does not mix with the Kra'vak - sixes do not bode well
for doubling K-gun damage-, and seems to backfire completely when Aaron
actually has to take a threshold.) KV3 (vs. IF) started a bit slow and took
long range fire before moving into the fray. THe Ti'Dok and one Si'Tek of this
group fell to the last UN cruiser before it went pop. At
least two, perhaps three KV lost all heavy weapons and/or all firecons
at once to bad threshold rolls. In all a strategic victory for Humanity
- the IF saved at least one NI ship from destruction by shearing off
all the weapon power of a Ti'Dok before it could fire; The UN's noble
sacrifices spared several other ships from certain peril, and Humanity gets a
foreshadowing of what the Siege of Sol is going to be like. While the KV main
objective is not achieved, at least one contingent solidifies its leadership
position for the coming assault. It was great fun to GM. I'll generate more
detailed AAR as time goes on. Thanks Jim, Thomas (T),

The Battle for Gramicci Pass: My first DS game. Thank goodness we had
experience on our side :-) As the Allies again (ever the good guys), I
had fun firing my tanks from the hilltops at the enemy advancing through the
cliffs. I had to leave the game before its conclusion, unfortunately, so I
don't know if we nailed those illegal ICMB's or not, but I did see and enjoy a
great deal of carnage while there, and like the game. It made me want to bring
cotton to my FT games to simulate vented atmosphere, and convinced my to pick
up the DS rule
book, which was probably a bad idea because now I'll be tempted _not_
to ignore all the [DS] posts on this list. Thanks Indy.

I already know I won't be able to make ECC-VII, but I'm optimistic
about VIII.