CampCon short (relative to what went on) PM/AAR

Just FYInterest:)

This weekend, Games Afoot in Sayre PA (perhaps unwittingly) hosted Campcon 02.
This years attendees included a couple of local kids, Mike Sarno, Mike Hudak,
David Raynes, Joel "Boba" Frock, James Hilchie (Comrade Hil Chi) and your
scribe (Tomb Raider). The last two being Canadians, Mike S. being from PA (as
I think is Mr.Hudak IIRC), and the other two (Joel and David) being from
Maryland (sp)?.

For those who don't know, CampCon is a get together of the GZG faithful,
spawned after an ECC meeting. We decided one time a year is too infrequent and
that WCC is just "too durn far".

CampCon is "Camping" Convention, though as of yet no one has pitched a tent...
;) It is a costs down affair which aims to be a fun weekend.

CampCon 01 was held last year around the same time (give or take a day or two)
and featured four or five games. The first was an ESU orbital assault on New
Providence against a thin screening force of NAC. The second was a Dirtside
assault on the PDC. The third was an SG2 battle for the Downport. The
scenarios were linked so that failure or success
in one led to better/worse forces for the next episode. The NAC and NPM
defenders sent the ESU packing (ESU landed troops, but took a bit of a
drubbing in their attack on the PDC (they won, but they lost a lot on the
way), and the NPM and NAC regs proved very tough in the key Starport battle).
So the NAC team under Brigadier Sarno were awarded the Gold Medallions of
Victory and the ESU the Silver Medallions of somewhat less Victory. (Along
with the instructions from Brigadier Sarno to "Get Your Ass Back To
Eurasia!").

This year, five scenarios were run. Force compositions of enemy forces were
unknown and four reinforcement chits (representing a 10% force increment) were
available to be played as desired. Scenarios were not linked directly, and
campaign victory was to be determined by most wins.

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Battle One: Refueling Stop

5000 pts of ESU ships were refueling at a gas giant, but the NAC found out.
They had 5000 points of ships, none larger than a heavy cruiser. The ESU
needed to skim gas from the gas giant before moving more than half thrust.

ESU forces included several heavy cruisers (Voroshilevs and Gorshkovs), 2
Konstantins with standard fighters, one Komarov, Two BDNs. NAC forces seemed
to include several vandenburgs, ticonderogas, hurons, and an escort cruiser or
two.

The NAC setup inside the gas giant's atmosphere. The ESU had to come get them.
We sent the fighters in and the fleet closed slowly. This leveraged our
advantage in heavy beams. The fighters savaged the NAC, and our ships (ESU)
ended the game just about to enter the gas giant and refuel while the NAC
fleet was reeling from fighter attacks and long range concentrated gunnery.

With a kill total of 200 and some points for the NAC to about 1200+ for
the ESU, once again the TMF imbalance and the fighter power were
demonstrated... (the ESU tactics were solid too though).

ESU had only one or two ships damaged (the NAC tried to kill the Komarov).
Joel's NAC fleet segment was pristine. Fire concentration was the order of the
day.

Result: Decisive victory ESU. No reinforcement chits played. The NAC focused
on the big ESU ship, and the length of the rows meant it didn't suffer any to
soon, nor did it blow up. In opposition, the ESU fighters took out the escort
cruisers then started lunching on other cruisers. The great majority of the
ESU fleet didn't even have a scratch. This was a route for the NAC. It would
have been better for them if 1) They'd been allowed to bring some fighters, 2)
the ESU had brought fewer fighters, 3) They'd had about a 15% fleet size
increase to account for the TMF imbalance. (Or use the conjectural TMF
correction formulas to determine point costs for the big ESU ships).

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Battle Two: Sayre Canal Shuffle

A reinforce platoon of ESU SF attempt to capture a key bridge. A mixed bag of
NAC MPs try to hold the bridge so the Engineers can wire it and blow it sky
high. They are in platoon strength, but have green units. A single Coonhound
FSV is deployed from the King's Own Albion Hussars.

NAC deploys for 360 defence. ESU enters the board and engages two MP squads
(one is command squad) with fire after taking some overwatch fire. ESU brings
MAWs to bear on enemy units. MP forces on far side of the board begin to cross
the bridge to enter the fray. Engineers working on setting charges.

ESU moves dummy counters down the river and up the river. Two of these are
actually submersed infantry walkers. They leap out onto a small island when
recce by fire from MPs force
their hand. Fire from the Coonhound (HKP/3 vs. armour 1) destroys one
ESU walker, and David Raynes, in the move that earned him the "Without a
Prayer" medallion for the campaign, took the remaining walker underwater to
strike from the bridge side which was not seeing intense combat (The ESU was
close assaulting onto the bridge.... the first unit discovering that NAC
engineers use slightly downgraded PA which kicks butt in HTH...). David just
failed to observe the NAC MP veteran squad (whose leader took over when the
platoon LT went down to an ESU close assault on the other side of the
river)... who promptly IAVR'd his mechanical backside into the next planetary
system. (This prevented him from massacring the remaining MPs).

One green MP squad held against the fire of three smaller but higher quality
ESU SF teams AND against a close assault by one of the teams. They gave up
cover to form a line across the bridge and keep the ESU from engaging the
surviving engineers as they strung charges. This heroic stand prevented the
ESU from sweeping the bridge in time.

One highlight was Mike Sarno's repeated comms failures (before his MP command
squad was overrun). He rolled a lot of 1's and 2's. The off
board pre-registered artillery never came... (there were lots of jokes
about batteries for the NAC radios made in China). Mind you, when Greens beat
Regs or Vets in HTH (Comrade Hil Chi's inglorious assault against the NAC MPs
protecting the engineers), you have to say bad die rolling happened to both
sides.

Result: NAC victory, though everyone on the bridge probably died. The only
survivors would be a single Vet MP squad that never really got into the
battle. Each side used one reinforcement chit (NAC for arty which they never
successfully called... and ESU for the two Class 1 infantry walkers). The
scenario came down to the wire and was determined by a few final combat
engineer quality checks. One more bad roll and a draw could have been
achieved. Two more bad rolls and an ESU victory would have occured.

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Battle Three: Zeguma Beach

5000 pts of ESU forces attempt to reinforce a single element holding the
starport at Zeguma Beach. 5000 pts of NAC attempt to stop them. Board is an
archipelago of about 15 islands with urban terrain on them and a causeway and
starport. One ESU squad (PA with Arty Obs of course!) starts in the starport
(infiltrated on the Ambassador's ship) and both forces enter from opposing
board sides to vie for control of this "resort area". (ESU trying to get a
starport to launch another landing attempt). NAC doesn't want to destroy
premier resort, and ESU wants to capture starport. Floating starport CAN SINK
if hit repeatedly with
arty/big weapons.

The NAC arrived with a number of conventional boats with light weapons (some
larger PBRs with some heavier ordinance with conventional infantry aboard,
some grav MICVs with normal infantry, and a pile of PA in zodiacs! as well as
some grav tanks). The ESU arrived with a few grav tanks and piles of
amphibious tracklayer MICVs and tanks (slow, but
still dangerous) and a few interface landed PA with GMS/L. The ESU had
no command vehicles and no casevac ("Comrade, you are still alive. Your wounds
are not that severe. Rejoin the fight or be shot."). The NAC had casevac, a
command vehicle of some type, and an aerospace fighter with RFAC and some DFO
and spotter capabilities. I think the NAC had a medium gun on call with HEF
MAK and SMOKE and the ESU a large gun with DFO and MAK.

Round 1 saw the ESU interface land 3 more PA stands in the Starport. It saw
the slow ESU force motor onto the board and the zippier NAC arrive. NAC forces
soon came under fire from the observer in the starport calling MAK on MICV
formations and HEF on the open assault boats. The NAC responded with HEF into
the starport (risky!).

In a round or two, the somewhat mauled NAC advance arrived at the
starport (taking a few GMS/L on the way in) and began to CC the ESU PA
there. On the other side of the board, a single ESU grav tank platoon (with a
few stray GMS shots from other units) blew away a platoon of heavy grav tanks
and a platoon of lighter assets and were in turn heavily damaged by another
NAC grav tank formation. OTOH one unit tied down 3 of the enemies, so that was
good.

The ESU were smart getting more PA into town early. The NAC were smart picking
a lot of infantry on mobile platforms (note to ESU designers: open water is
POOR for amphibious tracklayers... OOPS!). The ESU needed more speed, the NAC
needed more units and better firecons (ESU had superior on most things, NAC
enhanced).

Great game, wonderful scenics, some great action.

Result: Draw. Both sides had substantial forces inside the starport (I think
the NAC had 3 infantry stands and 3 PA stands and two or three
IFVs and the ESU had 3 PA stands with GMS/L). However, the ESU had 5
MICVs with 5 more infantry stands only a couple of turns away along with about
ten MBTs. And the ESU had another round of heavy MAK if the NAC wanted to
bring out lots of armour. We conceded collectively that no one could predict
the exact outcome, it would come down to whether the NAC could evict the 3 ESU
PA stands in the next two turns or not and whether the ESU reinforcements
would be able to do anything if that was the case. So we called it a draw.
Each side used two reinforcement chits (so we each had 6000 pts). Don't know
what the NAC bought, but the ESU bought the grav tank formation that did so
well on the rightmost flank. This left one reinforcement chit for each side.

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Battle Four: Bottom of the Ninth

A convoy of ESU vehicles (tanks, APCs, trucks, and a missile launch platform)
tries to get to launch position, setup its launcher, and get off 4
intermediate sized nuclear missiles. A NAC company plus some air assets and a
Coonhound and a Diemos MBT attempt to stop them. Gurkhas and SAS were also
present.

Close terrain on the board resulted in the first vehicle to vehicle encounter
at about 150m. The NAC pushed forward to deploy infantry, the ESU (who hadn't
reached launch point) immediately started worrying about if they could launch.
Some recalculations by the launch crew showed they could. They setup the
launcher, set the jacks, raised the launch package, started programming
missiles.

Meanwhile above the battelfield, a NAC VTOL appeared, dropped some
Gurkhas on a flank, popped up, GMS/H'd an ESU Grav APC, got shot down,
and crashed destroying a NAC APC. An ESU VTOL appeared, GMS'd the
Coonhound, then was blown out of the sky by DFFG/1's from the NAC APCs.
The middle of the board became a vehicle deathrap (two smoking ESU APCs and a
dead tank, two downed VTOLs, a smoking NAC APC and Coonhound FSV.

The NAC started getting desparate after the ESU fired their first missile.
They then inserted the SAS by parawing right about 100m from the enemy flank
(and immediately took fire). By the end of the scenario the NAC had lost about
50% of the SAS squad and never fired it. It did tie down the the ESU walker
reinforcement that latterly appeared.

The second missile popped out and was shot at by NAC GMS/AA which
missed. Scratch 2 NAC targets. The NAC got daring here and their Diemos
flipped on its APFC belts, charged past some blocking infantry, taking shots
as they went, killing most of them with the APFC and then rammed the launch
vehicle, nearly knocking it over. The ESU desparately fired their third
missile (and counterjammed NAC jamming). (Missile #4 was destroyed in situ by
NAC APSW fire).

Result: ESU Victory. The ESU got off 3 missiles that were neither jammed nor
shotdown. This meant three NAC centers were probably nicely radioactive. The
NAC felt they didn't really have a chance (the game ran somewhat differently
than the two playtests revealing some issues the playtests didn't catch), but
in retrospect I have to (respectfully) disagree. The had GMS shots at the
outbound strategic missiles in their boost stages, they had EW jamming tasks,
and they had a last minute MBT to launch vehicle ramming attack, any of which
could have resulted in a draw result, and any two of which could have resulted
in a win. So the issue was contestible. Still, in all fairness, there are
things I would amend if I'd do it again and these will be covered in the
actual post mortem AAR on www.stargrunt.ca when I get to it.

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Battle Five: Black Belt Brouhaha

5000 points of ESU square off against 5000 points of NAC across an asteroid
laden field that gave cover to small ships and beam dice of damage for passing
through to most ships (PDS, thrust and B1s could reduce this, as did shields).

The NAC force deployed on one side of the board in tight formation (unlike
game 1). The ESU deployed in a looser formation with no unified orders (so
Admiral Hudak raced to contact, while Admiral's Hil Chi and Barclay hung back
(letting the fighters work) and Admiral Raynes did something half way
between). The NAC lost all their fighters to a mass dogfight, then started
loosing ships with a 54 point strike on their SDN and similar strikes on the
BB and BDN present. The fighters were almost out of endurance by the end of
the game (most from attacking, 3 squadrons from stopping all the salvo
missiles aimed at Admiral Hudak's Konstantin).

The basic rule seemed to be that the ESU cruisers and SDDs would die if they
came out of the belt on the NAC side. A "line of death" seemed to be
established. One voroshilev went from no armour full hull to dead in one
round... after emerging.

The asteroid field, although total science bunk, was a fun mid-board
terrain point. It also took its toll on some ESU ships (a Gorshkov and a
Warsaw).

Result: ESU Victory. This one was tight (about 1600 pts to 1850 or so pts
destroyed) but the ESU fleet attacked disjoint (we intentionally had no
coordinated planning). My own inability to fly resulted in the destruction of
a Gorshkov in the belt without a single enemy shot!!! NAC learnt from the
first FT game and focused on whacking small ships (cruiser or smaller). They
did much better as a consequence. They lost, but only by about 15%, which is a
marginal victory for the ESU.