[ECC] Lancaster, at a glance

Friday: Good drive down with Jim Bell (Ottawa), JP Fiset (Ottawa) and Doug
Schavo (Kingston).

Friday night: Charlie Don't Surf.... as ASAS and Australian Mech Inf. My Mech
Inf got to clear a villlage, burn some supplies, leave the village, have the
villagers and the enemy save some of the supplies (typical) while chasing the
remainder of the suppplies. My ASAS got to take a 6 man squad up against about
30 NVA. After a Napalm strike and a brutal close combat, 4 of 6 ASAS were
killed, 2 were captured, in exchange for the platoon command squad (killed in
close
assault) and about 10-12 other NVA figures.
That platoon wasn't too happy....

Meanwhile, the American press was running around reporting things with the
level of accuracy and factuality that we've all come to know and love.
Especially interesting was their possession of the "teleporter".

Kudos to "Benny Rambo" (Jon Davis), the one-
man cinematic wrecking crew. And Stu for
running a nice-looking game with some very
odd rules which was quite a bit of fun, in a sort of psycho way!

Later Friday Night: Abbreviated Formula De which saw Doug S.
leaving the pack of 10-11 cars entirely behind.
And having to (at least as of when we called the game) admire the brake lights
of Sr.Davis car.... (I'll get you yet.... you wouldn't have held me off for
three laps!!!!). Lots of fun. Then, while most people went off to bed, 5 very
silly Canadians fought two games of Nuclear War, one resulting in a win for
Doug S, and
another a no-win game where final retalliations
killed everyone. Oh, and there was beer
involved (nice to be able to buy take-out beer
from the House of Pizza even in the middle of the night).

Saturday Morning: Ran "A Change of Orders". SG2. An ESU Platoon investigates
the remains of an enemy surveillance satellite. An OUDF Platoon investigates
the remains of a crashed enemy surveillance plane. Neither side is right. It's
a crashed Kravak Scoutship (neither side has every met KV yet). They get clues
from some of the wreckage, begin shooting at one another. Then an ESU squad is
obliterated by a sudden surprise KV close assault (they discovered one crew
member, and wounded him, so the others had to act). Then both sides started
radioing for help and support. And got changed orders! The rest of the game
saw Ortillery strikes from both sides, mortar attacks, the arrival of tanks
and walkers for the ESU, the arrival of a VTOL
and the Gurkhas to help the OUDF. End result -
ESU gets away with some info (most of their physical evidence was blown off
the map by three ortillery strikes on the same place), OUDF gets away with a
live prisoner. ESU casualties are about 35%, OUDF about 20%. The ESU actually
did more and would have got more if they hadn't had the bad luck to eat
ortillery. Special note: At one point, due to ambiguous communication, both
OUDF and ESU HQ considered deploying the "Omega Option" (read: nuclear
strike). However, saner heads prevailed. And the Kravak CSAR vessel showed up
and picked up the remains of the downed scoutship crew they were there to
rescue.

Friday Noon: The Cheese Game. Beyond description by me. It featured a news
group of NPCs, my squad of Eldar Harlequins, a squad of flaming (in every
sense of the word....) Protos Rejects, Boba Fett and his 6x6 Deathtruck, an
NSL Squad, Awful
Green Things from Outer Space led by a three-
eyed fuzzy penguin, Space Hillbillies, some
space-marine-ish PA, and another squad whose
origins are lost to me. Oh, and a horde of howling Gretchen! Final Tally: Rick
Rutherfords PA takes first, Harlequins take second, and the Gretchen kill most
of the cursed News Crew. Oh, and the
Harlequins kill Boba Fett! (The Empire formerly-
known as the Republic cannot stand against the troops of the Evil Empire known
as GW, and neither can their hired guns!)

Friday Evening: Silverstone FMAS on an asteroid. The Zhodani displace
calculating thinking to deploy (and teleportation) and try to gain entry to
the objective. The Imperial marines find every sinkhole and talus avalanche
they can. Much gunfire is exchanged, and several close combats are fought.
Heavy armour on both sides (and an oops on penetration of gauss rifles) keeps
the casualty counts down. Adrian J distinguishes himself with aggressive play
and Laserlight proves the Zhodani can think on their feet. The result would
have been a draw, as neither side was decisively ahead and the Zhodani were
about to open the alien pyramid, but they might well have been kicked off of
it by the Marines. One highlight was the entire table chanting "Death To Tom!
Death To Tom!" (apparently they take instructions from HQ somewhere in
Tasmania). Admittedly, they'd just found out that the battle was in actuality
over nothing as both sides' intelligence reports had been utterly wrong....;)

Later Friday Evening: Virus (cardgame) and Damn the Torpedos and Beer with JP,
Jim, Doug, Mike Hudak, Adrian J, and Rick Rutherford in the lounge.

Sunday Morning: Sleep. Say goodbyes. Buy far far far too much resin and other
stuff.

General: A Great Time. Too bad KR couldn't make it. Very Large Grandiose and
Deserved Thank You All to the organizers Jon, Mark, Jerry and Nick (and anyone
else I'm forgetting) are in order. The result was.... amazing. And for those
of you interested in PBeM FT, you've got a rather amazing surprise coming soon
I'm told!

Thanks to my fellow gamers, whose company was wonderful as usual. Thanks to my
fellow Canucks for representing Canada so well. (PS, we may have had to take
silver in the Cheese game, but we won the Pod Race, the Formula De Race, and
we hold the Pod Race Land
Speed Record at either 77 mu/turn or 89
mu/turn depending on how you reckon it!)

AARs will (with pix) eventually appear on stargrunt.ca. One thing we'd like a
lot is if anyone with a camera got a pic of Adrian getting his painting
awards, please send us a
copy - my DC ran out of juice and Adrian's was
unfortunately not successfully operated by the
suddenly-impressed camera-drone... :)

One last thing: Derek Fulton.... you will pay for your instigation
sometime.... even if I have to come over there....;) <*grin*>