From: Brian Burger <yh728@v...>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 15:20:48 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [fma]...actually on topic!
A number of people have been complaining about the increasing signal-to-noise ratio here, and I've been as guilty as others in that... so... Anyone done anything with FMA recently? I saw a bunch of great ECC pics at Jerry's site - is anyone planning a proper after-action writeup from an event they ran or participated in? Could some of the playtesters let us know what the state of play is there? Jon, any (even vague) idea of a date? We've had a couple of small FMA games here recently - the most recent saw my squad of four troopers get mashed by a group of gangers... I had the weaponry and leadership advantages; Franaine's gangers had very slightly better quality and a 'home ground' advantage - he set up more of the scenery than I did! Things started to come apart for me in the third turn, when Franaine's only assault rifle - in the hands of his very competent gang leader - whacked one of my troopers from clear across the table. I had thought I was safe, but Franaine saw the gaps and rolled well. The mid-game saw lots of fairly short range and surprisingly ineffective shotgun and pistol fire over the middle of the table. I dropped one ganger, lost a second trooper, then a third, then my squad leader, all alone now, started to fall back. He was charged by the gang's rash but stupid rookie, who got cut apart by my leader's oversized knife in CC. Finally Franaine's lady gang leader, with that damned assault rifle, wasted my guy from well outside CC range while he sheltered behind some cargo boxes. We didn't use grenades or anything but firearms and CC weaponry, and we left out the command & control rules (the 'isolation' one, at least). It was a fast, tight game, and a lot of fun. I've got a batch of 25mm troops, civilians, and terrorists on the painting table right now, so we'll be able to introduce some more variety into our games!