GenCon Review with a GZG Emphasis (part 4 of 4)

The Last Day

After combing the dealer's room one last time, I set up for my SG2 game, "Ork
Hill". The miniatures HQ ended up giving one of our tables to the guys from
Agents of Gaming (known for B5 Wars, but running another game called
Rebellion). This was cool, though, as we had booked enough tables for Saturday
thus we had a couple of tables extra by Sunday. Throughout the con we earned
some goodwill by allowing other companies to use our spare tables.

The turnout for Ork Hill was disappointing, but understandable. Sunday is a
horrible day for that kind of game. Next year we'll try to run it on the
Saturday. On the other hand, it turned out to be a bit of a mailing list game.
Tom McCarthy was the only player who signed up who showed. Tom played the
Space Marines and I recruited Mark Siefert and my friend (Martin Sloan, one of
my playtesters) to play the Orks.

The game was played using old GW miniatures. I had 22 Space Marines (original
plastic boxed set) and 5 Squats against 52 Orks (the original boxed set lead
Orks, as well as a bunch from the old boxed set of
plastic Orks) and 1 Ork dreadnought (original 4-armed dreadnought). The
terrain consisted of woods and a river with a small hill in the middle. On the
hill were four of the old Kryomek buildings. A lot of people walked up and
watched part of the game, and I got a number of complements on my figures and
the board set up, so I was pretty happy about it.

The scenario had the Orks trying to kill as many Imperials as possible, while
a Squat engineering team tried to destroy the 4 buildings on Ork Hill. After
that, the Imperials were to try and get as many men off the board as possible.
Tom made a crucial mistake early on, but the mistake sort of resolved itself
in time. He moved up a marine squad prematurely,
but the squad---facing overwhelming odds---managed to hold on heroically
for most of the game. In the end the buildings were destroyed, but the Squats
were mauled in the open by the Ork dreadnought while the majority of the
marines were pinned down. The game went to the Orks. Once again, everyone
seemed to enjoy themselves. With Tom's suggestions under my belt, I intend to
run this scenario again next year but with a bit
better balance for the marines. Considering the number of walk-ups just
watching the game, this could be a popular scenario.

Conclusion

Whew! Pretty long review. As always, I really enjoyed myself, ate too little,
slept too little, and talked too much. I met many of the mailing list guys,
including some that I hadn't met before. Although I didn't get a photograph of
the mailing list gang, I took a number of pictures during the FT tournament
and I think I have most of the mailing list people on film at some point. I
have some web space I haven't used yet, so I intend to post the pictures to my
own web site as soon as they're developed. I'll let the list know the URL.

Special thanks should go to Jeff Guillion for once again doing a great
job of running the Geo-Hex/GZG events. Thanks should also go to Dean for
exceptional work on running the FT tournament.

The con was good and the people great. I'm really looking forward to attending
next year. I hope more of the mailing list can show up, too. Next year we
should have even more GZG events, a return of the FT Fleet
tournament, a possible build-your-own FT tournament, and the use of
FT2.5/FT3 rules. In SG2, I will run my Ork Hill game again. I'm also
working on a SG2 city fight scenario and/or a SG2 game using old 15mm
Traveller figures. I hope to see you there.