GZG 8 Brief AAR + Quote Correction

<UNCLOAK>

Friday:

Drive down with Kevin Fox (new to ECC) and Adrian Johnson. Arrive in time to
setup and run "Stargrunt Pickup Game" which became known (for map reasons) as
"Grey Rocks vs. Brown Rocks". Watched Laserlight demonstrate that he has a
relationship with the infernal, as that is all that could explain his amazing
resistance to enemy fire... Bob 'Magic' Makowksy tried, then gave up and
surrendered. Kevin managed to close assault a suppressed unit, and run into
another along the way, walk through a hail of fire, then assault a smaller,
lesser quality unit. And in the end, his 7 or 8 elites lay dead, and the
regulars (or vets) on the other side lost one figure. (Yes Kevin, it is okay
to roll numbers higher than 3 on d12...) Grey Rocks win hands down. Bob
Makowsky surrenders half his squad, but they live.

Saturday:

Paint figures with Rick Rutherford. Learn a few more techniques from Rick.
Share some knowledge in return I hope. Good clinic. Joel Frock, Adrian
Johnson, Kevin Fox and I have variously spoken about the idea of running a
terrain building seminar. Perhaps next year we can do that.

Spend the afternoon getting the kinks out of Weight of Command, as it is a
major undertaking and could not be tested full scale ahead of time. Smaller
tests don't cover all coordination issues. Needed to get a wireless network in
place, Teamspeak up and active, prove the system, print out some more squad
cards, lay out figures into units, get our image processing on the go,
photograph some 'pre game intel' pictures then muddy them up with night vision
green and noise filters, etc. Went out for Java with Bob, Los, and Kr'rt and
found the world's most comfortable couch. Nearly a critical game abort as the
couch sucked us in. But professionalism overcame comfort. The game must go on.

Saturday night, executed a 45 minute briefing and planning section for the
players, a 3
hour and fifteen minute game, and a 45 minute post-game debrief/lessons
learned/behind the
curtains event. There were various objectives - to show what it is like
operating as or with off board commander, where the on board commanders get
instructions that aren't always relevant or timely and the off board
commander, the only one with a real idea what is going on, is constantly
lacking a complete picture and is recieving it with hysterisis. Also, we
wanted it to demonstrate what happens when instructions or dataflow is less
than precise. And we wanted to put the players in a place where they had to
make situational decisions without full facts. And where players on the game
boards had to adapt rapidly to
changing pressures and to off-board command influences and the commander
had to deal with
out-of-game UN HQ and civilian government pressures. All in all, it went
well.

Interesting points:
- Info for the UN HQ Cmdr was 'a day late and a dollar short'. His
commands arrived sometimes late (authorizing weapons free on a particular unit
three or four game rounds after the players on the board had went weapons
free). But that was expected.
- Experienced the confusion of having the mission target reported in two
places and the
resulting back-and-forth of orders from higher HQ. This too was
expected.
- Experienced the on-board commanders deciding which orders to obey and
which to 'interpret creatively' in view of their own SA. This too was
expected.
- Experienced examples of units on different comm nets not coordinating
(UN APCs driving
off and leaving R&S elements sitting there with their thumbs out - and
forcing them to hotwire a civilian truck to escape the WMD blast radius). This
was unexpected, but goes on in real life as each unit follows its own orders.
- Watched some very inventive play. Beth's UN HQ rescued some young
schoolkids instants before the WMD should have went off, bribing them with
candy. This same unit also served as a distraction when Aaron's unit of UN PA
prepared for a 'through the floor' assault on the terrorists with the WMD in
the church basement. Said tangos were located by Aaron using the advanced
sensors in his PA, an inventive idea. All in all, a number of inventive ideas
came forth (in the briefing and during the game). They were unexpected,
sometimes surprising, and a lot of fun.
- At the end of the game, due to Philip Pournelle commanding the
'snatch' board, he did
not pass on to his troops the presence of the WMD. At end-game, the guys
on that board said 'we though everything was just going as planned, no idea
anything was wrong' and the guys at HQ said 'that board looks calm' (Phil
restricted info flow upwards too) and Bravo board (the WMD board) looked
chaotic to higher HQ and its players. Now, part of this was
expected (Bravo had to deal with a mid-game change and the appearance of
unbriefed heavily armoured hostile forces). Part of it is just a result of how
things were played. But the experiences of players on Alpha board and Beta
Board and in the HQ were each distinct from one another.
- Ref's are preparing a proper AAR and summary. We are also preparing a
study of what went right from the perspective of running one of these and what
went wrong and what we think can address that in later iterations of similar
types of command simulator. This way, perhaps, we can offer others insight
into the process and if anyone else wants to try this (or if we do it again a
year or two hence), the job will be easier.

Then a bunch of us Canucks plus Tom Tongue sat up until the wee hours drinking
beer and chatting. It wouldn't be ECC without late nights. The abscence of a
bar really sucked though. It meant we couldn't even drink beer in the comfy
chairs with a table and play a game. Hopefully they will rememdy this.

Sunday

Cleaned up from TWOC. John Davis asked me to run a quick game of SG for some
latecomers who were new to the game. I did so, and the Africans were gradually
beaten to death by the Gurkhas, even though the Africans had pretty good
tactics. This game saw more close assaults than I have seen in some time (4 or
5). I think it was a good intro for the new guys.

Overall Comments:
- I missed the street preacher and Phil Pournelle exchanging bon mots. I
wish I'd seen that.
- Concession cart? Why the (*&@!! didn't we have one before! That's a
great idea! Kudos to Mr.Calivari (Nee Davis) for making this happen, along
with every other of the billion things the Con Committee does for us for which
we do not thank them enough. Without them, no word of a lie, there would not
BE a GZG ECC. Boys, I'm tipping a beer to you. Everyone else: Get in there and
volunteer to help in the coming years!
- I was very happy to meet Beth. I *wish* I'd known she was coming. I'd
have brought her a present down from Canada like some Maple Syrup. <sigh> Next
time. Or I'll have to go to Oz for a Con. Pity she couldn't fit Derek in her
suitcase. Or Lachlan and Janneke and the others.
- To Los, thanks brother. You're a great guy and wonderful to work with.
And you always have cool pix and stories.
- To Cmdr. Makowsky, USCG. You're my kinda guy Bob. And the promotion
was well deserved. And the picture of your crew and you with Ollie North was a
neat item. Fun working with you.
- To Weasel Boy Wasserman, merci for all your assistance. Good to see
you again, wonderful fun working with you, thanks for the tech support for the
game and the BB. You are the King, baby.
- To Kevin Fox, thanks 1000x for painting so many wonderful figures for
me over the past year. Thanks for 17 or 18 years of wonderful friendship. And
thanks for helping out in our game Saturday night.
- To Rick Rutherford, thanks for teaching me more painting tricks. :)
- To JP, Jim, Tom, Chris, Adrian, Kevin, Mike Sarno, Mike Hudak, and
others - thanks for
the outrageous good natured burning that keeps my ego in check. I generously
*assume* that it is good natured.:)
- No Kra'Vak you say? I think we need a sequel to "The Weight of Command
during a Grey Day on Carter Island!".... and it has to have Kra'Vak.

TomB

PS, I'm back. I've been on the test list for a long time.

PPS - Quote Correction:
The comment about latex had to do with crossing the border. Several funny
comments were
made by the Canucks this year "It was a latex-free crossing." (JP?), or
"Do you have anything to Declare? Yep! I'm allergic to Latex!" (Tomb)

============

Quotes from TWOC:

Tom McCarthy, during the briefing, when told that escalation of force was not
acceptable under ROE: "Just watch me."

Magic, talking to Tomb: "You know that rad spike that UN science observation
reported to Mark? He thought it correlated with Tom's Fusion gun fire. That's
what he reported to higher HQ. He even sent them a picture of the car." (The
car had been burning as a result of a crash caused by a carefully aimed rifle
volley at the tires, and the rad spike was from the preparation of the
WMD...NOT Tom's fusion gun fire, which also had not touched the car)

Tom McCarthy, after hearing on the radio that Weapons Free had been given on
the Mercs he was fighting (and on whom had been using the heavy plasma gun
already for several turns): "Ah. I have my hacker get to work on the timestamp
on those image logs."

Tom McCarthy to Beth Fulton: "You can fire your fusion guns at them. It won't
do anything but suppress them." (Tom had fired twice, and I had rolled really
well for the defence) (Beth fired, and wounded 3 out of 4 in the squad and
killed the other). (This was also where the comment about being court
martialled for what HE (Tom McCarthy) had already done arose)

Over the radio from UN OpCO at HQ Kochte: Amnesty is not authorized at this
time. UN HQ directs you negotiate with them in the strongest possible terms.
In the CO's exact words "Tell them it would be in their best interest to
surrender". Beth Fulton, to the Arms Dealers less than 30 seconds later: "I
offer them Amnesty."

Beth has captured a bunch of mercenaries, including their leader. There is a
WMD with 28 seconds left on it. GM: You wish to interrogate the Arms Dealer
leader. How far do you go? Beth: As far as necessary. GM: <rolls some dice,
Beth rolls some> Well, it looks like he was thinking about talking before he
died. You ripped his arms off.

Beth, interrogating the next merc after the leader's body topples to the
floor: "Is there anyone else who knows the code?" Scared Merc: "Y..yyesss! The
XO! He got away in a boat!" Beth, looking at the squad she previously close
assaulted near the shore and the dead single figure out there with a pistol.
"Crap."

Tom McCarthy, fleeing from the the board with the other UN troops in various
APCs: "I just drove over onto the other board. Aaron (Newman)'s guys just
asked me if I was
there to give them a lift." (Tom had a big grin on his face - I feared
the worst) Shortly after, talking to Aaron: "I was trying to get my R&S
elements out. The CO radioed and said 'just catch a lift on
one of the APCs'. I replied - you mean the ones that just drove by?"
(Aaron had to hotwire a truck to save his guys. Good thing he asked me ahead
of time if his guys had those kind of skills... *grin*)

Aaron Teske's radioactively contaminated Hero, who had single handedly
disarmed the bomb by removing the core, talking to his CO Beth: "I'm going to
come join up with you guys. I disarmed the bomb." Beth: "Negative. Procede to
the park, we'll get you some evac." (knowing he was 'Hot') Shortly after,
Aaron is in the park, and Mark's Command VTOL arrives, and he asks to be
picked up. Mark's rad gear goes off. Aaron is instructed to cable-hitch
himself to a
tow-hook on the outside.... Fine thanks for a hero.

<CLOAK>

> Watched Laserlight demonstrate that he has a relationship with the

Piffle. You gave me Zhodani troops, so I used them.