GZG ECC AAR - The Indy Report

*GZG ECC XX – The Indy After Action Report*

Greetings everyone!

So, the AAR for my part of ECC this year.

Work has been incredibly busy, and was barely able to squeak out of work in
time to make the long drive up to Owego, NY. Long drive, but doable. Google
claims this should “only” take 4.5 hours, but I have never been able
to do it in less than 5. There’s always something: traffic, weather, gas
stops, or something shiny off an exit somewhere.

So, dodging traffic and hurricanes, made it to Owego in 5 hours and change
this go around. I had two events running this year: one Friday evening (ESCOM)
and one Sunday morning (Alpha Strike). Otherwise I didn’t sign up for any
specific games for Saturday because historically Saturday I am busy dealing
with the miniatures painting contest enough that it usually interferes with
any gaming I might try to do. I would conveniently forget that this year and
jump in on three separate games as Saturday wore on, only to have this time
impact fact reminded to me forcibly. But I managed to make the most of it
anyway. So yay, got to play three games!

Friday evening. After checking into my room, I unloaded the IndyMobile III
and got my event set up. The rules set was the in-development Emerging
Suns: Starship Combat Game (ESCOM, which most pronounce as
“ess-com”, but
some people say it as “ee-ess-com”, which sounds more stumbly to
me). The
core rules themselves are 90% done, a few things are left to do/tweak,
then we need to get some art, a proofreader, and then explore where to publish
this thing. So this evening’s event was a playtest of one of the
scenarios we are making for the first scenario book: “Battle Line”.
This would pit three brand new North American Confederation (NAC) battleships
with
state-of-the-art beams and energy torpedoes against four
tried-and-tested
Novaya Rossiya (NR) battlecruisers with long-range disruptor batteries.
I played this at Cold Wars last week with one other person new to the game,
and his die rolling was SO HOT that as the NR he managed to vaporize two of
the three NAC battleships by the time the NAC got into serious engagement
range (he rolled no fewer than fifteen 10s and one 9 on D10s for damage
over the course of three turns; my die rolls were…sub-par, of course).
The
ECC version of the game was much more balanced die-roll wise,
and…maneuver-wise, as at the critical contact point when the NAC had
the NR dead to rights, the navigation commands on each side had them going
everywhere but where they wanted their targets to end up. Still, the NAC
managed to mission kill one battlecruiser (killed all the crew, but the ship
was still somewhat intact) for damage to a couple of their battleships. The
remaining three NR battlecruisers had gotten badly separated, so Jerry Han,
running one pair of BCs decided to go after the strategic objective and left
the field of battle under thrust, heading for the planet the NAC were trying
to defend (with the goal of damaging or destroying the local base station),
while the third NR battlecruiser turned 180 from Jerry’s plot and headed
out to the hyperlimit to escape. This would cause the three NAC BBs to make a
choice as to whom to chase – and the bugger of it all is that neither
side had a thrust advantage. The NR did have a *speed* advantage, as their
fastest traveling ships were moving
at 2 inches/turn faster than the NAC. The stern chase would slowly
devolve to the NR ships outdistancing the NAC ships after a few turns, and
long range weapons fire wasn’t going to do much but a point or two at the
ranges they would be pursuing, and the target ships could always repair their
shields (what Full Thrust has as armor ESCOM considers shielding, and is
repairable via standard damage control rolls) to stave off any further damage
to the hull. We called the game as a pyrrhic victory for both sides. The NR
did not have the firepower to really do much to the base station before they
would have to flee the area to avoid angry NAC ships from closing in, and they
lost a battlecruiser while inbound, so it was a bit costly for not much
return. The NAC failed to fully keep the NR from going after the base station,
but they did get a battlecruiser hull out of it for later study.

Got a lot of good feedback on the game, both positive and critical on the
rules system. Some of the critical feedback we’ve heard before, and stem
mostly from people new to the system and seeing it not play to how they
expected it should play (i.e., preconceived notions on the mechanics) but
almost every one of them was later retracted when players played a second game
and ‘got’ how the game played. This, I find, happens a lot when
players try out a new system, whatever the genre, and their preconceived
notions of what they think they should be able to do runs headlong against the
system mechanics. Still, I take ALL the feedback we get and put it into the
consideration folder for later review.

Saturday came early, but not as early as some ECCs. I at least got 5 hours
sleep the night before. Met up with Jon Davis, Greg Davis, and Jerry Han in
the lobby, and we marched up the road to one of the restaurant establishments.
We decided to try a new one instead of the one we usually go to (it was
closer, and overlooked the river). When we got in, there was definitely a lot
more elbow room than the old place, but all the tables by the windows were
already taken. However, the main dining area was empty, so we plopped
ourselves down and had a fulfilling breakfast. Well, let me caveat that. Jon
Davis had some issues with his, so he was less than impressed, but I was quite
fine with my selected entrée, so I’d happily give this place a try
again in the future. But probably not with Jon along.
;-)

Back to the con, I got the painting table area prepped and submission forms
out, then after taking a bunch of photos of the different games in progress,
went over to Aaron Newman’s table, where he was running a Babylon 5 game,
“Severed Dreams”. Only this time he was using our ESCOM rules, not
FT rules. (Aaron has been coordinating with Noam and myself for running an
ESCOM game using fighters and vector movement, two systems which are not in
the Core Rules but we plan to offer in the Advanced Rules). He had managed
to get 2-3 playtests in with his gaming group prior to ECC and had
already tweaked the alpha alpha draft fighter rules a little from what I sent
him a few months ago. And as I hadn’t even looked at the fighter rules
(as currently drafted) in a couple months, I had to have HIM explain to me how
they worked. LOL! During the course of the game, as I watched how the fighters
were actually playing on the table, we made a couple more tweaks to the
current rules (e.g., if squadrons of fighters attack a ship, and they realize
they have zero hope of doing any damage, they can abort their attack runs so
they aren’t wiped out to a fighter by PDS).

The game was standard Severed Dreams, with Babylon 5 a couple Omega destroyers
and a few other ships and squadrons of fighters defending against the
loyalists coming in with Omegas, Hyperions, boarding pods, and fighters
galore. I came in with the loyalists' reserve wave on turn…3? Maybe 4.
Anyway, the reserves for both sides appeared at the same time, and it was
quite the furball going on in the middle that we saw. Unfortunately, the
volume of fighters on the table at this point, coupled with vector movement
plotting and whatnot, seemed to slow the game WAY down (not that it is all
that much faster in FT), and we were unable to finish the last turn before the
end of the time slot. While I love the Severed Dreams scenario, maybe a
slightly smaller scope game would have been better. Nevertheless, we got some
good feedback (again, both positive and critical) to chew on (much of the
critical feedback had to do with the fighter mechanics, which I reminded
people were still alpha alpha draft but I greatly appreciated their insights
and thoughts so we could take that and see how to best reformulate and
streamline the fighter rules).

After lunch I chatted with Stuart Murray for a spell. He was running the game
“Get Three Coffins Ready”, a wild wild WesternGrunt (StarGrunt meets
the Wild West). He had an opening since one of our regular members (Mark
Kinsey) was unable to attend over the weekend due to some other Life Issues he
had to attend to, so I stepped in for him. Woot! Game #2 for me!

Alas, it was not one of my better showings, mostly because I always feel SO
ill-equipped to play in a Stuart Scenario. He always pulls out these
incredibly cool ideas that usually require players to have some background
knowledge of the subject in question, and either I don’t have said
background knowledge, have the ‘wrong’ background knowledge (know
something of the subject but not exactly what Stuart was looking for), or my
brain
simply vapor-locks on the subject and I can’t think of what he wants
despite knowing the subject matter (I invariably think about it two days
later with the “D’oh! I could have done/said THAT”). Nevertheless,
his games are always fun, so I dove in as best as I could.

We had to generate a character for the game, with two sidekicks. These
characters belonged to one of two rival gangs with the basic storyline that
one gang needed money to open up a gold mine on their land (e.g., they would
have to rob a bank) and the second gang wanted to steal the deed to the land,
take it to the city to have it altered, so they could come back
and claim-jump the first gang. This had all the makings of a lot of
fun-fighting – or gun-fighting, if you will. And there was some! But
there were also a bevy of subplots and plot twists throughout to throw us off
our game. The gang I was part (we had to rob a bank for funds) of did not fair
as well as we might have (I tried to rob bank #1 only to find it had zero
cash; argh!), while the rival gang managed to maintain some cohesiveness to
their goals and ultimately not only got the deed, but got on the train to
leave town with it. (but not without leaving a few casualties behind).
Meanwhile, one of our gang members, Jeff Aubert’s character, who had the
sensibilities of a mobile rock, got himself caught by the daughter of the
rival gang leader (he apparently had been having a, ah, fun time with her for
a while, and there was a baby as a result) and dragged off to be married
(kinda took him out of the fight for a few turns – but then his
bride proved to be a kick-ass character, and mowed down the opposition
until her new hubby was killed, then she was coerced back to her father’s
gang). There were plot points all over town, but we never got to all of them
(never did make it over to the pig pen to find out who’s leg was sticking
up out of the mud). My character was shot and killed at one point (he was
mostly average and had some odd skills – like he was a rifleman, but he
had the ambidextrous skill which would have allowed him to shoot two pistols
at once – only he didn’t have two pistols!), and one of my sidekicks
was promoted to be my new character (when you lost your character, you took
one of your sidekicks and finished fleshing them
out).
My new character was a kick-ass veteran-level stomper – Level 1 D10 on
EVERYTHING in StarGrunt terms! Shooting, intelligence, skill – name it, I
somehow rolled to get D10 for everything. ROCK ON! Only…

A couple turns earlier some of the rival gangers released the cows from across
town and started them on a stampede. My character would be caught flatfooted
in the middle of the street as the cows came roaring around the buildings (I
was trying to chase down another set of the rival gang who had gotten our
deed). I figured my best option, given that my character just rocked, was to
finish dashing across the street with one action and then pick off one of the
rival gangers with my other action (my new character was also a crack shot,
which gave him a shooting bonus). Stuart looked at me and said roll to see if
I succeed. I could only fail on a ‘1’.

So I rolled a ‘1’.

Seriously?? Thus got trampled my new character. Only he was robust as hell,
too, and merely got mangled a little, didn’t actually die. Still the
delay allowed the rival gangers to escape from me and I was out of it most of
the rest of the game. No more moseying about town for this cowboy!

After that I spent the rest of the period, and a chunk of dinner, dealing with
the ballots for the miniatures painting contest. Had to do a
vote-off
as two people tied for second place in the 25mm scale category (which merely
means that I do not vote with the rest of the ECC population, but if a tie
comes up, then I go out and weigh in on which I personally think is slightly
better – when these come up, it is always a tough choice, and this
year’s was no different, between Jerry Acord’s Zombie Troopers and
Jeff Aubert’s Hetzer). At 7pm we then did the general “thank you for
coming and supporting ECC” speech followed by the minis painting contest
awards ceremony. Because we had fewer attendees this year than in past years
(due to too many Real Life Interference Reasons), there were fewer entries in
the painting contest (often because a lot of people don’t think their
work is of any merit, to which I would vigorously disagree, but just
can’t convince folks to submit things). And there being fewer entries in
the contest meant…well, I put in some entries – and I won second
place in the
Dirtside/6mm category! Which snagged me some Brigade Models 6mm desert
buildings that Tony Francis had sent out the year before. These will see
table time in Alpha Strike in the near future.  :-)

Once the painting contest awards were handed out, we had a bevy of other
things to raffle off to the attendees. Then did the group photo, then the
minis painting contest winners group photo, then….Cake! Er, I mean,
Frosting Delivery Systems! (let's call them what they really are, shall we?).
Jon had secured two sheet cakes from the nearby grocery store in celebration
of our 20th year of ECC. It was all quite yummy.

Once we were done with cake and ceremonies – back to gaming!!

I was going to jump in on a groundpounder game that Mark Kinsey was signed up
for, to take a break from starship gaming, but someone else beat me to it, so
I decided my second choice would be Tom McCarthy’s Full Thrust scenario.
Figured I couldn’t go too far wrong with FT, right? Tom’s scenario
was an aliens (Sa’Vasku) vs a mixed human fleet mash. I took one of the
UNSC fleets with a battlecruiser, a light cruiser, and a destroyer
(during the game my beam dice would be average, the grazer-2 would be
average, and the p-torps would either hit for minimal damage or miss; my
anti-matter torpedoes made up for some of this). The other four humans
took other trios of ships ranging from battleships to destroyers. The set up
had us placing our ships around the board where ever we wanted, at whatever
speed we wanted, in whatever facing we wanted. Then the aliens got to decide
where their jump points would be located. Given we were unsure of where the
aliens were going to be (but they knew damned well where we were!), we opted
to set up in all corners of the board, facing in, so the aliens couldn’t
set up behind anyone. We had one squadron set up in the center of the board
facing in different directions as ‘bait’.

The Sa’Vasku all clumped up in one quadrant of the board and so were
fairly clustered at the start (Tom rolled for scatter and drift, but no one
ship drifted for more than a few inches, so it was really inconsequential). On
turn one the Sa’Vasku proceeded to erase Scott Howland’s battle
squadron and much of Jim Bell’s battle squadron, destroying two
battlecruisers in
two shots from small ships (their light/medium ships were throwing out
30
dice of FT damage, averaging with rerolls 30+ points of damage per
volley – their superdreads were just scarier). At the end of turn one we
realized the humans had No Hope in this game. We were going to be wiped out to
a ship (and pretty much were). We nibbled at the aliens as best as possible,
and ultimately would destroy some of them, but in the end…yeah, the
humans were pretty wiped out.

One thing Tom was instituting in this game was accumulation of points. As you
damaged an opponent ship, depending on how much damage you did you got N
points (each person’s ship page had how many points the firing ship got
depending on how much damage was inflicted). If you lost your trio of ships,
you could then pick up another set of ships to run, so you could keep playing.
But you lost ALL your accumulated points, so there was no incentive to rejoin
the fight – as you’d just be giving the opposition opportunities for
more points whereas you would have to start from 0 and increase from there
with fewer enemy units to target. Some humans did rejoin the fight (notably
Scott Howland, because he was killed off in turn one without really
accumulating any points), and some did not (myself on turn 3, as I didn’t
feel like giving the aliens any more targets and points, plus I had gained 795
points at that point which I would otherwise lose). In the end, I missed who
the top three point players were, but I somehow, by NOT rejoining the game,
came in 4th. Huh!

Wrapping up the evening, I bowed out of a mafia-style card game JP Fiset
was running. My brain was getting mushy and I had no imagination left to
participate. I chatted with Jim Bell for a spell, then headed back to my room
to try and get some sleep, but I would only succeed in getting about 4 this
time around.

Sunday morning was breakfast in the hotel (stuffed French toast – damn!)
then it was time to run my Alpha Strike game. It was full-up with
players, none who had played AS before, but some who had played Battletech and
so were somewhat familiar with the terms. In rough terms, Alpha Strike, for
those who are unfamiliar, is to Battletech what Full Thrust is to Star Fleet
Battles. I spent about half an hour going over the rules (after getting a
delayed start, which seems typical for Sunday morning, as gathering the
players is kinda sorta kinda like herding cats), then we played for about 3
hours. The scenario pitted an invasion force of an Inner Sphere company on a
Clan Space planet. 12 Inner Sphere ‘Mechs vs 10 Clan ‘Mechs. The
forces were pretty even, but given the players’ unfamiliarity with the
mechanics and capabilities of their units, they were all fairly cautious,
which dragged the game on a little longer than it might otherwise have gone.
Still, ‘Mechs shot other ‘Mechs, and some ‘Mechs exploded. It
was all glorious. We ended the game at 1pm at basically a draw. The Inner
Sphere were pushing on the Clan, who were pulling back, but it cost them
several heavy ‘Mechs to do so, whereas the Clan had lost 2/3 of their
light ‘Mechs and one assault ‘Mech. Most of the Clan ‘Mechs
were damaged to some level, as were most of the Inner Sphere ‘Mechs (I
think only one or two IS ‘Mechs were untouched – but at least one IS
‘Mech was down to it’s last structural point before blowing up
itself)

And that, dear reader, was the weekend. Many people had left by this point,
so I packed up, said my good-byes, and got on the road. Took about 6
hours to get home as I opted to take a different, more scenic route, and got
stuck for tens and tens of miles behind a short line of cars stuck behind a
semi-tractor/trailer winding through the mountains (and no one would
pass when the opportunities presented themselves!). But still, managed to get
home before sunset, so ‘win’.

Photos are being sent to Jerry Han to be put up on the ECC website for later
viewing consumption (ditto the infamous Quote Board). I've already sent him my
photos from Friday and Sunday, but have a few GB of shots to still send him
from Saturday. I think Jerry will post when the links are ready.

Mk