[GZG] [ECC] Con Report/AARs (long)

I had a great time at the con, and want to thank the usual suspects (Indy,
Jerry, Jon) for running it so smoothly, everyone I mooched minis off of to run
my game (too numerous to name), and the GMs of all the scenarios, and Carl
Scheu for being there with emergency game supplies when needed. Special thanks
to Rick Rutherford for running the painting workshop, which my son Zev really
appreciated.

Zev also had a great time, and I appreciate everyone's patience and tolerance
with having a youngster around. He's gotten more self sufficient and
interested in his own stuff over the last year (being able to read really
helps!), but still ran into the occasional
tiredness/boredness/frustratedness roadblocks. He tells me he had a
great time, overall.

Saturday morning, I played in Jon's FT3 playtest game. I had a NAC
force that pretty much flew into the teeth of the opposing FSE/ESU,
experiencing time on target with two SML waves. The good news is that one wave
of 6 SML's zeroed in on one of my CL's and exhausted itself by destroying each
individual molecule of the CL with 450% overkill.
My Battlecruiser fared better - only dying with around 100% overkill.
Concentrated anti-missile fire could never have been enough against
twelve salvoes (and I was just out of range of some allied ships with ADS
systems. I thought the damage profile of the test missile system was a little
high, but I think that was tweakable. I survived with a
CL and a damaged CE, and the FSE/ESU got the upper had on the NAC/NSL
in this game. But it was certainly enjoyable, and the new rules tested looked
overall pretty good. During the morning session Zev, who had bought himself a
box of B5 Minbari ships, went to the Painting workshop and Rick helped him get
started painting his smaller ships. He was very pleased with the results so
far.

Saturday afternoon was Joel Frock's Destroy All Fogres, and Zev and I each had
a Fogre, as did Jon Davis and Stuart Murray. Jon had the
weather-beaten, "experienced" Fogre - Think Roz from Monster's Inc.
and Stewart had Darth Fogre - flat black and Eeeevil. Zev had the
Smiley Fogre, and I had Captain Fogre the psychotic patriot. The personalities
were really just gravy for the rampage as we leveled the city and each other.
Destroying buildings was extremely satisfying, as were squishing cars,
annihilating tanks, and gunning down troops. I was masterfully conned by Jon
into a mistake that cost my my last secondaries (Stewart hat blown up my
Primary rather
earlier). Sadly, Zev ended the game with low score and his Fogre self-
immolated in the wonderful mushroom cloud that Joel had built. This cloud saw
quite a bit of action later in the con, as will be seen when more photos start
appearing. Despite the self destruction, this was Zev's favorite event at the
Con.

Zev and I ordered dinner from the hotel, which turned out to be a big
mistake - the food was woefully late - like an hour - and half of it
wasn't even what we ordered. Nevertheless we survived, and got back just in
time for the Painting contest results. I had entered a tank group in the SG
section and a New Israeli fleet (DN, BDH, BB, BC, CH,
CE) - which *won* the fleet mini competition. !!. I was totally
floored. I was dim enough not to bring my camera this time, but I believe
images of the contest entries are coming soon.

Sat. eve was the game I ran - The Battle of Titan: Human vs. KV late
in the Siege of Sol.. 8 players and over 16,000 CPV of ships -
nothing smaller than a heavy cruiser. I had some terrain in there -
Saturn's rings - but initial player setups pretty much allowed them
to ignore it. We tried out several new/playtest things. We had the UN
with Grasers, the New Israelies with Stealth, and a new initiative system
designed to balance larger and smaller ships, which I think worked out pretty
well. The sceario was designed with the KV having a firepower advantage, and
thus the Humans were really destined to
lose. However, the humans had _smoking_ hot dice in the first real
combat round - turn 4 saw the bulk of both sides *just* inside 18 MU
of each other - critical for both the KV K-Guns and the UN Grasers.
Grant LaDue (I think!) was ESU and scored on the order of 25 points
with around 20 beam dice - twice. Carl Scheu with a flotilla of NSL
BC's also dished out better thatn 1 damage/beam die several times
from his wall. This was utterly necessary for the humans not to be flayed
alive, given the array of K5's and K6's they were facing, where 1 hit would
almost always do at least 10 points of damage. Time ran out after the humans
and KV had passed through one another. The humans needed to disengage, since
the surviving KV, though many were heavily damaged, were still too much for
the humans to come around and face. The humans fared better than
"historically", leaving the field with more intact ships, and heavily damaging
more Kra'Vak than expected, so they were given a marginal victory. Titan Base
would still fall, and the war would proceed insystem...

Zev and I crashed in our hotel room around midnight. Zev had tried to rest in
one of the side rooms during my game, but the excitement was just a bit too
much. We slept well, though, and Sunday Morning we teamed up with Laserlight
for Full Sail. Thanks to Chris' masterful navigation, we ended up landing our
representative on the island first (which was the main goal), allowing us to
set the terms for
negotiations. Rule #1 - never let the pirates set the terms. One
extra bonus here was that my booty for the game was a GZG Glowworm mini.
Sweeet.

In all, it was a great time! Next year, if I can go at all, it will be with my
other son, Benjamin, who will have much, much less hesitation firing on his
father if we play on opposite sides.

-N

---

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
          -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of
science, 1949

Actually, at the Battle of Titan, I found the low starting velocity of
the Kra'vak dictated they make the first battle pass head-on at the
human forces, and the humans declined a second pass, effectively negating the
points they spent on advanced drives and bringing it right
back to a 1:1 fight.  But that's a one-sided opinion.

And I thought Jerry Cantrill's dice were as hot as or hotter than Carl's. But
Jerry's cut from the quiet gentleman mould, while Carl's more flamboyant.

> Sat. eve was the game I ran - The Battle of Titan: Human vs. KV late

> with Grasers, the New Israelies with Stealth, and a new initiative

> firepower advantage, and thus the Humans were really destined to

> the field with more intact ships, and heavily damaging more Kra'Vak

It was Jerry who commanded the awesome ESU. Carl and he definitely turned the
tide against the Kravak. Unfortunately my own UNSC dice let me down a couple
of times, which kept it from being a bigger human win. 5 grazer dice into the
rear of the damaged Kravak SDN managed 1 point of damage! Sigh. I rerolled it
on the side and did 47 points the second time. Ah well. It was still fun to do
more damage than we received considering their advantage.

I must say, the activation system that Noam used worked wonderfully, and made
for interesting tactical decisions in the initiative phase. I'm going to crib
that mechanic for larger games myself.

Great game Noam. The con was filled with them this year.

> Actually, at the Battle of Titan, I found the low starting velocity of

Actually, I disagree. Those advanced drives allowed the Kravak to keep the
 K-guns in action in the second turn of firing where more than a few of
the ESU and NI main weapons had no target.

> And I thought Jerry Cantrill's dice were as hot as or hotter than

Jerry's dice were hotter in the first turn. Carl just had better arcs with
targets in the second round, so he managed to catch up in the damage caused.
Fortunately you guys kept ships on either side of the NSL allowing them to use
all their weapons.

I find the UN ships to be a lot of fun, but boy are they an all or nothing
force. They seem to draw a *lot* of fire, so if your few fire dice don't hit
early, you're not going to hit at all.