From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 23:58:14 -0800
Subject: Re: GZG-ECC IV AAR's
> From: Robert W. Hofrichter Well, okay, since you insist.... Friday Night Firefight, run by Stuart. A massive StarGrunt game, complete with vehicles, VTOL, helicopters, air defense, artillery, drop ships and civilians (until one of my teammate's units went berserk and massacred them, while a hostile camera crew gleefully filmed the whole thing). I'd never played SG or read the rules, and, due to a severe case of sleep deprivation, I still don't know what the rules are--Stuart explained them well, but apparently my memory was on "continuous disk format" mode instead of "save to disk". However, everyone else picked it up pretty quickly. I am going to claim the "Major Oops" award for that game, as I called in arty on an enemy squad that had been pretty well shot up already--in addition to that squad, I scragged the medevac chopper and two of my own squads, including the guy who'd called in the fire request. Despite this, I had a great time and I'll be getting 15mm SG figs (oh, and I guess some rules too, eh?) soon. Stuart is a really fun GM, due largely to the delight he takes in saying things like, "Draw a chit--oh, that's bad for you! Draw another one. Oh, that's worse--keep that!" Stuart's minis are absolutely gorgeous and he thoroughly deserves the contest award(s) he won--Jon, can we have time for a painting clinic next year? Saturday morning, Operation Avalanche, run by Brian Bell, Kra'Vak vs Hu'Man in vector. The Kra'Vak got to launch asteroids down the length of the table and we elected to send them down our left and the center and concentrate on the Hu'Man right. The NSL on their right (commanded by Chad if I recall correctly) played slalom with the rocks and did a great job of it--ie kept formation better than my MD6 KV could !--but were delayed by it. The HM center (UN and PAU) shifted to their left and the ESU on the HM left, commanded by Commodore Lester Bell, attempted an end run to get past the KV line and destroy the KV base. Unfortunately for the ESU, the KV were facing the HM while thrusting to the rear. Our retrograde movement wrong-footed the ESU and so instead of flying through our line and ending up behind us, they ended up smack in front of us--and "smack" was the operative word, as about 25% of the Hu'Man fleet was at 12-18mu range of about 70% of the KV fleet (one ESU ship did make it through the KV line, but not out of scattergun range). KV victory, and the lesson is "concentrate your fire--not the enemy's fire." I'd have to say, though, if we'd had unlimited play time, I think the PAU and UN fleets would had kept us busy for long enough that the NSL could have gone and killed our base. Saturday afternoon I played a pickup game, lesson learned being "PDS is good, but not being where the missiles hit would have been better" Saturday evening, TomB and Los ran a playtest of FMA skirmish for CanAm. We discovered that grenades can explode in front of you and, if you're in the open, you're usually safe; however, if you've ducked behind a doorframe and so get a hard cover bonus to protect you from the grenade, you're doomed. (despite what the quote board says, Adrian was in the open when he got killed, so it's not 100% safe. Not quite). The Canadians won that game. Indy provided certificates of victory and the American team certified the Canadian victory. Just wait till next year! Sunday morning, I ran CanAm Full Thrust (in vector, not cinematic--I'll change the web page any time now). The Americans (Brian Bell, Carl Scheu, Aaron Teske, Mike Sarno) took a fleet with 25 fighter squadrons; the Canadians (Tom Barclay, Jim Bell, and Adrian Johnson, who quite sportingly learned FT about five minutes before the game started so he could lend moral support to the other two) took a beam heavy fleet. Both sides started in high orbit around the planet and both sides elected to circle the planet clockwise. The US fighters took off after the Red Maple squadrons; a few of them tied up the Canadian interceptors while the rest tore into the ships, rather like a pack of wolves dragging down an elk. Adrian's squadron was pretty much gone before he had any chance to shoot; Jim's squadron plinked away at long range; Tom maneuvered quite nicely around the planet but ran into salvo missiles, the US fighters, and the beam fire from the entire US fleet. Carl Scheu gets the award for Excessive Overkill (29 points past the last hull box, on a ship that had about 30 hull + 5 armor to start with); Tom Barclay gets the reciprocal Incandescent Award, 'cause he is; and Mike Sarno gets the Fleet Engineer's Heartfelt Thanks for taking no damage to his ships and bringing back all his fighter squadrons (did lose some individual fighters, no squadrons). I suspect the Candians should have started in low orbit rather than high orbit, thereby closing more quickly with the Americans (and with the Canadian squadrons closer to each other). With two inexperienced players, they were understandably concerned about running into the planet, but the result of being cautious was that the fighters had more time to attack, and the Americans could defeat them in detail. I had a great time, and many kudos to Jon Davis, Indy Kochte, et al, for putting in the work to organize this. Be there next year.