[GZG] [ECC] [long] AAR

Best pre-con comment: "The **con** hasn't even started yet,
and the Sheep Game players are already threatening each other."

The other pre-con comment was "Aaargh!".  I was walking
around with a sheep in my shirt pocket, and various people (unwisely) asked
about it. It was a sheep measuring tape, which my wife found at the fabric
store.

Friday night: DS3 Demo by John Lerchey and Indy A playtest of a proposed DS3
ruleset, with significant
changes from DS2--no chits, and adding Firefight segments
within the normal turn. Our KV armored talon was assigned to occupy a central
hill after clearing it of Hu'Man defenders; the HM mission was to bring in a
couple of armor companies and relieve the hilltop force. We suppressed the HM
relief column and the hilltop force; then a Ro'Kah tank platoon
close-assaulted the hilltop and destroyed the defenders.
That platoon continued to advance across the hilltop and dropped their grav
tanks on top of the remains of a HM tankette platoon, which squeeked in dismay
and fled around the hill. The KV platoon followed...exposing their rear armor
to the HM relief column. The HM took advantage of the opportunityl, the KV
platoon brewed up, and with cascading morale penalties, the Kra'Vak suddenly
went from Ro'Kah to Bro'Ken. The entire KV talon turned and fled...except for
one platoon--mine--which went Ro'Kah and advanced,
unsupported, against the enemy battalion. Just imagine the NSL tank battalion
in a long line along the ridge, the three KV tanks bursting out of cover, the
commander from the last scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid saying
"Three
banditos? _Three_?"...

Saturday morning: Stuart Murray's game Toward the end of the War of the
Worlds, the village of
Wopping-on-Sodbury was attacked by a giant Martian war
machine but was saved when the Martian crew died. As the game started, a
British relief colum (me, Adrian, Joel,
Tony) rushed--well, "plodded"--to rescue the village and
take custody of the fighting machine, while the dastardly Hun (JP, Jim Bell,
Greg Davis, Tom McCarthy) arrived by Zeppelin with an eye on securing the war
machine to improve German technology. The Brits entered along a road from the
southeast, got bottled up, misplaced our officers, and milled about in
confusion. My dinosaur lancers, trying to clear the southwest road for our
second column, raced ahead to the village, where they regrettably met Farmer
Giles, the town drunk. The
farmer, who owned several recently-deceased cows, tried to
use a dinosaur in a demonstration of alien probe techniques; the dinosaur,
understandably annoyed, used Farmer Giles in a demonstration of alien
evisceration techniques. I hastily proceeded out of the village and up the
western road, where I encountered the Kaiser's Own African Rifles (who used
some salty language and peppered my right flank) and a
newly-arrived Martian tripod (who microwaved my left flank).
Suppressed into permanent immobility, I sat there and stewed. A group of nuns
with rulers appeared and chased the Africans, who withdrew; Adrian's gatling
gun and rifle company then fired past (and through) the nuns and some British
bobbies ("sacrifices must be made in the name of Empire") to destroy the unit.
That improved the situation on the left flank. On the right flank, my Indian
sepoys turned off the road; they ran
nose-to-nose into a German unit, yelled "holy cow!" and
spent the rest of the morning trading fire. In the center, a German naval
infantry platoon charged a company of British regulars, broke them, pursued
the survivors and wiped them out. The dastardly Huns got into the village, and
things looked grim. Fortunately, our Aerial Bicyclist scouts got the idea to
land atop a Martian tripod; the monster tried to brush them off with its
tentacles, but our gallant lads subdued the beast with their revolvers and
captured the fighting machine. So we lost on moral grounds (with the
Kreigsmarine infantry pressing their attentions on the flower of English
womanhood) but won on material grounds. Quote of the game was JP's line,
paraphrased: "Jim, you're our MVP because you're ravaging their women."

Saturday afternoon was the Cheese Game, run by Tony Finan and John Crimmins,
with various crimes against reason, fashion and humanity committed by players
Bryon ("we're privately funded") Gordon, Greg (with his "fearless elite
powered armor black ops squad" as the cheesiest unit) Davis, Charlie
("mercenaries") Decker, Damond ("weather and traffic news crew"), Mike
("cockroaches on hovercraft") Hudak, Adrian ("Brun Hilda #4 and fashion news
crew") and me (Darth Squidious). The best comment on the game was Tony's
oft-repeated, mute stare of stunned disbelief, but "....!"
doesn't come across well on the quote board, so we'll go with Adrian's line:
"the game hasn't even started yet and the GM's plans have already gone down
the drain". My giant squid (4 tentacles, powered armor, a lightsaber, and a
flock of sheep I placed as recon drones) slid around
through the sub-surface water system, opening sinkholes and
grabbing cheese, while using the Force to con...um, "persuade"...the other
players into doing what I wanted. The most ridiculous instance was when I
encouraged Damond's news
chicks to "protect the sheep"; he initiated a non-violent
"close assault" on Mike's unit, picked up the struggling
bugs-on-roombas, and carried them away. Or maybe it was a
bit later, after Adrian's newscrew shot most of Damond's news chicks. when I
encouraged Adrian (who wanted to avoid winning) to dump his cheese in the
water, he did. Then he sent Brun Hilda # 4 to interview and distract the Fox
News terminators while the rest of Adrian's news crew threw the bodies of
Damond's news chicks into the water. I'm not sure if Adrian was trying to get
rid of the evidence or sacrifice them to Cthulhu. Brun Hilda #5 (of the NPC
media team) seemed fascinated when tentacles rose from the lake, grabbed
the mini-skirted bodies and sank back into the depths, but I
didn't ask why. Meanwhile, Greg's Black Ops squad was nearly arrested by a
squad of powered armor who grav-dropped onto the industrial
storage tank (of Cheez Whiz) behind him, but he shot through the tank roof and
dropped them into the cheese. On the other side of the map, Damond's two
surviving news chicks
close-assaulted the four survivors of Charlie's mercs and
defeated them. When the dust settled, Adrian successfully brought home zero
points; Mike and Bryan tied at around 35; Damond's one surving news chick had
about 57; and, ahem, someone with lots of cheese and hot dice (of 7d20, not
one rolled less than 11) came out with 122 points.

Saturday Night, FMAS, run by yours truly, aided and abetted by Adrian (Captain
John Atkins) Johnson, Jerry (Sarah Bellum) Han, Jon Mark (Prof Eisenberg) and
Greg (Lt Pourcell) Davis, Mike (Mad Doc Maddox) Hudak, Lee (Oersula Anders)
Salter, Lorenzo (Evan MacDouglas) Harmon, and Tony (Burke, Anthony T) Finan.
This game took place aboard the aethership Nostradamus. Things got off to a
good start as Tony summoned a Dark Young of Sheep Niggurath into one
lifeboard, and Mike tried to change the codes on the other one and
accidentally jettisoned it. Some of the troubleshooters raced to the bridge,
and died when they found the Dark Young; others wandered around opening boxes
and finding items like Spinal Weapon (backpack claymore mine), Mint Jelly
Molotov, and
Fusion Canon (not "cannon"--it turned out to be a classic
Miles Davis jazz fusion record). Around then Lorenzo's troubleshooter
discovered that another Dark Young had been summond to the engineroom. He
died, respawned into a clone chamber which had been sabotaged (Mike had
sabotaged a second one and Tony a third, but no one else knew that), died,
recloned on the engine deck, died again (the Dark Young was right outside),
recloned at the same one and died a fourth time, and finally respawned at a
clone chamber on the cargo deck. That was much safer place, as there was
merely a gunfight between two troubleshooters, which degenerated into a
gunfight between one troubleshooter and
three UN peacekeepers, and a slap-fight between the other
troubleshooter and Captain Atkins (who apparently was using the flat of his
sword rather than the edge). Tony decided that Jerry needed more trauma, so he
played "American Baa Association" and the players gathered around Jerry and
baa'd him. Adrian pressed the button labeled "Do Not Press" (I was amazed
that it took that long) and started the self-destruct
sequence. Mike
heroically planted a baa-mb in the lifeboat with the Dark
Young and blew it up. Tony summoned a sheepgoth (a sheep
with a black coat is a sheep-goth, yes?), which might have
been a trifle excessive; he then tried to talk a Mi-Go into
transporting him away from the disaster, but Jerry played
"Muttony" and the mutinous Mi-Go declined. Sarah Bellum,
being a dedicated reporter, sold herself to Honest Abdul in exchange for
Abdul's promise to get the story out; Adrian's female troubleshooter flashed a
little Victorian lingerie at Abdul (and you'd better be glad no one took video
of *that*, Adrian) and also sold herself to Honest Abdul's Harem Supply as a
way of getting off the ship. As the remaining
characters watched the self-destruct count down, Jerry's
character picked up bagpipes and played "Amazing Grace"; the other played
hummed along, with accompaniment by Tony Finan on kazoo. The camera pulled
away from the ship; the music changed from bagpipes to the full orchestral
version; the ship exploded, and we rolled credits. Mike, as the MVP, got a
sheep measuring tape. When asked why he summoned Cthulhu creatures, Tony
explained that "something about playing in Chris's game brings out my
inclination to destroy the world."

After hours, the Canadian Contingent lured me into playing Gullotine, in which
the players are executioners during the Terror. The objective is to rearrange
the line of nobles so that your executioner collects the most prestigious, um,
clients. The Canadians were all interfering with each
other's plans and mostly leaving me alone--I'm going to
claim that I won for that reason, rather than my natural talent...

Sunday morning, John Lerchey (Decals Express) admitted that he might just be
willing to create sheep decals. His other decals look really good; I wish I
had more painted lead to put them on.

Sunday morning was Mike Hudak's Full Sail game. Noam and I gleefully chose the
pirates, and managed to slip through a massaive nautical traffic jam to be the
first to deliver our courier to the resort island. The first representative to
the island makes the rules, so...: Noam: "We have decided to decree that
henceforth, no nation shall have warships!" Me: "And furthermore, that all
merchant ships shall be stocked with rum!" Noam: And crewed by women!" Me:
"Lovely women!" Noam: "Lovely and cooperative women!" Me: "And masseuses!"
Noam: "Lovely and cooperative masseuses!" and so forth.

Another great ECC.  The next one is ECC-X -- make plans to
be there, and try not to think about

Mutton con Queso.