From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:36:34 -0500
Subject: [GZG] GZG ECC X: Indy's AAR (parts 1 & 2)
_______________________________________________ Gzg-l mailing list Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lThe entire write-up came out to be 4Kb too large for the list, so breaking it up into two parts. Well, it's now a few days since GZG ECC happened. And it was quite a fun time, to be sure. :-) There were the usual, and not-usual, pre-con issues that Jon, Jerry, and I had to deal with, but in the end we managed to make it happen. We rock. :-D PS: yes, this is long, but a lot happened. If you make it to Sunday (part 2), you might be rewarded. :-) This year, our 10th, we commissioned Joel Frock to construct, and Jon Tuffley to produce, our GZG ECC commemorative starship - the Delafield (named after Adam Delafield (rip), the original gzg-l host/maintainer). It turned out pretty well. And as I am in charge of collecting prizes for the various events and painting contest at the convention, I was able to get my hands on some Delafields first, with barely a week to go before the con. I struggled to get some painted up to show off in my FT game and put in the painting contest (so those who didn't get to see them in the FT game would have an opportunity to see them undisturbed; I had no illusions, however, of winning anything in the contest with them ;-) ). I don't know exactly how many people showed up. 40-some, I believe (a number of people didn't make it due to the weather from earlier in the week; see below). We had several vendors in residence (one of them only briefly, though), and plenty of games to go around. I ran two, and because I don't get to interact with many of the people at the con on a yearly basis, played three. I was pretty zonked by the time I got home Sunday evening. A few days prior to ECC (Tuesday afternoon/evening) there was a significant ice/snow storm that blew through the region, from as far south as DC, all the way up to Maine. By Friday most of the main roads were cleared. But downtown Lancaster...ummm...well, apparently they have never heard of "salt". At least the city road crews. The streets were sheets of ice with parallel ruts and rises along tire tracks, forcing you to slide into the left lane or right, into parked cars on one side of you or the other, and pitted with ice potholes inches deep. I've taken my little 4-door Honda '92 sedan over and through some sporting terrain in my time, off-road, through woods, over rocks, but the streets of Lancaster were...well, let's just say the drive in was...entertaining. Even at 10 mph (seriously). Friday night I ran my two-part alternate timeline Castle Wolfenstein scenario. Part one was a Full Thrust scenario called "Old Foes, New Horizons". In this alternate timeline, during WWII, Nazi Germany somehow acquired high-tech weapons that turned the war around so much for them that the *US* sued for peace! The NAC still formed, the FSE and ESU and IJN all still formed (the UNSC also existed, but was a puppet of the NSL/IJN), but in this universe, the NSL was now the Nazi Stratocratic League. And they (along with their IJN allies) were kicking @$$ all over the universe. By 2179 they had been at war with almost every other power and were crushing most of them. The NAC was on its last legs. The ESU had the strength to hold out, but only as long as the NAC and FSE still existed. Somewhere along the way the NAC realized what had happened back in 1944 and learned at the same time that the NSL were experimenting with time travel technology. They formed a plan to send their own ship or ships back in time in an attempt to thwart the NSL's experiment and possible arming of Nazi Germany during WWII. To this end (and unbeknownst to the NSL) they designed several new ships: the "new" NAC destroyer, the "new" NAC battleship, and the Delafield (which I made as 170 mass BDNs). These were armed with advanced drives (which would start breaking down if the ships moved over 12 mu/turn), K3 guns, and in the case of the Delafields, also a brace of AMTs. At the same time the NSL had developed the Graser and created a few ships carrying G2s and G3s. Thusly armed... The NAC had three fleets comprised of battleships, heavy cruisers, escort cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers, and the Delafields (three), two "new" NAC BBs, and a single "new" NAC DD. They also had two frieghters. The freighters and one pre-designated Delafield were carrying the troops and equipment meant to go back to 1944 and deal with the NSL units there. The NAC's objective - get at least ONE of these ships off the far side of the map. The NSL knew nothing of the special nature or mission of the freighters and the designated Delafield. They DID know that the NAC were going to try and send a force back in time, and their job was to stop them. To that end they had an SDN, several BDNs, heavy cruisers, escort cruisers, light cruisers, and a couple destroyers. The graser-armed ships were two heavy cruisers (one G2 each) and a BDN (two G3s). The battle was engaged almost immediately. The NAC started in the middle, the SDN fleet at one end of the table in front of the NAC, the BDN force directly behind the NAC (anvil-hammer), and the new-tech ships arrived on turn 2 off the NAC ships' starboard aft. Nutshell account of the battle: the NSL die rolling was sub-par. The NAC die-rolling was blazing. The NSL *did* evaporate the two freighters in the space of two turns. But the Delafields were only scratched and lightly damaged by the end of the game. The "new" BBs and DD were hit reasonably hard, but not destroyed. The NSL had many ships gutted by the end. Thusly surviving, the NAC would successfully get the designated Delafield off the board, and to its destination in order to attempt time travel... After the game stayed up for a while socializing with those still alive, but fading fast, I went to the room and crashed. This year at the hotel, due to it being closed for renovations, we had the whole place to ourselves. It was quite nice, actually... ---------------------------------------------- Bright and early the next morning up and joined Jon Davis, his two sons, Jerry Han, and a small group of others for breakfast at Zimmerman's. Then I sauntered down to the local Farmer's Market to pick up donuts for those who had not yet stirred. Two dozen donuts vanished pretty fast. ;-) That morning I played in John Lerchey's DS3 playtest game. Originally there were to be, I think, 6 players, but due to the weather, several were no-shows. That left me squaring off against David Hornung and Keith (whose last name I am spacing :-( ). They had the lower-tech Order of Man religious militant faction, and I was running the extremely honorable high-tech Japanese mercenary unit Divine Wind (with a name like that, you can't help BUT be honorable! :-) ). My die rolls were not with me much of the game. First I sent scouts onto the table. David and Keith had all their units hidden. I blew EVERY spotting die roll I had to make. I even launched surveillance drones. Blew their spotting die rolls, too. Badly. The ONLY way I was able to FIND anything was by drawing it's fire! I just had to position myself in such a manner that David and Keith wanted to blaze away. ;-) I managed to spot some of their units, but not all. I never, ever saw the arty units, even though I had a drone I think right next to them (the drone - and by extension, the drone operator - was too Shaken to do anything, much less spotting. Having uncovered a few infantry positions, I opted to bring on my infantry to dig them out. The first platoon was thrown back by arty fire. The second platoon managed to make headway, and despite the arty fire they drew, they fought their way INTO the foxholes and evicted the current Order Of Man residents. The tanks started coming on at that point, and a new player (Richard) joined my side. I gave him one of the platoon of tanks and we went in to clear out that avenue of escape. Well, much battling ensued, and as the smoke rose (not cleared), there were five dead Divine Wind main battle tanks (Richard only started out with five), and three or four out of eight dead Order Of Man tanks. My HQ tanks made short work of the OOM survivors. At this point we called the game. I like how the DS3 rules have been evolving over time. I hope to get some more local playtesting in on them this year. Saturday afternoon. After a quick lunch, I entered Mike Hudak's Full Thrust Campaign game. I had Aaron Newman, Grant Ladue, and Jon Davis on my team. We split our ships up and decided which systems we were going to move into, and worked out a strategic battleplan for the next several strategic turns. As turn one unfolded, I found my medium-sized NAC battle fleet **squarely** in the middle of THREE ESU medium, heavy, and ultra-heavy fleets. Needless to say, I didn't last long. And while I managed to not take anything out with me, I put a hurting on a few ships, and managed to last more than three turns total. :-) But before turn four was over, I was out of viable combat ships (my frigates and scout ran on turn 1, leaving my two BBs and the CE to face off against an SDN, a BDN, two BBs, CAs, CEs, CLs, and DDs). It was a short, sharp game - but I got to roll lots of beam die, and actually hit a few times with pulse torps (three total, out of six or seven - but they were within the first two range bands!) (of course my actual damage roll was less than noticeable ;-D ). Between the afternoon and evening sessions we had dinner, did the results of the painting contest (Jerry will post the results, but for some reason people thought my Delafields were pretty nice, and I got a third place finish in the FT category!), did general annoucements, did the group photo thing (had to this year!), and had cake (yummy yummy in my tummy tummy :) ). Saturday evening I was involved in Steve Barosi's and Martin Connell's Victorian-Age battle on Mars: British army vs Martians who were stealing human women for their own reproductive purposes. Being stiff upper-lipped gentlemen, we couldn't allow that! The game was played using a combination of FT and SG2, and was all 15mm scale. The ships were homemade aeronefs, while the figs were from a variety of companies. The battle was played off the floor, in three dimensions. Steve and Martin had constructed PVC poles that the ships were attached to and could maneuver in six elevation levels in addition to moving forward and turning. There were also clouds, manta riders to harass the brave British fleet, automatons, and hang-glider assault squads. Our goal was to rescue the women from the Martians. As we maneuvered and jockeyed for position, I sprayed fire for three or four turns at Martian 'Nefs. I missed with EACH and EVERY shot (they weren't pulse torps, I don't understand! - oh, yeah, they were beam dice :-P ). My British marines had a better time of it shooting at Martian crew and soldiers on other 'Nefs. The Martians' big boat (where most of the women were being held) blasted one shot into my ship. 5d6 beam dice caused 11 pts damage, forcing a threshold check. Now I began rolling 6s! A full 1/4 of my ship fell into disuse. :-/ The only thing I really had now were my two elite hang glider squads. One dropped onto the deck of the big ship and engaged into close assault with one of the two elite Martian squads. I managed to wipe out just over half of the Martians in that squad, but it cost me each and every man in my unit. :-( I was rolling soooo well. :-P It was getting late, and the Martians were about to exit the field of battle with the women. Our 'Nefs were badly out of position (the Martians used gravity to drop in elevation and accelerate like mad!), so we had two hopes left: my remaining elite hang glider squad (who got shot at and took a couple casualties) and one of the automatons. We dropped them onto the big Martian ship. My hang glider squad went in first. The six of them engaged the last three Martians. I lost two or three guys doing so, but finally killed off the Martians! In both of the close assaults I never failed a morale check - my boys rock! (then again, they knew they were doing this for the women - no way we were backing down! :-) ). The automaton then dropped on the other squad. I couldn't bear to watch (having watched the other automaton get tore up by the soldiers on one of the Martian skiffs), but a few minutes later, the automaton was victorious! And we had rescued five of the eight women from the Martians! (the other three, alas, were hiding on skiffs that escaped; I was still blowing my observation rolls as badly this evening as I had been earlier in the day). The British won a minor victory due to not rescuing the other three women. After more socializing and whatnot, finally crashed off to bed. (cont'd next msg)