[GZG] GZG ECC XII AAR for Friday evening

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lGiv
en my copious free time, I'll probably have to trickle out the AARs from my
POV.

I arrived around 6pm, unloaded my stuff, and dashed off to the House of Pizza
for a quick (hah!) cheese steak dinner. Once back I got some things
organized, and found an open game. An FT game. Sweet. :-)

Thus I found myself playing in Scott Bishop's "What the!@#@!$!%?" scenario.
Basically it was a Q-style game where a Q-ness went to different genre
universes (Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, SG-1 and B5). Our respective
fleets found ourselves in a huge arena that, if you went off an edge, you'd
appear on the opposite side of the map field. Tom McCarthy was running the
star destroyer and TIE fighters at the opposite corner from me. To my
immediate right, between me and Tom, was Ken Wang with some Battlestar
Galactica units. Across from Ken, and to Tom's right, was Aaron Newman, with
an Earthforce squadron, complete with two Omegas and a Warlock. To Aaron's
immediate right, and my immediate left, was Jerry Han running a Klingon battle
group of several D7s and a D9. I had two Daedalus class battleships and a
larger version of those (or I had two Prometheus' and a Daedalus; don't
remember), with a handful of fighter wings. I had thought to turn into the
center of the board and take on Tom's star destroyer, but 1) he was WAY far
away from me, 2) I didn't want Aaron getting opportunistic on me with shots at
my flank while my heavy beams were facing away from him, and 3) I didn't want
Jerry suddenly coming up my back end with a bunch of Klingon warships! Given
how far Aaron was from me (and that he was "stuck" in vector, while I was
flying cinematic), I turned to give Jerry a bloody nose, blow through his
formation, and off the board, to appear on the opposite end of the field
behind Tom's force. The plan went mostly as I was hoping...but
not fully. However, in some ways unexpectedly better - much to Jerry's
dismay.

I was unclear just how powerful, or not, the Klingons were, until I started
dumping railgun shots and heavy beam fire at his ships. They began to
evaporate. By turn three we were nearly interposed and between my ships and
fighters, I finished off all three of his cruisers and crippled his D9 to
almost non-functionality. I really hadn't intended on inflicting THAT
much damage, because I had planned on 'using' him to engage with Aaron, thus
preventing both of them from trying to follow me to the other side of the
board.

But man, gotta love that Asgard technology. :-D

Unless you're a Klingon.

As Jerry and I were mixing it up hard, Aaron took a couple pot shots at us,
but otherwise left us alone, turning his attentions to the BSG/SW forces
converging on his left flank. Ken and Aaron teamed up to destroy the star
destroyer (kinda ironic, that) about a turn after I had raked Jerry's ships to
nothingness. The game was then called at that point.

Since the night was still early, I got Jerry to give me a private game of Full
Sail, since in the years he's been running it I have never had an opportunity
to try my hand at it. I took a couple of US frigates while Jerry had a couple
of Brit war sloops and we went at it in a Carribean archipelago.

My inexperience with the system and rules showed, as I split my forces up to
flank Jerry while he remained in a straight as an arrow line. I did manage to
inflict some significant damage on one of his ships, but as I've come to
experience from the past few years of Flames of War gaming, halfway through
the game the tide turns (not quite literally here ;-) ), the dice gods
get fickle, and the losing side suddenly gets openings it needs to prevent a
wholly one-sided victory by the winning side. And thus the tables
turned, and Jerry all but destroyed one of my ships (the other was pretty
hurt, but not out of it yet), while I did minimal damage to him. I brought my
wounded bird up, hoping to slip around an island, recapture my lost ship (it
was now abandoned), and make good an escape. But Jerry had other plans for me
(as he remembered the rough handling his Klingons took an hour or two earlier
by my
Tau'ri ;-) ), and he swiftly sank my remaining ship.

Neat adaptation of FT to sailing ships. I liked it. :-)

The rest of the evening was catching up with old friends from previous ECCs,
and finally retiring around 1am. Just to do it all again come the morrow.
Except, the morrow would be me busy running the painting contest, running my
FT3 playtest game, and running John Lerchey's FT game (he had to pull out of
the con last minute, unfortunately, so I offered to pick up his game for him)
converted to another FT3 playtest game. Yes, Saturday was going to be a busy,
busy day....

Mk