[GZG] GZG ECC XII AARs for Saturday & Sunday

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promised, the AARs from the rest of the weekend. Details have been left fuzzy
because a lot of this was playtesting games. But the general gist is
there. :-)

Saturday was the long day for me. In the morning I fielded entries for the
miniatures painting contest. In the afternoon I was running an FT3 playtest
using SFB-inspired ships (Klingons, Lyrans, Hydrans, Kzinti and ISC).
Saturday evening I was pinch-GMing for John Lerchey his FT game, but
using the FT3 playtest rules.

The morning session was relatively quiet, as all I did was remind people about
the painting contest and collect entries. I also spent some time wandering
between tables taking photos.

Then it was lunch, and then the afternoon hit. During the afternoon session
people were to take a little time out to go check out the entries for the
minis contest and vote. I would tally up the votes during dinner and present
the awards during the post-dinner/pre-evening gathering of the day.

But first, I had a playtest game to run...

This SFB-inspired game was set to take place after the General War, when
the ISC imposed peace upon the warring nations. I set up an encounter between
the Kzinti (a space control ship) and a Lyran fleet to occur near the
Lyran/Kzinti/Klingon border. The Klingons got word of the skirmish and
sent out a heavy squadron to 'quell' the rabble (or to just get in some target
practice). A small Hydran force happened to be making its way across Lyran
space and stumbled upon the hapless Kzinti SCS facing down two fleets of
Lyrans. At about this same time the ISC showed up to put a stop to it all.

The players were all assigned (in most cases by choice) fleets and the new
playtest rules explained (and explained that these were **playtest**, and
weren't necessarily going to *be* the FT3 rules; feedback desired after the
game!).

The game unfolded not quite how it went last time I played it. The ISC rolled
in and focused every living plasma bolt and phaser and PPG (grazer)
on the Klingons - who basically evaporated in one or two turns.

Meanwhile in the opposite sector of the board, the Kzinti SCS was taking a bit
of a beating, but managed to dump out a ton of heavy missiles, drones,
and chaff - so much that it basically wiped out one of the two Lyran
forces. The other Lyrans had started to work on the Hydrans, but the Hydrans
got some very very very good beam rerolls and began gutting the remaining
Hydrans. The surviving Lyrans departed post-haste, leaving the ISC to
take on the Kzinti and Hydrans.

The game was called at this point, as the Kzinti and Hydrans did not want to
face down a fresh ISC force with rechargeable plasmas (esp since the Kzinti
had mostly used up their store of heavy missiles - drones).

Feedback on the playtest rules was pretty favorable overall. I'll be writing
up a summary for the playtest list later, as soon as time permits (and as
soon as I get some promised feedback from the players ;-) ).

After the game ended I went around to remind people to vote. Then at 6p went
to collect the ballots.

The way voting worked, all entries on the table had a designated
scale/type
and number. No names associated with them, so you were voting on
(for/against) the minis, not the person. This was, in my best judgement,
the best way to garner fairest voting. I abstain from entering any votes
unless
there was clear-cut tie that needed resolving, then I would input my
opinion.

And we had a lot of VERY good entries in the contest this year for people to
vote on! However, as I tallied up the votes, in all but one category were the
first place winners apparent (the 2nd and 3rd place winners were almost always
within a few points of each other, though). In the 15mm category, however, the
1st, 2nd and 3rd places were extremely close! In the end it was a 0.5 point
difference between first and second place, and a 2 pt difference between 2nd
and 3rd. The winners were:

Full Thrust
1st - Steve Barosi
2nd - Noam Izenberg
3rd - Stuart Murray

StarGrunt 25mm
1st - Mark Kinsey
2nd - Aaron Newman
3rd - Martin Connell

StarGrunt 15mm
1st - Martin Connell
2nd - Erik Kochte
3rd - Mark Kinsey

Dirtside 6mm
1st - Martin Connell
2nd - Ken Wang
3rd - Noam Izenberg

Congrats to all the winners!

During the awards ceremony and general announcements, I also had the
opportunity to recognize the remaining few people who have made it to all 12
of the ECCs to date. There are now four of us:

Mark 'Indy' Kochte Jon Davis Stuart Murray Jim Bell

I happened to have on hand 3 12" dinosaurs that I presented to the other three
"oldsters" (since I was presenting, I didn't have to give me one; however, a
friend of mine at home, hearing of this little award I gave to
Jon, Stuart and Jim, went out and purchased a small dinosaur for me -
ha.
ha. ha.)

The group broke up into their evening games. As mentioned earlier, John
Lerchey was unable attend, so I took over his "Emergence" FT game. Tried to
turn it into an FT3 playtest as well, but that didn't work out too well, as
the way the game unfolded, it was nigh impossible to really *test* any of
the FT3 system against the FT2/FB stuff.. But more on that later.

The game was, in a nutshell, a warp point assault on a pirate base. In
John's universe, it was his NRA out to remove a giant pirate-y thorn
from
their side by doing a long-range hyperjump into the system where the
pirates
were hiding out. Doing short-range (few light-years) jumps you can pop
in
where ever you want in-system pretty much, but if you are doing
long-range
jumping (many light-years), you need to use "Beaumont Points". Your
entry into the system wrt the BPs would be determined by your entering
sublight speed (if you were going slow enough, you'd enter pretty much ontop
of the BP, but if you were going fairly fast, you would scatter). This was
explained to the non-pirate side (which I determined would be NAC, since
I know nothing of the NRA). The NAC players decided they did not want to
scatter, and set their ships to enter at low speed. I didn't know enough about
the scenario to persuade them otherwise.

Also, the ships enter one per turn per BP. There were three BPs in the system
near the asteroid belt where the pirates base lay. So the NAC would
only be getting 3 ships/turn in-system.

Oh! And the turn you enter the system, your shields are down, your firecons
are down, your engines aren't working - i.e., you're a floating hulk
until your power recycles.

The pirates set up three squadrons near the BPs, one at each. And waited. The
other three BPs were situated closer to the asteroid belt.

The pirates also had to get out of system at LEAST 12-18 boxes of cargo.
They had three asteroids with one docking clamp each, and four freighters at
their disposal. They could load 1 cargo point per turn, meaning in four turns
they could load a total of 12 points of cargo. Then a turn to undock, another
few turns to get out of the asteroid belt, then jump away.

The NAC began entering the BPs, and if they scattered, it was only by a few
inches. The pirates opened up with everything they had: C2s, C1s, needle
beams, and EMPs (class-II). They repeatedly *nailed* the NAC ships as
they appeared. Only the battlecruiser survived long enough to bring systems
back online and remove two pirate vessels, but by then the reinforcing
squadrons had arrived and...well, good night gracie.

The NAC were less than amused by all this. And by turn 4, all they had left
to bring in-system were destroyers, each of which would pop as soon as
it
appeared. The game was called. Basically, a very one-sided win for the
pirates, as an entire NAC task force was obliterated.

To salvage a little of the evening, Stuart suggested we each take a couple
destroyers or a single cruiser from the NRA/pirate game and do a
semi-free-for-all (which ended up being the NAC players vs the pirate
players with me tossed into the pirate ring) to test the FT3 rules I had
originally wanted to test. This went much better (though the NAC still got
their heads handed to them, they did perform much better; I got to shoot up
Jon Davis a little bit, too).

After the game I talked at length with several participants about the proposed
FT3 rules as presented. I got a lot of *good* feedback from them. Again, I'll
be presenting this to Jon and the test list later.

Sunday morning came and a few of us headed out for breakfast, only to find the
usual place closed. Jon Davis remembered an "organic" place down the block so
we went to check it out. It proved to be a fine fair.

After breakfast it was back to the con. Today Noam would be running a large
fleet encounter, also playtesting more of the FT3 rules. Unlike my games,
his would be also stress-testing the upper practical limits of FT fleet
engagements with massed amounts of small targets (missiles and fighters).
This, I think, was imminently successful. We never actually finished the
game. ;-)  I don't know how BIG it was points-wise, but it was an
NSL/FSE
battle. The FSE had one SDN, one CVA, one BDN, a light carrier (total of 15
fighter groups iirc; the NSL ended up having one or two more), several BBs,
some CAs, and more cruisers of smaller design, and destroyers and frigates.

But the NSL caused need for the table to be reinforced, by the sheer mass of
lead that made up their fleet!

The two groups closed, then salvo missiles were sent in. A little too early,
as it turned out, as the NSL were able to knock down all the ones that could
engage, but it was good for doing anti-missile practice. However, it
took a while. Turn 3 (or 4?) saw the next two waves of missiles and fighters
coming into the NSL fleet. We basically ran out of practical time to play by
this point. However, to illustrate the FT3 mechanics we did not get to, and to
discuss some other perceived vs actual play (which involved lots of good
discussion), we all worked the dice a little more before calling it a day. At
this point people needed to be getting on the road home. We were the last game
to wrap up.

All in all it was a good con. I hung out until the last of the con
participants packed up and left, then I got on the road myself. Beating the
threatened snowstorm we'd been hearing about all weekend by about an hour.
:-)

Thanks again to Jerry and Jon for letting me help run another con, and thanks
to everyone who was able to push through their schedules and make it out for
another weekend. Hopefully (fingers crossed) more of you will be able to come
next year!

Mk