From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 12:19:33 -0500
Subject: [GZG] GZG ECC XIII: AAR
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lWell, back once
again from the grind of ECC and to the relaxing world of
work. :-D
This year, our 13th year, marked a location change due to unforeseen
circumstances (that really we all should have seen some indication of) with
the Hotel Brunswick back in Oct 2009. It was LATE in the game for us to be
scouting out new locales, but we managed to do so, and found the Owego
Treadway in Owego, NY, to be very accommodating.
Going to Owego now meant my travel would be more than 2x as it was to the
Brunswick in Lancaster, but I reminded myself, a fair number of regular
attendees to ECC over the years have traveled as far as I would be now or
further. If they can do it, I can suck it up, too (but then again, I'm
transporting all the prizes; if it gets too far away, the prizes won't make
it to the con ;-) ). This move to Owego, we knew, would cause a drop in
attendance, with most of the people in the MD/VA area not making the
drive
(they were spoiled by the shorter drive to Lancaster, too ;-) ). Of
course, the economy hadn't been helping in that regards, either.
Two days before ECC was to commence, a Nor'easter (being called a snowicane
due to the near hurricane force winds it was supposed to have at times)
slammed into northeastern Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and much of New
Jersey. Having already weathered "snowpocalypse" in December and the
one-two
punch "snowmageddon" in early/mid-Feb, I was well-braced for slow
travel. I loaded my snowshoes and accompanying gear into the car along with my
con stuff. Friday I got on the road about 11am, stopping briefly at a hobby
shop along the way to pick up some super glue.
The drive up was pleasantly nice. Not much traffic, roads were mostly open.
Winds were extremely strong, and twice I was buffeted into the lane to my
right. Fortunately, the "not much traffic" meant very few people on the
highways, and little danger of my actually hitting someone. On the other
hand, halfway through the mountains I saw a semi-tractor-trailer rig had
been blown off of the highway and into the median strip, leaving a deep gouge
of mud and tire tracks easily 3 truck & trailer lengths long before coming to
a stop. Somehow the driver managed to keep his rig upright.
Traveling through the mountains in central Pennsylvania, sometimes the
wind-driven snows covered the left lane for half a mile or more, but
always at least one lane was open. So, while not always at highway speeds, I
was never going slower than 40 mph for any stretch, probably averaging more
like
50 in the mountains. Once I was up past the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton
region, the roads opened up, the winds died down, and...damn, the sun came
out! I decided to take a break along the way and did a few geocaches (but
actually only found two, as the other two I was going to try for were buried
in
2+
feet of snow). With these stops I managed to get to the hotel by a little
after 5pm.
After I checked into my room (and called John and Yerin to let them know where
we were staying), I hustled over to the con room. Found a dozen people there,
milling about or setting up for the evening games. I wanted to get something
to eat before the festivities really kicked underway, and hiked down the road
5 minutes to some food (plenty of food options within a
5-10
minute walk of the hotel). The roads were remarkably clear, despite the storm
that blew through not 24 hours before, and there was a nice shoulder to walk
along.
Back at the con room I was to play in Jon Davis' "Battle for Cormorant
Moon", an FT Federation/Klingon battle. It was mostly straight up
fighting, but you had to stay within a certain range of the planet in order to
gain
points for your side. The Klingons (of which I was one - hehehe) closed
in quickly with the moon while the Feddies held back some. This netted us some
early lead in points, which helped in the end.
There were six ships (Federation cruiser and Klingon D7) to each side. We
battled, chased each other around Cormorant, and battled some more. At the end
of 10 turns, there were three damaged Klingons and two or three very damaged
Federation cruisers. With the early lead in points, the Klingons won.
Saturday morning came all too early. A group of us stumbled our way up to the
Blue Collar Diner for breakfast. It was populated with regular blue collar
types, a couple of whom stared at us funny ("damn city slickers"). But we got
no trouble, had a good breakfast, and back to the con.
That morning I was originally going to be in Jon Davis' Car Wars-style
battle arena game, but I decided to help John Lerchey fill out his
late-submitted FT game (plus I wanted another just straight up FT game
to
play). His was an interesting one not oft-seen. First, vector movement,
and
second, players had to build fleets using no more than 250 NPV - and
could have no more than ONE destroyer, and nothing larger. This would force
players to put together fleets using frigates and smaller. Finally, a game
where the largest thing on the board MIGHT be a destroyer! I decided to have
all kinds of fun with this and took two Kra'Vak Swift War Killers for 238 pts.
My opposite numbers had a fleet of NSL frigates and a squadron of NAC
frigates. Oh, and there was a rather sizeable asteroid debris field we were
flying about in - in vector! :-D
I'd never flown K'V in vector before, so it was interesting to get a feel for
their maneuverability. But despite my better maneuverability, my skills
with nailing ships with K-2s proved...less than adequate. By turn 4 or 5
both of my ships were destroyed by combined fleet human firepower (class 2s
can reach out and smack just as I'm getting into better range bands for the
K-guns). I destroyed no one, but had a fun time nevertheless. I spent
the rest of the morning organizing the miniatures painting contest.
Saturday afternoon I ran a playtest game of FT3, stress testing the
fighter/small targets mechanic. I based the game in the Battlestar
Galactica universe (plenty of 'small targets' there!!). Unfortunately, there
was some confusion on each side about how certain mechanics actually did work,
which may or may not have muddied the playtest results. But each side did get
a feel for things and gave me some good feedback on various mechanics we're
working on.
As the afternoon session came to a close, I tallied up the votes for the
miniatures painting contest while Jerry went out and got a pizza for us to
split. Then Jon and I did our mid-con speeches and awarded the winners
of the contest their prizes. Then, because Jon Tuffley had so graciously sent
extra prizes to us over and above his usual box, in honor and celebration of
GZG's 25th anniversary, we had a mini-raffle of sorts with the con
attendees: Jon pulled names out of a box and we had them come up and select
a prize. This went on until everyone got something. :-) So, combined
with
our door prizes, no one went home empty-handed. And a few people got
some
reinforcements to their space fleets or ground units. ;-)
The evening games then kicked off. I was in on Tomb's StarGate FMA(ish)
game, playing a Russian Colonel. It was a great game, well-run, and very
StarGate cinematic (except that the Jaffa seemed to have better armor in the
game than on tv :-D ). Jon Davis, running two characters, the
Canadian/American rescue team Colonel and a Russian soldier who was part
of my team, was in awesome form when doing the role of the Russian soldier. He
played it to the hilt, and so well that when he fired at a Goa'uld and watched
the bullet stop and drop a foot from the Goa'uld, he burst out (in complete
Russian accent) with a "What the f**k!? I rolled a 12! [on a d12] Russian
bullet blow head off!!" (note: Jon admitted later he has only seen a few
episodes of StarGate, so this truly did take him by surprise). The rest of us
at the table and nearby observing fell out of our seats laughing. I was
concerned Yerin was going to pass out she was turning so red with laughter.
In the end of the game, we managed to stop the Goa'uld forces from obtaining
whatever technology they were going to grab, but somehow the Goa'uld managed
to activate something (or it was from the explosive package we tossed into
the pyramid) that would turn the world - and eventually the solar system
-
into a black hole. While the (cinematic) black hole was forming and sucking
everything into it, we all fled. Unfortunately, the explosives expert and
myself were the closest to the 'special ripple effects', and while we could
have both made it through the gate, the gate would not shut down in time. One
of us had to stay and shut the gate down before the black hole grabbed hold of
the worm hole. And while I should have gone through and ordered the explosives
expert to take care of it (and thus be able to submit a proper
report), paperwork wasn't on my mind (or was it? ;-) ). I ordered the
explosives expert to get through the gate and then I destroyed the DHD just as
the black hole destroyed me.
At least I closed the gate, saving my comrades, and my fellow SG teams with
their Canadian bullets.
Sunday morning came all too quickly.
Breakfast was in the hotel this time. And it proved 1) to be good food, and 2)
to be cheaper than the diner from the day before. Hmmmm...
Sunday morning I ran a second FT3 playtest game, stress testing other aspects
of the rules. It was a WW2 naval combat game in which I gave each person two
WW2 battleships. The battleships were designed in FT terms along the stats of
the real battleships, which meant that pairs of ships may not
have been well-matched to fight other pairs of ships. I warned the
players of the imbalance ahead of time so they would not go into combat
thinking they may have an even chance at it all. But since this was mostly a
"roll a bucket load of dice, destroy things, and have fun" game, people were
pretty okay with how things went.
As the end of the session drew nigh, we decided to call it (partly because the
Yamato hadn't been more than scratched yet, and could take on any two or three
battleships still on the board with ease, and partly because people were
getting tired and had long drives ahead of them). At this point two ships (the
King George and the Jean Bart) were sunk, a number of others badly damaged,
and a handful lightly damaged. And people got to roll lots of dice, and blow
things up (at least via threshold checks, since each
battleship had 5-6 hull rows). Steve Barosi had some miserable threshold
checks on the Littorio. Only moderately damaged, he had lost 80% of his
systems to thresholds and wasn't doing much other than be a fire magnet (but
as soon as everyone understood he was no longer a threat, they left him
alone).
And that, in a long discourse nutshell, was the weekend. We wrapped things up,
packed cars, and went our various directions home.
ECC XIII is now done. All that is left are other people's AARs and the Quote
Board (when Jerry gets around to posting it).
But until then, here are a few quotes I had written down from the Sunday game: