[GZG] Re: GZG ECC X: Indy's AAR (parts 1 & 2)

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Sunday  morning came entirely too fast. 3-1/2 hours had gone by. I
needed more sleep. But I needed food more. And as there is nothing open in
downtown Lanc'ster for food on a Sunday, Jon Davis, his boys, Jerry Han, and I
went out to find a diner Jon had seen on the drive in: the Neptune Diner. It
was here that I probably had the lowest point of the weekend. We walked into a
smoke-filled restaurant, the air so heavy it was gray (I know many
gamers smoke, but most are pretty courteous about it, and while I have
allergic reactions to smoke, I can usually tolerate brief exposures, so I
don't
complain any). The hostess asked us if we wanted smoking or non-smoking.
Jon
asked for non-smoking. As she led us into the back room, one of the
patrons at the diner bar threw a comment our way "Yeah, send them to the back
where
they belong!". Totally uncalled for. :-[  If only we had real gauss
rifles.... Anyway, we went to the back and had the whole place to ourselves.
And had a pretty decent meal. Our waitress chatted with us a while,
complaining about the conditions of the streets. She said that the mayor was
claiming "full responsibility", and wondered rhetorically if he would then
take responsibility for her car's front end alignment repair. Heheh. Jon D
made a joke about not seeing the Amish snowplows out this weekend, which
cracked our waitress up to no end.

After breakfast, back to the hotel. Check out and back to the gaming!
:-)

Today I ran part two of my alternate timeline scenarios. Today it was to be an
FMAS game. The remaining survivors from the Delafield (which had suffered
massive damage during the time travel transit) had fought their way from Italy
(teaming up with a company of Rangers near Cistern di Latina) to Germany.
Their remaining numbers were few. 4 NAC Marines (Martin Connell), 3 Power
Armour troopers (Steve Barosi), and 6 US Rangers (Mike Hudak) entered
a bombed-out section of Berlin. Their goal: to get to a certain building
on
the map where a lab had been created to generate high-tech weapons for
the German army. To that end they had a couple of very small tac nukes to
obliterate the lab (but not enough to cause wide-scale destruction of
the city). An ad hoc defense was assembled by the local lab commander that
consisted of 4 NSL panzergrenadiers (the remaining survivors from their own
crash, run by John Lerchey), 7 Fallschirmjagers armed with the latest weapons
that the lab had turned out (and given the materials the lab had to work with,
these weapons could either fail or Do Bad Things on any roll of
'1'; these were run by John-Mark Davis), and two standard 1944 panzers:
a Pz IV H and a Pz VI "Tiger" (run by Tom McCarthy).

The battlefield was a 4'x'4' city section. The NAC and US Rangers mostly
pushed down one flank with most of the buildings semi-intact. The NSL
panzergrens were on the far side of the table setting up defensive perimeters,
while the fallschirmjagers rushed forward to directly engage the Rangers and
Marines. The power armour dudes moved down the middle of the board with the
goal of getting to the lab first. The panzers appeared on turn two. The Tiger
appeared just in time to sight a PA trooper poking his head out from behind a
shattered wall. The commander fired the big
88...and
HIT the PA trooper! Square in the forehead. Fortunately for the trooper, the
shot was non-damaging to the suit, but he got knocked onto his ass. He
got back up again and the two of them proceeded to exchange fire for a while.

In the meantime another PA trooper found the Pz IV and attacked it. Realizing
his gun was really a small arms weapon, he entered
hand-to-hand
close combat with the tank! Now, you would expect the PA dude to tear the tank
apart like a hot knife through butter, but the tank commander and driver
jinked the tank back and forth enough that the trooper couldn't get a good
hold. At one point the trooper attempted to climb up onto the tank in order to
rip off the turret, but the panzer suddenly jinked in such a way that the
trooper was thrown to the ground, his suit taking damage. The panzer commander
attempted to run over the trooper, but the trooper managed to always deflect
the tank, and at a couple points damaged the thing while doing so.

While that was all going on, the Rangers and NAC Marines were embroiled in a
battle with the Fallschirmjagers. While out-numbered, and in some points
in
the wide open, they were holding their own by delaying the US/NAC forces
from pushing forward. I don't think John-Mark really appreciated the
role he was playing in the game. While most of his guys ended up being killed,
he bought John Lerchey's panzergrenadiers time to get into position (although
it turned out that his position wasn't always supportive of the battle at the
far end of the table, due to intervening terrain).

John Lerchey eventually got his heavy plasma gun trooper into a position where
it could support the tanks against the power armoured troopers. And as the one
PA trooper with a small tac nuke ran for the lab, John's man blasted him
repeatedly. Didn't quite kill the PA trooper, but brought him to his knees
right in the lab, unable to do ANYthing (he had Wounds and Stress galore, so
much that he couldn't even activate!). The other two PA troopers decided it
was time to go help their comrade and set off the nuke (the PA trooper in HTH
combat with the Pz IV moved to leave, and the Pz IV moved to
stop him - but by fortuitous chance Steve rolled extra well and the
panzer was completely disabled!). John's plasma man stood his ground and
blasted each of them hard. The PA trooper who had been in HTH with the panzer
took a hard hit as he rushed into HTH combat with the plasma gunner. He was
too far away to get the assault going, and that had allowed the plasma gunner
to fry the PA trooper a bit ahead of time.

The Tiger (damaged) moved up to throw another 88 shell into the unmoving PA
trooper at the lab entrance, but Martin's one NAC Marine with its own heavy
plasma gun (and with ONLY three shots remaining!) fired a full spread of
damage at the Tiger in the space of two turns. The first shot missed. The
second two actually hit, the last shot killing the Tiger before it could
unleash its own hell shot.

It was now the next turn. There were two PA troopers left, both badly wounded
(2 out of 3 wounds taken). The Fallschirmjagers were all but destroyed (one or
two had started to pull back from engagement with the Rangers). Half the
Rangers were dead, most of the rest wounded. I think half of the NAC Marines
were dead or wounded as well. The NSL panzergrenadiers were the only ones
unharmed by any combat. It was initiative time. The only thing that stood
between the lab and the PA troopers at this very moment was the NSL plasma
gunner. One PA trooper was in close combat range and ready to
throw a punch. The die were rolled. The NAC/US side won initiative!

But the fat lady hadn't sung yet. Could Steve's PA trooper shake off the
stress that he was feeling about charging headlong into plasma shots, or
would he freeze in his tracks, Shaken? He, a Veteran/2 guy, was badly
wounded (had taken two Wounds, which equal four stress points) and was
seriously stressed (had two additional Stress chits). He needed to roll HIGHER
than an 8 in order to activate successfully and enter close combat with the
plasma gunner. If he failed, the plasma gunner would most likely back up a few
steps and lay waste to both of the remaining PA troopers.

Steve rolled. The group held their breaths. The die spun a little....a
9!

----------------------------

Sgt Allan Bowden shook off the effects from the last the plasma gun volley,
knowing that it was ALL on his shoulders now. He swung his arm, crushing
through the chest plate of the Nazi before him. Dropping exhaustedly to the
ground beside the now lifeless Nazi, he saw his squad commander, Colonel
William Reed, rush forward to the downed but still alive Lt Tony Parris. Small
arms fire from the other three Nazi panzergrenadiers behind him played on his
suit, but he had no thoughts for them. His focus was all on Col Reed. He
prayed. He saw two heavily armed figures rise from a hidden door under the
rubble. They trained their large plasma guns on Colonel Reed's form as Reed
took the tac nuke from Parris, manipulate it, and...

...Sgt Parris continued prepping his PA suit next to Colonel Reed. Those
damned FSE were NOT going to take the Bradley colony and hold it for
long -
not if the 136th Gloucestershire Regiment had anything to say about it!
Briefly, an unbidden thought came to his mind, of an ancestor who fought with
the 751st Tank Battalion in Italy, on Earth, back during World War II. He
wondered for a split moment what war might have been like back then, with
their version of power armored troops, the tankers. Then he scowled, shook his
head and went back to prepping his suit. There would be enough fighting ahead
of him in this time that he didn't need to start worrying about the damned
past. Leave that for the historians to ponder.