GZG-WCC

Greetings, Things are going along quite well
at the WCC.   Meeting some good people,
and bringing home some prizes! Many thanks to Jon T. for his 'inducements'.

Bye for now,

I couldn't agree more. Had a great time there even though we couldn't stay as
long as we'd have liked! Next year I'd like to see the huge human v. KV battle
include other fleets besides the NAC; might give the humies more of a chance
against the KV. How did the Stargrunt game on Saturday afternoon turn out?

> At 06:07 PM 10/22/00 -0700, you wrote:

Everyone, I just got in from the con a few minutes ago. I had to say I had a
*great* time at the con, meeting folks from the list and putting faces to
names, and meeting some brand new folks. Got spanked in most of the games
I played (Wait for the quotes page. bleah. :-)), but nonetheless had
fun. The reason why, I suppose, is everyone else was there to have fun, not to
min-max/whine their way to victory. I'm hoping to have some pics up
tomorrow night on my web page, but I promise nothing. Mark, if you're talking
about the 15mm scale game Mike ran, Sean totall y won his portion, and Ted and
I came out with a tie, so the imperialist
thugs/defenders of the Federation won. If you're wondering about the
25mm humans vs bugs, the bugs won, I believe. Sorry folks, I'm beat from the
drive, so I'll post something more coher ent tomorrow. I just wanted to drop a
quick line. Oh yeah, many thanks to Ted for putting the con together, and Jon,
KR and DLS for supplying him well with prizes. I had a BLAST!

> --- Mark Reindl <mreindl@pacbell.net> wrote:

Mark,

I would like to offer my thanks to Ted for organizing the Con and to
Geo-Hex
and DLD Productions for supporting the Con. I was only able to attend on
Saturday but had a great time.

I was one of the Kra'Vak fleet commanders in the large 24000 pt game and can
only say that we Kra'Vak need to go back to piloting school. I successfully
"Klingoned" straight into an asteroid and had two (or was it three) other of
my ships bowled over by the same asteroid. I also ignored the strengths of the
railguns and closed into literal boarding range to slug it out with the sushi
(eh, humans).

It was good to hear that the afternoon Stargrunt game was called a tie. I was
one of the innocent spaceport workers who came under fire from the
oppressionist Federation forces and forced to defend himself. It was my first
time ever playing Stargrunt and found it a rather easy set of rules to grasp
(even though I had a hard time remembering which dice to use when). I never
really cared for miniature games that utilized chits BUT found this game to
use the concept very well. And I like the method for determining initiative.

As it happened, I enjoyed the rules enough to jump into the Bug Hunt game that
was put on Sat. evening on th ehuman side. This was a marvelously layed out
game with very nice terrain, and more bugs than I would have cared for. I had
to leave the game before it ended, and when I did we humans were in pretty
dire straights. Definitely to the point of making sure that there was at least
one round left in the chamber for the "final action".

All in all, had a great time and will be looking forward to a repeat
performance next year.

Kent M. McClure I heard the dawn whisper to me, "If you search, there's joy to
be found" from the dubbed version of "Never the End" Sung by Reika "Vision"
Chang in Episode 7, "Double Vision", of Bubblegum Crisis 2032 PS. The term
"Klingoned" is a term my son and I use for crashing into large obvious objects
such as asteroids and planets. It came from a comic strip that parodied Star
Trek and always had the Klingons zooming around the galaxy only to run into an
asteroid or some such thing.

> John Leary wrote:

> Mark,

Hmmm, I'd be willing to provide a sizable ESU contingent:).

> Human vs Kra'Vak, we are back to finding

A couple of observations on this. First off, the way the game was set up
really did give an advantage to the KV, not because I believe the points are
unbalanced; far from it. I've won with my KV more often than I've lost, but
much of that is due to the way that my tactics have evolved (as those who
remember the discussions some time ago about this can attest). I have,
however, also suffered some *ahem* spectacular defeats with them as well.
Overall, I'd have to say that the NAC is probably the weakest fleet to play
against the KV, since they attempt to
be the "jack-of-all-trades" fleet.  The other fleets, IMNSHO, probably
fare better against the KV due to their design philosophies. The FSE, given
time and enough missiles and fighters (which they generally have) will wear
the KV down, particularly forcing them to expend their scatterguns. Once those
are gone, kiss the KV goodbye, as they have no
other defensive systems (OK, K-1's, but even they don't get a reroll
when fired in the PD mode). Heavy fighters and lots of missiles are the way to
go with the French. The NSL, with their heavy batteries of
class-3 beams, can tear up a KV fleet in short order.  The KV need to
get into beam range before they can even think about hitting, and with
the number of class-3 beams that the NSL has, they can turn a KV fleet
to rubble in short order *if they use their admittedly limited vulnerability
to the fullest advantage they can*. The ESU are by far toughest fleet that the
KV can face. They have huge ships that can do massive amounts of damage, and
can take a pounding in return. They are
well-balanced from a fighter perspective, but don't go overboard with
them, and they have what I consider to be the two best human ships in the
game: the Vorishilev Heavy Cruiser and the Volga Super Destroyer. I'd load up
on these ship types, particularly the Volga, which pumps out the same damage
as a Tibet Light cruiser for far fewer points. Having been on both sides of a
KV v. ESU fight several times, I have a pretty good perspective on this
matchup especially.

Probably the most critical thing in the big game was the lack of maneuvering
room on the flanks, which really forced the two fleets to close with one
another head on. The KV certainly have the maneuverability advantage, but a
wider playing field would most likely have allowed for the NAC to pursue
different angles of attack that might
have kept more of them out of those firing arcs for the K-6 guns.
Outmaneuvering your opponent should be the key to winning a battle, not
necessarily lucky die rolls (although they certainly don't hurt, just ask the
poor crew of my Vorishilev that suffered six consecutive rolls of '6' from my
opponent from a single SV beam:). Guess I'll drop down off the soapbox and use
it for cover as people pick apart what I've said
:)

Hello Everyone: Went and picked up a bunch of different ships for the ESU,
FSE, NSL today. B y
the next GZG-WCC I will have all four of the human fleets represented
fairly well. I also am going to take and redo the palying area so there will
be room to manuever. There is also going to be a twist to the BIG game next
year. Oh, and to the person who mutter something about wheres the big game the
number of points next year will be 30,000 total.

John W. Fox

> John Leary wrote: