From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 09:24:11 -0500
Subject: Indy's ECC VI After Con Report (ACR) (nice and long)
Indy's After Con Report
An unusually arduous drive from Baltimore to Lancaster got me there with
barely an hour and change to spare before the con officially began. I unloaded
and distributed prizes (one of my functions for the con is getting the prizes
for the various events; the 25mm Slammers that were distributed this weekend
were very well received) and joined in Stuart Murray's famous Friday Night
Cinegrunt game. In the past, Stuart's games have attained Legendary Fun status
due to the scenarios he's run and the characters he's had in the scenarios for
the players
to play. Jon Davis particularly gets into them. ;-)
This year Stuart ran a Boar War/Zulu era British/Pathanes action
called "The Taxman Cometh." I got to run two units: the 10th Bengals (serious
cavalry lancer dudes, but no "characters") and The Great White Hunter and
attached group of wannabe hunters, dog Blinkey, employer ("nefarious"
character played by Laserlight), and an entourage of African porters. The 10th
Bengals were to do regular cavalry work with the rest of the British forces.
The Great White Hunter's "orders" were to track, kill, and take back a rather
vicious tiger. Our general disposition: if it moves, shoot it; if it doesn't
move, shoot it and mount it. Alas, the only thing near us were sheep. All of
us got a chance to play the Pathanes as well (as GM Stuart was the director;
we played all the roles for the show). It was fun, AND it allowed everyone to
participate and be involved, instead of waiting for their corner of the world
to get its turn to do something (very effective, this method of GMing).
The game progressed with the multiple and various characters (played by such
notorious notables as Adrian Johnson, Laserlight, and David Raynes; Aaron
Teske's "character" really didn't do much) interacting with glee with the
Panthanes (who would appear now and again, take hostages, mules, kill a few
Brits, and in general disappear again when the British regulars turned on
them; the 10th Bengals managed to
slaughter the Panthanes that it went up against - charging lancers are
cool!). The Great White Hunter and group, alone in their corner of the board,
wandered a little aimlessly, following sheep (the whole "sheep" thing became a
theme for some games this weekend). By the end of the game we had found the
tiger, tried to kill it, nicked it in the shoulder (getting its attention),
and then were slaughtered by it, despite Stuart's best efforts to give me
every break he could (he even allowed Blinkey to try and take out the tiger,
giving Blinkey a d12 vs the tiger's d6, and I STILL couldn't roll high!). In
that corner of the world, the tiger won. Oh, and at the same time Laserlight's
"nefarious" character and the African porters made haste for the village. When
they arrived unmolested it was learned that the nefarious character was
running a gun smuggling operation for the Pathanes and he succeeded in his
goal this game (delivered guns). Sneaky, sneaky.
Adrian was playing a British officer (the character's name I am totally
spacing on now) who was being pursued by Amelia, daughter of someone else and
was being played by Laserlight. Adrian was also playing the American newsteam
who were teleporting all over the board to catch as much of the action between
the British and the Panthanes. Amelia was captured by one Panthane raid,
forcing Adrian's British character to do his utmost to rescue her. In the end
he succeeded, and said his character dropped to his knees to propose to this
love who had been chasing him for so long. Stuart pointedly replied, "That
makes me sick. I'll make you propose. And I'll MAKE you propose." Adrian
looked at him in shock and horror as Stuart's words sunk in. Several people
readied cameras and Adrian slowly got down on his knees and played out the
role. It was hard to know who was more embarrassed, Laserlight or Adrian.
Saturday came all too early, even for a morning person such as I (then again,
staying up half the night didn't help). My day was planned as
such: play in Jon Davis' FT game, spend the afternoon doing set-up for
my evening Dirtside scenario, dealing with miscellaneous con items during the
day, dealing with the miniatures painting contest, and then running my DS
scenario. And pretty much that's how it went.
Jon's scenario involved an NSL task force escorting some resupply freighters
to a besieged world, blocked by ESU forces. The combat was fierce, and
difficult for the NSL, as many of their ships had only
Thrust-2, and the ESU came in from two sides. In the end the ESU won by
killing two freighters and by the NSL attempting to save the freighters
instead of killing ESU ships en mass (ie, our set up was not the best).
I had opted for the battleship group, forgetting that it had thrust-2
and aÂ
.p-torp. Oops. Jim Bell and Aaron Teske groaned when we learned
this. Oh well, the ships had been chosen! And the two times I got to fire The
Weapon, a "1" and a "2" were rolled. I stayed true to form. In any event,
despite being on the losing side, it was a fun scenario.
The afternoon I spent considerable time setting up the terrain, encouraging
the players to review their sealed orders that they chose earlier in the
morning ("We'll look at them at five minutes to seven,
thanks!" - then just before the game started they looked at the packets
and said "Holy crap! There's a lot of stuff here!" I warned them...), and
dealing with a drunk who came in halfway through the day to inquire about who
to contact because he had all these ideas for making better terrain than what
we were using (although when I told him that some of the terrain I had picked
up at a dollar store in Baltimore, he wanted their contact information because
he didn't think there were any dollar general stores in the Lancaster area,
and he wanted to contact them about making terrain for us).
Finally the afternoon sessions were over and it was time to tally up the votes
for the miniatures painting contest while everyone else went off to dinner.
Once everyone was back, the awards ceremony was held.
DSII - 3rd place: Mark Kochte (Brigade/Jeremy's bug tank squadron)
2nd place: Nick Caldwell (battlemech) 1st place: John Crimmins (two
battlemechs)
SG15 - 2nd place: Stuart Murray (British Colour Guard)
1st place: Mark Kochte (GZG NSL squad)
SG25 - 3rd place: John Crimmins (not sure what those were)
2nd place: Adrian Johnson (mercenary squad) 1st place: Adrian Johnson (another
infantry squad I'm forgetting the type)
FT - 1st place: Nick Caldwell (a Minbari ship)
2nd place: Aaron Newman (the First Ones ships) 1st place: Aaron Newman
(Minbari ships)
B5 ships made a clean sweep of the FT category.
The DSII entries that came in 2nd and 3rd actually had tied, but playing
impartial observer (even if it was my unit involved), I felt Nick's battlemech
was a superior paint job over my bugs. Thus Nick took second.
The 15mm Stargrunt category was a surprise, as Stuart is a far, far, FAR
better painter than yours truly (Stuart is to painting minis as a 7th dan
blackbelt is to martial arts, and while I learned a LOT from Stuart's seminar
last year, I'm just a lowly brown belt kinda guy). But it was close, and my
entry won by a mere one vote. In acknowledgement to Stuart's mastery, I let
him choice which of the prizes in the 15mm category he'd like. He snagged the
Baldur tank, happily exclaiming he now had a full platoon of them. Several
other people had mentioned possibly submitting their 15s for the category, but
opted not to in
the end. Well, they should have - they might have come in at a fair
standing, and there was a third place prizeÂ
In agreement with (and thanks to) Tony of Brigade, the first place finisher
for the Full Thrust entries would have the new Brigade SDN ship named after
him. Congratulations to Aaron Newman for his very VERY nice Minbari ship
squadron!
Quick side note about our vendors. Bill Spring from B.R.Snasis was once again
in attendance, and Carl Scheu came as Starmats Plus, selling star mats and
minis galore. I bought a set of GROPOS tanks from Carl as well as some unknown
DSII toy tanks and VTOLs. From Bill I picked up a *lot* of GHQ WWII German and
Soviet tanks in preparation for my proposed battle of Kursk scenario for ECC
VII. As usual, I spent too much. But in the long run...
The evening sessions then began. My scenario was called "Battle for Gramicci
Pass", a fairly large Dirtside scenario using sealed orders. Ahead of time I
had set the board up and taken a "satellite" photograph for the players to
have ahead of time. Each side also had chosen one set of sealed orders (there
were 9 for each side). Some orders were complimentary, some had nothing to do
with each other. It was all the luck of the draw. In any event, the scenario
pitted a UNSC force against an ESU force on an outrim colony planet (that was
being beset by the ESU looking for new systems to absorb; the UNSC Colonial
Armed
Forces were called in to help defend the colony planet - I guess we all
can't get along, even on one planet). The ESU orders were to identify
any/all Size Class 4 or 5 vehicles that the UNSC might be fielding, as
their intel suggested that the UNSC had some new large tank units in play. The
ESU had to get an infantry squad next to a UNSC size 4 or 5 tank for two turns
(doing nothing else but gathering intelligence), then depart with the
knowledge gained. The UNSC's task was to locate two tactical nuclear ballistic
missiles that the ESU were supposedly secretly moving into the Pass (this time
around they weren't). The scenario devolved quickly into a meeting engagement
as the ESU was
unable to get infantry near any of the damaged/destroyed size class 4
tanks the UNSC had along, and the UNSC could not locate any missiles. In the
mean time, however, carnage was done to both sides, and both sides nearly met
their withdrawal conditions before the game was called
at 1am, 4 turns and 4-1/2 hours after it started. It was fun to ref;
it seemed fun for the players as well. Due to the number of unchosen "sealed
orders", I plan on running this scenario for at least a few more upcoming
ECCs.
During the evening session Rick Rutherford (another master painter) held a
painting seminar, very similar to Stuart's seminar last year. Nick Caldwell's
wife had accompanied him for the weekend, but not being a gamer, either
observed or did other things. However, for the painting seminar, she tried her
hand at that, never having painted before. In the end Nick showed me several
of the minis she had painted up. You know, it is disgusting when a complete
novice and newbie comes along and cranks out painted minis that look almost as
good as Stuart's or Rick's. I was ready to sell my minis right then and there
(hopefully
she won't enter the painting contest next year - on the other hand,
hope she does!)
After packing things up, Saturday night ended later than even Friday night,
and Sunday morning came even earlier than Saturday morning had.
Today I was running "The Battle for Kaua`i" - an AquaThrust scenario
mixing Full Thrust and enhanced rules from the AquaZone website. The scenario
was inspired by a visit to the Hawai`ian Islands I had the opportunity to have
late last summer, and the premise was that the government of Hawai`i had opted
to cede from the NAC immediately after the FCT. Given all the "breakaway NAC
groups" that people have come up with over the years, and considering how the
Hawai`ian people view the Mainlanders, this breakaway group, the Hawai`ian
Free State, was not at all inconceivable (though I don't necessarily agree
they would join the OUDF, either, but that's neither here nor there). This
particular scenario, based in the waters just off of the island of Kaua`i,
pitted a fleet of NAC submarines against a collection of Hawai`ian "defector"
submarines. There were two undersea city-colonies near the Hawai`ian
side of the board (there was a restriction that any weapon fire or torpedo
that damaged either city, the side that fired the weapon or torpedo would
automatically lose; also, any unguided torpedoes that came within 12 mu of a
city would automatically target the city in lieu of anything else, keeping
these areas potentially free of much combat). As the Hawai`ians were part of
the NAC, some subs were the same on both sides. The NAC, however, was fielding
a new sub (which proved less than very effective), and the Hawai`ians were
also fielding a new submarine (but never really got the chance to use the
weapons she mounted due to the tactics the NAC performed in keeping one of the
undersea cities in the Hawai`ian line of fire;).
There were 7 hidden mines in the playing field: 2 secretly noted by the
Hawai`ian players, 2 noted by the NAC, and 3 that the GM (me!) had secretedly
noted earlier. The NAC started spread out on their side, moving relatively
fast, while the Hawai`ians stayed bunched up in one corner, moving slow. The
NAC opted to swing around the far side of the field and come in at the
Hawai`ians from the direction of the city near the other corner by the
Hawai`ians. Unfortunately for the NAC, they
found two of the GM-hidden mines (narrowly missing the third) and both
of the Hawai`ian hidden mines. While single no ship was destroyed by the
mines, a couple were seriously damaged by running through two of the mines,
enough that later torpedo exchanges savaged them more and contributed to their
eventual death (one from torpedo fire, one from loss of engine control and
slamming into an undersea cliff).
As the NAC closed with the Hawai`ians, torpedoes erupted in the water.
The rules need tweaking, especially the sensor and lock-on rules, but
everyone managed to work through them and counter-measures began to be
fired off from targeted subs. While only a few subs died, a number were
damaged, or would eventually be damaged if more torpedo exchanges were
made as most counter-measures were fired off early on. But the weekend
was drawing to an end, so the game was called after nearly 10 turns. While it
seemed that each side was still relatively evenly matched, it was a victory
for the Hawai`ians as they had only lost a sub or two (at least one small one)
while the NAC had lost three or four large ones. Most subs were either out of
torpedoes or had only a couple left to
fire. The Hawai`ians also had more direct-fire weaponry than the NAC
did in this case (the "new" NAC subs had absolutely no direct fire weaponry
available to them). As prizes for the participants, I gave
them each either fossilized Miocene-era shark teeth (to the Hawai`ian
winners) or fossilized manta ray teeth, all of which I found at a place called
Brownie's Beach in Maryland.
After that, those of us who remained cleaned up the room and left for home.
With one last look around the now bare room, memories of the weekend flooding
through me, I shut off the lights and stepped out the door into a brisk wind.
Next year won't come soon enough.