JesterCon 2001 a brief report

G'Day

Yesterday two friends (Nathan Rolfe (list member) and John Langiu (not a

list member)) and I travelled to Launceston (a city in Northern Tasmania) to
attend the local convention, JesterCon 2001, to put on a demonstration game of
Dirtside 2. The con was a small affair and Saturday was mostly roleplay
sessions but we did have interested persons come by and ask questions.

The game was played out on a 6' by 8' area, and was designed to be played on
day, after all this was a demo game. I ran the NSL defenders and Nathan
and John ran the ESU attackers, we used the attack/defence game set up
given in the rulebook, I set up with approximately 10 000 points of troops in
defensive positions and John began the attack with the ESU recon element
(approx 5000 points), it's appears the ESU doctrine was recon via suicide as
the ESU troops threw themselves on the prepared NSL positions, although the
"Eurie" attack VTOLs inflicted heavy losses on the NSL.

After the recon troops came the advance guard run by Nathan (approx 10 000
points), but the NSL lines were bolstered by the arrival of the reaction

force (approx 12 000 points), and over the next few turns a ferocious battle
developed, centred on a hill on the front of the NSL lines. The hill was
defended by a platoon of panzer grenadiers and the fight consumed the hill's
defenders and 8 tanks, 5 apcs and 14 stands of infantry belonging to the ESU
attackers. It also included the NSL artillery being called down on their own
positions as the ESU infantry attacked, this broke the momentum of the initial
ESU thrust.

The day finished at the end of turn 5 with the NSL Divisional reserve (approx
12 000 points, including two platoons of the hover variant of the Deimos tank)
and ESU main body (approx 35 000 points) arriving on the tabletop, when we
discussed the game on Friday afternoon I suggested the

ESU main body be broken into 10 000 to 15 000 point chunks but John displayed
what some might say was an unnatural urge to see 35 000 points of the ESU
charge across the table and brought it all on at once (understandable
considering the amount of time he had invested in painting his miniatures).

It was time to pack up and thank our hosts for putting up with us. The NSL
defenders still held the objectives, but the ESU had it's 35 000 point main
body raring to go. John, Nathan and I all agree we would like to continue the
game at a later date and play a further three turns. But I think we will
probably go back to the 'chunks' for the ESU main body, with 1 chunk on the
table and the rest still off the board arriving on the table in subsequent
turns.

Nathan and I are writing up a detailed after action report, which will be
posted to my website when it's finished.