Marcon 33 - an FT Game Report

Marcon Mini Gaming Report - by Indy

Last weekend I dropped in at Marcon for a couple days. Robin Atkin Downs
(Byron) and Fiona Avery (Reference Editor, behind-the-scenes gal) were
the B5 guests there that weekend. There was a wide variety of costumed
participants at
the con (B5, Star Trek, a good Darth Vader w/about half a dozen Storm
Troopers and a really good Han Solo to go along with them, various
fantasy-related, The
Tick and DeFleder Mouse, a few Starship Troopers (no requisite alien
bugs ;),
and a great many Medieval period outfits, partly because Melody
Apslund-Faith
was also a GoH at the con - but I digress).

In addition to a couple of Hubble presentations I made and a handful of other
panels I attended/stopped in on, I also ran a Full Thrust game. Kyle
Klinger, Dale Mazzola, and Scott Miller were at the con, and joined in on the
game, as did a couple other guys from last year. Plus a couple new people (one
a newbie to FT). The game I ran was basically Jon Davis' Cruiser Duel game.
The game was called "The New Anglian Naval Academy Cruiser Duel", and so with
the Fleet Book
being out, I gave each player a modified Vanguard-class heavy cruiser
(basically a Vanguard-II; dropped the multi-arc Class-3 batt to
single-arc,
added in another Class-1 batt and a subpack; this forced the players to
*maneuver* in order to bring their Class-3 batt to bear). The basic idea
was that each player has been training for captaincy of a cruiser, and this
was
final exam time. :-)  So, using Jon's rules, I set up the 7 ships,
distributed to the players their ship sheets, let them read over the scenario
rules and
info to fly their newly-designed ships (eg, get used to the fact they
were
going to be working in a 6-arc enviroment and not a 4-arc one), then let
them go at it.

In order to score points, players had to chose targets each turn and fire as
many weapons they could bring to bear. For every die they rolled of *beam*
fire (the subpack was 'free' damage; the players got no points for firing
them, but they could damage enemy ships), the players in question got 1 pt to
their cumulative score. At the end of turn 10, all surviving ships could tally
up their remaining damage boxes, divide it by two, and add the final number to
their accumulated score.

Unfortunately I didn't keep detailed notes as to the turn-by-turn
blow-by-blow
because I was too busy moderating and explaining occassionally stuff to
onlookers who stopped by. But 2 hours after it started 2 ships were *gone*,
and 5 remained. It was turn 10. One ship scooted away, only moderately
damaged. The rest were hurting pretty badly. The average speed was in the
upper-teens/
lower-20s, but the newbie was flashing about the board around speed 30.
And with a Thrust rating of 6, he managed to keep himself on the board with
nary a problem.

Once the turn 10 smoke cleared, the points were tallied. Dale Mazzola came in
first, with Scott Miller right behind him. The newbie, Barry Muhilville,
pulled out third, with the remaining two players (Kyle among them) coming in
close behind in 4th and 5th places.

Unfortunately, due to our ever-so-speedy postal service, the prizes that
KR had generously sent out to me for this scenario had not arrived before I
left (even though he sent them out a week before as priority mail). When I
returned on Tuesday I found the prizes sitting in my mailbox. So I packed them
up and sent them off to the scenario winners. They should arrive any day now
(I hope; hey Kyle, check with Dale and Scott, lemme know when they get 'em).

Mk

> Marcon Mini Gaming Report - by Indy

I spoke to him about messin' with my girl.  ;-)

Mk