PentaCon XII Results

Here's the results from running five games at PentaCon this year...

*Friday
- Slug Fest '96 (skilled) using macro ships
DESC: Individual ships battle for sole survivor. RESULTS: No show.:( Major
bummer! Next year myself and some friends plan to bring our own large scale
ships to help gather interest. I think players might be apprehensive about
bringing their own models for this event.

*Saturday
- Helm: Full Thrust! (novice)
DESC: Fleet engagement with 4-5 ships per player of varying types.
RESULTS: Full attendance. Everything went well. Had one or two return players
from last year. Several new players enjoyed their first experience with FT and
went out to buy a copy of the game afterwards.

- Fire in the Sky (intermediate)
DESC: Planetary invasion scenario. RESULTS: Full attendance. Invasion force
played a more defensive posture and did not send any transports into planet's
atmosphere. Next time I will try to place this game in a Friday night slot
since they are 5 hours long vs. the normal 4 hour slots. With more time, the
attackers might have successfully landed some transports. I also plan to give
the attackers slightly higher starting velocities to prod them forward a bit.

*Sunday
- Helm: Full Thrust! (novice)
DESC: Fleet engagement with 4-5 ships per player of varying types.
RESULTS: Full attendance. Everything went well as the one from Saturday and
had some players from Sat play it again.

- Dark Star (intermediate)
DESC: Based on the movie "Dark Star" by John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon. Earth
forces send a battlegroup to investigate the disappearance of the scout ship
Dark Star. They discover a large (somewhat uninhabited)planet that has a 1%
chance of going unstable in the next 10 million years. They start to complete
the Dark Star's mission of vaporizing the planet with Exponential
Thermostellar bombs to make way for colonization ships. As the attack starts,
the Earth forces encounter some very p.o.'d aliens. The alien defenders have
excellent beam weapon technology while the Earth forces have a heavy allotment
of missile weapons.
RESULTS: The game started late since I mistook the start time by 1/2
hour. Oops! my bad!:( Once the game started it was great, in fact it ran
excellent. 8) Earth forces took heavy losses mainly due to the planets gravity
well making maneuvering difficult. The alien defenders successfully stopped
all missiles(bombs with booster assist) from nuking the planet. If the Earth
forces used their battle dreadnought with the Futik Cannon to clear a path for
the missiles, things might have turned out differently. Adding the humor
element to the game really created quite a few laughs making the last game
session of the Con a memorable one. Everyone seem to
really enjoy the game and asked if we would be back next year - most
definitely!

DS Highlights: An Earth force missile corvette passes into planet's gravity
well during movement phase. Gravity randomly knocks ship into path of an alien
battle dreadnought. During fire phase, ship is blown to bits.

We used a variant of the Wave Gun called the Futik Cannon orignally created by
Jon as a joke. When the cannon fires, the player must roll 1D6. On a 6, the
ship does not fire because the crew is temporarily incapacitated from laughing
so hard when the captain issues the order to fire. Something like: "Mr Rogers,
please pull the trigger on the Futik Cannon." The Earth force ship using this
weapon, fired it once out of range generating an impressive light show. The
second time they went to fire it, a large group of alien ships were near the
12" 4D6 damage template, but the captain rolled a 6.
 As
the crew rolled over laughing, the same ship was hit by a barrage of beam fire
with one hit damaging the FTL drive. The captain rolled for the damaged
improbability drive, and the ship was sent in the opposite direction from the
enemy, making a hasty retreat.