Saturday at the Con. . .

Saturday, I ran in three games, taking off from the strenuous job of
umpiring.

In the morning I played in a Stargrunt game run by KR (who spent most of
the Con running Stargrunt, selling stuff inbetween games).  It was an
ambush scenario--a short platoon of NRE Thematic troops who had run out
of grenade launcher ammo, and were also short a few heavy weapons (I
usually have, instead of command squad, a PL, PSG, 3xSAW, 3xGMS/P) and
the troops carrying them.  So I'm hidden in the woods, and up comes five
assorted squads of Japanese, Islamic Fed, ex-Swabians, and Cthulu knows
what else in front of the two trucks.  Since I opened fire at
point-blank range, I slaughtered the first squad (7 out of 9) and the
second (4 out of 9).  Another one came up behind me and shot up one of
my squads, only hitting one man, and his armor saved him.  I got mortars
dropped on me, but they were mostly ineffective, only killing one man. 
Eventually the trucks decided to go around the ambush, so I had to run
my command element out and shoot them with the GMSs since I didn't have
units out on the edges of the board.  Blew up one, immobilized the
other.	Tactical victory for me since I really wanted to capture the
trucks.  But for 1 KIA, 2 WIA, I shot a total of 17 enemy troops.

That afternoon I joined the BYOF battle, taking a LtBatRon.  My target
was Indy's force, and I took off across the board to go after him,
fragging all but his NSL carrier, but then I got wiped out by a strike
from 108 fighters off of Keith's fleet.  Damned if I know what I could
have done differently to prevent this, so I'm not worried about it.

Evening was probably the best scenario I've ever seen at any con, bar
none.  Solar Thrust.  Set in a background Keith dreamed up, in 2061,
using realistic engines and FUEL rules.  Keith convincingly demonstrated
that fuel rules don't signficantly impact the way the game is played,
even for those who showed up a bit short on fuel.  Convoluted five-sided
scenario in which no two players trusted each other.  Outstanding use of
conflicting victory conditions, some of which could be fulfilled by
peaceful negotiations prompted Andy Presby to spend more time using
commo lasers than weapons lasers.  Jerry Han's Venusians went away soon
as his mortal enemies, the Mercutians (me) closed in to blast him
immediately.  I was taking a lot of fire from the UNSC's fighters until
Andy finally committed to helping me--his fighters were almost wiped out
cleaning those damned Earther toys off my battleship.  Andy then
negotiated terms for the UNSC's withdrawl, making this a decisive
victory for the Martians, who basically had done a little firing at the
Venusians and otherwise basically drifted in a straight line not doing
anything or talking to anyone.	Mars got 80 out of 80 points for having
all non-Martian, non-Vestian (who weren't mentioned in his victory
conditions) warships leave Titan. I picked up 72 out of 80 for not being
the one to deliver the coup de grace to two of Jerry's ships and for
letting the UNSC escape, but I didn't think I had a choice given the
state of my battleship and the Vestian's threatened withdrawl of fighter
support.

Tomorrow: AAR for the Big One.

John M. Atkinson