[FT] Quick GenCon Rundown

I'm finally getting back to the normal routine after GenCon.  My home PC
printer and modem died just before the con as I was scrambling to get
things
ready so that started the interesting week.

Schoon had to pull out of the con so I agreed to take over running the 3
FT
demos and the FT Tourney in addition to 2 sessions of my Sci-Fi
Crossover
game.  I then had to get sheets ready for the demos and the Tourney with
no
preparation.

Thursday - FT Demo, 7PM
Only a 2 hour demo was scheduled for 12 players.  I had whipped up small
fleets of a CH and a couple DDs for the NAC, NSL and ESU for the demo. 
12
people showed up and they learned the rules and got some good pounding
on
each other by the end of the 2 hours.  One thing to note on this demo,
Marvin Lamb, the current owner and publisher of Starfire's latest
version
'Galactic Starfire' was one of the players and seemed to have a good
time.
In talking with him afterwards, he wasn't that thrilled with how ships
can't
fire at all if they loose all their FireCons, and suggested that they
can
still fire but at an increased effective range.  My response was that I
had
not seen this as a problem and the small fleets we were using did skew
the
results a bit

Friday - Sci-Fi Crossover 12 noon
No one showed up.  Not being in the Pre-reg guide really hurts.  Lots of
people stopped by to look at the minis and several of them did later
show up
to play the 5pm game.

Sci-Fi Crossover: Asteroid Chase 5pm
Filled out the game with 12 players.  Lots of fighters which did
dominate
the game too much.  Too many sci-fi series and movies are fighter based
so
next time I'll find a way to reduce the number of fighters, maybe a
straight
Trek Federation vs the Star Wars Empire battle with fighters only on one
side.......  Anyway, the 'Centennial Osprey' did pop out of an asteroid
and
all the fighters on the board jumped into one huge furball, but the
'Alliance' had more fighters available so they won the day.  Not enough
ship
to ship damage though.	The Beast took a bunch of damage with his
Federation
Dreadnought and dished out a bunch too.  Other highlights were when a
Victory class Star Destroyer hit an asteroid and vaporized, and when Tim
Pricer (a lurker her on the list) made a great vector move with his
White
Star and ended up directly behind an Imperial Star Destroyer with a
great
up-the-kilt shot, but then was jumped by a couple groups of TIE bombers,
which took him to a threshold that knocked out the Capacitor for his
Heavy
Minbari Beam.  A full After Action Report and pictures will be up on my
webpage someday soon.

FT Demo - 7pm
6 players, Kevin Walker ran this one and it seemed to go well.

Saturday - FT Tourney 20 Noon
Schoon had set this up as 5 rounds in 6 hours but I only had the 1500
point
fleets from last year so I went 2 rounds of round robin competition and
the
4 players with the highest point totals moving to the semi-finals and
then
finals.  12 players did show up, just enough to fill the tables I got
(the
miniatures area wasn't run that well and tables were hard to get if you
weren't there right away on Thursday morning to reserve a block of
tables
for the whole con).  Lew Stoneking got the fleet sheets copied saving me
the
effort.  the KV and Phalon fleets were available for use this year while
the
SV were excluded.  It was tough to get the game done in 1 hour and 15
minutes but it was done.  The top 4 were selected after 2 random rounds
and
the were, Mike Cottone (one of the KV fleets), Rick Rutherford (FSE
carrier
fleet I think), Carl Scheu (a KV fleet), and Steve Rapatti (custom NSL
fleet
using missile DDs).

Mike switched to a Phalon fleet and took on Steve, but he hit his own
Class
5 plasma ball and lost the game.  Carl battled Rick and Carl came out on
top.  The finals were Carl and Steve, in which Steve separated his
forces
and Carl took them all out.  Carl was Tourney Grand Admiral a couple of
years ago and runner up the year before that.  He seemed to like the $75
gift certificate for GeoHex that KR donated, thanks KR.  The KV were the
most popular fleets, taken about half the time and as a result, 2 of the
4
semi-finalists used KV fleets.	I'll try and get a better listing of
what
was used when I can go over some notes but I don't have listings of who
used
what fleet in each battle

FT Demo - 7PM
Mike Miserendino was going to run this but he was in the middle of a
Delta V
demo, trying to get his mind around the realistic vector movement so I
ran
this one.  12 players and it seemed to go well, enough destruction to
keep
most happy.

Other FT bits, Dave Barclay ran a couple FT events on Thursday that
seemed
to go well, there were some other FT events run around the Bloody Clans
background in the Battletech universe using FT 2nd edition rules.

KR and the GeoHex booth always seemed busy.  All of the Galactic Knights
range (old Superior Starfleet Wars minis) were available and the Modular
Space Station got lots of good comments.   Too bad I didn't have time to
inventory what I had so I knew what I needed.

That is enough for now, more news and pictures will show up on my
webpage
eventually.  In response to a few other comments:

The_Beast wrote:
> Dean did yeoman service running, and KR
> supporting, the Full Thrust games at GenCon. I know that he was
feeling
> pretty disappointed some events didn't come off, but I thank him for
the
> one I played, and could tell plenty of others had a damn good time.

Thanks, this GenCon was a bit more work and more stress than normal but
it
all worked out in the end.  It was also great to sit down and talk to
you
for a while.

Rick Rutherford wrote:
> > > I'll second that -- Dead did a FANTASTIC job running the Full
Thrust
> > > tournament this year!
>
> > Dead ? He must have been working too hard !! ;-)

> Whoops! Sorry Dean... :)

No problems Rick, I only feel slightly dead after the Con, dragging all
the
minis back and forth every day and then driving home to the sweltering
100+
degree (F) heat index.

Greg Kettler wrote:
> As someone who played his first ever game of Full Thrust at GenCon,
> promptly ran to the dealers' room to buy the books, and just
subscribed to
> this list yesterday, I would like to echo that thank you.

Greg, after all the names and faces that passed in front of me, I'm
sorry
that I can't remember you specifically but I'm glad you had a good time.
Which game did you play?

Dean Gundberg

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