[ECC] Lancaster, at a glance

Friday: 
Good drive down with Jim Bell (Ottawa), JP Fiset 
(Ottawa) and Doug Schavo (Kingston). 

Friday night: 
Charlie Don't Surf.... as ASAS and Australian 
Mech Inf. My Mech Inf got to clear a villlage, 
burn some supplies, leave the village, have the 
villagers and the enemy save some of the 
supplies (typical) while chasing the remainder of 
the suppplies. My ASAS got to take a 6 man 
squad up against about 30 NVA. After a 
Napalm strike and a brutal close combat, 4 of 6 
ASAS were killed, 2 were captured, in exchange 
for the platoon command squad (killed in close 
assault) and about 10-12 other NVA figures. 
That platoon wasn't too happy....

Meanwhile, the American press was running 
around reporting things with the level of 
accuracy and factuality that we've all come to 
know and love. Especially interesting was their 
possession of the "teleporter". 

Kudos to "Benny Rambo" (Jon Davis), the one-
man cinematic wrecking crew. And Stu for 
running a nice-looking game with some very 
odd rules which was quite a bit of fun, in a sort 
of psycho way! 

Later Friday Night:
Abbreviated Formula De which saw Doug S. 
leaving the pack of 10-11 cars entirely behind. 
And having to (at least as of when we called the 
game) admire the brake lights of Sr. Davis 
car.... (I'll get you yet.... you wouldn't have held 
me off for three laps!!!!). Lots of fun.
Then, while most people went off to bed, 5 very 
silly Canadians fought two games of Nuclear 
War, one resulting in a win for Doug S, and 
another a no-win game where final retalliations 
killed everyone. Oh, and there was beer 
involved (nice to be able to buy take-out beer 
from the House of Pizza even in the middle of 
the night).

Saturday Morning:
Ran "A Change of Orders". SG2. An ESU Platoon 
investigates the remains of an enemy 
surveillance satellite. An OUDF Platoon 
investigates the remains of a crashed enemy 
surveillance plane. Neither side is right. It's a 
crashed Kravak Scoutship (neither side has 
every met KV yet). They get clues from some of 
the wreckage, begin shooting at one another. 
Then an ESU squad is obliterated by a sudden 
surprise KV close assault (they discovered one 
crew member, and wounded him, so the others 
had to act). Then both sides started radioing 
for help and support. And got changed orders! 
The rest of the game saw Ortillery strikes from 
both sides, mortar attacks, the arrival of tanks 
and walkers for the ESU, the arrival of a VTOL 
and the Gurkhas to help the OUDF. End result - 
ESU gets away with some info (most of their 
physical evidence was blown off the map by 
three ortillery strikes on the same place), OUDF 
gets away with a live prisoner. ESU casualties 
are about 35%, OUDF about 20%. The ESU 
actually did more and would have got more if 
they hadn't had the bad luck to eat ortillery. 
Special note: At one point, due to ambiguous 
communication, both OUDF and ESU HQ 
considered deploying the "Omega Option" 
(read: nuclear strike). However, saner heads 
prevailed. And the Kravak CSAR vessel showed 
up and picked up the remains of the downed 
scoutship crew they were there to rescue. 

Friday Noon:
The Cheese Game. Beyond description by me. It 
featured a news group of NPCs, my squad of 
Eldar Harlequins, a squad of flaming (in every 
sense of the word....) Protos Rejects, Boba Fett 
and his 6x6 Deathtruck, an NSL Squad, Awful 
Green Things from Outer Space led by a three-
eyed fuzzy penguin, Space Hillbillies, some 
space-marine-ish PA, and another squad whose 
origins are lost to me. Oh, and a horde of 
howling Gretchen! 
Final Tally: Rick Rutherfords PA takes first, 
Harlequins take second, and the Gretchen kill 
most of the cursed News Crew. Oh, and the 
Harlequins kill Boba Fett! (The Empire formerly-
known as the Republic cannot stand against the 
troops of the Evil Empire known as GW, and 
neither can their hired guns!)

Friday Evening:
Silverstone FMAS on an asteroid. The Zhodani 
displace calculating thinking to deploy (and 
teleportation) and try to gain entry to the 
objective. The Imperial marines find every 
sinkhole and talus avalanche they can. Much 
gunfire is exchanged, and several close 
combats are fought. Heavy armour on both 
sides (and an oops on penetration of gauss 
rifles) keeps the casualty counts down.  Adrian J 
distinguishes himself with aggressive play and 
Laserlight proves the Zhodani can think on their 
feet. The result would have been a draw, as 
neither side was decisively ahead and the 
Zhodani were about to open the alien pyramid, 
but they might well have been kicked off of it by 
the Marines. One highlight was the entire table 
chanting "Death To Tom! Death To Tom!" 
(apparently they take instructions from HQ 
somewhere in Tasmania). Admittedly, they'd just 
found out that the battle was in actuality over 
nothing as both sides' intelligence reports had 
been utterly wrong.... ;) 

Later Friday Evening: 
Virus (cardgame) and Damn the Torpedos and 
Beer with JP, Jim, Doug, Mike Hudak, Adrian J, 
and Rick Rutherford in the lounge. 

Sunday Morning:
Sleep. 
Say goodbyes. 
Buy far far far too much resin and other stuff. 

General:
A Great Time. Too bad KR couldn't make it. 
Very Large Grandiose and Deserved Thank You 
All to the organizers Jon, Mark, Jerry and Nick 
(and anyone else I'm forgetting) are in order. 
The result was.... amazing. And for those of you 
interested in PBeM FT, you've got a rather 
amazing surprise coming soon I'm told! 

Thanks to my fellow gamers, whose company 
was wonderful as usual. Thanks to my fellow 
Canucks for representing Canada so well. (PS, 
we may have had to take silver in the Cheese 
game, but we won the Pod Race, the Formula 
De Race, and we hold the Pod Race Land 
Speed Record at either 77 mu/turn or 89 
mu/turn depending on how you reckon it!)

AARs will (with pix) eventually appear on 
stargrunt.ca. One thing we'd like a lot is if 
anyone with a camera got a pic of Adrian 
getting his painting awards, please send us a 
copy - my DC ran out of juice and Adrian's was 
unfortunately not successfully operated by the 
suddenly-impressed camera-drone... :) 

One last thing: Derek Fulton.... you will pay for 
your instigation sometime.... even if I have to 
come over there.... ;)	 <*grin*>

Tomb Raider

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Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site

Corruptisima republica plurimae leges. 
[The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.]
-- Tacitus
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