[GZG] [ECC] [long] AAR

Best pre-con comment: "The **con** hasn't even started yet,
and the Sheep Game players are already threatening each
other."

The other pre-con comment was "Aaargh!".  I was walking
around with a sheep in my shirt pocket, and various people
(unwisely) asked about it. It was a sheep measuring tape,
which my wife found at the fabric store.  

Friday night: DS3 Demo by John Lerchey and Indy
A playtest of a proposed DS3 ruleset, with significant
changes from DS2--no chits, and adding Firefight segments
within the normal turn. Our KV armored talon was assigned to
occupy a central hill after clearing it of Hu'Man defenders;
the HM mission was to bring in a couple of armor companies
and relieve the hilltop force. We suppressed the HM relief
column and the hilltop force; then a Ro'Kah tank platoon
close-assaulted the hilltop and destroyed the defenders.
That platoon continued to advance across the hilltop and
dropped their grav tanks on top of the remains of a HM
tankette platoon, which squeeked in dismay and fled around
the hill.  The KV platoon followed...exposing their rear
armor to the HM relief column. The HM took advantage of the
opportunityl, the KV platoon brewed up, and with cascading
morale penalties, the Kra'Vak suddenly went from Ro'Kah to
Bro'Ken. The entire KV talon turned and fled...except for
one platoon--mine--which went Ro'Kah and advanced,
unsupported, against the enemy battalion. Just imagine the
NSL tank battalion in a long line along the ridge, the three
KV tanks bursting out of cover, the commander from the last
scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid saying "Three
banditos? _Three_?"...

Saturday morning: Stuart Murray's game
Toward the end of the War of the Worlds, the village of
Wopping-on-Sodbury was attacked by a giant Martian war
machine but was saved when the Martian crew died. As the
game started, a British relief colum (me, Adrian, Joel,
Tony) rushed--well, "plodded"--to rescue the village and
take custody of the fighting machine, while the dastardly
Hun (JP, Jim Bell, Greg Davis, Tom McCarthy) arrived by
Zeppelin with an eye on securing the war machine to improve
German technology. The Brits entered along a road from the
southeast, got bottled up, misplaced our officers, and
milled about in confusion. 
   My dinosaur lancers, trying to clear the southwest road
for our second column,	raced ahead to the village, where
they regrettably met Farmer Giles, the town drunk. The
farmer, who owned several recently-deceased cows, tried to
use a dinosaur in a demonstration of alien probe techniques;
the dinosaur, understandably annoyed, used Farmer Giles in a
demonstration of alien evisceration techniques. I hastily
proceeded out of the village and up the western road, where
I encountered the Kaiser's Own African Rifles (who used some
salty language and peppered my right flank) and a
newly-arrived Martian tripod (who microwaved my left flank).
Suppressed into permanent immobility, I sat there and
stewed.  
  A group of nuns with rulers appeared and chased the
Africans, who withdrew; Adrian's gatling gun and rifle
company then fired past (and through) the nuns and some
British bobbies ("sacrifices must be 
made in the name of Empire") to destroy the unit. That
improved the situation on the left flank.
  On the right flank, my Indian sepoys turned off the road;
they ran 
nose-to-nose into a German unit, yelled "holy cow!" and
spent the rest of the morning trading fire. 
  In the center, a German naval infantry platoon charged a
company of British regulars, broke them, pursued the
survivors and wiped them out. The dastardly Huns got into
the village, and things looked grim.  Fortunately, our
Aerial Bicyclist scouts got the idea to land atop a Martian
tripod; the monster tried to brush them off with its
tentacles, but our gallant lads subdued the beast with their
revolvers and captured the fighting machine. So we lost on
moral grounds (with the Kreigsmarine infantry pressing their
attentions  on 
the flower of English womanhood) but won on material
grounds. Quote of the game was JP's line, paraphrased: "Jim,
you're our MVP because you're ravaging their women." 

Saturday afternoon was the Cheese Game, run by Tony Finan
and John Crimmins, with various crimes against reason,
fashion and humanity committed by players Bryon ("we're
privately funded") Gordon, Greg (with his "fearless elite
powered armor black ops squad" as the cheesiest unit) Davis,
Charlie ("mercenaries") Decker, Damond ("weather and traffic
news crew"), Mike ("cockroaches on hovercraft") Hudak,
Adrian ("Brun Hilda #4 and fashion news crew") and me (Darth
Squidious). The best comment on the game was Tony's
oft-repeated, mute stare of stunned disbelief, but "....!"
doesn't come across well on the quote board, so we'll go
with Adrian's line: "the game hasn't even started yet and
the GM's plans have already gone down the drain". 
  My giant squid (4 tentacles, powered armor, a lightsaber,
and a flock of sheep I placed as recon drones) slid around
through the sub-surface water system, opening sinkholes and
grabbing cheese, while using the Force to con...um,
"persuade"...the other players into doing what I wanted. The
most ridiculous instance was when I encouraged Damond's news
chicks to "protect the sheep"; he initiated a non-violent
"close assault" on Mike's unit, picked up the struggling
bugs-on-roombas, and carried them away. Or maybe it was a
bit later, after Adrian's newscrew shot most of Damond's
news chicks. when I encouraged Adrian (who wanted to avoid
winning) to dump his cheese in the water, he did. Then he
sent Brun Hilda # 4 to interview and distract the Fox News
terminators while the rest of Adrian's news crew threw the
bodies of Damond's news chicks into the water.	I'm not sure
if Adrian was trying to get rid of the evidence or sacrifice
them to Cthulhu. Brun Hilda #5 (of the NPC media team)
seemed fascinated when tentacles rose from the lake, grabbed
the mini-skirted bodies and sank back into the depths, but I
didn't ask why. 
Meanwhile, Greg's Black Ops squad was nearly arrested by a
squad of powered armor who grav-dropped onto the industrial
storage tank (of Cheez Whiz) behind him, but he shot through
the tank roof and dropped them into the cheese.  On the
other side of the map, Damond's two surviving news chicks
close-assaulted the four survivors of Charlie's mercs and
defeated them.
  When the dust settled, Adrian successfully brought home
zero points; Mike and Bryan tied at around 35; Damond's one
surving news chick had about 57; and, ahem, someone with
lots of cheese and hot dice (of 7d20, not one rolled less
than 11) came out with 122 points.

Saturday Night, FMAS, run by yours truly, aided and abetted
by Adrian 
(Captain John Atkins) Johnson, Jerry (Sarah Bellum) Han, Jon
Mark (Prof Eisenberg) and Greg (Lt Pourcell) Davis, Mike
(Mad Doc Maddox) Hudak, Lee (Oersula Anders) Salter, Lorenzo
(Evan MacDouglas) Harmon, and Tony (Burke, Anthony T) Finan.
This game took place aboard the aethership Nostradamus.
Things got off to a good start as Tony summoned a Dark Young
of Sheep Niggurath into one lifeboard, and Mike tried to
change the codes on the other one and accidentally
jettisoned it. Some of the troubleshooters raced to the
bridge, and died when they found the Dark Young; others
wandered around opening boxes and finding items like Spinal
Weapon (backpack claymore mine), Mint Jelly Molotov, and
Fusion Canon (not "cannon"--it turned out to be a classic
Miles Davis jazz fusion record). Around then Lorenzo's
troubleshooter discovered that another Dark Young had been
summond to the engineroom. He died, respawned into a  clone
chamber which had been sabotaged (Mike had sabotaged a
second one and Tony a third, but no one else knew that),
died, recloned on the engine deck, died again (the Dark
Young was right outside), recloned at the same one and died
a fourth time, and finally respawned at a clone chamber on
the cargo deck. That was much safer place, as there was
merely a gunfight between two troubleshooters, which
degenerated into a gunfight between one troubleshooter and
three UN peacekeepers, and a slap-fight between the other
troubleshooter and Captain Atkins (who apparently was using
the flat of his sword rather than the edge). Tony decided
that Jerry needed more trauma, so he played "American Baa
Association" and the players gathered around Jerry and baa'd
him. Adrian pressed the button labeled "Do Not Press" (I was
amazed 
that it took that long) and started the self-destruct
sequence. Mike 
heroically planted a baa-mb in the lifeboat with the Dark
Young and blew it up. Tony summoned a sheepgoth (a sheep
with a black coat is a sheep-goth, yes?), which might have
been a trifle excessive; he then tried to talk a Mi-Go into
transporting him away from the disaster, but Jerry played
"Muttony" and the mutinous Mi-Go declined. Sarah Bellum,
being a dedicated reporter, sold herself to Honest Abdul in
exchange for Abdul's promise to get the story out; Adrian's
female troubleshooter flashed a little Victorian lingerie at
Abdul (and you'd better be glad no one took video of *that*,
Adrian) and also sold herself to Honest Abdul's Harem Supply
as a way of getting off the ship. As the remaining
characters watched the self-destruct count down, Jerry's
character picked up bagpipes and played "Amazing Grace"; the
other played hummed along, with accompaniment by Tony Finan
on kazoo. The camera pulled away from the ship; the music
changed from bagpipes to the full orchestral version; the
ship exploded, and we rolled credits. 
   Mike, as the MVP, got a sheep measuring tape. When asked
why he summoned Cthulhu creatures, Tony explained that
"something about playing in Chris's game brings out my
inclination to destroy the world."

After hours, the Canadian Contingent lured me into playing
Gullotine, in which the players are executioners during the
Terror.  The objective is to rearrange the line of nobles so
that your executioner collects the most prestigious, um,
clients. The Canadians were all interfering with each
other's plans and mostly leaving me alone--I'm going to
claim that I won for that reason, rather than my natural
talent...

Sunday morning, John Lerchey (Decals Express) admitted that
he might just be willing to create sheep decals. His other
decals look really good; I wish I had more painted lead to
put them on.

Sunday morning was Mike Hudak's Full Sail game. Noam and I
gleefully chose the pirates, and managed to slip through a
massaive nautical traffic jam to be the first to deliver our
courier to the resort island. The first representative to
the island makes the rules, so...:
Noam: "We have decided to decree that henceforth, no nation
shall have warships!"
Me: "And furthermore, that all merchant ships shall be
stocked with rum!"
Noam: And crewed by women!"
Me: "Lovely women!"
Noam: "Lovely and cooperative women!"
Me: "And masseuses!"
Noam: "Lovely and cooperative masseuses!"
and so forth.

Another great ECC.  The next one is ECC-X -- make plans to
be there, and try not to think about 

Mutton con Queso.
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