Re: [GZG] GZG ECC 12: Jerry's AAR

I noticed the word Geocache in there.  I had my GPS with me the whole
con!  I hit a few around Lancaster on Sunday after we closed up.

Bob Makowsky

----- Original Message ----
From: Jerry Han <jhan@warpfish.com>
To: GZG-L Mailing List <gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 6, 2009 11:31:52 AM
Subject: [GZG] GZG ECC 12: Jerry's AAR

Hey folks,

Another AAR, this time by me.  Run away.  (8-)

JGH

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------
GZG ECC XII - After Action Report Jerry Han

This year was an odd GZG ECC to get ready for, because of Real Life
issues in
terms of having even less time than usual to get ready.  So, when
picking
events, I pretty much stuck with the FT side of things, since I didn't
think
I would have the energy to keep up with rulesets that I didn't know all
that
well.

This was also an odd GZG ECC because my wife wanted to come with me down
to
Lancaster, to see just what the heck it is I do at these conventions.
The
committee also wanted to do some filming to try and put together a short
introduction / documentary video about GZG ECC, so, I also packed a
bunch of
equipment that I wouldn't normally bring, and spent a good bunch of time
taking pictures and stuff for the website.

Everything was thrown together at the last minute, we loaded up the car,
and
headed down to Lancaster.

Friday Evening
I was scheduled to run an event, but it only had a single
person signed up for it, so I ended up playing in the "What the
!@#$@!$!?"
event run by Scott Bishop, which was a multi-universe FT free-for-all.
On a
single table were Klingons, Star Wars Star Destroyers, Stargate Taur'i
cruisers, Babylon 5 EA destroyers, and a pair of Battlestars, all
engaged in
a free-for-all.  I had the Klingons, Indy had the Taur'i cruisers, Ken
Wang
had the Battlestars, Aaron Newman had the EA Destroyers, and Tom
McCarthy had
the Star Destroyers.

The first turn went well.  I didn't die.

The second and third turns didn't go so well.  I died.

I discovered that a squadron of Klingon ships (one D9, three D7s)
against
three Taur'i cruisers (two Daedelus class, one 'Achilles' miniature from
Studio Bergstrom) doesn't really work, as my entire squadron disappeared
in a
two turn firing pass.  Tom got clobbered when Aaron and Ken ganged up on
him,
and it was pretty much over by Turn 5, two hours later.

It was a fun idea for an event, but, (as Scott later admitted) it
probably
could have used a little more playtesting for balance.

Afterwards, Mark and I played a short "Full Sail" duel, which was fun,
especially since I got a small measure of revenge for what he did to my
Klingon squadron.  (8-)  Mark did pull off a beautiful move, getting a
ship
in position to rake my squadron early on, but his squadron dispersed
into
General Chase early in the engagement.	Thus, I was able to engage him
piecemeal, and take his ships one by one.

Saturday Morning
After the standard breakfast at the rennovated Zimmerman's,
and going with Indy to the Central Farmer's Market on a doughnut run
(with a
sidetrip to try and find a geocache), I played in Jon D.'s "Arena
Deathmatch"
game. It was the best event at the convention for me, from a sheer silly
fun
standpoint.  FT rules again, except with cars in an arena, running in
two man
teams, each with a single vehicle.  There were 12 of us, and I ended up
paired with Ken Wang, forming the team "Asian Mafia."

It's important to note, for the record, that no Asian stereotypes were
exploited during the game.  Absolutely none.  Perish the thought.

I got killed in the second half of the game, but I managed to machine
gun a
bunch of vehicles (stupid "Jerks", why don't you die already?), and I
went
out in a giant blaze of glory when my gas tank exploded.  Kudos to Ken
for
demonstrating the glory of the Rising Sun by being hit with a
flamethrower on
Turn 2, and staying on fire for the rest of the game, culminating in the
ultimate act of selflessness by running from his exploding car, on fire
himself, saluting his sponsors, before collapsing in a pile of ash on
the
arena floor.

The best moment for me may have been when my wife got involved; she just
wanted to check up what I was doing, and Jon got her to pick a car out
of the
mass of cars left in the arena.  She was reluctant, and finally went,
"oh,
this one."  Jon then told her that she had picked out a car to be
targeted
for Audience Rocket Launcher attack, which resulted in a giant ball of
flaming debris, and Damond Walker looking at my wife with a hurt
expression
of "Why did you pick me?  WHY?	What did I ever do to you?"

So, for a single turn, my wife played the Arbitrary Angel of Death. 
Neat.

Saturday Afternoon
Lunch was sandwiches for us.  I had a turkey sandwich from
the Farmer's Market, Sarah had leftovers from House of Pizza.  Sarah and
I
then took an hour to wander around downtown a bit, including popping our
heads into the used bookstore just around the corner from the hotel.  (A
suggestion for convention goers -- take an hour or two if your event
ends
early and look around Lancaster downtown.  There are some pretty neat
little
shops and things around.  There's more choice available than House of
Pizza.
(8-) )

After I got back, I played in Mark's "Trouble with the Neighbors"
scenario,
which was a FT3 playtest scenario.

In this case, it was a SFB themed game, with Hydrans, Lyrans, Klingons
and
ISC all coming together, with myself and Ken Wang as Lyrans, Scott
Bishop and
Jerry Cantrill as Hydrans, Mike Hudak as a Klingon, and Noam and Ben
Izenberg
as the ISC.  Esentially, the theme of the game was Lyran squadron
attacks a
Hydran Space Control Ship and supporting squadron, while the Klingons
and the
ISC come along and take a look.

The first turn went well.  I didn't die.

The second and third turns didn't go so well.  I died.

I had two surviving destroyers when I threw in the towel on Turn 3 and
declared I was warping out (which didn't stop Scott and Jerry declaring
they
were going to blow me to smitheereens anyway) while Ken's squadron was
wiped
out by the end of Turn 2 by the single SCS.  Meanwhile, Mike Hudak's
squadron
ate a full plasma bombardment, and was off the board by the end of Turn
2 as
well. That's when we stopped the game, as the ISC and the Hydrans had
declared a truce.  The game lasted about an hour and a half, if that.

Once again, I think there were some balance issues in the scenario
itself,
but the FT3 rules worked fine.	We used the 'roll dice for shields'
mechanic,
and I fell in love with it, especially since it got rid of all those
special
rules that people had to write when dealing with FT 2 screens and
non-battery
weapons.  Didn't really get a chance to try anything else out, since I
got
killed before I could do anything else except fire some beam dice and
some
disruptors.  Loved the concept of the scenario though, and, with some
changes, I'd be game to try again.

I also learned that I never, ever want to play Klingons.  It seems that
in
every space scenario I've participated in, the Klingons met a very bad
end
(as shown in the next scenario.)

Saturday Evening
There were some beautiful miniatures entered this year in
the mini's contest.  You'll want to look at pictures in the gallery. 
And a
shoutout to Stuart Murray, Jim Bell, Mark, and Jon D., for being the
last
four people to have attended all 12 GZG ECCs.  As a reward, Stuart, Jim
and
Jon were given dinosaurs, in front of an appreciative crowd.  (Mark,
sadly,
only got applause, since he was the person giving out the dinosaurs.
Next
year people, give Indy something. (8-) )

I played "Emergence Point", continuing the FT3 play test theme.  This
was
Mark Kochte running a John Lerchley scenario, which was morphed into a
FT3
playtest when John had to cancel.

This time, it was a NAC / Pirates scenario, with the NAC engaging in a
warp
point assault with Pirates defending the warp points and trying to load
enough stuff to get away.  I played the Pirate Bases and the freighters,
and
spent three turns loading cargo and using my fighters to shoot at ships
that
came out of the Warp Points.  I was with the Johnstons, while Kevin
Chase,
Jon and Greg Davis, and Stuart Murray played the NAC.

For those who play Starfire, or who've read the books, you know what a
Warp
Point assault is like -- absolute massacre for the first several waves,
until
you can achieve a breakthrough, at which point the defense either
concedes
the points or is destroyed in place.  Well, what we saw was the worst of
ISW
1 - we didn't have any fixed defences, but the other side didn't have
any
SBMHAWKs or recon data.  They just came in, and our pirate vessels
(equipped
with large amounts of EMP - think non-targetable needle beam), just
lashed
them with fire as they came across and they couldn't respond while their
systems stabilized.  With the EMP weapons creating large amounts of
threshold
checks (including firecons), the NAC forces couldn't get established. 
By the
time we decided it wasn't fun any more, we'd destroyed several NAC light
and
heavy cruisers plus a battlecruiser, in exchange for one large pirate
raider.

The FT3 rules seemed to work well here too, but, once again, scenario
balance
really limited what you could do with it. In the debrief afterwards, we
learned that the trick was to emerge from the points at a much faster
velocity; that way, it would spread the pirate fire more.  I think this
is a
case of where, because of John L. having to bow out at the last moment,
and
Indy having to parachute in, things got kind of confused and that's
where the
scenario balance got out of whack (we weren't even sure if we were using
the
EMP weapons properly, they seemed to be pretty gosh darned powerful) --
plus
the fact that these types of assaults are always pretty hard to balance
as
convention events (because it's hard to stay upbeat when you know that,
even
if you successfully carry out the assault, you're going to lose 50% of
your
fleet.	Nobody likes getting pounded without being able to respond, even
if
you're eventually going to turn things around, especially in convention
or
tournament settings.)

Afterwards, Stuart and Mark organized a quickie cruiser engagement, 12
ships
on 12 ships.  I sat out this part of it, as I wanted to take the time to
take
more pictures and video (and get to bed somewhat early, as I was
absolutely
exhausted by this point) - but it looked like it went a lot better, and
people had a bunch of fun.

This was also the only event out of the entire weekend that I actually
managed to kill something, when my fighters smacked down a cruiser.  At
least, I think my fighters smacked down a cruiser - as I said, I was
absolutely exhausted by this point, and my memory might be playing
tricks on
me.  I hope I smacked down a cruiser, because, otherwise, I didn't score
a
single kill in a convention event at this con.	Whoops.  (8-)

Sunday Morning
Sunday was breakfast at a small place called "Wish You Were
Here".	I liked it, though it was a little more expensive then what you
would
have gotten at Zimmerman's.  Never did try the hotel breakfast.

For the event, I played the final FT3 playtest, Noam's Di Persano
Wieder.
(Mike Hudak didn't have the minimums for his Beer Run game, and so we
all
decided as a group to play Noam's event.)   Thus, we ended up with Scott
Bishop, Jerry Cantrill, and Mike Hudak as NSL, with myself, Indy and Ben
Izenberg as FSE.

Noam used a slightly different version of the FT3 playtest rules then
Mark
did (differences in the way damage was allocated, and the way ordnance
moved), and he stated up front that this event was to playtest the
'small
target' rules in a large fleet combat setting.

And boy, did we see small targets.  It was a straight up NSL / FSE
battle,
with massive fleets -- the FSE side had a SDN, a BDN, a CVH, a CVE, some
BBs
and BCs, and a dozen escort ships, while the NSL brought in a CVL, a
SDN, a
couple of BDNs, the combination of BBs and BCs, and the escort ships. 
At one
point we had probably close to 20 fighter squadrons in play, and at
least 30
SM salvoes.  Once again, we ran into scenario issues (there really were
too
many ships for the time alloted), so, we ended up calling the game on
Turn 3
(when we were getting close to 1pm), and just ran the attacks around
ordnance
(fighter furballs, ordnance defence/attack) to see how things worked
out. A
lot of dice were rolled, and everybody seemed happy with the results.

And then we packed everything up, and drove back home.	The End.

(8-)

Thanks to everybody who came out, thanks to the people who run their
events,
thanks to the people who made me laugh and made me smile, and reminded
me
why it's worth giving up a weekend to do this, and thanks to the Jon D.
and Indy for being great people to do stuff with.  I hope to see people
next year!

Addendum: Full Thrust 3 Playtest Summary
Indy and Noam have done a wonderful job integrating things. What they've
got
now feels very polished, in terms of basic mechanics. There's still work
to
be done in terms of detailed balancing and integrating into a single
ruleset
all the 'commonly accepted' systems out there.	And there was
considerable
discussion about certain mechanics, especially the old argument of
complexity
vs playability vs time.  However, there are always discussions like
this, and
always will be, and so I don't think that's a major impediment, given
how
finicky FT2 could be sometimes when people forgot to play the game and
started playing the rules.  (One of the things I always liked about FT2
is
that it assumes that its players are mature human beings, who are smart
enough to play fair.  FT3 continues this, and that's great.)

Give Indy and Noam extra props for working hard on this -- FT3 is going
to be
great, I think, and that's because of what Noam and Indy have done.
Kudos, guys!

-- 
** Jerry Han - jhan@warpfish.com - http://www.warpfish.com/jhan -
TBFTGOGGI **
My heart has been worn, but it ain't broke;It may hiccup and cough black
smoke
It may seem old, but it still runs; My love has laces that won't come
undone
			    -- Jason Plumb, "Satellite"

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