[GZG] GZG ECC XIII: AAR

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lWell, back once
again from the grind of ECC and to the relaxing world of
work. :-D

This year, our 13th year, marked a location change due to unforeseen
circumstances (that really we all should have seen some indication of)
with
the Hotel Brunswick back in Oct 2009. It was LATE in the game for us to
be
scouting out new locales, but we managed to do so, and found the Owego
Treadway in Owego, NY, to be very accommodating.

Going to Owego now meant my travel would be more than 2x as it was to
the
Brunswick in Lancaster, but I reminded myself, a fair number of regular
attendees to ECC over the years have traveled as far as I would be now
or
further. If they can do it, I can suck it up, too (but then again, I'm
transporting all the prizes; if it gets too far away, the prizes won't
make
it to the con ;-) ). This move to Owego, we knew, would cause a drop in
attendance, with most of the people in the MD/VA area not making the
drive
(they were spoiled by the shorter drive to Lancaster, too ;-) ). Of
course,
the economy hadn't been helping in that regards, either.

Two days before ECC was to commence, a Nor'easter (being called a
snowicane
due to the near hurricane force winds it was supposed to have at times)
slammed into northeastern Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and much of
New
Jersey. Having already weathered "snowpocalypse" in December and the
one-two
punch "snowmageddon" in early/mid-Feb, I was well-braced for slow
travel. I
loaded my snowshoes and accompanying gear into the car along with my con
stuff. Friday I got on the road about 11am, stopping briefly at a hobby
shop
along the way to pick up some super glue.

The drive up was pleasantly nice. Not much traffic, roads were mostly
open.
Winds were extremely strong, and twice I was buffeted into the lane to
my
right. Fortunately, the "not much traffic" meant very few people on the
highways, and little danger of my actually hitting someone. On the other
hand, halfway through the mountains I saw a semi-tractor-trailer rig had
been blown off of the highway and into the median strip, leaving a deep
gouge of mud and tire tracks easily 3 truck & trailer lengths long
before
coming to a stop. Somehow the driver managed to keep his rig upright.

Traveling through the mountains in central Pennsylvania, sometimes the
wind-driven snows covered the left lane for half a mile or more, but
always
at least one lane was open. So, while not always at highway speeds, I
was
never going slower than 40 mph for any stretch, probably averaging more
like
50 in the mountains. Once I was up past the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton
region,
the roads opened up, the winds died down, and...damn, the sun came out!
I
decided to take a break along the way and did a few geocaches (but
actually
only found two, as the other two I was going to try for were buried in
2+
feet of snow). With these stops I managed to get to the hotel by a
little
after 5pm.

After I checked into my room (and called John and Yerin to let them know
where we were staying), I hustled over to the con room. Found a dozen
people
there, milling about or setting up for the evening games. I wanted to
get
something to eat before the festivities really kicked underway, and
hiked
down the road 5 minutes to some food (plenty of food options within a
5-10
minute walk of the hotel). The roads were remarkably clear, despite the
storm that blew through not 24 hours before, and there was a nice
shoulder
to walk along.

Back at the con room I was to play in Jon Davis' "Battle for Cormorant
Moon", an FT Federation/Klingon battle. It was mostly straight up
fighting,
but you had to stay within a certain range of the planet in order to
gain
points for your side. The Klingons (of which I was one - hehehe) closed
in
quickly with the moon while the Feddies held back some. This netted us
some
early lead in points, which helped in the end.

There were six ships (Federation cruiser and Klingon D7) to each side.
We
battled, chased each other around Cormorant, and battled some more. At
the
end of 10 turns, there were three damaged Klingons and two or three very
damaged Federation cruisers. With the early lead in points, the Klingons
won.

Saturday morning came all too early. A group of us stumbled our way up
to
the Blue Collar Diner for breakfast. It was populated with regular blue
collar types, a couple of whom stared at us funny ("damn city
slickers").
But we got no trouble, had a good breakfast, and back to the con.

That morning I was originally going to be in Jon Davis' Car Wars-style
battle arena game, but I decided to help John Lerchey fill out his
late-submitted FT game (plus I wanted another just straight up FT game
to
play). His was an interesting one not oft-seen. First, vector movement,
and
second, players had to build fleets using no more than 250 NPV - and
could
have no more than ONE destroyer, and nothing larger. This would force
players to put together fleets using frigates and smaller. Finally, a
game
where the largest thing on the board MIGHT be a destroyer! I decided to
have
all kinds of fun with this and took two Kra'Vak Swift War Killers for
238
pts. My opposite numbers had a fleet of NSL frigates and a squadron of
NAC
frigates. Oh, and there was a rather sizeable asteroid debris field we
were
flying about in - in vector! :-D

I'd never flown K'V in vector before, so it was interesting to get a
feel
for their maneuverability. But despite my better maneuverability, my
skills
with nailing ships with K-2s proved...less than adequate. By turn 4 or 5
both of my ships were destroyed by combined fleet human firepower (class
2s
can reach out and smack just as I'm getting into better range bands for
the
K-guns). I destroyed no one, but had a fun time nevertheless. I spent
the
rest of the morning organizing the miniatures painting contest.

Saturday afternoon I ran a playtest game of FT3, stress testing the
fighter/small targets mechanic. I based the game in the Battlestar
Galactica
universe (plenty of 'small targets' there!!). Unfortunately, there was
some
confusion on each side about how certain mechanics actually did work,
which
may or may not have muddied the playtest results. But each side did get
a
feel for things and gave me some good feedback on various mechanics
we're
working on.

As the afternoon session came to a close, I tallied up the votes for the
miniatures painting contest while Jerry went out and got a pizza for us
to
split. Then Jon and I did our mid-con speeches and awarded the winners
of
the contest their prizes. Then, because Jon Tuffley had so graciously
sent
extra prizes to us over and above his usual box, in honor and
celebration of
GZG's 25th anniversary, we had a mini-raffle of sorts with the con
attendees: Jon pulled names out of a box and we had them come up and
select
a prize. This went on until everyone got something. :-)  So, combined
with
our door prizes, no one went home empty-handed. And a few people got
some
reinforcements to their space fleets or ground units. ;-)

The evening games then kicked off. I was in on Tomb's StarGate FMA(ish)
game, playing a Russian Colonel. It was a great game, well-run, and very
StarGate cinematic (except that the Jaffa seemed to have better armor in
the
game than on tv :-D ). Jon Davis, running two characters, the
Canadian/American rescue team Colonel and a Russian soldier who was part
of
my team, was in awesome form when doing the role of the Russian soldier.
He
played it to the hilt, and so well that when he fired at a Goa'uld and
watched the bullet stop and drop a foot from the Goa'uld, he burst out
(in
complete Russian accent) with a "What the f**k!? I rolled a 12! [on a
d12]
Russian bullet blow head off!!" (note: Jon admitted later he has only
seen a
few episodes of StarGate, so this truly did take him by surprise). The
rest
of us at the table and nearby observing fell out of our seats laughing.
I
was concerned Yerin was going to pass out she was turning so red with
laughter.

In the end of the game, we managed to stop the Goa'uld forces from
obtaining
whatever technology they were going to grab, but somehow the Goa'uld
managed
to activate something (or it was from the explosive package we tossed
into
the pyramid) that would turn the world - and eventually the solar system
-
into a black hole. While the (cinematic) black hole was forming and
sucking
everything into it, we all fled. Unfortunately, the explosives expert
and
myself were the closest to the 'special ripple effects', and while we
could
have both made it through the gate, the gate would not shut down in
time.
One of us had to stay and shut the gate down before the black hole
grabbed
hold of the worm hole. And while I should have gone through and ordered
the
explosives expert to take care of it (and thus be able to submit a
proper
report), paperwork wasn't on my mind (or was it? ;-) ). I ordered the
explosives expert to get through the gate and then I destroyed the DHD
just
as the black hole destroyed me.

At least I closed the gate, saving my comrades, and my fellow SG teams
with
their Canadian bullets.

Sunday morning came all too quickly.

Breakfast was in the hotel this time. And it proved 1) to be good food,
and
2) to be cheaper than the diner from the day before. Hmmmm...

Sunday morning I ran a second FT3 playtest game, stress testing other
aspects of the rules. It was a WW2 naval combat game in which I gave
each
person two WW2 battleships. The battleships were designed in FT terms
along
the stats of the real battleships, which meant that pairs of ships may
not
have been well-matched to fight other pairs of ships. I warned the
players
of the imbalance ahead of time so they would not go into combat thinking
they may have an even chance at it all. But since this was mostly a
"roll a
bucket load of dice, destroy things, and have fun" game, people were
pretty
okay with how things went.

As the end of the session drew nigh, we decided to call it (partly
because
the Yamato hadn't been more than scratched yet, and could take on any
two or
three battleships still on the board with ease, and partly because
people
were getting tired and had long drives ahead of them). At this point two
ships (the King George and the Jean Bart) were sunk, a number of others
badly damaged, and a handful lightly damaged. And people got to roll
lots of
dice, and blow things up (at least via threshold checks, since each
battleship had 5-6 hull rows). Steve Barosi had some miserable threshold
checks on the Littorio. Only moderately damaged, he had lost 80% of his
systems to thresholds and wasn't doing much other than be a fire magnet
(but
as soon as everyone understood he was no longer a threat, they left him
alone).

And that, in a long discourse nutshell, was the weekend. We wrapped
things
up, packed cars, and went our various directions home.

ECC XIII is now done. All that is left are other people's AARs and the
Quote
Board (when Jerry gets around to posting it).

But until then, here are a few quotes I had written down from the Sunday
game:

Indy: "Good morning. Find a chair."
John Lerchey: "Do I need a chair?"
Aaron Newman: "It's Sunday morning, most of us do."

Aaron Newman: "No, unless he [Jerry Han] does something stupid, I'm not
attacking him."
Jerry: "Uhh..."
Aaron: "Oh, wait..."

Bryan: "Are you going to shoot at the Jean Bart or the --"
Aaron: "I'm going to shoot at the one less on fire."