brief Fall In convention AAR

So, had an opportunity to jet up the road to poke into Fall In today.
Saw
several people from my local game shop.club there, as well as Mark
Kinsey.
Wearing my GZG ECC shirt, had one guy come up to me to inquire about it.
He
was hesitant about maybe going, because he only recently learned about
Full
Thrust, and while he likes it a lot, has no one to play with/against,
and
wasn't certain how he, a noobie, would be received at the con. I assured
him he would be welcome by pretty much everyone there. Yay, new ECC
attendee!

I spent entirely too much time (and money) in the dealer hall, but I
think
I have my Check Your Six needs met for the next few months/year.  :-D  I
then made my way back to the main resort where I ran into Mark Kinsey
for a
bit. Then toured the flea market, browsed around a number of games, then
got involved in a new starship combat game currently under development
called Silent Fury. I had done a blind playtest of the game about a
month
ago, after being put in touch with the game designers who were looking
for
some folks to do blind playtesting, so it was nice to meet them in
person.
And after the debacle of our playtest session (which, according to them,
went far better than others they had gotten feedback from!), sitting at
the
table with them I saw all the mistakes we made.  :-D

Their game is definitely not Full Thrust. It IS pretty quick and
relatively
simple in many ways, but it is also immersed in hex movement
(surprisingly
they use vector hex movement - which works pretty well, actually), and
offers a sub-game in the form of boarding action (where you actually
play
out boarding party/ship crew battles on another ship as you take over
various systems on the opposing ship - if they don't kill you off
first!).
However, my Full Thrust Curse Flag flew true!

The first ship I was assigned was the first ship destroyed - on turn 2.
Took ONE hit...and exploded catastrophically. I hung out to kibitz and
take
some photos of the game for the designers, then got an opportunity to
take
over another ship as one of the other players on my side had to leave
early. That ship was catastrophically exploded the next turn. One of the
badly damaged enemy ships was involved in an overwhelming boarding party
action with boarders from another player's ship from my side. As he was
having a tough enough time fighting his ship, I happily took over for
him.
I managed to take the enemy ship...but then was fired upon by our
opponents
which all but gutted my new ship (I had one functional engine and one
crew
unit remaining). As the game then wrapped up at that point (so luckily
my
third ship lived), one of the game designers took stock of the carnage
on
the table, and the tally of ships blown out from under me. He looked up
from across the table, shook his head, and said, "You are just cursed,
Indy!"

I chatted some with him after the game. Turned out that he had gotten
his
first taste of Full Thrust yesterday in a FT Light game that was being
run
(don't know who was running it; I wasn't there yesterday). He liked it,
but
he wasn't very fond of how the fire control system/rules worked. (to his
mind tracking firecons that have or have not been used to fire on enemy
ship was a needless complication; firecons should just lock up at any
time
they are needed)

Was a fun time, but alas I only had enough time to be there just today.
Maybe next year I'll try for the whole weekend.

Mk