GenCon Review with a GZG Emphasis (part 3 of 4)

The Full Thrust Tournament

I didn't do any miniatures gaming on Friday, so I'm not sure how things
went that day. I did spend a whole whack of money at the Geo-Hex booth,
though. Thankfully Canada Customs didn't stop us at the border, as I was
over my duty-free limit. I bought 22 packs of NSL infantry and three
VTOL troop carriers for SG2. I had intended to buy FT ships, but I'm
still considering which fleets I want to collect. Since SG2 is becoming
my favourite game, I bought a bunch of miniatures to complement my
existing collection of Living Steel 25mm figures. Next year I'll buy
some NAC or FSE figures. The resin Deimos grav tank was for sale at the
booth. It looks VERY nice! If I only had some money left over (and the
Canadian dollar hadn't gone in the tank just before we went down
south)...

Saturday morning was the Full Thrust tournament. I'd like to start off
by saying that Dean Gundberg did an excellent job of organizing and
running the event. Bryan Miller and I were referees, but Dean created
the ship designs, set up the tournament, got the prizes, and came down
with the official rulings. The popularity and smooth execution of the
event is testimony to Dean's preparation.

The format for the tournament is a good one and should even be made
semi-official (IMHO). Dean created a number of different styles of
fleets: beam fleets, carrier fleets, megabattery dreadnought fleets,
battlerider fleets, etc. Each player was free to choose any fleet. The
players were matched up randomly, and played a one-on-one battle on a
table half the usual size (5' x 4' or 6' x 4', I think). The games would
take no more than two hours. The game ended on a turn when a player
destroyed enemy ships equivalent to half the opposing fleet's total
point value. The player who destroyed more of his opponent's fleet was
deemed the winner. As it turned out, in all games the first person to
destroy half of his opponent's fleet turned out to be the winner.

We had 12 players join the event out of a possible 16. We needed 8 for
the second round, so the percentage of the opposing fleet destroyed was
calculated. The top 2 losing players would also get into the next
(quarter-final) round. I'm not sure what we would do if we had an odd
number of players (a random player would get a "by" into the next round?
the lone player would have to play a referee?). The method we chose
worked well. The only wrinkle is that we paired off the two "losing"
players that got into the quarter-finals, thus guaranteeing that one of
the players who lost round one would get into the semi-finals. For next
year, we might want to try a "seeding" system. The player who does the
best in round one plays the player who did the worst in round one, then
the player who did second best plays the player who did second worst,
etc. This gives the possibility of upset wins, and adds to the tension.
This is a minor quibble, however.

The games for the most part ended early. There were some interesting
things of note during the tournament. A beam-based superdreadnought
fleet won the tournament, but battlerider fleets and megabattery
dreadnought fleets were very popular. The megabattery fleet could be set
up ahead of time as having two AA megabatteries or one wave gun. Most
chose the AAs, which proved interesting as the AAs burned out with
amazing regularity. Mark Siefert gets the award for greatest comeback in
the first round. He lost much of his carrier fleet early on, resulting
in people giving up on him, only to squeeze out a win late in the game.
The set up was such that his opponent had to pretty much destroy Mark's
carrier to win, something that came to him far to late to do anything
about it.

In the quarter-finals, two megabattery fleets squared off against each
other. In the semis, one of the players changed from a pulse torpedo
fleet to a batterider fleet, but ended up losing. In the finals, one of
the players swapped his megabattery fleet for a battlerider fleet, while
the other finalist stuck with his superdreadnought fleet.

The final game was a nasty one with both fleets fairly evenly matched. A
mistake in tactics early on put the superdreadnought fleet at a bit of a
disadvantage. It didn't look good for the SD fleet going into the final
turn: the SD and a damaged cruiser were all that was left (with the
cruiser's death giving the game to the battlerider) on the SD side. On
the battlerider side, there were two battleriders in reasonable shape
and a battledreadnought virtually untouched. At this point, the game
ended in a slight bit of controversy. The battlerider player was, shall
we say, liberal with his turning and moving. He had a tendency to turn
his ships inaccurately, while his ships tended not to move straight but
to drift a bit. On the second last turn he had placed the two
battleriders near the edge of the table at a speed of 18. Knowing the
criticality of the next move and the player's penchant for inaccurate
movement, I measured the movement myself and determined that the
battleriders should slide off the table. At a speed of 18, there was no
way either ship should be able to stay on the table. Funny enough, when
the player moved his own ships, they miraculously hugged the table edge.
With Dean and the other player as witnesses, I used referee discretion
and declared the ships off the table, and thus classed as mission kills.
The game went to the SD player. 

Congratulations to the mailing list's Sean Schoonmaker, winner of the
1998 GenCon Full Thrust tournament. Sean won a trophy, $50 worth of
stuff from the Geo-Hex booth, and a Superior Miniatures starship. In
fact, every player making it past the first round got one or two
Superior Miniatures starships and a $5 off certificate. Sean should also
be congratulated for excellent gamesmanship. Sean had a lot of fun
playing and kept things fun and non-serious for his opponents. Even
during the last game, when his opponent made some "irregular" moves,
Sean didn't complain. Sean's an excellent sport and I'd play against him
or with him any time.

After the tournament I played in the second of three linked SG2
adventures. The victory conditions were particularly nasty for our side,
but with a little referee fudging we were able to eke out a tie. For
anyone who played the NSL in the third Ventron game, you can thank me
and my fellow player for taking out the two bunkers! It was a fun game,
and I really enjoyed it. I went back to the hotel for the final slot,
too tired to play in the other game I was going to join. On the other
hand, the place was hopping in the miniatures area with all the GZG
tables running something or other. Although we only had 4 players for
our SG2 game, the FT games looked full.

Allan Goodall	       agoodall@sympatico.ca

"We come into the world and take our chances
 Fate is just the weight of circumstances
 That's the way that Lady Luck dances
 Roll the bones." - N. Peart