[report] Conquest 2000

Convention report: Conquest 2000

Over easter, Conquest was held in Melbourne, Australia, attracting ~600
visitors over the weekend.
On GZG related items, I ran a FT comp & several FT demos & a SG demo
game.

FT competition:
This was run on the sunday over 3 rounds using scenarios & fleet morale.
I used crew factors to work morale, which gave a balanced feel, with
most
fleet averaging 32-35 crew for 2000 pts.  Fighter sqdns counted as 1 cf
each.

Overall winner was Matthew Dobbs, fielding an FSE fleet consisting of
Foch
SDN + escorts.	Dropping 11 SMLs per turn hurts!
Other fleets were: 2 x NAC, 2 x ESU, 1 x FSE; no NSL this year!

The first scenario was a hunt the admiral; with 5 CF for getting the
admiral
& 3 CF for the largest ship.
The second scenario was a black hole, with a 3 MU pull directly towards
it
every turn.  Although no ships were lost, several ships had close calls.
The last scenario used was a nebula with _everything_ having to roll
lockon
(including each indivual fighter, missile & PDS).  

Most of the battles were fairly close affairs, with the average win
being
only 5 points difference.
*****
The FT demo's were fairly well attended, with several dozen players
through
over the period; I was running a cruiser duel, usually with about 4-5
players at a time.

*****
The Stargrunt demo was an ambush scenario inspired by the short story
"Welcome to Ground Zero".

I involved a patrol of marines ambushed by OU troopers.
The Marines had a command squad, 2 x 10 man squads, a rhino APC (size 2)
& 2
Demolisher tanks.

The OU had a command squad, 3 squads of line infantry & 2 GMS/L teams
with a
sniper.

The scenario opened with the GMS firing upon the heavy vehicles, but
failing
to damage it.  The kept this up for 3 activations before finally
disabling
both of the Demolishers, but not before taking heavy suppression &
several
casualties from return fire.  
The sniper succeded in taking out the marine commander, but promptly
expired
himself under a rain of bolter fire from the APC.
The marine player didn't move his troops very much, which resulted in
heavy
crossfire from the treelines on opposite sides of the road, before a
close
assault captured most of the command squad... on the second attempt. 
The OU
failed to reach with both moves on the first attempt & consequently took
heavy casualties from point blank fire.
The remaining marine squad (no casualties) then escaped off the board as
the
OU were kept busy by the surviving tank crew & other squad which had
suffered moderate casualties.

Neath Southern Skies -http://home.pacific.net.au/~southernskies/
[mkw] Admiral Peter Rollins; Task Force Zulu
[DitD] Captain Puppilier