Re: GZG-ECC IV AAR's

>From: Robert W. Hofrichter
>Now that all of you that were lucky enough to have a chance to attend
GZG-ECC have gotten back home, I expect lots of >good after action
reports (so I can live vicariously through your gaming)!

Well, okay, since you insist....

Friday Night Firefight, run by Stuart.	A massive StarGrunt game,
complete with vehicles, VTOL, helicopters, air defense, artillery,
drop ships and civilians (until one of my teammate's units went
berserk and massacred them, while a hostile camera crew gleefully
filmed the whole thing).  I'd never played SG or read the rules, and,
due to a severe case of sleep deprivation, I still don't know what the
rules are--Stuart explained them well, but apparently my memory was on
"continuous disk format" mode instead of "save to disk".  However,
everyone else picked it up pretty quickly.  I am going to claim the
"Major Oops" award for that game, as I called in arty on an enemy
squad that had been pretty well shot up already--in addition to that
squad, I scragged the medevac chopper and two of my own squads,
including the guy who'd called in the fire request.  Despite this, I
had a great time and I'll be getting 15mm SG figs (oh, and I guess
some rules too, eh?) soon.  Stuart is a really fun GM, due largely to
the delight he takes in saying things like, "Draw a chit--oh, that's
bad for you!  Draw another one.  Oh, that's worse--keep that!"
Stuart's minis are absolutely gorgeous and he thoroughly deserves the
contest award(s) he won--Jon, can we have time for a painting clinic
next year?

Saturday morning, Operation Avalanche, run by Brian Bell, Kra'Vak vs
Hu'Man in vector.  The Kra'Vak got to launch asteroids down the length
of the table and we elected to send them down our left and the center
and concentrate on the Hu'Man right.  The NSL on their right
(commanded by Chad if I recall correctly) played slalom with the rocks
and did a great job of it--ie kept formation better than my MD6 KV
could !--but were delayed by it.  The HM center (UN and PAU) shifted
to their left and the ESU on the HM left, commanded by Commodore
Lester Bell, attempted an end run to get past the KV line and destroy
the KV base.  Unfortunately for the ESU, the KV were facing the HM
while thrusting to the rear.  Our retrograde movement wrong-footed the
ESU and so instead of flying through our line and ending up behind us,
they ended up smack in front of us--and "smack" was the operative
word, as about 25% of the Hu'Man fleet was at 12-18mu range of about
70% of the KV fleet (one ESU ship did make it through the KV line, but
not out of scattergun range).
KV victory, and the lesson is "concentrate your fire--not the enemy's
fire."	I'd have to say, though, if we'd had unlimited play time, I
think the PAU and UN fleets would had kept us busy for long enough
that the NSL could have gone and killed our base.

Saturday afternoon I played a pickup game, lesson learned being "PDS
is good, but not being where the missiles hit would have been better"

Saturday evening, TomB and Los ran a playtest of FMA skirmish for
CanAm.	 We discovered that grenades can explode in front of you and,
if you're in the open, you're usually safe; however, if you've ducked
behind a doorframe and so get a hard cover bonus to protect you from
the grenade, you're doomed.  (despite what the quote board says,
Adrian was in the open when he got killed, so it's not 100% safe.  Not
quite).  The Canadians won that game.  Indy provided certificates of
victory and the American team certified the Canadian victory.  Just
wait till next year!

Sunday morning, I ran CanAm Full Thrust (in vector, not
cinematic--I'll change the web page any time now).  The Americans
(Brian Bell, Carl Scheu, Aaron Teske, Mike Sarno) took a fleet with 25
fighter squadrons; the Canadians (Tom Barclay, Jim Bell, and Adrian
Johnson, who quite sportingly learned FT about five minutes before the
game started so he could lend moral support to the other two) took a
beam heavy fleet.  Both sides started in high orbit around the planet
and both sides elected to circle the planet clockwise.	The US
fighters took off after the Red Maple squadrons; a few of them tied up
the Canadian interceptors while the rest tore into the ships, rather
like a pack of wolves dragging down an elk.  Adrian's squadron was
pretty much gone before he had any chance to shoot; Jim's squadron
plinked away at long range; Tom maneuvered quite nicely around the
planet but ran into salvo missiles, the US fighters, and the beam fire
from the entire US fleet.  Carl Scheu gets the award for Excessive
Overkill (29 points past the last hull box, on a ship that had about
30 hull + 5 armor to start with); Tom Barclay gets the reciprocal
Incandescent Award, 'cause he is; and Mike Sarno gets the Fleet
Engineer's Heartfelt Thanks for taking no damage to his ships and
bringing back all his fighter squadrons (did lose some individual
fighters, no squadrons).
 I suspect the Candians should have started in low orbit rather than
high orbit, thereby closing more quickly with the Americans (and with
the Canadian squadrons closer to each other). With two inexperienced
players, they were understandably concerned about running into the
planet, but the result of being cautious was that the fighters had
more time to attack, and the Americans could defeat them in detail.

I had a great time, and many kudos to Jon Davis, Indy Kochte, et al,
for putting in the work to organize this.  Be there next year.