A Gnome's eye view of ECC-VI (long)

The title is probably accurate. I do believe I was the shortest (full 
grown) attendee of the Con. I won't comment as to whether any of the 
adolescents were, in fact, taller than me.

Thanks to all Indy, Jon, & Jerry particularly for assembling a great 
Con. It was great to be there again after missing two in a row. My only 
regret was having to turn into a pumpkin at midnight on Saturday.

I thoroughly enjoyed all the games, peeking at the goings on on other 
tables, and putting real faces and voices on some of the folks I had 
still as yet only interacted with virtually. and will have a longer AAR 
of Interrupted Negotiations put together hopefully sometime this week.

I played 3 games at Table 1 which happened to be in the middle of a 
swamp. The water dripping from the ceiling (from the unending rain 
outside) was _mostly_ collected in a series of garbage cans, but the 
rug squished and pooled under the feet of anyone caring to step on it. 
The tables and players stayed dry, but we should have draded tables 
with some of the SG/DS games where the wet terrain would have added 
realism to the game. Spaceships to not go >squish<. Ok, well maybe 
Sa'Vasku. OK, probably Phalon (eww) But none of those were in the games 
I played.

Here's a mini (as in small, not miniature) report from the games in 
which I participated:

War Without End - After driving up from Baltimore in some of the worst 
dreck I've ever had to drive through, I was ready to blow something up 
and thought I had my chance as a Shadow squadron sent to take out 
Babylon 5. We used Aaron Newman et all's enhanced B5 sourcebook rules 
and it was great fun. Both my Battlecrabs ships got frozen by telepaths 
at different points and destroyed out of range of B5 itself (one due do 
double catastrophic threshold (Aaron: "Don't roll a six," Noam rolls a 
6; Aaron "Don't roll a six," Noam rolls a 6)),	but did do some flaying 
of the Army of Light before going down. The shadow spitball-launched 
fighters were outnumbered by the AoL's pretty significantly, but gave 
good accounting of themselves. The weakest Battlecrab (Jim Bell had 
both the "youngest" and "oldest" shadow cruiser) made it to B5 and did 
it's best to take it out solo at the end of the game, but the station 
was still standing, if badly hurt) by the end. It looked like a wash at 
the end. Somewhere in there one of the Shadows managed to take out Lyta 
Alexander (Damn those telepaths anyway), but I'm sure another of my 
dark colleagues - Jim or JP - can fill in those details. The AoL was a 
varied and erratically formidable foe. It was fun to see two Sharlins 
eviscerated by the Beams of Great Mayhem and Jerry Han look like an 
Indy clone with his dice. :-) It was less fun to plasma net a Vree 
saucer into close range only to discover we had pulled it to where we 
were in the range of the game's only area effect weapon. But no one 
said shadows were overly _smart_...  Thanks, Aaron.

Space Battleship Yamamoto: Allied powers against the Imperial 
Neo-Japanese. We (the allies - NAC, NSL, and, would you believe, ESU) 
outflanked the main line of heavy Japanese ships, flayed Gofu-tron 
(Tofu-ton?) alive in a fighter swarm the turn of his arrival on the 
board (almost on top of some ESU capitals), obliterated the 
mecha-fighters in a dogfight/slaughter festival and converged on the 
base in a sweeping and masterful display of righteous power. Thanks, 
Jerry.

Interrupted Negotiations: A testy standoff between the New Israelis 
Islamic Federation and the mediating UNSC is interrupted by a Kra'Vak 
attack. The UN SDN-X Neptune, already damaged by sabotage falls to the 
power of withering K-5 fire, and the other ships of the UN contingent 
follow, though hang on long enough to finish off a Ti'Dok and a Si'Tek. 
The Islamic Federation accounts for itself but at a distance with Heavy 
Beam fire and in the knife fight with massed B2's. They take out a 
Ti'Dok and score significant damage on several other KV ships, and 
escape (with the still-hidden saboteur). The New Israeli's prove hard 
to hit, and soft on the touch with stealth hulls and lighter armaments, 
scoring no kills, but also taking the least damage of the human forces. 
and controlling the space at the end game. The KV forces hit a mixed 
bag. Force 1 targeting the UN scores pretty much a total victory, 
taking out all the UN ships with their own fire and leaving the field 
with all ships in decent shape. KV2 (targeting NI) fares not so well - 
the Ti'Dok falling to IF fire (of all things) and the two Si'Teks 
limping away (quickly) with a few hull boxes to spare. (Note to all: 
The Teske field does not mix with the Kra'vak - sixes do not bode well 
for doubling K-gun damage-, and seems to backfire completely when Aaron 
actually has to take a threshold.) KV3 (vs. IF) started a bit slow and 
took long range fire before moving into the fray. THe Ti'Dok and one 
Si'Tek of this group fell to the last UN cruiser before it went pop. At 
least two, perhaps three KV lost all heavy weapons and/or all firecons 
at once to bad threshold rolls. In all a strategic victory for Humanity 
- the IF saved at least one NI ship from destruction by shearing off 
all the weapon power of a Ti'Dok before it could fire; The UN's noble 
sacrifices spared several other ships from certain peril, and Humanity 
gets a foreshadowing of what the Siege of Sol is going to be like. 
While the KV main objective is not achieved, at least one contingent 
solidifies its leadership position for the coming assault. It was great 
fun to GM. I'll generate more detailed AAR as time goes on. Thanks Jim, 
Thomas (T),

The Battle for Gramicci Pass: My first DS game. Thank goodness we had 
experience on our side :-) As the Allies again (ever the good guys), I 
had fun firing my tanks from the hilltops at the enemy advancing 
through the cliffs.  I had to leave the game before its conclusion, 
unfortunately, so I don't know if we nailed those illegal ICMB's or 
not, but I did see and enjoy a great deal of carnage while there, and 
like the game. It made me want to bring cotton to my FT games to 
simulate vented atmosphere, and convinced my to pick up the DS rule 
book, which was probably a bad idea because now I'll be tempted _not_ 
to ignore all the [DS] posts on this list. Thanks Indy.

I already know I won't be able to make ECC-VII, but I'm optimistic 
about VIII.

-Noam

Bronze Enigma	 (Noam Izenberg)