ECC 8 AAR (long? very most definitely!)

My AAR isn't going to be strewn with rib-rubbing humour, unlike
Laserlight's.
Instead, just a [rather long] AAR of my side of ECC this year.

Pre-con:
The weeks leading up to the con were stressful and *filled* with prep
work.
I had it worked out that I'd get everything done in time for the con,
but
then got laid out flat with the flu for a week. That really put a crimp
in
my schedule, and there were more than a few nights where I only got 3-4
hours sleep in the last week before the con. So, going into it, I was
one
tired boyo.

Oh, one thing I want to do before this continues is to publicly thank
the various game companies who donated prize support for the various
scenarios that were played this weekend. We had some very generous
donations from some companies that had never donated before (Force XXI
for some 15mm prizes and Xtreme-Hobby for their superb Cold Navy ships).
With their donations, along with prize support from GZG, Brigade, and
some of our vendors (as well as Los, who donated some of his own stuff),
we were able to offer some very nice prizes to painting contest winners
as well as winners of a number of games.

Okay, now, back to the [exceedingly long] AAR!

[warning! I did say "exceedingly long" - you have been warned!]

		Friday, Feb 25, 2005 - Start of ECC 8!

The drive up for me was uneventful. I managed to work it out so I left
work early, packed, and for the first time in 8 years of this con,
managed
to beat Jon Davis to the hotel. Okay, beat him by maybe 10 minutes, but
one takes one's "victory" (so to speak ;-) where one can (I live 90
minutes from the con, Jon lives a few hours away, and half the time
makes
sidetrip detours to pick Stuart up, so how does he beat me every time?).
After checking in, went around with Jon and the very helpful and
friendly
catering sales manager, Lisa Dawn, to discuss the future of the con room
we have been using and what possible options for the future were
available
to us. All non-game stuff, this, but as con organizer, interested in
learning. Who knows what the future holds for which room we'll be in
next
year. May be in our current room, or may be in the larger ballroom....we
will see come 2006.

After that, it was time to unpack and get things ready for the games to
begin.
I took a quick stroll downtown a few blocks away to grab a virtual
geocache
that had been planted down there, grabbed some dinner at the local
Chinese
hole-in-the-wall place (discovered after I got back to the con room that
there were no utensils; argh!), and started organizing prize
distributions
and all the stuff I brought for the games I'd be running. And when the
time
came for the games to begin, I had already signed up for John Lerchey's
"Last 'Bot Standing", a Dirtside II game based on Metagaming's old
Rivets
game. John even had two armies of Boppers painted up for the players to
use.
Now, as there were only three of us instead of four, it meant that it
was
going to be one vs two. And it turned out that it would be I who stood
alone
to face off against Dan Blezek and Aaron Teske (complete with his Teske
Field!). 

We were given initial forces (no dive boppers or missiles were in this
particular game, btw) of four light boppers and a jack bopper, told to
assign them their targets, and begin play. Both sides began building.
I opted, over time, to start generating more boppers early, whereas
Aaron and Dan were working on the Big Boppers. At first, early in the
game, I was able to push close to their factory building, and even did
a few points of scratch damage to it. But after that the weight of the
Big Boppers (and Teeny Boppers) began to weigh heavily on my forces, and
I eventually ended up in a forced retreat (if not killed outright). The
Teske/Blezek units began the March of the Big Boppers. I did what I
could
to blunt that onslaught, but they were able to eventually get to an open
range of my factory, and blasted the hell out of it. I went from 15
control points to 4. Ouch in a *bad* way. I had to lose control of 1-2
of my damaged boppers (one jack bopper was a pillbox, unable to be
reprogrammed or engage it's targets, as the latter were behind hills
and stuff). And still the Teske/Blezek Factory churned out more boppers.

I managed to finally work a couple of jack boppers down to their
factory,
and from point-blank range, got in a couple very lucky shots - bringing
their factory control to *zero*! Which meant that in time I would be
able to create a Big Bopper or two, and send that against their factory
to finish it off; they had no way to repair the damage to the control
console. Nigh three hours after we started, my four boppers stood
victorious on the battlefield. Go me! :-)

The rest of the evening was spent going around to various tables to see
how things were developing/finishing, touching base with various people
at the con (I never did get to spend enough time visiting with Beth,
alas,
as she always had a contigent of others around her ;-), and setting up
the terrain for my DS2.5 game Saturday morning. Finally sometime after
midnight, I crawled to my room and crashed, dead to the world. So dead
that I never heard the riots and car alarms and police and people
yelling
and whatnot about 2 or 3am after the nearby bar let out. Slept right on
through it all....blissfully unaware....

		Saturday, Feb 26, 2005 - Day 2

Saturday morning came too quickly, alas. Up, showered, dressed, I and
Joel Frock proceeded downstairs to the lobby to meet up with Jon Davis,
his kids, Aaron Teske, Jerry Han, and whomever else was going to join
us for breakfast at Zimmerman's. Now, usually I try to beat Jon down
to the lobby, but he manages to get less sleep than I and is usually
already waiting for a while. This time, however, beat him down. ;-)
Okay, by only a few minutes, but one takes one's "victories" where one
can get them. ;-D

After a good breakfast at Zimmerman's, back to the con room. Other
people
staggered in, some having gotten less sleep than I due to the earlier-
mentioned noise events that occurred about 2 or 3am. Overheard a number
of people complain about that. But since that was the worst of it all,
everyone was willing to continue on; we have experienced FAR worse
within
the hotel building itself (anyone remember the "ski" group who was
partying
their heads off all night long in a recent ECC? ;-). The only other
group
in the hotel was a wedding that was going on, and they were, for the
most
party, pretty quiet (some people reported Sunday morning having heard
some
post-wedding celebratory activities going on in rooms next to them, but
again, not near me, and I was dead to the world that night; but that's
neither here nor there...)

My game on Saturday morning was The Return to the Gramicci Pass, a
Dirtside battle that featured some playtest rules. Said playtest rules
dealt with unit morale (different than what is in DS2), movement, and
the 'firefight' concept that Oerjan developed on the playtest list. In
this game Beth Fulton was a participant, and was able to do a direct
comparison to the playtesting she and her group had been doing down in
her corner of the world (apparently they resolve their games faster; 
unfortunately I never did get a chance to sit down with Beth and compare
notes on exactly how they did this, but she did say that they used smoke
a heck of a lot more). The game was set up so that each side had to
choose
a 'sealed' set of orders. Forces may or may not have been compatible
with
each other, objectives may or may not have been compatible, either. This
was an attempt to put some 'fog of war' aspect into the game. The UNSC
was the 'attacking' side, and their primary objective was to find out
what
happened to a recon unit that had gone up into the pass and disappeared.
Their secondary objective was to take out any enemy units they found.
The
ESU (defender) objective was to keep secret 4 heavy batteries of
artiller
that had been sequestered in the Pass. As long as the artillery
batteries
did not fire, or as long as the UNSC got no units within line of sight
of
where the batteries were hiding, the batteries were kept off-table. The
UNSC had no clue about the artillery, but the ESU was nervous as hell
when
some of the UNSC got close to LOS, and in the end, unleashed a barrage
of
arty on the UNSC in order to pound out the invading force. This was a
surprise to the UNSC (as they had no idea about the arty), but they took
it in stride (what, Indy, placing hidden units on the board? naaaah!!!).
We managed to only get through one turn, but this was partly because we
only got started about an hour and a half after the nominal time; I was
deluged early on with entries for the painting contest, and that
prevented
me from being able to get my game going on time. :-/  I tried to
multi-task,
but next year I think I'll not run a game Saturday morning so I can con-
centrate on the painting contest entries bit.

In any event, of the comments I got back from the game were that people
did like it, but it "seemed" to run slow, since we only got through one
turn (despite the carnage that was left on the table; the two forces had
lost at this point 40-60% of their units). There were also questions in
how artillery works in firefights, and some other stuff, that will be
taken eventually to the test list for a working over. ;-)  The players
in the game were Beth Fulton (playtest list member, UNSC), John Lerchey
(who I have bounced numerous DS2.5 ideas off of and who worked out the
OGRE rules for DS2 that we used last year; UNSC), John Crimmins (UNSC),
Noam Izenberg and his son Zev (the former a playtest lister; both played
ESU), Jon Davis' son Greg Davis (ESU), and Dave Hornung (experienced DS2
player; ESU).

Saturday afternoon. After a brief recon foray to a Mexican burrito place
that Dan Blezek spotted the afternoon before (big-@$$ burrito, no better
or worse than a sandwich from House of Pizza - but definitely broke up
the regular routine of HoP food every year ;-), I was involved in Vince
Johnston's "Ancient Eyes Always Watching" FT game. This game featured
NAC, ESU, and Sa'Vasku. The premise was that the ESU pops in a
NAC-controlled
system, catching them somewhat unawares, and combat ensues. The
Sa'Vaskue
then enter the field of battle a turn or two later. The field of battle
happens to be rather thick with asteroid fields of different sizes
(small,
medium, large; running into/through any is a Bad Thing, but you *could*
blow away the larger, ship-damaging chunks with weapons fire if one
wanted to, reducing the size of the asteroid field down to a lower
level,
or even zero if enough damage was applied). As the Sa'Vasku, Tom Tongue
and I were to secretly pick a side to support (we were not to let either
side know who we were supporting), destroy both flagships, and cause
discord amongst the two sides. We decided to support the NAC, who was
getting seriously hammered and unable to hammer back effectively. We
popped
in beside and behind the ESU on turn 3, and spent that turn blowing away
asteroid fields (clearing an area for maneuvering) and just drifting
along
side the ESU. Since they didn't know what we were doing, they left us
alone
and continued to pound each other. The NAC flagship was destroyed about
this
time, iirc. The ESU flagship was drifting further and further away from
the
field of battle. It was apparent to us that it was trying to escape. But
given how far away it was, and how slow everyone was going, it didn't
seem
likely we were going to be able to stop it. Tom thought it was going to
swing around behind the NAC, but with the NAC in sorry shape, and facing
two battle squadrons that consisted of a BC, a CAH, and support ships
each,
I didn't think that was likely. But who really knew but Noam, who was
playing
the ESU flagship squadron. 

On turn 4 the Sa'Vasku made it clear that the ESU were too strong
compared
to the NAC, and it was time to widdle them down. So we proceeded to.
Most
of the ESU ignored us and kept pounding on the NAC ships that remained,
but
eventually they took exception to the damage that Tom's group was
dishing
out and began to hit him back. But it was too little too late. By the
end
of this turn, the Sa'Vasku were the most powerful thing on the board, an
no one was going to stop us. We pounded away at the ESU (I had planned
on
sniping a couple of NAC ships for good measure, but the ESU blew them up
before I got the chance) for another turn and then the game ended. With
Vince's victory conditions and calculations, it turned out that of the 7
players playing (2 NAC, 3 ESU, 2 S'V), one person from each faction won.
All in all it was a fun game, but I think the S'V came in one turn too
late to prevent the ESU flagship from leaving. Vince told me later that
in
other games he's run of this the NAC had won by convincing the ESU to
side
with them and pound the tentacles off of the S'V. This time they didn't
cooperate, and the S'V whalloped with impunity.

After this session was over it was time for me to tally up the votes
from
the minis contest. There were four categories (FT, DS2, SG-15, SG-25),
and each person could enter up to two submissions per category. The FT
and
SG-25 categories are always very popular for entries, typically having
12-20 entries per. The DS2 and SG-15 categories are usually less
popular,
but do have entries. Sometimes 2-3, sometimes 10 or more. This year the
DS2 category had 4 entries, and the SG-15 category had 5. I had
submitted
two entries into the SG-15 category (a squad of GZG Ghurkas - ones I had
"complained" about several months ago as being too well-sculpted for me
to
begin to do justice to painting them - and GZG's SG-1 team), and one to
the Dirtside category (a platoon of Brigade M-84 Kochte tanks). I can
only attribute the low numbers of entries in these two fields to the
fact
that I won the Dirtside category and took 3rd in the SG-15 (with my
Ghurkas,
no less!). Martin Connel had entered GZG's sci-fi Egyptians in the SG-15
category, and those were DAMNED good! Everyone agreed - so much that he
had more than 2.5x the votes of the 2nd place entry (which I am spacing
what that was). In the FT and SG-25 categories, the difference in votes
between 1st and 2nd place was 1-2 votes - there was a lot of good work
submitted to those two categories!

After I tallied up the votes, we had our standard mid-con 'meeting' with
the con goers (we are small enough to do that; you'd never see that
happen at Cold Wars, Historicon, or Origins!). At this point the prize
for furthest travelled was handed out (Beth Fulton - all the way from
Tasmania! :0), and the painting contest winners were given their
certificates
and prizes. 

Because in year's past as well as this year, some people paint so well
that
they can win multiple places in different categories, we are looking to
implement some changes (from the feedback given us) to limit each person
a single win for each category (so one person can't win 1st and 3rd, for
example). Also, for those whose craftmanship is SO much better than
others,
we may open up a new category: Master's. This will be for repeat
winners,
and will give those others who enter but never win a shot at possibly
making
it to the upper ranks in that category. Details will be hammered out at
a
later time - we've got a year to work this out. ;-)

Saturday evening was "Weight of Command", run by Tomb and Los, with
Magic
and Kr'rt as support GMs (RTOs). There were some 9 or 10 players
involved.
The premise to this scenario was that we were all UN Peacekeepers, on
some
backwater planet or country, that had just recently undergone very
tumultuous and destablizing events. There is a local warlord or war
criminal who is still in power in the region, and has a vested interest
in
further destabilization, granting him more personal power. He has allies
and followers all over, including elements of the local police agencies
(if not the entire agencies). The UN wants him for war crimes, but must
grab him in such a manner that it looks like the national police are the
apprehending force. All sounds well and good, except...there are two
boards
(one for each side of the town, seperated by a river), so there will be
two
seperate teams of players, plus an HQ section in a different room, who
is
tasked with coordinating the activities on the two boards. Tomb and Los
would
be the 'local' GMs, running things at their respective tables. Magic and

Kr'rt would be the Radio Transmition Operator GMs, sitting in the
secluded
room with the UN CO and XO (I got to be the CO, Damond the XO; Phil
Pournelle
was Alpha Team leader, and Beth Fulton was Bravo Team leader). The quick
and
short of it was the war criminal Mr K was coming into town, meeting with
his
family during evening church services on Bravo table (he was coming in
from
Alpha table). Phil's group was to perform the snatch of Mr K while
Beth's
forces were to prevent sympathizers from Bravo table from interfering,
by
blocking the two bridges with her corden groups. And Damo and I were
sitting
in a side room coordinating all this. Hahahah. ;-)

Without going into a LOT of detail, it was a very interesting scenario.
Damo
and I had to balance being able to issue orders to our field teams
without
getting into micro-manage mode, and still deal with upper levels of
headquarters (various generals and things; we were but majors). Things
on
Alpha table went off pretty well. Things on Bravo table, on the other
hand,
kept getting worse and worse as the turns went by. Unbeknownst to our
intel,
Mr K was actually coming to the church in Bravo town in order to
purchase a
small nuke (~10 megaton iirc) from a group of weapons dealers. While
Alpha
Team was making the snatch on Mr K, Bravo Team saw Mr K's decoy, thought
it
was Mr K, and went after him. Their shooting out the tires of the decoy
vehicle caused said car to flip and explode (at which point I started
getting
queries from my superiors as to 'what is going on'; these went quickly
to
'what the hell is going on' when they picked up fusion weapons fire ;-).

As the car exploded, the UN Bravo forces moved in to secure Mr K
(decoy),
who turned out to have been killed in the explosion. The weapons dealers
in
the church had no way to know that they had NOT been found out, and
started
shooting, thinking the UN was coming after them. When the power armored
mercs
appeared, that's when (as I understand it) the APCs let loose with
fusion
weapons fire (and about that point my superiors were getting a little
anxious
with what was going on ;-). After I explained to them about the powered
armor
mercs, they gave my teams clearance to eliminate the PA troops. Of
course, my
teams were already in the process of trying to do just that (so when I
sent
down the official order that PA mercs were fair game, comment back was
"Little
late!"). 

Anyway, as the firefight grew on Bravo board, it became clear that there
was
more to the area than we first knew - and we learned about radiation
spikes
that eventually became understood as coming from the nuke that was
hidden in
the church. I tried to get my people out of the area, but then higher up
HQ
insisted that I "secure the WMD!". Dammit. Now I had to send people into
harm's way that we weren't prepared for. I sent the XO to the scene with
the
heavy-lift VTOL and all our elite power armor squads. Nominally to pick
up
Mr K and bring him back, but to give any team that heavy hammer fire
support.
Turned out the Bravo teams needed it, and the XO dropped two squads of
PA on
the church. Chaos ensued in the escalating firefight (during which
apparently
most of the locals left town, knowing about the nuke). The UN forces
were able
to punch into the church, at which point the arms dealer leader asked
for
amnesty in exchange for information on the nuke. I didn't have the
authority
to grant amnesty, and while I COULD have lied about it, I opted to just
play
it straight and told the troops on the scene to advise the leader that
amnesty
was not granted, but to also tell the leader under the strongest
possible
terms that it would be in the best interest to drop his weapons and
surrender
(leaving the unspoken 'or else' hanging in the air). More fighting
ensued,
and the weapons dealers retreated to the basement of the church,
focusing
all their attention on the narrow stairwell, the only access to the
basement
from above...or was it? 

In the mean time, HQ had gotten word that one of the weapons dealers was
actually (or also) a high-level civilian in the national government (or
something like that; iirc it was the weapons dealer leader) and having
them injured or killed would be a Bad Thing. And so I was ordered to
take
PERSONAL command of the situation. I think Beth and Aaron thought I was
coming in to steal their thunder for securing the WMD, because they
carried
on with the church assault. Unbeknownst to them all I really wanted to
do
was to contain the situation. They were going to get credit for
retrieving
the nuke. ;-)

While Beth's UN corden force was negotiating with the weapons dealer
leader,
Aaron and Beth's PA set charges around the floor of the church - the
blew
the floor, dropping in on the weapons dealers from above. Close-quarters
melee commenced, with the PA subduing most of the mercs. That was when
they
noticed the object in the corner with the LED that was reading
"30....29...
.28....27...." Oops. The Bomb. 

At this point things went into 'cinematic' time, as the UN forces did a
HELL of a lot of things in the remaining 25 seconds - from waving the CO
(me) off from landing due to the impending nuke explosion, torturing two
prisoners to learn who knew how to disarm the bomb, retreating from the
building to take shelter in the nearby sewer treatment plant, rescuing
the group of school children who showed up JUST at the wrong moment,
etc,
etc, etc. I think maybe 40 minutes worth of activities happened in that
25 seconds. ;-)  Nevertheless, the UN PA was able to dismantle the Bomb
and secure the radioactive material in a safe place for later hazmat
teams
to come in and retrieve. And the scenario ended.

I didn't get much more detail covered on Alpha table, mostly because I
was focused on the events going on on Bravo table, and partly because
they had things over there under control. In the end we got Mr K out
and taken to a UN holding area, and recovered the unsuspected WMD. A
pretty good win for the UN!  

Post-game we all convened in the HQ room and had a debriefing,
discussing
what each of us experienced and thought of the situation. Alpha team for
the most part had no clue about the WMD, but that was mostly because
Phil
Pournelle did not pass that information on to his troops. Reason? They
didn't need to know. As Phil stated, in his experience, a good officer
is
a good filter: tell the troops what they NEED to know, and not bother
them
with information that would either hamper their abilities to function
effectively or distract them from doing their jobs. As there was nothing
Alpha team could do about the WMD, the Alpha team didn't need to know
about it, and only had to worry about their own evac plans.

All in all WoC was probably one of the best games I've played in a long,
long time. I really appreciated the amount of time, energy, and effort
that Tomb, Los, Kr'rt, and Magic put into this. It was well worth it.

		Sunday, Feb 27, 2005 - Day 3

Sunday morning came entirely too quickly. I was running my 15mm Dirtside
game, "The Bigger They Are...". Premise: an unknown enemy force had
broken
through the front lines and was wreaking havoc in the rear areas.
Tracking
the force's movement, the defending commanders were able to cobble
together
a counter-force in order to try and stop the invaders. Suspected (due to
the availability of the models) but not 100% known to the players, the
invading force was a 15mm Ogre Mk III (called a FOGRE, created by Joel
Frock at my request from last year). The defenders included units from
Brigade (an M-84 Kochte platoon), Force XXI (MBTs, light APCs, an
APC-VTOL,
a couple of Banshee gunships, and an artillery battery), DLD (Kamodo
APCs,
TOC, ICVs, and HFS', as well as a platoon of Civet grav tanks and a
platoon
of Bengal MBTs), and GZG (2 NAC infantry squads, a squad of Ghurkas, and
three NAC PA squads). We used the end room of the con room, which was
also
used as the HQ room in "Weight of Command" the night before. And since
in
15mm playing on tables would be...inconvenient (weapons ranges were
multiplied
by a factor of 3 for simplicity sake - thus a HEL could now shoot 180
inches
or about 15'), we used the floor. To the slight dismay of some
participants,
but no one seemed to kill themselves or knees. :-)  We opted to keep the
room a 'shoeless' room so people could actually feel if they accidently
stepped on any terrain or models. Happily, only a couple of stands of
trees
were casualties from a short stumble at one point; otherwise all models
faired well by not being stepped on - however...)

The FOGRE came on the board, and the defenders moved to cut it off. Long
range fire was ineffective against the Mk III, and in reply the Mk III
wiped out the entire platoon of M-84s, and thumped a couple other
platoons
with missile fire. The defending tanks kept trying, though, to get in
range
and tried to destroy things, but the levels of armor (6/7; remember,
meters
thick of biphase carbide armor) on the modules proved resilient. The
FOGRE
rumbled on...until it got within range of the infantry. THen one team
(the
Ghurkas) fired an IAVR (in desperation; they needed a 'boom' chit to do
ANYthing to the FOGRE) at the FOGRE's main gun (which hadn't fired yet).
The IAVR pulled a '2'...and a 'boom'. Ka-blooie! The main gun was now
gone;
first blood drawn on the FOGRE by a lowly infantry team (said team did
not
last long, however, being creamed by AP fire a short time later). At
this
point the tide began to [slowly] turn. Further weapons fire against the
FOGRE proved effective now and again, and the FOGRE began losing tread
units
and secondary batteries. But not without a cost! There were many
defending
tanks burning when the FOGRE drove into the heavy forrest. Many fresh
and
still viable tanks piled up behind it, to shoot down the 'tunnel'
created
by the FOGRE driving through the woods. The FOGRE then threw its treads
into
reverse and...rammed through four tanks in one move, rammed more tanks
later.
It was down to only one secondary battery, but ramming it could do with
impunity. As it had killed the Kamodo APC/ICV units earlier, the Wraith
APC-VTOL picked up a couple teams of PA to move them into position to
take
on the FOGRE. The FOGRE's remaining secondary battery knocked the
APC-VTOL
from the sky, taking out the two PA teams at the same time. Bummer for
the
defenders.

In the end the defenders were able to prevent the FOGRE from getting
past
the halfway point on the field of battle, but had only 6 viable tanks
and
two squads of infantry (one regular, one PA) left to fight with (oh, and
the artillery unit and the two Banshee gunships as well). Everything
else
was a burning hulk. A costly victory, but the FOGRE was stopped.

After that, the game sessions were mostly over. I packed up, said
good-bye
to people who were departing, and then eventually departed myself for
the
drive home. 

Another good ECC had come to a close. Now to start thinking about what
to run next year....FMA? More Dirtside 2.5? FT? So many scenario ideas
to choose from I don't know where to begin...

Mk