[GZG] GZG ECC XII AAR for Friday evening

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en my copious free time, I'll probably have to trickle out the AARs from
my POV.

I arrived around 6pm, unloaded my stuff, and dashed off to the House of
Pizza for a quick (hah!) cheese steak dinner. Once back I got some
things
organized, and found an open game. An FT game. Sweet. :-)

Thus I found myself playing in Scott Bishop's "What the !@#@!$!%?"
scenario.
Basically it was a Q-style game where a Q-ness went to different genre
universes (Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, SG-1 and B5). Our respective
fleets
found ourselves in a huge arena that, if you went off an edge, you'd
appear
on the opposite side of the map field. Tom McCarthy was running the star
destroyer and TIE fighters at the opposite corner from me. To my
immediate
right, between me and Tom, was Ken Wang with some Battlestar Galactica
units. Across from Ken, and to Tom's right, was Aaron Newman, with an
Earthforce squadron, complete with two Omegas and a Warlock. To Aaron's
immediate right, and my immediate left, was Jerry Han running a Klingon
battle group of several D7s and a D9. I had two Daedalus class
battleships
and a larger version of those (or I had two Prometheus' and a Daedalus;
don't remember), with a handful of fighter wings. I had thought to turn
into
the center of the board and take on Tom's star destroyer, but 1) he was
WAY
far away from me, 2) I didn't want Aaron getting opportunistic on me
with
shots at my flank while my heavy beams were facing away from him, and 3)
I
didn't want Jerry suddenly coming up my back end with a bunch of Klingon
warships! Given how far Aaron was from me (and that he was "stuck" in
vector, while I was flying cinematic), I turned to give Jerry a bloody
nose,
blow through his formation, and off the board, to appear on the opposite
end
of the field behind Tom's force. The plan went mostly as I was
hoping...but
not fully. However, in some ways unexpectedly better - much to Jerry's
dismay.

I was unclear just how powerful, or not, the Klingons were, until I
started
dumping railgun shots and heavy beam fire at his ships. They began to
evaporate. By turn three we were nearly interposed and between my ships
and
fighters, I finished off all three of his cruisers and crippled his D9
to
almost non-functionality. I really hadn't intended on inflicting THAT
much
damage, because I had planned on 'using' him to engage with Aaron, thus
preventing both of them from trying to follow me to the other side of
the
board.

But man, gotta love that Asgard technology. :-D

Unless you're a Klingon.

As Jerry and I were mixing it up hard, Aaron took a couple pot shots at
us,
but otherwise left us alone, turning his attentions to the BSG/SW forces
converging on his left flank. Ken and Aaron teamed up to destroy the
star
destroyer (kinda ironic, that) about a turn after I had raked Jerry's
ships
to nothingness. The game was then called at that point.

Since the night was still early, I got Jerry to give me a private game
of
Full Sail, since in the years he's been running it I have never had an
opportunity to try my hand at it. I took a couple of US frigates while
Jerry
had a couple of Brit war sloops and we went at it in a Carribean
archipelago.

My inexperience with the system and rules showed, as I split my forces
up to
flank Jerry while he remained in a straight as an arrow line. I did
manage
to inflict some significant damage on one of his ships, but as I've come
to
experience from the past few years of Flames of War gaming, halfway
through
the game the tide turns (not quite literally here ;-) ), the dice gods
get
fickle, and the losing side suddenly gets openings it needs to prevent a
wholly one-sided victory by the winning side. And thus the tables
turned,
and Jerry all but destroyed one of my ships (the other was pretty hurt,
but
not out of it yet), while I did minimal damage to him. I brought my
wounded
bird up, hoping to slip around an island, recapture my lost ship (it was
now
abandoned), and make good an escape. But Jerry had other plans for me
(as he
remembered the rough handling his Klingons took an hour or two earlier
by my
Tau'ri ;-) ), and he swiftly sank my remaining ship.

Neat adaptation of FT to sailing ships. I liked it. :-)

The rest of the evening was catching up with old friends from previous
ECCs,
and finally retiring around 1am. Just to do it all again come the
morrow.
Except, the morrow would be me busy running the painting contest,
running my
FT3 playtest game, and running John Lerchey's FT game (he had to pull
out of
the con last minute, unfortunately, so I offered to pick up his game for
him) converted to another FT3 playtest game. Yes, Saturday was going to
be a
busy, busy day....

Mk