GZG ECC 16 - an overview wrap

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Well, yet another ECC has come and gone. Lots of people showed up, lots
of
games were hosted, lots of prizes given out, and lots of people had fun.

After the long 5-hour drive up (missing the weather channel-warned storm
in
the mountain passes of Pennsylvania by a couple hours), I arrived with
plenty of time to check in, unload the car of my stuff, and get in on
Ron
Walls' "Star Trek Starship Combat: Into the Maelstrom" game. Setting was
a
mystery ship has appeared in this nebulosity surrounding a black hole
near
the neutral zone and both the Freds and Klinks sent a squadron of ships
to
investigate. I got to be the mystery ship and it turned out I had the
Excelsior Prime from the Mirror, Mirror universe. Adm Hikaru "Oh Myyy"
Sulu
commanding. My goal/objective was to test out the new antiproton beams
that
were installed in place of the typical phaser banks (antiproton beam -
think "planet killer" from "The Doomsday Machine"). I was also to
capture
any tech from either side, and kill as many as I could (granted, I was
in a
battleship, but I couldn't take on both sides at the same time, so was
going to have to 'ally' myself with one or the other). The Feddies
attempted to hail me and find out who i was, but I didn't let out much
of
info. So to confuse them I asked them where they were from. and set out
to
maneuver at a substantially high rate, with shields and weapons charged,
adding to the apprehension of both sides as they saw my speed and were
doing scans of my weapons. I finally let them know who was commanding
the
Excelsior Prime, and since I outranked the Commodore on the Chandley (or
whatever ship it was; can't remember), they decided to try and form up
on
me to drive off the Klingons. The Klingons in turn tried to encourage me
with the 'enemy of my enemy' philosophy. To which I replied that I was
leading the unsuspecting Feddies right to them. I wasn't sure yet if I
was
going to turn on the Feds or blow away a Klingon or two. In the end I
got
the two sides together, the Klingons (not trusting me) covered some of
their (or more literally, my) asses, and in one turn a LOT of phaser and
photon fire ensued, accompanied with substantial antiproton beam blasts,
which basically gutted two Klingon ships at point-blank range. One Klink
blew up, and I went to tractor the other and take it back to my
universe,
but it self-destructed so I let it go and went home.  :-)  The remnants
of
the Klingons warped out, and the few surviving Fed ships picked up the
pieces and survivors (as good Feddies are to do).

Saturday morning Noam Izenberg and I ran a playtest of a starship combat
game we are developing and got a lot of good and positive feedback from
it.
Double win there.

Saturday afternoon I got in on a Tomorrow's War game run by a friend of
mine who had come up to the con for his first time. He has doing a Mars
Rebellion series of four games locally, and ran the middle two scenarios
at
the con. Prior to this I had only been able to help him playtest the
first
scenario. So it was neat to see how the second one went. Basically the
Terran Marines had worked their way into one of the Mars Domes and were
looking to secure it (take control of the facilities in order to pacify
the
resistance). I was helping play part of the resistance commandos (lower
tech, lower troop quality units) and we somehow managed to avert a
Terran
take-over of our control complex at the last possible moment. WIN for
the
Mars Revolution! The People's United Mars Provinces (PUMP) rule!

Saturday evening we had our awards ceremony for the minis painting
contest.
This year, since Ken Wang was going to do a scratchbuild workshop, we
expanded the minis contest entries to include a scratchbuild category.
There were a lot of fantastic minis entered, and as usual, I abstained
from
voting since I wanted to remove any actual or perceived bias from
knowing
who's mini(s) was(were) whose, and let the attendees of the con vote
instead. This year, over most any other year, the first place winners
were
far and wide in the lead in ALL categories - by a factor of 2.5 points
in
votes! The differences between 2nd, 3rd and 4th place were pretty slim,
and
I even squeaked in a 3rd place win with an "old style" NAC battle
squadron.  :-D	(I usually enter something in most categories just to
help
fill the field and to give everyone a chance to compare 'poor' painting
to
'great' painting techniques :-) ). Due to the generous donations of our
GZG
and Brigade sponsors, I was able to give some very nice prizes to the
winners.

After that I got in on Ron Walls' Tomorrow's War game set in the Aliens'
universe. This was a fun and tense scenario but the flow was disrupted a
bit by some communication disconnects between the GMs, the GMs and the
players, and the Aliens player and the players, which caused some
confusion
and frustration for those playing (and I'm sure GMing). But getting
beyond
that, it was a fun game, and as one of the Marines I got to shoot
things:
egg sacks, face-huggers, and a handful of highly armored Aliens (D10 on
the
defense? holy crap!) We even got to see the Weylund-Yutani Mercenary
plasma-fusion armed grav tank explode. I'd play it again.

Sunday morning I ran MY Tomorrow's War game, "A Walk Through the Valley
of
Death". From my scenario blurb:

*"The humans, I think, knew they were doomed. But where another race
would
surrender to despair, the humans fought back with even greater strength.
They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life, I have
never seen anything like it. They would weep, they would pray, they
would
say good-bye to their loved ones, and then throw themselves, without
fear
or hesitation, at the very face of death itself, never surrendering..." 
Emperor Londo Mollari, 2278

The year was 2247. Flinn Colony was the site of some of the bloodiest
ground fighting during the Earth-Minbari War (2245-2248). Prior to this
the
Minbari were able to deal with ground forces in a pretty
straight-forward
manner, but Flinn Colonys ground-based defenses forced the Minbari to
land
a large number of units on the planet itself. Massive hand-to-hand
combat
raged across the planets surface, until every human of Flinn Colony was
killed. But high Minbari casualties told the tale that the humans made
the
Minbari pay for every human death inflicted.*

I had four players, two Human, two Minbari. Three of the players were
brand-new to Tomorrow's War, so it was a little frustrating for them as
they had some preconceived notions as to how it should play vs how it
did
play. But once they got past that they had a good time and shot stuff
up.
In the playtest games I'd run before the Minbari won, but at a
substantial
price (usually with half of their members seriously wounded or KIA), but
this time only one KIA and one or two seriously wounded. The rest of the
Minbari were running rampant on the Human defenders. The boneheads
(especially Jim Bell) had gotten some great die rolls most all game and
combined with lack of movement by the humans (they should have either
moved
up to perform a pincer or move together and levied withering fire into
one
or two Minbari fireteams rather than go at them semi-piecemeal)
contributed
strongly to the Minbari win. Nevertheless I think the game went well.

I shot a lot of photos and took a number of time-lapse sequences (with
and
without the dolly) but upon review last night I'm not wholly happy with
most of the time-lapse shots. I'll get a slideshow together later when I
get some time and I'll drop in some of the TL sequences, but won't be as
many as last year's was (https://vimeo.com/38046845)

Jerry Han has the Quote Board, and while there are not nearly as many
quotes posted as there have been in years past (mostly because I think
people are starting to forget about posting quotes during games), there
are
some gems in there. One of my favorites is this (may be slightly
paraphrased; Jerry will post the actual quote, but this is close enough)
:

Jerry Han: "I didn't realize Aliens had opposable thumbs"
Greg Davis: "...and the tank?"
Jerry Han: "The tank was the Aliens' lunchbox"

(if you didn't draw the connection, this was the explanation for why the
W-Y Merc tank mentioned earlier exploded)

Mk