RE: brief Fall In convention AAR

Staying true!  Thanks for the update





Michael Brown

mwsaber6@msn.com

 
  
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 21:20:43 -0500
Subject: brief Fall In convention AAR
From: indy.kochte@gmail.com
To: gzg@firedrake.org

So, had an opportunity to jet up the road to poke into Fall In today.
Saw several people from my local game shop.club there, as well as Mark
Kinsey. Wearing my GZG ECC shirt, had one guy come up to me to inquire
about it. He was hesitant about maybe going, because he only recently
learned about Full Thrust, and while he likes it a lot, has no one to
play with/against, and wasn't certain how he, a noobie, would be
received at the con. I assured him he would be welcome by pretty much
everyone there. Yay, new ECC attendee!

I spent entirely too much time (and money) in the dealer hall, but I
think I have my Check Your Six needs met for the next few months/year. 
:-D  I then made my way back to the main resort where I ran into Mark
Kinsey for a bit. Then toured the flea market, browsed around a number
of games, then got involved in a new starship combat game currently
under development called Silent Fury. I had done a blind playtest of the
game about a month ago, after being put in touch with the game designers
who were looking for some folks to do blind playtesting, so it was nice
to meet them in person. And after the debacle of our playtest session
(which, according to them, went far better than others they had gotten
feedback from!), sitting at the table with them I saw all the mistakes
we made.  :-D	

Their game is definitely not Full Thrust. It IS pretty quick and
relatively simple in many ways, but it is also immersed in hex movement
(surprisingly they use vector hex movement - which works pretty well,
actually), and offers a sub-game in the form of boarding action (where
you actually play out boarding party/ship crew battles on another ship
as you take over various systems on the opposing ship - if they don't
kill you off first!). However, my Full Thrust Curse Flag flew true! 

The first ship I was assigned was the first ship destroyed - on turn 2. 
Took ONE hit...and exploded catastrophically. I hung out to kibitz and 
take some photos of the game for the designers, then got an opportunity 
to take over another ship as one of the other players on my side had to
leave early. That
 ship was catastrophically exploded the next turn. One of the badly
damaged enemy ships 
was involved in an overwhelming boarding party action with boarders from
another player's ship from my side. As he was having a tough enough time
fighting his ship, I happily 
took over for him. I 
managed to take the enemy ship...but then was fired upon by our
opponents 
which all but gutted my new ship (I had one functional engine and one
crew 
unit remaining). As the game then wrapped up at that point (so luckily 
my third ship lived), one of the game designers took stock of the 
carnage on the table, and the tally of ships blown out from under me. He
 looked up from across the table, shook his head, and said, "You are
just cursed, Indy!"

I chatted some with him after the game. Turned out that he had gotten
his first taste of Full Thrust yesterday in a FT Light game that was
being run (don't know who was running it; I wasn't there yesterday). He
liked it, but he wasn't very fond of how the fire control system/rules
worked. (to his mind tracking firecons that have or have not been used
to fire on enemy ship was a needless complication; firecons should just
lock up at any time they are needed)

Was a fun time, but alas I only had enough time to be there just today.
Maybe next year I'll try for the whole weekend.

Mk