GZG ECC 16 - An Overview Wrap By Indy

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