Hi All!

Despite the fact that Yerin and I left Pittsburgh about 2 
hours later than I had planned, we had absolutely NO trouble 
with the drive across PA to Lancaster, and made it in plenty of 
time for my participation in Friday nights FT game, "Old Foes, 
New Horizons"  hosted by Indy.  

The game (see the descirption on the ECC website!) held a few 
suprises.  I played the NSL. :)  We got two squadrons, one 
having a SDN with some supporting ships, and my squadron 
having 3 BDNs with some supporting ships.  We started on 
opposite ends of the table, with 3 groups of NAC ships between 
us.  The NAC, in this alternate verse had the new Delafield 
ships (Joel Frock sculpted them for the con, and every 
participant got one!).  Each force had some non-standard kit.  

The NAC had 3 ships with advanced drives, AMTs and K-guns!  
The NSL had 3 Cold Navy Terran ships, each fitted with Grasers 
(2 lighter ships with a G-2 each, and one with a pair of G-3s).  
The game was pretty fun, but the NSL die rolls were 
not quite up to snuff, and the potential effect of the Grasers 
was offset by most of the NAC ships having level 1 or 2 
screens. (Grasers do not like screens and level 2 screens 
*really* reduce their effectiveness).  OTOH, the K-guns DO 
like to rip huge holes through NSL ships.  Big holes. Though we didn't 
explicitely know it, we had to stop one of the Delafields and 
two freighters.  We killed the two freighters easily, but 
failed to kill ANY Delafields, and handily lost.   Still, it 
was a good game!

Then I went to bed. :)

Saturday I ran a DS3 game, "Broken Contract".  A lot of the 
new rules I was testing worked really well, and the players 
seemed to have a pretty good time.  There was lots of 
violence, and the attackers pulled off a marginal victory.

I tookd Saturday afternoon off to reset my head, make sure 
(with Yerin doing most of the work while I played!) the Decals 
Express table was up and running, and just resting.

Saturday evening Grant LaDue, as he did last year, snagged me 
and asked if I wanted to join in on an FT game in need of a 
warm body.  I said, "Sure!" and jumped in.  We were going to 
finish the final battle of Mike Hudaks "Squabble in Sector 
Six", but everyone decided that it was just a slugfest and 
that we'd have more fun starting something else and having 
Mike play.  Ken Wang came up with the idea of playing 
"Assassin".  We each (Ken, Mike, Myself, Jerry Cantrill, and 
Grant) took a small task force of 5 identical NAC ships (SDN, 
BB, BC, HC, CE - I think).  We then pulled names out of a hat 
to determine who our "contracts" were on.  The Rules of 
Engagement stated that you could not fire upon anyone unless:

	- They were your target
	- They were a target that you acquired by destroying
	  another players fleet
	- They fired upon you first
	- They were within 6mu

Both Ken and I pulled out our own names making us "free 
agents" able to fire at anyone we wanted.  I honestly can't 
quite remember how the other three mapped out.  In the 
beginning we were kind of feeling things out and mostly moving 
in a clockwise cirle.  Mike started hammering Jerry, who 
valiently fought back. As their fleets passed through each 
other, they both got heavily damaged and Mike killed a ship.  

We kept killed enemy ships as trophies.  Grant, meanwhile, was 
heading off to my right, with my fleet following at very long 
range.  Ken was running right up our center, and Jerry broke 
through and started moving in to pass through our lines.  

Grant was sure that I was after him and that Ken was after me. 
Boy was he wrong. :)  Ken took a pot shot at grant, but lined 
himself up so that I was full-fleet to his broadside.  I tore 
into him pretty heavily.  Jerry passed through while Grant 
pulled away, and Ken, Jerry and I did some shooting at each 
other with my fleet mostly in their rear arks, giving me the 
opportunity to "cherry pick" kills.  All the while, I took 
long range pot shots at Grant.  Grant had figured out that I 
was a free agent, and tried to persuade others to fire at me, 
but for the most part, I managed to keep my positioning such 
that I was never the optimal target.  By this time, I was 
pretty much behind Grants fleet, and since our ships were 
identical with mine being mostly untouched, he had little 
option but to try to run while I cut inside of his circle and 
tore into his fleet.  Jerry escaped with 2 ships, but still 
had 2 fighter squadrons on the table!  Everyone else had taken 
pretty significant damage, but I had only taken 1 threshhold 
on 1 ship, while having 4 trophys.  Regardless of win or loss 
we had a great time and it was a really fun game for a con!

Time for sleep again!

Sunday morning I played in Indys "Castle Wolfenstien" FMA 
game.  This was a follow-up to the earlier FT game wherein the 
NAC sent a unit back into time (1944) to stop the NSL from 
helping Germany to win WWII.  Forces consisted of a squad of 
US Rangers, a squad of NAC, a squad of NAC infantry, and a 
squad Powered Armor vs. a squad of German Infantry, a squad of 
NSL "advisers", and a pair of tanks - a Mk IV and a Tiger.

The German infantry bravely stood against a combined attack by 
all 3 "Allied" squads while the NSL advisors (me!) set up on 
the other side of the bombed out town to provide cover fire 
and prevent any advances on that side.  The tanks set up with 
the Tiger supporting the Germans and the Mk IV supporting the 
NSL.

The Germans had a rough time of it, being vastly outnumbered, 
and occasionally moving into areas with no real cover.  Still, 
they killed or wounded a good number of Rangers.  The NSL 
infantry provided cross fire and helped to keep the US forces 
from advancing.  Meanwhile, we learned, much to our despair, 
that an 88 on a Tiger was barely a match for the NAC PA, and 
that the Mk IV with it's 75 was inferior!  The only thing we 
had that had a decent chance of stopping the PA was my ONE 
trooper with a plasma gun.  The Tiger did hold up the PA for a 
bit, popping 88 shells off of one poor troopers forehead, 
knocking him down a few times, but never hurting him.  The Mk 
IV did about the same thing, but less so, and was close 
assaulted by a PA guy!  The melee lasted a looooong time, 
mostly with each combatent hurting themselves.  I *should* 
have had a nice overwatch shot against the PA when it charged 
the Mk IV, but I was mistaken about which of my guys was on 
the first floor of a building and which was on the second, and 
lost the shot 'cause I thought that the guy with the clear LoS 
was a rifleman who could not damage the PA.  D'oh!  

Eventually, the PA sent a guy into our end of town and into 
the building we were trying to protect!  I had to activate my 
plasma gunner using my commander to climb down the building, 
run into a sandbag position and fire on the PA!  He caused 
some stress, but that was it.  The PA squad leader moved up 
and looked around the corner of a building and shot at my 
plasma gunner, cleanly missing.  I then had to activate my 
plasma guy, taking one shot at the PA on the obejctive, 
scoring a wound! and then snapping a shot at the PA squad 
leader causing another wound!  An NAC trooper with a plasma 
gun fried the Tiger, and the PA fighting the Mk IV pulled away 
from it, breaking it in the process to charge my plasma 
gunner!  Luckily for me, he had no actions left, so I got two 
plasma shots off at him wounding him twice!  (PA get 3 
wounds).  The PA in the building, by this time, along with the 
PA squad leader had also been wounded twice (go plasma 
gunner!) and had a ton of Stress - enough so that the one on 
the objective could not activate!  

It came down to my plasma gunner and Steve Barosis PA.  If he 
won initiative and activated, my plasma gunner and our defense 
was doomed.  We rolled and Steve won initiative!  Praying for 
a 1, I watched as Steve attempted to rally his stressed and 
wounded PA trooper.  He rolled a 9 and squashed the only guy 
we had left that could damage the PA like a bug!  The game was 
over and the NAC managed to correct history and restore order 
to the future!

What a great game!  And what a truly cinematic cliff-hanger of 
an ending!

After that, it was time to do final sales, clean up, and head 
for home.

Oh, did I mention that my freshly painted Hard Kill terran 
Storm Tanks took first in the painting contest for DS minis?

Noam and Benjamin Izenberg took 2nd and 3rd.  Nice job guys!

It was an excellent ECC as always and I'm already looking 

forward to seeing good friends, playing great games, and 
generally having a blast next year!

John