My turn!

Yerin and I managed to head out early enough this year to have to time to
eat dinner AND be at the con in time for my Friday evening FT game, Rite
of Ascension.  The game description can be found on the ECC website.
Basically, assassin with each player having a Pirate Cruiser and two
Pirate Heavy Destroyers.  The players (as expected) vied for position and
then lit up anything within range that was a legal target for them (in
assassin, there are very specific rules of engagement).  Played in what
is essentially an arena in space, hitting the "walls" results in a random
warping and reentry, and a threshhold test.  Ken Wang was the first to
make a run into the walls, having run a fly through of everyone else.
Fun to watch his 3 ships scatter around and pop back in. :)

CJ was eliminated early being right between Mike Hudak, who drew his
fleets color and Carl Shue (apologies if I've misspelled the name Carl!)
who was a "free agent", having drawn his own fleet colors.  Poor CJ
barely got any shots off before his entry was vaporized.

In the end, Carl, with 1 DH left and a TON of kills squeaked by a victory
over Ken Wang, who while with fewer kills, had acquired a few of the
other players fleet color tokens, which were worth some victory points.
Pretty close game.  Carl is now the Hudak of Shue.  I have little doubt
that the other pirate houses will challenge his rule next year. :)

After Indy and my Encounter with Strangeness (tm) (that stripper was as
vaccuous as she was ... um... vaccuous) I headed off to bed.

Saturday morning came way too early and Yerin and I didn't even try to
join Indy and Jon for breakfast.  When we finally roused ourselves, we
too headed down to Yorgas for a fine repast, then back to the hotel to
set up the Decals Express table.  After a fine lunch of stuff acquired at
the Market (there is an Amish couple in the back corner that makes
fabulous roasted chicken and roasted carrots!) I got ready to help Indy
run his DS3 game, Return to Gramaci Pass.  Overall the rules worked well
(in DS3 you don't play many "turns", but do get in lots of action blowin'
stuff up!) and we got some excellent feedback from Eddie, who was an M-1
gunner.  I'll be talking to Eddie off-line for ideas. :)

Dinner was had at the pizza place down the street, and I played delivery
boy to bring back hoagies for some folks who were way too busy to be out
getting food. :)

Saturday evening I helped Ken Wang to run Surprise! Surprise! - an FT
game that was not-at-all-the-final-battle -from-the-movie-Serenity.
Overall a fun game, but I felt that the NSL had too many ships.  Yerin
played, and does not like facing NSL ships.  They have beams, beams and
more beams, and armor and beams to boot.

After the game, we cleaned up and crawled back up to our rooms for some
badly needed sleep.

Sunday came about and I headed down to play in Ken Wangs FT game, D3
(Dreadnaught Demolition Derby).  Each player got an SDN (for my UNSC SDN,
Eddie let me play with his incredible battle fleet gothic battle barge -
that ship has to be seen to be believed! - Thanks Eddie!).  The "arena"
was a figure 8 track with some kind of buffering fields that blocked you
from going the wrong way through the center of the 8, but still allowed
fire and missiles and fighters through.  If you lost your ship, you
popped back in in a class smaller, eventually flying a Frigate, though
none of us got that far down the list!

My ship was behind Mike Hudaks FSE ship and being chased by Scotts IJN.
An NSL ship was in front of Mike, and the NI, NAC, and ESU ships were
heading toward the intersection for a cross over, in that order.  The NAC
ship hauled ass through the gap and in the end made it just over half way
around the track!

The FSE and NI ships unloaded into the NSL ship, while my UNSC Battle
Barge gave Mike's FSE a love tap with a few beams and a Graser 3, for 18
or so damage.  The NSL was short lived, and some shots were exchanged
between Noam's IJ and Mike, then the Maria Von popped in behind me!  I
was pouring on the thrust to get away, and the NSL found solace in
destroying Mikes FSE ship while I managed to get a hard forward arc shot
at under 12 mu into Noams NI ship (also being hit  by the NAC and the
ESU!).  I hammered it pretty good with 10 beam dice, 5 graser dice, and a
p-torp, but didn't kill it.  I then went into the far loop of the 8, and
was essentially by myself while the ESU (Zeb) and a smaller NI ship
(Noam) battled around the curve from me, and the IJ (Scott), FSE (Mike)
and the NAC (Eddie) had a slug fest on the far side.

I think I made it further around the table than any other player, but
sadly, despite taking any shot I could get, I scored no kills. On the
plus side, my UNSC SDN only took a grand total of 12 hits, and never even
had to make a threshold test.

The game was fun.  Then it was time to clean things up, pack up the
table, and head for home.  Before hitting the highway, Yerin and I had a
post-ECC lunch with Indy (as indicated by the final entry of the quote
board). :)

On behalf of Decals Express, I would like to thank everyone who dropped
by to browse and/or purchase decals.  On my own behalf, I would like to
thank everyone who bought my personal stuff (older minis that I'll never
use!) as it got me some money to buy new minis with!

It was great to see so many friends and fellow GZG enthusiasts, and to
meet some new folks as well.  I'm already looking forward to not sleeping
for a weekend next year!

John