After Action Report - Mark Kochte Given my copious free time, I'll probably have to trickle out the AARs from my POV. I arrived around 6pm, unloaded my stuff, and dashed off to the House of Pizza for a quick (hah!) cheese steak dinner. Once back I got some things organized, and found an open game. An FT game. Sweet. :-) Thus I found myself playing in Scott Bishop's "What the !@#@!$!%?" scenario. Basically it was a Q-style game where a Q-ness went to different genre universes (Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, SG-1 and B5). Our respective fleets found ourselves in a huge arena that, if you went off an edge, you'd appear on the opposite side of the map field. Tom McCarthy was running the star destroyer and TIE fighters at the opposite corner from me. To my immediate right, between me and Tom, was Ken Wang with some Battlestar Galactica units. Across from Ken, and to Tom's right, was Aaron Newman, with an Earthforce squadron, complete with two Omegas and a Warlock. To Aaron's immediate right, and my immediate left, was Jerry Han running a Klingon battle group of several D7s and a D9. I had two Daedalus class battleships and a larger version of those (or I had two Prometheus' and a Daedalus; don't remember), with a handful of fighter wings. I had thought to turn into the center of the board and take on Tom's star destroyer, but 1) he was WAY far away from me, 2) I didn't want Aaron getting opportunistic on me with shots at my flank while my heavy beams were facing away from him, and 3) I didn't want Jerry suddenly coming up my back end with a bunch of Klingon warships! Given how far Aaron was from me (and that he was "stuck" in vector, while I was flying cinematic), I turned to give Jerry a bloody nose, blow through his formation, and off the board, to appear on the opposite end of the field behind Tom's force. The plan went mostly as I was hoping...but not fully. However, in some ways unexpectedly better - much to Jerry's dismay. I was unclear just how powerful, or not, the Klingons were, until I started dumping railgun shots and heavy beam fire at his ships. They began to evaporate. By turn three we were nearly interposed and between my ships and fighters, I finished off all three of his cruisers and crippled his D9 to almost non-functionality. I really hadn't intended on inflicting THAT much damage, because I had planned on 'using' him to engage with Aaron, thus preventing both of them from trying to follow me to the other side of the board. But man, gotta love that Asgard technology. :-D Unless you're a Klingon. As Jerry and I were mixing it up hard, Aaron took a couple pot shots at us, but otherwise left us alone, turning his attentions to the BSG/SW forces converging on his left flank. Ken and Aaron teamed up to destroy the star destroyer (kinda ironic, that) about a turn after I had raked Jerry's ships to nothingness. The game was then called at that point. Since the night was still early, I got Jerry to give me a private game of Full Sail, since in the years he's been running it I have never had an opportunity to try my hand at it. I took a couple of US frigates while Jerry had a couple of Brit war sloops and we went at it in a Carribean archipelago. My inexperience with the system and rules showed, as I split my forces up to flank Jerry while he remained in a straight as an arrow line. I did manage to inflict some significant damage on one of his ships, but as I've come to experience from the past few years of Flames of War gaming, halfway through the game the tide turns (not quite literally here ;-) ), the dice gods get fickle, and the losing side suddenly gets openings it needs to prevent a wholly one-sided victory by the winning side. And thus the tables turned, and Jerry all but destroyed one of my ships (the other was pretty hurt, but not out of it yet), while I did minimal damage to him. I brought my wounded bird up, hoping to slip around an island, recapture my lost ship (it was now abandoned), and make good an escape. But Jerry had other plans for me (as he remembered the rough handling his Klingons took an hour or two earlier by my Tau'ri ;-) ), and he swiftly sank my remaining ship. Neat adaptation of FT to sailing ships. I liked it. :-) The rest of the evening was catching up with old friends from previous ECCs, and finally retiring around 1am. Just to do it all again come the morrow. Except, the morrow would be me busy running the painting contest, running my FT3 playtest game, and running John Lerchey's FT game (he had to pull out of the con last minute, unfortunately, so I offered to pick up his game for him) converted to another FT3 playtest game. Yes, Saturday was going to be a busy, busy day.... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As promised, the AARs from the rest of the weekend. Details have been left fuzzy because a lot of this was playtesting games. But the general gist is there. :-) Saturday was the long day for me. In the morning I fielded entries for the miniatures painting contest. In the afternoon I was running an FT3 playtest using SFB-inspired ships (Klingons, Lyrans, Hydrans, Kzinti and ISC). Saturday evening I was pinch-GMing for John Lerchey his FT game, but using the FT3 playtest rules. The morning session was relatively quiet, as all I did was remind people about the painting contest and collect entries. I also spent some time wandering between tables taking photos. Then it was lunch, and then the afternoon hit. During the afternoon session people were to take a little time out to go check out the entries for the minis contest and vote. I would tally up the votes during dinner and present the awards during the post-dinner/pre-evening gathering of the day. But first, I had a playtest game to run... This SFB-inspired game was set to take place after the General War, when the ISC imposed peace upon the warring nations. I set up an encounter between the Kzinti (a space control ship) and a Lyran fleet to occur near the Lyran/Kzinti/Klingon border. The Klingons got word of the skirmish and sent out a heavy squadron to 'quell' the rabble (or to just get in some target practice). A small Hydran force happened to be making its way across Lyran space and stumbled upon the hapless Kzinti SCS facing down two fleets of Lyrans. At about this same time the ISC showed up to put a stop to it all. The players were all assigned (in most cases by choice) fleets and the new playtest rules explained (and explained that these were **playtest**, and weren't necessarily going to *be* the FT3 rules; feedback desired after the game!). The game unfolded not quite how it went last time I played it. The ISC rolled in and focused every living plasma bolt and phaser and PPG (grazer) on the Klingons - who basically evaporated in one or two turns. Meanwhile in the opposite sector of the board, the Kzinti SCS was taking a bit of a beating, but managed to dump out a ton of heavy missiles, drones, and chaff - so much that it basically wiped out one of the two Lyran forces. The other Lyrans had started to work on the Hydrans, but the Hydrans got some very very very good beam rerolls and began gutting the remaining Hydrans. The surviving Lyrans departed post- haste, leaving the ISC to take on the Kzinti and Hydrans. The game was called at this point, as the Kzinti and Hydrans did not want to face down a fresh ISC force with rechargeable plasmas (esp since the Kzinti had mostly used up their store of heavy missiles - drones). Feedback on the playtest rules was pretty favorable overall. I'll be writing up a summary for the playtest list later, as soon as time permits (and as soon as I get some promised feedback from the players ;-) ). After the game ended I went around to remind people to vote. Then at 6p went to collect the ballots. The way voting worked, all entries on the table had a designated scale/type and number. No names associated with them, so you were voting on (for/against) the minis, not the person. This was, in my best judgement, the best way to garner fairest voting. I abstain from entering any votes unless there was clear-cut tie that needed resolving, then I would input my opinion. And we had a lot of VERY good entries in the contest this year for people to vote on! However, as I tallied up the votes, in all but one category were the first place winners apparent (the 2nd and 3rd place winners were almost always within a few points of each other, though). In the 15mm category, however, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places were extremely close! In the end it was a 0.5 point difference between first and second place, and a 2 pt difference between 2nd and 3rd. The winners were: Full Thrust 1st - Steve Barosi 2nd - Noam Izenberg 3rd - Stuart Murray StarGrunt 25mm 1st - Mark Kinsey 2nd - Aaron Newman 3rd - Martin Connell StarGrunt 15mm 1st - Martin Connell 2nd - Erik Kochte 3rd - Mark Kinsey Dirtside 6mm 1st - Martin Connell 2nd - Ken Wang 3rd - Noam Izenberg Congrats to all the winners! During the awards ceremony and general announcements, I also had the opportunity to recognize the remaining few people who have made it to all 12 of the ECCs to date. There are now four of us: Mark 'Indy' Kochte, Jon Davis, Stuart Murray, Jim Bell I happened to have on hand 3 12" dinosaurs that I presented to the other three "oldsters" (since I was presenting, I didn't have to give me one; however, a friend of mine at home, hearing of this little award I gave to Jon, Stuart and Jim, went out and purchased a small dinosaur for me - ha. ha. ha.) The group broke up into their evening games. As mentioned earlier, John Lerchey was unable attend, so I took over his "Emergence" FT game. Tried to turn it into an FT3 playtest as well, but that didn't work out too well, as the way the game unfolded, it was nigh impossible to really *test* any of the FT3 system against the FT2/FB stuff.. But more on that later. The game was, in a nutshell, a warp point assault on a pirate base. In John's universe, it was his NRA out to remove a giant pirate-y thorn from their side by doing a long-range hyperjump into the system where the pirates were hiding out. Doing short-range (few light-years) jumps you can pop in where ever you want in- system pretty much, but if you are doing long-range jumping (many light-years), you need to use "Beaumont Points". Your entry into the system wrt the BPs would be determined by your entering sublight speed (if you were going slow enough, you'd enter pretty much ontop of the BP, but if you were going fairly fast, you would scatter). This was explained to the non-pirate side (which I determined would be NAC, since I know nothing of the NRA). The NAC players decided they did not want to scatter, and set their ships to enter at low speed. I didn't know enough about the scenario to persuade them otherwise. Also, the ships enter one per turn per BP. There were three BPs in the system near the asteroid belt where the pirates base lay. So the NAC would only be getting 3 ships/turn in-system. Oh! And the turn you enter the system, your shields are down, your firecons are down, your engines aren't working - i.e., you're a floating hulk until your power recycles. The pirates set up three squadrons near the BPs, one at each. And waited. The other three BPs were situated closer to the asteroid belt. The pirates also had to get out of system at LEAST 12-18 boxes of cargo. They had three asteroids with one docking clamp each, and four freighters at their disposal. They could load 1 cargo point per turn, meaning in four turns they could load a total of 12 points of cargo. Then a turn to undock, another few turns to get out of the asteroid belt, then jump away. The NAC began entering the BPs, and if they scattered, it was only by a few inches. The pirates opened up with everything they had: C2s, C1s, needle beams, and EMPs (class-II). They repeatedly *nailed* the NAC ships as they appeared. Only the battlecruiser survived long enough to bring systems back online and remove two pirate vessels, but by then the reinforcing squadrons had arrived and...well, good night gracie. The NAC were less than amused by all this. And by turn 4, all they had left to bring in-system were destroyers, each of which would pop as soon as it appeared. The game was called. Basically, a very one-sided win for the pirates, as an entire NAC task force was obliterated. To salvage a little of the evening, Stuart suggested we each take a couple destroyers or a single cruiser from the NRA/pirate game and do a semi-free-for-all (which ended up being the NAC players vs the pirate players with me tossed into the pirate ring) to test the FT3 rules I had originally wanted to test. This went much better (though the NAC still got their heads handed to them, they did perform much better; I got to shoot up Jon Davis a little bit, too). After the game I talked at length with several participants about the proposed FT3 rules as presented. I got a lot of *good* feedback from them. Again, I'll be presenting this to Jon and the test list later. Sunday morning came and a few of us headed out for breakfast, only to find the usual place closed. Jon Davis remembered an "organic" place down the block so we went to check it out. It proved to be a fine fair. After breakfast it was back to the con. Today Noam would be running a large fleet encounter, also playtesting more of the FT3 rules. Unlike my games, his would be also stress-testing the upper practical limits of FT fleet engagements with massed amounts of small targets (missiles and fighters). This, I think, was imminently successful. We never actually finished the game. ;-) I don't know how BIG it was points-wise, but it was an NSL/FSE battle. The FSE had one SDN, one CVA, one BDN, a light carrier (total of 15 fighter groups iirc; the NSL ended up having one or two more), several BBs, some CAs, and more cruisers of smaller design, and destroyers and frigates. But the NSL caused need for the table to be reinforced, by the sheer mass of lead that made up their fleet! The two groups closed, then salvo missiles were sent in. A little too early, as it turned out, as the NSL were able to knock down all the ones that could engage, but it was good for doing anti-missile practice. However, it took a while. Turn 3 (or 4?) saw the next two waves of missiles and fighters coming into the NSL fleet. We basically ran out of practical time to play by this point. However, to illustrate the FT3 mechanics we did not get to, and to discuss some other perceived vs actual play (which involved lots of good discussion), we all worked the dice a little more before calling it a day. At this point people needed to be getting on the road home. We were the last game to wrap up. All in all it was a good con. I hung out until the last of the con participants packed up and left, then I got on the road myself. Beating the threatened snowstorm we'd been hearing about all weekend by about an hour. :-) Thanks again to Jerry and Jon for letting me help run another con, and thanks to everyone who was able to push through their schedules and make it out for another weekend. Hopefully (fingers crossed) more of you will be able to come next year!