Well, back once again from the grind of ECC and to the relaxing world of work.
:-D

This year, our 13th year, marked a location change due to unforeseen
circumstances (that really we all should have seen some indication of) with the
Hotel Brunswick back in Oct 2009. It was LATE in the game for us to be scouting
out new locales, but we managed to do so, and found the Owego Treadway in
Owego, NY, to be very accommodating.

Going to Owego now meant my travel would be more than 2x as it was to the
Brunswick in Lancaster, but I reminded myself, a fair number of regular
attendees to ECC over the years have traveled as far as I would be now or
further. If they can do it, I can suck it up, too (but then again, I'm
transporting all the prizes; if it gets too far away, the prizes won't make it
to the con ;-) ). This move to Owego, we knew, would cause a drop in
attendance, with most of the people in the MD/VA area not making the drive
(they were spoiled by the shorter drive to Lancaster, too ;-) ). Of course, the
economy hadn't been helping in that regards, either.

Two days before ECC was to commence, a Nor'easter (being called a snowicane due
to the near hurricane force winds it was supposed to have at times) slammed
into northeastern Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and much of New Jersey.
Having already weathered "snowpocalypse" in December and the one- two punch
"snowmageddon" in early/mid-Feb, I was well-braced for slow travel. I loaded my
snowshoes and accompanying gear into the car along with my con stuff. Friday I
got on the road about 11am, stopping briefly at a hobby shop along the way to
pick up some super glue.

The drive up was pleasantly nice. Not much traffic, roads were mostly open.
Winds were extremely strong, and twice I was buffeted into the lane to my
right. Fortunately, the "not much traffic" meant very few people on the
highways, and little danger of my actually hitting someone. On the other hand,
halfway through the mountains I saw a semi-tractor-trailer rig had been blown
off of the highway and into the median strip, leaving a deep gouge of mud and
tire tracks easily 3 truck & trailer lengths long before coming to a stop.
Somehow the driver managed to keep his rig upright.

Traveling through the mountains in central Pennsylvania, sometimes the wind-
driven snows covered the left lane for half a mile or more, but always at least
one lane was open. So, while not always at highway speeds, I was never going
slower than 40 mph for any stretch, probably averaging more like 50 in the
mountains. Once I was up past the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton region, the roads
opened up, the winds died down, and...damn, the sun came out! I decided to take
a break along the way and did a few geocaches (but actually only found two, as
the other two I was going to try for were buried in 2+ feet of snow). With
these stops I managed to get to the hotel by a little after 5pm.

After I checked into my room (and called John and Yerin to let them know where
we were staying), I hustled over to the con room. Found a dozen people there,
milling about or setting up for the evening games. I wanted to get something to
eat before the festivities really kicked underway, and hiked down the road 5
minutes to some food (plenty of food options within a 5-10 minute walk of the
hotel). The roads were remarkably clear, despite the storm that blew through
not 24 hours before, and there was a nice shoulder to walk along.

Back at the con room I was to play in Jon Davis' "Battle for Cormorant Moon",
an FT Federation/Klingon battle. It was mostly straight up fighting, but you
had to stay within a certain range of the planet in order to gain points for
your side. The Klingons (of which I was one - hehehe) closed in quickly with
the moon while the Feddies held back some. This netted us some early lead in
points, which helped in the end.

There were six ships (Federation cruiser and Klingon D7) to each side. We
battled, chased each other around Cormorant, and battled some more. At the end
of 10 turns, there were three damaged Klingons and two or three very damaged
Federation cruisers. With the early lead in points, the Klingons won.

Saturday morning came all too early. A group of us stumbled our way up to the
Blue Collar Diner for breakfast. It was populated with regular blue collar
types, a couple of whom stared at us funny ("damn city slickers"). But we got
no trouble, had a good breakfast, and back to the con.

That morning I was originally going to be in Jon Davis' Car Wars-style battle
arena game, but I decided to help John Lerchey fill out his late- submitted FT
game (plus I wanted another just straight up FT game to play). His was an
interesting one not oft-seen. First, vector movement, and second, players had
to build fleets using no more than 250 NPV - and could have no more than ONE
destroyer, and nothing larger. This would force players to put together fleets
using frigates and smaller. Finally, a game where the largest thing on the
board MIGHT be a destroyer! I decided to have all kinds of fun with this and
took two Kra'Vak Swift War Killers for 238 pts. My opposite numbers had a fleet
of NSL frigates and a squadron of NAC frigates. Oh, and there was a rather
sizeable asteroid debris field we were flying about in - in vector! :-D

I'd never flown K'V in vector before, so it was interesting to get a feel for
their maneuverability. But despite my better maneuverability, my skills with
nailing ships with K-2s proved...less than adequate. By turn 4 or 5 both of my
ships were destroyed by combined fleet human firepower (class 2s can reach out
and smack just as I'm getting into better range bands for the K-guns). I
destroyed no one, but had a fun time nevertheless. I spent the rest of the
morning organizing the miniatures painting contest.

Saturday afternoon I ran a playtest game of FT3, stress testing the
fighter/small targets mechanic. I based the game in the Battlestar Galactica
universe (plenty of 'small targets' there!!). Unfortunately, there was some
confusion on each side about how certain mechanics actually did work, which may
or may not have muddied the playtest results. But each side did get a feel for
things and gave me some good feedback on various mechanics we're working on.

As the afternoon session came to a close, I tallied up the votes for the
miniatures painting contest while Jerry went out and got a pizza for us to
split. Then Jon and I did our mid-con speeches and awarded the winners of the
contest their prizes. Then, because Jon Tuffley had so graciously sent extra
prizes to us over and above his usual box, in honor and celebration of GZG's
25th anniversary, we had a mini-raffle of sorts with the con attendees: Jon
pulled names out of a box and we had them come up and select a prize. This went
on until everyone got something. :-)  So, combined with our door prizes, no one
went home empty-handed. And a few people got some reinforcements to their space
fleets or ground units. ;-)

The evening games then kicked off. I was in on Tomb's StarGate FMA(ish) game,
playing a Russian Colonel. It was a great game, well-run, and very StarGate
cinematic (except that the Jaffa seemed to have better armor in the game than
on tv :-D ). Jon Davis, running two characters, the Canadian/American rescue
team Colonel and a Russian soldier who was part of my team, was in awesome form
when doing the role of the Russian soldier. He played it to the hilt, and so
well that when he fired at a Goa'uld and watched the bullet stop and drop a
foot from the Goa'uld, he burst out (in complete Russian accent) with a "What
the f**k!? I rolled a 12! [on a d12] Russian bullet blow head off!!" (note: Jon
admitted later he has only seen a few episodes of StarGate, so this truly did
take him by surprise). The rest of us at the table and nearby observing fell
out of our seats laughing. I was concerned Yerin was going to pass out she was
turning so red with laughter.

In the end of the game, we managed to stop the Goa'uld forces from obtaining
whatever technology they were going to grab, but somehow the Goa'uld managed to
activate something (or it was from the explosive package we tossed into the
pyramid) that would turn the world - and eventually the solar system - into a
black hole. While the (cinematic) black hole was forming and sucking everything
into it, we all fled. Unfortunately, the explosives expert and myself were the
closest to the 'special ripple effects', and while we could have both made it
through the gate, the gate would not shut down in time. One of us had to stay
and shut the gate down before the black hole grabbed hold of the worm hole. And
while I should have gone through and ordered the explosives expert to take care
of it (and thus be able to submit a proper report), paperwork wasn't on my mind
(or was it? ;-) ). I ordered the explosives expert to get through the gate and
then I destroyed the DHD just as the black hole destroyed me.

At least I closed the gate, saving my comrades, and my fellow SG teams with
their Canadian bullets.

Sunday morning came all too quickly.

Breakfast was in the hotel this time. And it proved 1) to be good food, and 2)
to be cheaper than the diner from the day before. Hmmmm...

Sunday morning I ran a second FT3 playtest game, stress testing other aspects
of the rules. It was a WW2 naval combat game in which I gave each person two
WW2 battleships. The battleships were designed in FT terms along the stats of
the real battleships, which meant that pairs of ships may not have been well-
matched to fight other pairs of ships. I warned the players of the imbalance
ahead of time so they would not go into combat thinking they may have an even
chance at it all. But since this was mostly a "roll a bucket load of dice,
destroy things, and have fun" game, people were pretty okay with how things
went.

As the end of the session drew nigh, we decided to call it (partly because the
Yamato hadn't been more than scratched yet, and could take on any two or three
battleships still on the board with ease, and partly because people were
getting tired and had long drives ahead of them). At this point two ships (the
King George and the Jean Bart) were sunk, a number of others badly damaged, and
a handful lightly damaged. And people got to roll lots of dice, and blow things
up (at least via threshold checks, since each battleship had 5-6 hull rows).
Steve Barosi had some miserable threshold checks on the Littorio. Only
moderately damaged, he had lost 80% of his systems to thresholds and wasn't
doing much other than be a fire magnet (but as soon as everyone understood he
was no longer a threat, they left him alone).

And that, in a long discourse nutshell, was the weekend. We wrapped things up,
packed cars, and went our various directions home.

ECC XIII is now done. All that is left are other people's AARs and the Quote
Board (when Jerry gets around to posting it).

But until then, here are a few quotes I had written down from the Sunday game:

Indy: "Good morning. Find a chair." John Lerchey: "Do I need a chair?" Aaron
Newman: "It's Sunday morning, most of us do."

Aaron Newman: "No, unless he [Jerry Han] does something stupid, I'm not
attacking him." Jerry: "Uhh..." Aaron: "Oh, wait..."

Bryan: "Are you going to shoot at the Jean Bart or the --" Aaron: "I'm going to
shoot at the one less on fire."

Mark "Indy" Kochte