Hi Guys, Thought I'd write up my AAR for the con. Not sure who collects them for the site, so I included everyone. :) John --- Yerin and I managed to attend ECC XIII this year. The new location, general life complications and such kept me from knowing for sure until the last minute. The drive was not as bad as we had thought it might be, and the new hotel was perfectly fine. We arrived Friday evening. Yerin needed some rest and I was signed up for Jon Davis' FT game, Battle for Comorant Moon. There was a voclanic moon in the center of the map. 6 Federation Cruisers faced off against 6 Klingon D7s. I was assigned the Federation Cruiser Defiant. The Federation, myself certainly included, failed to quite grasp the scoring system. Ships received points for being within certain distances of the moon. We thought this was tallied at the end of the game (turn 10). Turns out it was every turn. We weren't aggressive enough on turn 1, and that ended up putting us behind on points for the entire game. While Jon did a decent job of balancing the ships, we felt that the Klingons had a slight edge in a "knife fight". Sadly for us, the scoring system kind of required knife fighting. You see, while most of the systems were pretty near identical, the Feds had a pair of p-torps while the klingons had a pair of Grazers. Both can cause the same damage generally - 1D6 on a hit - but the Graser gets 2 D6 on a roll of 6. Nasty. Still, in the end, though we were well behind in points we had managed to hammer the klingons down to having only two ships left, like us. Fun game. Slept, went out to a diner for breakfast, came back. Yerin and I ran our FT game - Bounty on the Mutiny. The table had a large number of asteroids and each was surrounded by a field of debris - smaller rocks and such. Unfortunately, because of the lateness of my entry and the low-ish attendance, we only ended up with 3 players. The game was really geared towards more, and "fleets" were purposely small. I really should have planned for that and made some double sized forces, but I didn't. The Mutiny tooled around the asteroid fields in a random fashion while the other forces (NSL, AmRep and Kra'Vak) tried to not hit rocks, kill each other, and capture the errant Mutiny. The Kra'Vak were pounded pretty mercilessly by the other players and were taken out early. Then the AmRep and NSL turned on each other and the vaporization began. The AmReps flew their little task force through a debris field and blew up one of their own ships, then were finished off by the NSL, but not before a devastating barrage of their own the took out a ship. The players appeared to have enjoyed the game. Lunch. :) For the afternoon session, I played in GeTrouble in Gehirnsdorf! hosted by Jeff Aubert. 1944 Germany. The dead walk the earth. Zombies are everywhere. And the Germans have genetically manipulated werewolves to slay them. An uneasy peace between the Axis and Allies ensues, and 4 squads converge on a small town.. the townspeople holed up in the church as the undead walk the streets. I had a squad of Russians (all Red/Elite, 2 officers with PPsh SMGs, 3 riflemen and a sniper). I came in on a corner behind a small woods. To my left, fairly close was a squad of Germans (big squad, with at least an MMG and a flame thrower!). To my far left (across a road and through a field) was a group of werewolves - genetically modified zombie killing machines. My squads orders were to accomplish at least one of three goals: - explore half of the buildings in the town (there were 13!) - explore 3 of 4 player-set markers (happily, 3 all in a row along my chosen line of advance!) - explore the church - not a bet, comrade. Then exit via the East edge of the map (came in on West) while preserving unit strength as much as possible. I immediately agreed to a "cease fire" with the Germans and advanced on a building that they were going to go around to my right. As I got there and checked the building (smash a window, look inside), the Germans began mowing down squads of zombies advancing at them from their front. Some other zombies came around the corner of the house (to my left). My riflemen batted 'em down, then we "advanced" into the house leaving the zombies outside. I put an officer and the sniper upstairs. The sniper positioned himself in a window with good view to the 3 markers and determined that the first was a bunker buried in the street intersection (weird place for a bunker!). The officer covered the steps while the rest of the squad headed into the street to check two more houses and the bunker. The houses and bunker were empty. As a side note, the zombies I left outside saw the Germans and passed my squad by - exactly as I had planned! As soon as we were done checking the bunker a bunch of zombies started into the intersection. Happily, 3 of my German "allies" joined my group to fight them off. By "fight them off", my squad used held actions to knock the zombies down (tried to kill them, but failed), then run back to leave the Germans to finish them. My sniper popped a bunch near my next objective from the window, getting extra shots from having a commander next to him. Meanwhile, the werewolves were practically bee-lining for the church. They got hit by some zombies, and on an unlucky set of die rolls, one doggy died. Otherwise, they were just ripping their way through. One got knocked down from a sniper in the church bell tower, but got back up and continue forward. On the opposite corner of the table, the Americans and Brits were coming in. They were inundated with zombies, but held their own for a while. One Yank popped a group of zombies with a bazooka round! Very entertaining. In the church, there was odd chanting going on. After a few turns, a purple glow emenated from the church grounds and some kind of demon materialized. It horrified the Yanks and Brits, destroying a few. Then the werewolves showed up and ripped into it. Lots of tussle, but since it was far away from my intrepid Russians, I didn't track the details. Then the Americans hit it with a bazooka shell. Pop goes the demon. Splat goes some werewolves. Everyone continued with going after their individual objectives, then a giant fly or mosquito or something appeared floating above the courtyard. Giant? Yeah, like the size of a small truck. Game ended there and I was happy to discover that I had done very well in working towards my objectives without having any negative results. I had explored 3 buildings and 1 of the three objective markers, and had not lost a single man from my unit. Killed some stuff too. :) Dinner followed, then it was time for the evening game. Yerin and I were signed up for Stargate: SG-21 Rough Men hosted by Tom Barclay. We showed up and got some background. A Russian SG team was off-world investigating some goa'uld activty. They were overdue, so SG 21 was dispatched to find out what happened and to bring 'em back. Yerin, Indy, and Doug volunteered to play members of the Russian team, so they spent some time sitting around watching the rest of us. I apologize in advance for not remembering everyone's names. SG 21 consisted of two teams (Alpha and Beta) under the command of Major Allen (Jon Davis). With him was a heavy weapons guy (Dan? I think - don't remember the characters name) with an M-4 and an underslung M-203. Next was a civilian scientist with a pistol and a zat (Dave Hornung). Beta team was led by a sniper (Kirkwood something, played by me!). Also had a scientist who I later found had some neat equipment (played by Ron Leonard, I think), and finally a scout with a shotgun (played by Bryan - don't know Byran's last name). Did I mention that my sniper was the only American on the team? What's that? Oh, yeah, SG-21 is Canadian. :) We went through the gate onto a desert near a shallow river and some low hills covered in ruins leading up to a small pyramid. We advanced in bounds with Alpha in the lead and Beta covering as they came. There was a huge rock jutting out of the ground that covered us as we exited the gate. As we moved around, stopped and looked through my scope to see what might be up in the ruins. I thought I saw something glinting near the path down from the center, but I wasn't sure. I let the Major know anyway. Alpha team moved to the edge of the river when we stopped them. Our scout saw some movement to our left, across the river after it curved. After checking it out for a few minutes, we found that it was one of the Russians and we called him in. There were Jaffa beyond his position, and more up on the ridge (I knew I'd seen something!). The Major decided that we'd need to take some of the Jaffa down to get the Russian in safely. The grenadier dropped an HE grenade off-side of the Jaffa group, who were nicely clustered. I sighted in on the leader - hey, man, he might have been a snake head, you know? I popped off three shots at him, but the crappy Canadian reject bullets bounds off of his frickin' armor! He ran for cover along with the remainder of the group. The ones in the center started down and our guys opened up, taking one down and pinning the others. I shifted fire between the Jaffa on our flank, and the ones on our front, dropping a few in each area. The Russian surprised us all as well opening up and taking down a handful of Jaffa! I gotta admin, Ivan was pretty hard. I decided to let the Jaffa know what I thought about 'em too! I kind of shouted out that they hid like women. Figured it might piss 'em off enough to leave their cover. It did. Things heated up after that. Jaffa were everywhere. We saw a group of them drag a staff cannon between a couple of walls, but I unloaded and took down their gunner. Then the civ opened up with his Zat and hit the cannon. It sparked all pretty-like and fizzled out. I think he fried it. Then we heard a nasty boom from up near the pyramid. Sounded like a claymore. The Russians got busy (learned later that the damned Russian sniper - Yerin - had a rifle that was able to penetrate the damned Jaffa armor!). While more Jaffa came out of the middle, a second group with a gen-u-ine Goa'uld came in from the left behind the once we'd been hammering. Crazy Ivan stood up and unloaded into the snake. Woulda hit him too 'cept that the bullets stopped a few inches in front of his face! Damn! He had a force field! I thought ol' Ivan was gonna lose it then. I could hear hims screamin' about how Russian bullets blow out brains, how they don't stop before they hit the head and kill bad guys. Man, he was wired! Then the sci-guy on my team went hell-bent-for-leather in a dash in front of my position and started messing with some gadget. The snakes shield went down! Not sure who actually hit him then, but I think it was the scout with a flechette round. Might have been the grenadier. I just know that the Snake dropped and was pissed. He sent his last Jaffa running for the stargate. Man, it was time for us to get out of there. I raced around the back end of the rock. Ok, I stumbled all over the place getting out of the scrub I was hiding, but man, I could NOT let them take the DHD. I came around the rock and put a .303 round through his head. I heard the Major on the general push telling the Russians to bail. We were heading for the gate. Time to get out of Dodge. There were more explosions up by the pyramid, and lots of firing all round. I was just lining up on the snake head when out of no where, Ivan came charging with a bayonette! Of all the shit! He cut that Goa-uld up pretty bad too! And the snake tried to use one of those palm things to crush him, but totally whiffed, leaving Ivan standing there killing him some more. The teams came running in pretty fast. I covered for a bit to make sure people got back. By the time we got 'em in, the science boys had dialed home and we had a hole open. Everyone went through but the Russian Colonel. Something BAD had happened up at the pyramid. Nasty big-assed explosion and things were getting worse. They decided that the had to close the gate - the Colonel stayed to do it while the rest of us jumped. I hope they give that guy a posthumous medal - he likely saved all of our bacon. Tell you this much. I might stay with the Canadian team, but I'll damned well be getting my own ammo, and might even put in a req for a .50. Jaffa armor is pretty hard shit. Kirkland out. What a fine, fun game. At one point, Doug had had a claymore set up. He hit his clicker and was totally stunned when NOTHING HAPPENED. Yerin's character had taken position near it, and thought that there might be anyone on the other end to set it off. She re-wired it herself. When the Jaffa came marching out in front of it, Doug tried to blow it. Yerin saw the Jaffa and fired it off herself, taking down 5 or 6 of 'em. The look on Dougs face was priceless. :) Almost as much fun as when Jon Davis, still in character as the crazy Russian launched this major rant when the Goa'ul had a force field. He rolled a 12 for impact - and it did NOTHING. Funniest thing at the entire con. :) TomB ran an awesome game. EVERYONE had a blast. Nice job, Tom! Sleep. Oh, blessed sleep. Sunday AM arrived and again, likely (hopefully?) due to low turnout and late registration, no one signed up for my DS3 game. I canceled and played in Indy's WWII FT Ship Battle Royale. Each player (10 of us!) was given 2 WWII battleships (or equiv) done up FT style for a no-holds-barred-bash-fest. I had two US battleships - the Washington and the Mass. There were 3 pairs of US ships, one of Germans (Tirpitz and Bismark), two sets of Japanese (including the Yamato), a pair of Italians, 2 pairs of Brits and a poor pair of French. In FT terms, these were MONSTERS. My ships each carried something like 9xB3s, 12xB2s, 2xB1s, some PDS, 5 Fire Cons, a nice chunky row of armor, 2 shields, and maybe 150 or so hull boxes? The Yamato was bigger by at least 20%. Alliances came and went, as there were no engagement rules. I won't remember enough of the details to go over them, but do recall a few highlights and some end results. EVERYONE who was able to fired on the French. By the end of the game, both French ships were SUNK. One Brit player started between 2 Japanese players. He passed on his first fire turn, and the next player with the Yamato lit him up good. One of his ships ended up sunk before the Yamato every took a single hit. My US ships chased down tthe French, helping the Brits to kill them off. The French (using FT3 "save throw" shields) had level 3 screens. He managed to save at least 50% of the total damage done to his ships. Still, he was picked on heavily and died. I took some pot shots eventually at the Bismark and managed to make it take a Threshhold! Wheeee! By the end of the game my division had one ship unscathed and the other had taken about a dozen armor hits and 6 or so hull. I think I'd have done OK if we had continued, but I started in a corner and was circling rather than charging in through the middle. I also won first place with a lance of Mechs in the painting contest in the DS category. All in all a good con and I'm glad I was able to attend. John