Hey, gang,

Friday evening I ran my Star Trek "save the Federation heavy cruisers"
SMITE game. It went very very well. Had six players sign up (Steve
Barosi, Tom Barclay, Mike Hudak, Ron Leonard, Carl Scheu, and his son,
Thomas Scheu), one who had played SMITE a couple times in the past few
years (but only once each year, when I've run it at the convention;
we'll call Steve 'skilled' as opposed to 'veteran' for now :-) ), the
rest newbies to the game. As usual, took a little time to clue in on the
two-phase movement and when ships can rotate facings, but once a couple
turns went by they were good to go. However, Steve Barosi managed to
scrape the side of his Klingon D6 at high speed against an asteroid
and.......well, after ripping the port engine nacelle off, and the
resultant forces throwing the ship into an uncontrollable spin which
cartwheeled it across the surface of the asteroid before pieces
scattered back out into space, there was no more ship. In the end, the
game played very well, and the Feddies pulled out a tactical win. They
absolutely pounded Carl's Klingon D7 to scrap with a combined force of
destroyers and medium cruisers when the D7 decided to break from the
rest of the pack and go it alone, planning on taking down one of the
space docks by itself. It didn't make it, and the Fed heavy cruiser
(Enterprise) managed to come out swinging, except there were no targets
to swing at. The rest of the Klingons went after the other space dock
and the Hood, forcing the Hood out with only 2/3 of the hull
reactivated. When we ended the game the Hornet had smashed a couple of
Klingon light and medium cruisers, but there was a pristine, untouched
(the only untouched Klingon ship in the game!) coming up on the Hood's
rear arc, and was going to be less than 4 inches away (point-blank
range). The Hood at this point had lost a shield and was down to 5 hull
boxes, so unless Ron rolled absolutely poorly, it was highly unlikely it
was going to survive another turn.

Saturday morning I got in on a straight-up basic Full Thrust game run by
Ken Wang. Since I've been doing the SMITE stuff, been a long time since
I've played basic vanilla Full Thrust. I faced off against Mike Hudak,
Scott Howland, and his son Ethan Howland. It was a good game, where we
each had battlecruisers with our choice of modular weapons loadouts, and
went head to head. Four players entered, and though I chose the p-torp
brandishing module, I somehow came out on top.  :-D  As Steve Barosi
said, "Every dog has his day." Starting in four opposite corners of the
board, I began going after Mike Hudak, who was on the long end of the
field away from me, then turned toward Ethan, who was coming at me. We
had a few fire exchanges, and i got the better of him each time. 6 p-
torp blasts managed to do something like 20 pts damage over the course
of three turns, which his ship couldn't take when combined with wicked
beam die rolls. I swear at one point Aaron Teske was nearby
counteracting my usual die rolls. After Ethan's ship vaporized, I turned
to the field center and closed with both Scott and Mike, who were doing
their own fire exchanges. The three of us met not far from each other,
but Mike was a full range band closer than Scott, so I let him have it.
One salvo of p-torps and massed beams put 18 points on him. Combined
with whatever Scott had been doing to Mike's ship, Mike's vessel
exploded. Then Scott and I squared off. Fortunately, Mike had done some
damage already to Scott, and it didn't take much for me to put him down.
But in return, he ended up savaging my ship. I lived, with 3-4 hull
boxes remaining, and a couple of systems, but the main point was, I
survived.  :-D

Saturday afternoon I got involved in a StarGrunt game based on John
Carpenter's movie, "The Thing", run by Steve Barosi and Martin Connell.
Because I had to step away from the table to take care of some Con
business, I was put in charge (he who is not present gets the command
team) of a merc unit that was hired to blast through the defending
ScanFed forces to a research station on some arctic planet, and either
nab the research specimen the scientists were working on, or take one or
more of the scientists, and get out again. Things were going very very
very well for us until about 2/3 of the way through the game, then the
defenders actually started hitting our (my) units. The scientists
apparently botched the experiments they were conducting and 'the worrm'
escaped, chasing them down. They all ran out into the arctic snow and
ice fields. The defending ScanFed leader realized we were after the
scientists as a secondary objective and started hosing them down ("if we
can't have them, they can't have them!"). Two of the 6 or 8  scientists
ultimately survived, though wounded. Meanwhile the worm took an
unhealthy (for Mike Hudak's unit) interest in one of the merc skimmer
teams and proceeded to tear it apart (then fed on the remains, growing
into a much larger worm - yikes!). When it reappeared, it went after the
nearby wounded scientist and ate her. Meanwhile I had tried to cover the
remaining three fleeing scientists with my APC, only to have it blown
out from under me (Thanks, Stuart!). 2/3 of my team got out, but a
couple of them were then cut down by the defenders (who were cheering,
as up to that point they hadn't caused any casualties to us). Jim Bell
swung his skimmer unit around the research station, grabbed the now one
remaining scientist (wounded) and my command team survivors and beat
feet. We escaped with one scientist, but I'd call it a Pyrrhic Victory.
Meanwhile, the 'worm' had grown and was feasting on the goodness of
juicy life that still clung outside and inside the research outpost. No
idea if the hapless ScanFeds were ever able to defeat the Thing, or if
they became dinner.

The painting contest event went well, although there were far far fewer
entries this year than in years past. Mostly this is because a number of
regulars weren't present. On the flip side, while the usual subset of
highly talented people won in most of the categories, it meant I got a
win in on the FT category (for my Ares-class Federation medium cruisers,
which, if you've seen them, was nothing fancy paint-job-wise) as well as
in the 6mm category (for my three B25 strafer bombers representing the
498th, 499th, and 500th Bomb Squadrons of the 345th Bomb Group who
operated in the Pacific theater during WWII). And newcomer Ethan Howland
snagged a 3rd place entry in the 25mm category!

Saturday evening I got into another Full Thrust game, this time a fleet
action game run by Jon Davis, where we were trying to defend a convoy
from three different attacking task forces. We...failed, to both defend
the convoy, and to cause sufficient damage to make it too costly to the
attackers. Good game, though, but I have forgotten just how
UNmaneuverable NSL ships are! Part of our tactical problems was in the
set up, where the NSL SDN commander elected to place his forces in the
back of the pack. He was unable to bring the full weight of his
firepower to bear in any significant manner. The other issue was all of
the NSL players really forgetting just HOW unmaneuverable our ships
were, especially compared to the ESU, and turning to go at them head-on
(so the ESU just took one volley of fire in the face and blew through
our lines). And partly, at least for me, my die rolls were beginning to
return to normal once again, and with my battleship and attendant
destroyers and frigates, I was unable to blunt the oncoming battleship
and cruisers of the ESU. (apparently the force coming head on into the
convoy is usually savaged pretty hard; my die rolls demonstrated that
near misses do not do much to affect the integral operating capability
of a target ship). Frustrating as it was to suddenly find myself out of
position and unable to do ANYthing to the ESU by turn 3, it was a good
game.

Sunday morning I decided to take it easy, so hung around and kibitzed
with some folks for a bit, watched an X-Wing game being run by Tom
Barclay (not your typical shoot-em-up game, either), a Rulerball game
being run by Mark Kinsey, and took great interest in Jon Davis' Full
Thrust variant to Car Wars. Then I got myself on the road, did a few
geocaches on the way back, and headed into Maryland to tackle some other
errands before finally getting home.

Great weekend, great games, and great people. The quotes from the Quote
Board will be posted to the ECC website, if not also posted here.

Next year, April 1-3, ECC XIX!! And a shout out to Jon Tuffley and Tony
Francis from GZG and Brigade for their prize support, as well as Mike
Renegar and Chris Lynch from Rebel Minis and Ravenstar Studios for their
prize support as well.

Mk