CON After Action Report - Mark 'Indy' Kochte

This is in *NO* way by any means a comprehensive and complete 'after con
report'. This is just a summary of highlights. There was far too much going
on for me to run around the whole weekend taking notes on things. Just could
not do that. This statement alone should give you some indication of how much
fun we all had. So follow along as best you can, this is going to be a bunch
of disjointed thoughts strung together.

For those who are not up to speed on all this 'GZG-ECC' stuff, a year and a
half ago Jon Davis and I began discussing the feasibility of getting a bunch
of East Coast people together for a weekend of GZG Game playing. We noted that
many people got together at GenCon, and a fair number paied visits to
Origins, and that a number of our West Coast brothers got together time and
again to do some gaming. It seemed to us that all the FT/DSII/SGII players
on the East Side of the US (with the exception of the Canadians ;) were
scattered hither and yon to the Four Winds. We wanted to meet some of these
listmembers and play some GZG games. Our discussions eventually jelled into
our hosting the first GZG East Coast Convention in February of '98.
Unfortunately for us, we didn't really get started on this until the December
before we held the Con. However, despite the short notice, we had 13 people
show up (8 of them were the Canadian Contingent ;-). GZG-ECC I was a trial
con, to see if we could pull it off and if it would be feasible to do (ie,
would people come, would costs be okay enough we didn't go bankrupt trying to
hold this thing, and would everyone have fun). We decided that our first
GZG-ECC was a great success. We did not have any vendors there that year, as
we were completely unsure of how well it would go. After our success for the
'98 con, we decided to:

 1) hold our second GZG-ECC (known as GZG-ECC II), and
 2) have a few vendors come this time so participants could pick up some
   stuff they forgot, have been looking for, or suddenly decided they wanted.

Well, to sum it up, GZG-ECC II was a smashing success. We had 28 people attend
the convention, more than double from last year! We had 3 vendors (KR from
Geo-Hex, Erik Kochte from Corner Fortress Collectibles, and Faron Betchley from
Little Wars in Wash, DC) who came and made their wares available (and from what
I saw and heard, the attendees - myself included - made a small dent in the
stuff they brought :).

A great many games were being played this year, and most all had good numbers
of people in them (if not full, they weren't often empty; only a few games here
and there got no players since players had signed up for other games). A few
pick-up games also appeared during the course of the weekend (such as Aaron
Newman's spontaneous sunday morning scenario 'Severed Dreams' using EFSB
rules). There were actually several EFSB games put on during the weekend. And a
large number of FT games, and quite a few SGII games. The only game not
represented strongly was DSII, but Jon Atkinson and Brian Bell made sure that
there *were* two games run (one friday evening, one sunday morning; when I
finally left the con at 3pm they were still playing the massive island invasion
scenario....and it's quite likely it's still going on! ;-). 

I won't go into the individual games that were being run. I tried to visit as
many of the tables as I could during the weekend, but couldn't always get to
them all. But from the noises coming from the tables in the room, I think
everyone was having a Good Time(tm). Many photos were taken by quite a few
people, some of them with digital cameras. So you can probably expect to see
a few pics on the web over the course of the next few days.  :-)

The Miniatures Contest was run once again this year. In the FT category, a
LARGE number of the entries were AOG ships (and a FULL 1/3-1/2 were Minbari
Sharlin warcruisers!). Some very nice paint jobs on all of them, too
(especially the Shadow-Tech Omega). The first place winners (plural; we had a
tie) were the Shadow-Tech Omega and a pair of Narn T'Loth Assault Cruisers. The
SGII/25mm category had about half WH40K stuff, half GZG stuff. The first place
winner here was a lone WH40K Marine, followed closely by a squad of Heavy Gear
and then finally a squad of FSE desert troopers. The DSII/Epic Scale entries
were few (only 6 or 7, as opposed to the 17 FT entries and 14 SGII entries). I
could have entered some of *my* DSII minis had I brought them and I may have
had a shot at winning.  ;-)  As it was, of the DSII/Epic Scale entries, the
Epic fighters took first, with a GZG helo coming in second by 1 pt, and a pair
of grey/black camo GZG tanks (one a NAC Phalanx) coming in 3rd by 1 pt. Jon
Davis got pictures of the winning entries, and those will probably be posted
on the web soon.

Prizes for various games and the miniatures contest were donated by Geo-Hex,
Corner Fortress Collectibles, and our list-dude Los. They deserve a great deal
of thanks for the support they gave the Con.

This year we also had t-shirts! Nick Caldwell (who, other than KR, wins the
prize for coming the furthest to attend - all the way from St Louis, Mo!) came
up with the idea and design and brought a couple dozen to the Con. They went
over pretty well (I picked up two :). There was a special t-shirt there, also,
but for the time being we are not allowed to discuss or talk about it. Later,
perhaps (when Nick gives the 'OK' :-).

It was really a pleasure to have finally met a large number of people from
the list here. And re-see the faces from last year (only a few were unable
to return this year). Among the listmembers who attended were folks like
Aaron Teske, Los, Kr'rt, Nick Caldwell, KR, and Stuart Murray. And many more
(I'm not going to go through a roll-call here; I'm sure they will likely post
their thoughts/views/opinions at some point here - well, I hope they do! :).

There was much discussion occurred throughout the whole weekend at various
tables about the Teske Field (some people felt its influence, some did not -
and in a few cases, some people rolled die like I generally do with p-torps!).
Some of this you'll notice in collected set of 'Quotes', stuff that was heard
or overheard at the various tables during the weekend. I'll post that as a
seperate message.

Right off, I think that's all I have to say right now. I'll let others give
their views/impressions/thoughts on the con. I just wanted to touch on some
of the highlights. It was a grand time, and there WILL e a GZG-ECC III!