Hi all,

What a fantastic convention! It's like having a really cool game club
that meets once a year, and runs miniatures games all day long (and
into the night) with well-painted figures and good-looking scenery.
I can't believe I got an actual, honest-to-god medal for winning the
"Carnage Con Queso" event... that really made my day! I'll write about
the con some more later, but I really must sleep now... it was great
to see everyone there again this year!

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Hi all,

Here's another con report for the GZG East Coast Convention:

Saturday morning: FMA Pirates, run by Nick Caldwell.
Nick winged it masterfully when the players decided to do strange things.
For example, when the group of Martian natives made it to the pyramid-shrine
(their objective) at the end of the table, Nick says, "Okay, the Martians
place their hands on the shrine and it begins to glow." One of the Martian
players says, "We activate the force shield!" Nick, knowing very well that
he didn't plan to have a force shield in the scenario, says, "Okay, you
activate the force shield." Later, when the shrine explodes, the force
shield contains the explosion, killing all of the Martian natives trapped
inside! :)

Saturday afternoon: Carnage Con Queso (SG2), run by Adrian Johnson.
This is the second year that this event was won by deception & guile:
"...winning? Who, me? No, I'm not winning... you should go attack Tom
Barclay..." Adrian did a great job of keeping things moving, even though
there were nine different players in the game. Fortunately for me, nobody
was willing to challenge me for my pile of cheese, and I ended up winning
the event. As I am now "Keeper of the Cheese" this year, I'll be the one to
run next year's scenario.

Saturday evening: Racing to Ruin (FMA), run by Tom Barclay.
The previous two events had been loud, fun games with lots of energy,
however this one turned out to be more of a thoughtful tactical exercise. I
discovered (again) that Chris DeBoe is a real gentleman, even as an opponent
-- given an opportunity to blast 2 of our troopers out in the open with a
plasma gun, he passed up the shot because the plasma gunner couldn't have
seen them from where he was on the table. Despite the ending, Tom ran an
excellent scenario.

The prizes for the events & the painting contest this year were incredible
-- I won a 15mm scale APC from DLD productions, and it looks great! (...and
I HATE resin kits.) Mark, Jon and Jerry did a fantastic job organizing the
convention this year!

-- Rick Rutherford