Mark "Indy" Kochte:

Well, finally getting a moment to catch my breath, thought I'd take
the time I'm inhaling to do my ACR.

A couple days pre-con Jon Tuffley arrived in Baltimore. After I
picked him up, he took a day to quietly hang out, rest, relax,
and unwind from the flight over, adjust to the time zone change,
and prepare his FMA scenario that would be run Friday evening.
The evening before the con Scott Field arrived in Baltimore from
New Mexico. He has been wanting to come out for several years now,
but his work schedule and travel-out-East-for-training schedule
has always been a week or two off from the con weekend. Now, finally,
they coincided. 

Friday morning we loaded the car with con supplies, personal supplies
and luggage (esp in the case of Scott, as he was not going to be coming
back to Baltimore post-con), and then squeezed the three of us into
my Honda (good thing I upgraded to a 4-door from the 2-door/hatchback I
some years ago!). Since we had the day ahead of us, we went off to go
check out the Aberdeen Proving Grounds Ordnance Museum (yes, open to the
public), not 35 minutes from my apartment (it's sad to think that I've
lived in B'more over 15 years and this was the first time I've gotten
to the museum). Despite the rather nippy day (temps were a comfortable
45 F or so, but the wind...), we visited each and every piece of war
machine set out on display (Scott was enamored with the Leopold railway
artillery gun ;-), browsed the interior portions of the museum, and
rummaged through the giftshop (finding two copies of "Panzer Truppen"
by Thomas L. Jentz; Jon T could not say enough about how great these
books were, which, in the end, convinced both Scott and I to pick one
up each - we also learned these were signed copies that the giftshop
had). From there we buzzed up to Havre de Grace, had lunch, then did
some non-highway driving to head up to Lancaster. We would later learn
that we were fortuitous in not going the regular route (up I-83 out of
Baltimore to York, then Rte 30 to Lancaster) as I-83 northbound was
shut down completely due to a fatal and nasty accident. Many people who
came from or through Baltimore that afternoon arrived anywhere from
3-5 hours later than they had expected.

At the con we got checked in, met Jon Davis, Jerry Han, David of DLD,
and the slowly growing contingent of ECCers. I was slated to play in
Tom Pope's "War of the World", a Dirtside II game set in about 1940.
As Tom was unable to make it due to work interference, John Lerchey
stepped in to take GM Command and ran a fine game. In the initial set-
up, John had placed some haystacks he had requested I bring (when he
learned I had some 6mm ones painted up) as well as a couple stands of
sheep and I think 7 stands of cows. It didn't *seem* important at first;
looked more like enhancements to the board scenery. As I was one of
the Americans, I made the comment that the Martians were coming to take
the cows away (making an oblique reference to the first episode of
South Park from years ago). Little did I know how right I was...

Tony Finan played the Martians and had walkers, flyers, and infantry
galore. The Americans (consisting of Aaron Teske, David Raynes, and I),
on the other hand, had hordes of Shermans and Stuarts. Our gun weaponry
*sucked*, but that was par for course with these vehicles. We would
just have to do the best we could.

We set up our 3 companies in two sections: Dave on the right side of
our set-up area, Aaron and I to the left, with Aaron more center than
I (his job was to go up to the hill and swing around right, while I
ran up the left edge to hit a flank; David was to come in from the
other flank while we had the Martians occupied - but you know what
they say about the best-laid plans ;-). The Martians divided up
their forces: a handful of flyers attacked Dave's company from over
the woods ahead of Dave, while the rest moved ahead of the walkers
and began engaging Aaron's and my companies. The walkers moved in
after the flyers had our attentions.

We discovered that the Martians had screens - a rude surprise, esp
when we learned that *any* valid hit, no matter how much damage done,
would only reduce a screen by one strength point. Flyers had 10-point
strength screens. Walkers had 8-point screens, and infantry we would
learn had 6-point screens. Screens would regenerate 1 point a the start
of each new turn. However, we had a little break in discovering that
'Boom!' chits would disable the screen generator permenantly, dropping
the screen completely, letting us engage the Martians on a more level
playing field. Unfortunately for the Martians, we ended up drawing a
rather high percentage of 'Boom!' chits during the game, dropping a
lot of screens (of course some of these were after we had knocked down
a flyer's screen from 10 to 2). Once screens were down, the Martians
began dying quickly. 

However, while we were learning about the screens, we saw that the
walkers were starting to make off with the cows! I personally can
only theorize that they have too many chocolate chip cookies on Mars
and finally figured out what all those "Got Milk?" commercials meant
(though there is a slight problem with the timing issues of the
commercials and when this scenario was to have taken place - but it's
a minor technicality that you should just ignore for now...absolutely
nothing happened in sector 83 by 9 by 12...).

At this point David was fully engaged with 3-4 flyers, I was taking on
2-3 flyers (and trying to save my 105mm Shermans from getting thumped
by Martian DFFGs), and Aaron was taking on the remaining Martian units.
While the Martians had us all engaged, they couldn't hit the side of a
hill most of the time. I really expected our forces to die in droves,
but lucky die rolling enabled us to dodge many blasts (either that or
the Martians were actually pervy cow-loving Martians and were rather
distracted at all the hot beefcake in the field; for the sake of the
younger and mixed members reading this, we'll go with the official
story that the Martians are just udderly pervy cow-loving tripods).
After I finished off the flyers that were assaulting my company, I
made it a priority to save the damsel moo-ers in distress and had
two walkers in my targetting reticule (ignoring the fact that my Shermans
probably didn't have said reticules, of course). 

Much fighting ensued (esp with the infantry, who dismounted from the
walkers when the walkers got to the cows; the infantry proved rather
difficult to take out with platoons of tanks), and in the end, only a
handful of walkers (3) managed to escape with cows. The rest were
destroyed, and the cows they were carrying waved. Yes, we GOT MILK!

Saturday came all too quickly (there was a "ski" group in the hotel
this year who were....enjoying the heightened volume of the stereo
their dj was playing - could sense it all the way to the 8th floor;
plus all the door slamming at 4am :-( ). A troop of us went off to
breakfast at a small establishment nearby, then back to the con! There
people began stirring, gathering, and setting up. I was to be involved
in another Dirtside II game, another one taking place in WW2. This
time, however, no Martians. Just Soviets, Italians, and German. John
Lerchey, GM for the Martians vs WW2-era Shermans, was on the Soviet
side, and was dug in - a lot. Dave Hornung was running this event, and
was using 'hidden' movement. We all assigned counters to our units, then
moved the counters on the board. The only way the composition of a
counter could be determined was for the opposing side to make a successful
spotting roll. This roll was based on the unit's quality die as well as
a movement die (if it did not move, it got a d12; if it moved some percentage
of it's total movement, the die type dropped accordingly). The unit
being spotted had only its quality die to roll (unless it was in cover,
in which case it got another die to roll; in the case of this game, the
Sovs were hiding in woods and got an additional d10 anti-spotting roll).
The unit composition was revealed if the spotter beat all anti-spotting
die results. If only partially successful (ie, the spotter beat only one
of the two anti-spotting die), we got an idea of what might be in the
unit (e.g., small wheeled vehicles, tracked vehicles, armored squirrels,
or some shadowy people).

Anyway, as the game progressed, the Soviets were succeeding about 50% of
the time in IDing the German/Italien forces. The Axis powers were succeeding
about...10% of the time in IDing the Soviet forces. So while we were busy
trying to figure out what the hell was shooting at us, the Soviets were
ripping through our lighter units (if you read John Lerchey's report, you
know he removed from the board a motorcycle group as well as a group of
kubelwagons - both of which were mine, dammit! ;-). 

We were unable to finish the game as the time slot for it to run in ended.
So it wasn't clear to me who might have won. We got to turn three, but the
turn three reinforcements (Panzer IIIs with stubby guns on the German side,
not Panzer IVs) were JUST entering the field of battle, and were still 1-2
turns away from being able to engage in combat. Despite that, it was a fun
little scenario. I'm intrigued by the hidden movement idea, but I think the
Soviets had a serious advantage in that with the added d10 anti-spotting die
for being entrenched in the woods. 

During this time period (Saturday am) people submitted many entries to the
minis painting contest. Even in the 15mm category (in which the past two
years only Stuart Murray and I entered minis). During the afternoon time
slot people could then vote for the minis they liked best and after the
dinner break but before the evening gaming session winners would be announced.

In the afternoon I joined in on Dean Gundberg's Sci-Fi Crossover FT game.
Given a choice of commands, I dearly wanted to play with the White Star,
so got that as well as an Earth Alliance heavy cruiser (Hyperion-class).
We also had an Omega (run by Noam), a battlestar (Atlantia, run by a guy
named Jerry), and a Mons Calimari cruiser, run by a guy named Scott or
Steve (I am drawing a complete blank on his name now :-( ). We four faced
off against 5 Evil Players, consisting of Scott Field, Jim Bell, Mike
Miserendino, Nick Caldwell, and <sigh> someone else I'm drawing a blank
on at the moment. :-(  In any event, Jim wanted to take out my ships; I
could see it in his eyes. Noam, however, got in Jim's way. Unfortunately
for Noam, one critical die roll on initiative cost us the Omega (Dean was
running squadron fire instead of individual ship fire; had it been indivi-
dual ship fire, Noam's Omega would have been able to toast one of the D7s
it was staring at before being gutted by the remaining ships: that's the
one problem with squadron fire, but it does make larger FT games play
faster). Most of the Alliance of Good jumped on Scott Field's super duper
star destroyer monster, and by the end of the game we had taken it out.
But at a serious cost that only the Mons Calimari cruiser had any hope of
being able to escape. We only destroyed a couple of the Evil Empire ships
all total, I believe.

Nevertheless, it was a fun game to play, AND it turned out to be another
of Dean's FB3/FT3 playtest games (which was cool, as I haven't had the
opportunity to test the current grazer idea out myself before this game;
the new fighter rules I have played with before and think they work okay).
We all gave feedback to Dean and broke for the dinner break.

During this time I tallied up the votes for the minis contest. It's a
humbling thing to thing that minis you might have entered because you
thought they weren't bad got zero votes (as basically three of my four
entries did ;-). I got more work to do...

During the break, after dinner but before the evening session kicked off,
we introduced and thanked Jon Tuffley for being able to make it over to
our little gathering. He gave a little speech (at our prodding, of course
;-), and handed out 45 copies of FT3*, under the grounds that we were not
to tell the list members about this (so just ignore the fact you read that,
forget about FT3, and go about your business; nothing to see here...). He
also showed us the only copy of Full Thrust in Polish on this side of the
Atlantic. It was a very well-done, well-put together book combining FT and
FB1. Nice artwork as well. But difficult to read unless you understand
Polish. ;-)

After this we did the minis contest winners announcements. I don't have
the list of winners with me, so this is by memory:

In the FT category Aaron Neumann took first, Nick Caldwell took second.
It was a VERY close race; I think Aaron beat Nick by 1.5 votes. I don't
remember who got third. :-(

Keith Swearington took first place in the SGII-25mm category. John
Lerchey got second I think in the DSII category.

I'm drawing a complete blank on who else got what in which category :-(
But Adrian J, Mike Miserendino, and Bryan Connell (Connelly?) all won a
place with their entries. Dopey me didn't write down the winners on a
seperate sheet of paper, and all the tally sheets are at home.

Anyway, after that the evening sessions kicked off. JOhn Lerchey and I
were co-running the OGRE Bash scenario. With four people to a side, we
tried to give them roughly balanced forces of OGREs (using the OGRE Mk V
as a benchmark). THis was a DSII game using John's developed OGRE rules
(that I've been helping test since last summer; they have come together
quite nicely, I must say; they retain the feel and flavor of OGRE, yet
work within the DSII rules). A lot of arty (OGRE missiles) was exchanged
between the OGREs, but not much direct fire, as the players were less
than enthusiastic to be the first to rush out into the middle of the table
only to be targetted by every other OGRE on the board and blasted to bits.
This, unfortunately, added to the already slow game (the OGRE rules are
good, but they play slower than regular DSII games; an artifact of how the
OGREs are designed, and is workable in smaller engagements - but difficult
with more than a dozen OGREs on the board!), so we had to push the rules
a bit and made the players use all their movement on turn 2 then fire all
their weaponry. This gives bonuses to the OGRE missiles (which act as
artillery), but by then most missiles had been fired, so the overall
effect wasn't that bad. After this we called the game good and assigned
prizes based on the number of systems a player *didn't* have destroyed.
At this point there was only one OGRE totally fried, but a good many others
who were in real unhappy shape. Only a couple were still pristine.

The night was once again long with our resident partying "ski" group (that
no one really believed were skiers, but were using skiing as an excuse to
gather together and party extremely hard; the hotel staff and several of the
ECCers noted that gee, gamers were much quieter, and MUCH cleaner, than the
"normal" people who were partying and trashing the place; I felt sorry for
the hotel staff that had to clean up after the "skiers").

Sunday morning came and I set up for my Battle for Durango scenario, yet
another DSII game (I think more DSII games were run this year than any of
the prior ECCs; and if not, it certainly felt like it). This game went two
turns as well (due to an hour late start while morning things got taken
care of). The Anglicans were attempting to take Durango from the redneck
Seperationists; the Durango Defenders were attempting to throw back the
government domineering forces. There were some amusing chit draws on both
sides (the best was when Jerry pulled a Firing Systems Down chit, and when
someone said don't pull that chit again, he did), and both sides made what
I considered (as GM who designed the scenario) some tactical errors, but in
the end the most important thing was accomplished - they all had fun. :-)
On the game board the Durango Defenders were just starting to get hammered,
and hadn't hammered hard enough on the Anglican Confederation (although
they did a good job early in turn 1, almost removing the entire AC howitzer
platoon!), although the Durango Defenders *did* get their infantry into a
position in which to harass the AC from a distance. The AC never got their
infantry into any action. This is probably because not many people play with
infantry in DSII tank battles (something that, I hope, will change with DS3).

After the con was finished, we wrapped things up and re-packed the car. The
car was now *fuller* than when we had come, because Jon had picked up a whole
box of DLD minis. ;-)  Scott Field, sitting in the back seat, was in a
quite cozy corner.

Scott, Jon, and I headed over to Gettysburg to see some of the battlefield
there in the late afternoon, then we dropped Scott off at the training
center he had to be at this week. Monday I took Jon to D.C., toured the
Mall and the Air&Space Museum, then subjected him to a meeting of the
local group of the American Alpine Club (where someone was giving a really
nice presentation of mountain climbing in the French/Swiss/Italien Alps).
As I write this Jon is currently unwinding from the con, catching his breath
once again, packing, and thinking thoughts about future projects for the
test list. ;-)  He'll be on his way back to England this evening, and once
he wades through all the spam and misc emails, be available to bug you all
once again. ;-)