My AAR isn't going to be strewn with rib-rubbing humour, unlike Laserlight's. Instead, just a [rather long] AAR of my side of ECC this year.

Pre-con:
The weeks leading up to the con were stressful and filled with prep work. I had it worked out that I'd get everything done in time for the con, but then got laid out flat with the flu for a week. That really put a crimp in my schedule, and there were more than a few nights where I only got 3-4 hours sleep in the last week before the con. So, going into it, I was one tired boyo.

Oh, one thing I want to do before this continues is to publicly thank the various game companies who donated prize support for the various scenarios that were played this weekend. We had some very generous donations from some companies that had never donated before (Force XXI for some 15mm prizes and Xtreme-Hobby for their superb Cold Navy ships). With their donations, along with prize support from GZG, Brigade, and some of our vendors (as well as Los, who donated some of his own stuff), we were able to offer some very nice prizes to painting contest winners as well as winners of a number of games.

Okay, now, back to the [exceedingly long] AAR!

[warning! I did say "exceedingly long" - you have been warned!]

The drive up for me was uneventful. I managed to work it out so I left work early, packed, and for the first time in 8 years of this con, managed to beat Jon Davis to the hotel. Okay, beat him by maybe 10 minutes, but one takes one's "victory" (so to speak ;-) where one can (I live 90 minutes from the con, Jon lives a few hours away, and half the time makes sidetrip detours to pick Stuart up, so how does he beat me every time?). After checking in, went around with Jon and the very helpful and friendly catering sales manager, Lisa Dawn, to discuss the future of the con room we have been using and what possible options for the future were available to us. All non-game stuff, this, but as con organizer, interested in learning. Who knows what the future holds for which room we'll be in next year. May be in our current room, or may be in the larger ballroom....we will see come 2006.

After that, it was time to unpack and get things ready for the games to begin. I took a quick stroll downtown a few blocks away to grab a virtual geocache that had been planted down there, grabbed some dinner at the local Chinese hole-in-the-wall place (discovered after I got back to the con room that there were no utensils; argh!), and started organizing prize distributions and all the stuff I brought for the games I'd be running. And when the time came for the games to begin, I had already signed up for John Lerchey's "Last 'Bot Standing", a Dirtside II game based on Metagaming's old Rivets game. John even had two armies of Boppers painted up for the players to use. Now, as there were only three of us instead of four, it meant that it was going to be one vs two. And it turned out that it would be I who stood alone to face off against Dan Blezek and Aaron Teske (complete with his Teske Field!).

We were given initial forces (no dive boppers or missiles were in this particular game, btw) of four light boppers and a jack bopper, told to assign them their targets, and begin play. Both sides began building. I opted, over time, to start generating more boppers early, whereas Aaron and Dan were working on the Big Boppers. At first, early in the game, I was able to push close to their factory building, and even did a few points of scratch damage to it. But after that the weight of the Big Boppers (and Teeny Boppers) began to weigh heavily on my forces, and I eventually ended up in a forced retreat (if not killed outright). The Teske/Blezek units began the March of the Big Boppers. I did what I could to blunt that onslaught, but they were able to eventually get to an open range of my factory, and blasted the hell out of it. I went from 15 control points to 4. Ouch in a bad way. I had to lose control of 1-2 of my damaged boppers (one jack bopper was a pillbox, unable to be reprogrammed or engage it's targets, as the latter were behind hills and stuff). And still the Teske/Blezek Factory churned out more boppers.

I managed to finally work a couple of jack boppers down to their factory, and from point-blank range, got in a couple very lucky shots - bringing their factory control to zero! Which meant that in time I would be able to create a Big Bopper or two, and send that against their factory to finish it off; they had no way to repair the damage to the control console. Nigh three hours after we started, my four boppers stood victorious on the battlefield. Go me! :-)

The rest of the evening was spent going around to various tables to see how things were developing/finishing, touching base with various people at the con (I never did get to spend enough time visiting with Beth, alas, as she always had a contigent of others around her ;-), and setting up the terrain for my DS2.5 game Saturday morning. Finally sometime after midnight, I crawled to my room and crashed, dead to the world. So dead that I never heard the riots and car alarms and police and people yelling and whatnot about 2 or 3am after the nearby bar let out. Slept right on through it all....blissfully unaware....

Saturday morning came too quickly, alas. Up, showered, dressed, I and Joel Frock proceeded downstairs to the lobby to meet up with Jon Davis, his kids, Aaron Teske, Jerry Han, and whomever else was going to join us for breakfast at Zimmerman's. Now, usually I try to beat Jon down to the lobby, but he manages to get less sleep than I and is usually already waiting for a while. This time, however, beat him down. ;-) Okay, by only a few minutes, but one takes one's "victories" where one can get them. ;-D

After a good breakfast at Zimmerman's, back to the con room. Other people staggered in, some having gotten less sleep than I due to the earlier- mentioned noise events that occurred about 2 or 3am. Overheard a number of people complain about that. But since that was the worst of it all, everyone was willing to continue on; we have experienced FAR worse within the hotel building itself (anyone remember the "ski" group who was partying their heads off all night long in a recent ECC? ;-). The only other group in the hotel was a wedding that was going on, and they were, for the most party, pretty quiet (some people reported Sunday morning having heard some post-wedding celebratory activities going on in rooms next to them, but again, not near me, and I was dead to the world that night; but that's neither here nor there...)

My game on Saturday morning was The Return to the Gramicci Pass, a Dirtside battle that featured some playtest rules. Said playtest rules dealt with unit morale (different than what is in DS2), movement, and the 'firefight' concept that Oerjan developed on the playtest list. In this game Beth Fulton was a participant, and was able to do a direct comparison to the playtesting she and her group had been doing down in her corner of the world (apparently they resolve their games faster; unfortunately I never did get a chance to sit down with Beth and compare notes on exactly how they did this, but she did say that they used smoke a heck of a lot more). The game was set up so that each side had to choose a 'sealed' set of orders. Forces may or may not have been compatible with each other, objectives may or may not have been compatible, either. This was an attempt to put some 'fog of war' aspect into the game. The UNSC was the 'attacking' side, and their primary objective was to find out what happened to a recon unit that had gone up into the pass and disappeared. Their secondary objective was to take out any enemy units they found. The ESU (defender) objective was to keep secret 4 heavy batteries of artiller that had been sequestered in the Pass. As long as the artillery batteries did not fire, or as long as the UNSC got no units within line of sight of where the batteries were hiding, the batteries were kept off-table. The UNSC had no clue about the artillery, but the ESU was nervous as hell when some of the UNSC got close to LOS, and in the end, unleashed a barrage of arty on the UNSC in order to pound out the invading force. This was a surprise to the UNSC (as they had no idea about the arty), but they took it in stride (what, Indy, placing hidden units on the board? naaaah!!!). We managed to only get through one turn, but this was partly because we only got started about an hour and a half after the nominal time; I was deluged early on with entries for the painting contest, and that prevented me from being able to get my game going on time. :-/ I tried to multi-task, but next year I think I'll not run a game Saturday morning so I can con- centrate on the painting contest entries bit.

In any event, of the comments I got back from the game were that people did like it, but it "seemed" to run slow, since we only got through one turn (despite the carnage that was left on the table; the two forces had lost at this point 40-60% of their units). There were also questions in how artillery works in firefights, and some other stuff, that will be taken eventually to the test list for a working over. ;-) The players in the game were Beth Fulton (playtest list member, UNSC), John Lerchey (who I have bounced numerous DS2.5 ideas off of and who worked out the OGRE rules for DS2 that we used last year; UNSC), John Crimmins (UNSC), Noam Izenberg and his son Zev (the former a playtest lister; both played ESU), Jon Davis' son Greg Davis (ESU), and Dave Hornung (experienced DS2 player; ESU).

Saturday afternoon. After a brief recon foray to a Mexican burrito place that Dan Blezek spotted the afternoon before (big-@$$ burrito, no better or worse than a sandwich from House of Pizza - but definitely broke up the regular routine of HoP food every year ;-), I was involved in Vince Johnston's "Ancient Eyes Always Watching" FT game. This game featured NAC, ESU, and Sa'Vasku. The premise was that the ESU pops in a NAC-controlled system, catching them somewhat unawares, and combat ensues. The Sa'Vaskue then enter the field of battle a turn or two later. The field of battle happens to be rather thick with asteroid fields of different sizes (small, medium, large; running into/through any is a Bad Thing, but you could blow away the larger, ship-damaging chunks with weapons fire if one wanted to, reducing the size of the asteroid field down to a lower level, or even zero if enough damage was applied). As the Sa'Vasku, Tom Tongue and I were to secretly pick a side to support (we were not to let either side know who we were supporting), destroy both flagships, and cause discord amongst the two sides. We decided to support the NAC, who was getting seriously hammered and unable to hammer back effectively. We popped in beside and behind the ESU on turn 3, and spent that turn blowing away asteroid fields (clearing an area for maneuvering) and just drifting along side the ESU. Since they didn't know what we were doing, they left us alone and continued to pound each other. The NAC flagship was destroyed about this time, iirc. The ESU flagship was drifting further and further away from the field of battle. It was apparent to us that it was trying to escape. But given how far away it was, and how slow everyone was going, it didn't seem likely we were going to be able to stop it. Tom thought it was going to swing around behind the NAC, but with the NAC in sorry shape, and facing two battle squadrons that consisted of a BC, a CAH, and support ships each, I didn't think that was likely. But who really knew but Noam, who was playing the ESU flagship squadron.

On turn 4 the Sa'Vasku made it clear that the ESU were too strong compared to the NAC, and it was time to widdle them down. So we proceeded to. Most of the ESU ignored us and kept pounding on the NAC ships that remained, but eventually they took exception to the damage that Tom's group was dishing out and began to hit him back. But it was too little too late. By the end of this turn, the Sa'Vasku were the most powerful thing on the board, an no one was going to stop us. We pounded away at the ESU (I had planned on sniping a couple of NAC ships for good measure, but the ESU blew them up before I got the chance) for another turn and then the game ended. With Vince's victory conditions and calculations, it turned out that of the 7 players playing (2 NAC, 3 ESU, 2 S'V), one person from each faction won. All in all it was a fun game, but I think the S'V came in one turn too late to prevent the ESU flagship from leaving. Vince told me later that in other games he's run of this the NAC had won by convincing the ESU to side with them and pound the tentacles off of the S'V. This time they didn't cooperate, and the S'V whalloped with impunity.

After this session was over it was time for me to tally up the votes from the minis contest. There were four categories (FT, DS2, SG-15, SG-25), and each person could enter up to two submissions per category. The FT and SG-25 categories are always very popular for entries, typically having 12-20 entries per. The DS2 and SG-15 categories are usually less popular, but do have entries. Sometimes 2-3, sometimes 10 or more. This year the DS2 category had 4 entries, and the SG-15 category had 5. I had submitted two entries into the SG-15 category (a squad of GZG Ghurkas - ones I had "complained" about several months ago as being too well-sculpted for me to begin to do justice to painting them - and GZG's SG-1 team), and one to the Dirtside category (a platoon of Brigade M-84 Kochte tanks). I can only attribute the low numbers of entries in these two fields to the fact that I won the Dirtside category and took 3rd in the SG-15 (with my Ghurkas, no less!). Martin Connel had entered GZG's sci-fi Egyptians in the SG-15 category, and those were DAMNED good! Everyone agreed - so much that he had more than 2.5x the votes of the 2nd place entry (which I am spacing what that was). He also won 2nd place with his NSL entry. Also very good. In the FT and SG-25 categories, the difference in votes between 1st and 2nd place was 1-2 votes - there was a lot of good work submitted to those two categories!

After I tallied up the votes, we had our standard mid-con 'meeting' with the con goers (we are small enough to do that; you'd never see that happen at Cold Wars, Historicon, or Origins!). At this point the prize for furthest travelled was handed out (Beth Fulton - all the way from Tasmania! :0), and the painting contest winners were given their certificates and prizes.

Because in year's past as well as this year, some people paint so well that they can win multiple places in different categories, we are looking to implement some changes (from the feedback given us) to limit each person a single win for each category (so one person can't win 1st and 3rd, for example). Also, for those whose craftmanship is SO much better than others, we may open up a new category: Master's. This will be for repeat winners, and will give those others who enter but never win a shot at possibly making it to the upper ranks in that category. Details will be hammered out at a later time - we've got a year to work this out. ;-)

Saturday evening was "The Weight of Command", run by Tomb and Los, with Magic and Kr'rt as support GMs (RTOs). There were some 9 or 10 players involved. The premise to this scenario was that we were all UN Peacekeepers, on some backwater planet or country, that had just recently undergone very tumultuous and destablizing events. There is a local warlord or war criminal who is still in power in the region, and has a vested interest in further destabilization, granting him more personal power. He has allies and followers all over, including elements of the local police agencies (if not the entire agencies). The UN wants him for war crimes, but must grab him in such a manner that it looks like the national police are the apprehending force. All sounds well and good, except...there are two boards (one for each side of the town, seperated by a river), so there will be two seperate teams of players, plus an HQ section in a different room, who is tasked with coordinating the activities on the two boards. Tomb and Los would be the 'local' GMs, running things at their respective tables. Magic and Kr'rt would be the Radio Transmition Operator GMs, sitting in the secluded room with the UN CO and XO (I got to be the CO, Damond the XO; Phil Pournelle was Alpha Team leader, and Beth Fulton was Bravo Team leader). The quick and short of it was the war criminal Mr K was coming into town, meeting with his family during evening church services on Bravo table (he was coming in from Alpha table). Phil's group was to perform the snatch of Mr K while Beth's forces were to prevent sympathizers from Bravo table from interfering, by blocking the two bridges with her corden groups. And Damo and I were sitting in a side room coordinating all this. Hahahah. ;-)

Without going into a LOT of detail, it was a very interesting scenario. And I think one of the best-run I've ever had the pleasure of playing in. Damo and I had to balance being able to issue orders to our field teams without getting into micro-manage mode, and still deal with upper levels of headquarters (various generals and things; we were but majors). Things on Alpha table went off pretty well. Things on Bravo table, on the other hand, kept getting worse and worse as the turns went by. Unbeknownst to our intel, Mr K was actually coming to the church in Bravo town in order to purchase a small nuke (~10 megaton iirc) from a group of weapons dealers. While Alpha Team was making the snatch on Mr K, Bravo Team saw Mr K's decoy, thought it was Mr K, and went after him. Their shooting out the tires of the decoy vehicle caused said car to flip and explode (at which point I started getting queries from my superiors as to 'what is going on'; these went quickly to 'what the hell is going on' when they picked up fusion weapons fire ;-). As the car exploded, the UN Bravo forces moved in to secure Mr K (decoy), who turned out to have been killed in the explosion. The weapons dealers in the church had no way to know that they had NOT been found out, and started shooting, thinking the UN was coming after them. When the power armored mercs appeared, that's when (as I understand it) the APCs let loose with fusion weapons fire (and about that point my superiors were getting a little anxious with what was going on ;-). After I explained to them about the powered armor mercs, they gave my teams clearance to eliminate the PA troops. Of course, my teams were already in the process of trying to do just that (so when I sent down the official order that PA mercs were fair game, comment back was "Little late!").

Anyway, as the firefight grew on Bravo board, it became clear that there was more to the area than we first knew - and we learned about radiation spikes that eventually became understood as coming from the nuke that was hidden in the church. I tried to get my people out of the area, but then higher up HQ insisted that I "secure the WMD!". Dammit. Now I had to send people into harm's way that we weren't prepared for. I sent the XO to the scene with the heavy-lift VTOL and all our elite power armor squads. Nominally to pick up Mr K and bring him back, but to give any team that heavy hammer fire support. Turned out the Bravo teams needed it, and the XO dropped two squads of PA on the church. Chaos ensued in the escalating firefight (during which apparently most of the locals left town, knowing about the nuke). The UN forces were able to punch into the church, at which point the arms dealer leader asked for amnesty in exchange for information on the nuke. I didn't have the authority to grant amnesty, and while I COULD have lied about it, I opted to just play it straight and told the troops on the scene to advise the leader that amnesty was not granted, but to also tell the leader under the strongest possible terms that it would be in the best interest to drop his weapons and surrender (leaving the unspoken 'or else' hanging in the air). More fighting ensued, and the weapons dealers retreated to the basement of the church, focusing all their attention on the narrow stairwell, the only access to the basement from above...or was it?

In the mean time, HQ had gotten word that one of the weapons dealers was actually (or also) a high-level civilian in the national government (or something like that; iirc it was the weapons dealer leader) and having them injured or killed would be a Bad Thing. And so I was ordered to take PERSONAL command of the situation. I think Beth and Aaron thought I was coming in to steal their thunder for securing the WMD, because they carried on with the church assault. Unbeknownst to them all I really wanted to do was to contain the situation. They were going to get credit for retrieving the nuke. ;-)

While Beth's UN corden force was negotiating with the weapons dealer leader, Aaron and Beth's PA set charges around the floor of the church - the blew the floor, dropping in on the weapons dealers from above. Close-quarters melee commenced, with the PA subduing most of the mercs. That was when they noticed the object in the corner with the LED that was reading "30....29... .28....27...." Oops. The Bomb.

At this point things went into 'cinematic' time, as the UN forces did a HELL of a lot of things in the remaining 25 seconds - from waving the CO (me) off from landing due to the impending nuke explosion, torturing two prisoners to learn who knew how to disarm the bomb, retreating from the building to take shelter in the nearby sewer treatment plant, rescuing the group of school children who showed up JUST at the wrong moment, etc, etc, etc. I think maybe 40 minutes worth of activities happened in that 25 seconds. ;-) Nevertheless, the UN PA was able to dismantle the Bomb and secure the radioactive material in a safe place for later hazmat teams to come in and retrieve. And the scenario ended.

I didn't get much more detail covered on Alpha table, mostly because I was focused on the events going on on Bravo table, and partly because they had things over there under control. In the end we got Mr K out and taken to a UN holding area, and recovered the unsuspected WMD. A pretty good win for the UN!

Post-game we all convened in the HQ room and had a debriefing, discussing what each of us experienced and thought of the situation. Alpha team for the most part had no clue about the WMD, but that was mostly because Phil Pournelle did not pass that information on to his troops. Reason? They didn't need to know. As Phil stated, in his experience, a good officer is a good filter: tell the troops what they NEED to know, and not bother them with information that would either hamper their abilities to function effectively or distract them from doing their jobs. As there was nothing Alpha team could do about the WMD, the Alpha team didn't need to know about it, and only had to worry about their own evac plans.

All in all TWoC was probably one of the best games I've played in a long, long time. I really appreciated the amount of time, energy, and effort that Tomb, Los, Kr'rt, and Magic put into this. It was well worth it.

Sunday morning came entirely too quickly. I was running my 15mm Dirtside game, "The Bigger They Are...". Premise: an unknown enemy force had broken through the front lines and was wreaking havoc in the rear areas. Tracking the force's movement, the defending commanders were able to cobble together a counter-force in order to try and stop the invaders. Suspected (due to the availability of the models) but not 100% known to the players, the invading force was a 15mm Ogre Mk III (called a FOGRE, created by Joel Frock at my request from last year). The defenders included units from Brigade (an M-84 Kochte platoon), Force XXI (MBTs, light APCs, an APC-VTOL, a couple of Banshee gunships, and an artillery battery), DLD (Kamodo APCs, TOC, ICVs, and HFS', as well as a platoon of Civet grav tanks and a platoon of Bengal MBTs), and GZG (2 NAC infantry squads, a squad of Ghurkas, and three NAC PA squads). We used the end room of the con room, which was also used as the HQ room in "Weight of Command" the night before. And since in 15mm playing on tables would be...inconvenient (weapons ranges were multiplied by a factor of 3 for simplicity sake - thus a HEL could now shoot 180 inches or about 15'), we used the floor. To the slight dismay of some participants, but no one seemed to kill themselves or knees. :-) We opted to keep the room a 'shoeless' room so people could actually feel if they accidently stepped on any terrain or models. Happily, only a couple of stands of trees were casualties from a short stumble at one point; otherwise all models faired well by not being stepped on - however...)

The FOGRE came on the board, and the defenders moved to cut it off. Long range fire was ineffective against the Mk III, and in reply the Mk III wiped out the entire platoon of M-84s, and thumped a couple other platoons with missile fire. The defending tanks kept trying, though, to get in range and tried to destroy things, but the levels of armor (6/7; remember, meters thick of biphase carbide armor) on the modules proved resilient. The FOGRE rumbled on...until it got within range of the infantry. THen one team (the Ghurkas) fired an IAVR (in desperation; they needed a 'boom' chit to do ANYthing to the FOGRE) at the FOGRE's main gun (which hadn't fired yet). The IAVR pulled a '2'...and a 'boom'. Ka-blooie! The main gun was now gone; first blood drawn on the FOGRE by a lowly infantry team (said team did not last long, however, being creamed by AP fire a short time later). At this point the tide began to [slowly] turn. Further weapons fire against the FOGRE proved effective now and again, and the FOGRE began losing tread units and secondary batteries. But not without a cost! There were many defending tanks burning when the FOGRE drove into the heavy forrest. Many fresh and still viable tanks piled up behind it, to shoot down the 'tunnel' created by the FOGRE driving through the woods. The FOGRE then threw its treads into reverse and...rammed through four tanks in one move, rammed more tanks later. It was down to only one secondary battery, but ramming it could do with impunity. As it had killed the Kamodo APC/ICV units earlier, the Wraith APC-VTOL picked up a couple teams of PA to move them into position to take on the FOGRE. The FOGRE's remaining secondary battery knocked the APC-VTOL from the sky, taking out the two PA teams at the same time. Bummer for the defenders.

In the end the defenders were able to prevent the FOGRE from getting past the halfway point on the field of battle, but had only 6 viable tanks and two squads of infantry (one regular, one PA) left to fight with (oh, and the artillery unit and the two Banshee gunships as well). Everything else was a burning hulk. A costly victory, but the FOGRE was stopped.

After that, the game sessions were mostly over. I packed up, said good-bye to people who were departing, and then eventually departed myself for the drive home.

Another good ECC had come to a close. Now to start thinking about what to run next year....FMA? More Dirtside 2.5? FT? So many scenario ideas to choose from I don't know where to begin...

Mk