GZG East Coast Convention 18

Note: This article is being published before some photos are uploaded and linked. Visit back later for updates that will include the photo gallery for the convention as well as other resource links.

Prelude

GZG ECC (Ground Zero Games East Coast Convention) is a miniatures gaming convention I've been attending since the late 1990s. I was at the first and have been at many of the rest. ECC has seen highs and lows in attendance and changes over the years in location (from Lancaster PA to Owego NY) and the loss of the North American Ground Zero Games distributor seems to have played a role in the drift of focus away from strictly Ground Zero Games (that an no rulebooks since the early 1990s, just miniatures).

Nonetheless, the crowd that does attend are good people and the gaming and socializing is one of the attractions. It's a small convention in the 30-50 person range. It has an informality and friendliness that some of the larger conventions, by virtue of size alone, have some trouble matching. I've been to Historicon, Origins, and Gen Con and this is more like a group of friends getting together than some massive enterprise. 

Jon Davis, Mark Kochte, Jerry Han and maybe one or two others have done a lot of the organization for the last 18 years. That's quite a feat and they deserve kudos for their efforts. 

For me, the last while has been filled with challenges on the home front (my step-daughter working through the challenges of a new school in a new language and of having a new baby half-sister in her father's side of the family, my partner Catherine wrestling with work stress and a bad back/hip as well as her worries about MJ and her Dad, a pair of aging parents, my own hard work to complete a school program (Enterprise Java Developer) and get back to work after a bit of a lengthy hiatus, and my own struggles at times with my own brush with post-traumatic stress).

Last year I meant to make ECC, but had to bail due to stuff on the home front. I was darn well not going to do that unless I had no choice this year. 

I had planned an 'event' with Bob Makowsky and Carlos Lourenco, but Carlos had a work situation (someone no longer there) that meant he had to work weekends suddenly and Bob realized he was away almost every weekend in March and had to spend one at home and unfortunately ECC was the option. So that plan, after going far enough to get into the list of events, suddenly went into damage control mode. 

I did some triage, came up with a way to carry that off and to also provide a second event, an X-Wing miniatures game to help fill out the schedule. 

In the days leading up to the convention, it came to my attention the main event had nobody registered, so I inquired if it really made sense to finish it out and bring all the materials or to just bring the X-Wing game and Jon (noting lower than usual attendance as he had a lot on his plate in the lead-up to this year) felt it was reasonable to let it go and just run the X-Wing game. So that's what I worked on getting ready. 

The day before we departed, I felt a bit under the weather. I was concerned, but hoped it was just a result of having a busy week and I would shake it off.

My friend Kevin Fox of Foxhole Design wasn't able to attend but provided some prize support for the convention which the organizers were quite thankful for. One of the buildings went to a first time attendee! Some folks who saw them thought they were interesting and the material was interesting. I passed around a few of Kevin's cards to those who seemed interested. Kevin does custom terrain building and painting of figures, vehicles and other things as well as having commercially packaged terrain products. He's has won a fair few GZG painting competition awards and has painted about 1500 or more of my 25mm sci-fi troops to a standard significantly higher than my own level of skill. I'd recommend him to anyone who wants to get their gaming figures painted to a good standard or who wants some nice custom built terrain models.

Getting Down There

Tom, Jim and I started out from Ottawa around 0930. We reached the border around 1200 or so and traffic was minimal and no fuss occurred at the border. We did find out our US CBP agent was a Cosplayer so he was curious about our games.... life is strange sometimes! 

The drive down saw some unforseen and unehlpful road construction (leading to a missed exit as the temporary exit was on the opposite side of a multi-lane highway than the one we expected....) and some snow. Overall, no fuss. We stopped for bear and booze - some to bring home, some to share at the Con. 

We arrived in about 1615 or so and settled into our hotel, then went and ate a nice meal at the local diner, and headed in to say hello to everyone and to get ready for our Friday night games. 

All day, my state of health, a bit dodgy on Thursday, was declining. I started relying on DayQuil, SInutab, and Tylenol to keep me functioning. I felt a bit off but was enjoying myself.

Friday Night

My game Friday Night was "The Battle of Axanar" run with the as-yet-not-released SMITE rules. This event was inspired by the movie "Prelude to Axanar" (which everyone who ever liked Star Trek should check out). Axanar is a Star Trek Universe moment where Garth of Izar and other Federation Captains try to hold back the Klingons until the Federation can get its new Heavy Cruiser design, the Constitution class (the Enterprise is one of those) finished. SMITE is a game system that looks a bit like Full Thurst but with more complexity in places and polyhydral dice instead of FT's fist-full-of-D6s approach. 

Mark Kochte ran the game and it saw three groups of Klingons under the command of Ron Lenard, Steve Barosi, and Carl Scheu against three groups of Federation ships under myself, Thomas Scheu, and Mike Hudak. The battle took place near the planet Axanar (off board on the Federation short edge) where two Constitution class starships were being built in orbital drydrocks. They were near completion but still powered down. The Klingons, three squadrons including some D6 and D7 designs (the D7 being the powerful Klingon Cruiser that was winning them the war) were going to try to destroy the first Constitutions before they were operational.

Axanar has a ring system and so there was a band of slowly passing rocks in the mid board. Axanar itself was off the Federation short edge and the Klingons entered from the opposite short edge. 

The Klingons split into three groups - two going down the sides and one down the center. The federation was essentially one battle line, but practically was split into three groups. 

Klingon strategy appeared to be 'Go in quick and blow stuff up' (reasonable given their goals) and Federation strategy was 'Come out slowly, use the rocks for cover against the D7s, and hold them off long enough for the Constitutions to join the fray' (reasonable given their limitations and the advantages the D7 gave the Klingons). 

The Feds had a mix including 2 Ares class medium cruisers, an old Texas class light cruiser, several Destroyers (class name eludes me), and several multi-engine ships whose class I don't recall but seemed like light cruisers to me). The Ares were our strongest ships. The drydocks had almost impotent defenses but a fair bit of damage soaking. The Constitutions were brutes, but needed to stay in dock long enough to enter the battle with working systems (including hull). 

The battle had some highlights: 

• Steve had one Klingon cruiser serve as a key example for a Klingon PSA of the danger of intersecting asteroids (pristine to hot plasma in one easy step!)
• The Ares, 3 Destroyers and the Texas shooting it out with what ended up being I think 2 D7s, three D6s and holding their own until the Feds were forced to reverse course and go after the fast moving Klingons and thus expose their backs to the opportunistic Carl whose battle strategies usually involve a late game engagement with high degrees of opportunistic predation
• On the other flank, the other Ares class ship and the light cruisers did well in holding off the hordes of Klingons

I think the Federation won in that neither Constitution was destroyed at game end. Both were coming out of drydock with a lot of systems active. Indy thought one dock was in peril, but they have a LOT of hull boxes and it only takes one turn to sortie. Thomas' Constitution was almost clear of the dock and Mike's could have been the next turn before the dock could likely be destroyed. Both had most systems active and enough hull to have a few turns of laying down the hurt. The Federation also had several light cruisers (the four engined ones) left and the Areas class were either both alive or one was (although in rough shape). The DD's got whacked by Carl's Klingons and the Texas may have died too, albeit doing damage as she went out. 

The SMITE rules play well, but there is a major difference between how much damage you are likely to take in the third range band against front shields and in the rear in range band 1 with a D7. It's the difference between about 1-4 points and 13-20. For reference, that's about 1 DD pristine to dead in one shot from the rear. 

Federation deployment, given their maneyverability, is not how I would have set things up if I was the command admiral. It was too close to the ship docks. It lacked defensive depth (docks and Axanar at our backs, fast incoming Klingons, ring system at our front, and low agility ships). I'd certainly have tried harder as that admiral to get early warning and have the Federation ships up and moving sooner and further from the shipdocks. Active patrolling would have been useful too. Of course, more nimble destroyers would have been a good idea too. 

Mark ran a good game and I think everyone had fun.

Saturday Morning

We got up early, hit the hotel lobby food area for a complimentary breakfast (pretty good), and I loaded up on drugs as I felt myself worsening, waking up at 5:30 am with sinuses on fire, head congestion, and gunk in my throat. During the day, I must have sucked on about 20 peppermints and as many cough drops and drank lots of water to try to keep myself hydrated and my throat lubricated. 

David Skelley ran Bare Jump which was an X-Wing Miniatures Game. In that game, an all-star cast of competent rebel pilots, loaded with missiles and torpedoes, were attacking a Star Destroyer to try to knock out the shield generators that protect it from other capital ships. The Imperial defense was an ever reappearing supply of TIE fighters and an interceptor crewed by not-terribly-good and outright inept pilots. Imperial losses were replaced, rebels were not. The Turbolasers would shoot until the dogfight was joined but weren't very effective against the Rebel fighters (every bit helps). 

Fighting around the Star Destroyer ( a huge 6' prop about 18-20" high) was challenging - your ships tended to run afoul of ship contours that resulted in fighters losing actions. As the Imperials moved first (low pilot skill), it was possible for them to jam up some key maneuver lanes close to the sides of the Star Destroyers making Rebel plans go awry and attacks be thwarted. 

Both sides started on a long side edge of the star destroyer. The Rebel deployment had their heavies (2 Y-Wings and a B-Wing) in closest to the shield generator and the fighters (2 X-Wings and an A-Wing) further out. The Imperials all came in fairly close to the shortest path to the Rebels. The Rebels might have managed a victory in this scenario had all their ships raced at the first shield generator from the closest entry point. Instead their interceptors took some time to close in and lost shots. 

The Empire went full bore. Out plans were simple: Get in close, clog up desirable real-estate, gang-beat single rebel ships until they died (having 6 damaged rebels was less useful than having 4 pristine and 2 dead). We figured we'd die in droves, but we'd come back quick. 

The shield generators had no agility (defense) but had 8 shields and 2 hits before they died. 

In the final result, the Imperials won. We had one shield generator left with no shields and one hit left. The last X-Wing had whiffed on his attack which could have won the Rebels the game and then been gang-blasted into space dust. The only rebel ship left was an out-of-position A-Wing with concussion missiles that likely wouldn't have been able to attack the next turn and might have died (with 4 nearby imperials and 2 more soon to arrive (they'd been off chasing off one of the Y-Wings)). 

The final tally was: B-Wing dead, 1 Y-WIng dead, 1 Y-Wing runFF-off (out of munitions, nearly dead), 2 X-Wings dead, A-Wing undamaged, several kills of TIE interceptors and a few of TIE fighters, one shield generator dead, another all but dead. 

Jon Davis and I commanded the Imperial defense squadron. David Skelley and Martin Connell (in his first X-Wing game) led the spirited Rebel attack. I also would love a huge Star Destroyer like that! 

For a game that lacked time for a playtest (Ron Walls and David Skelley who had planned to run together had late breaking stuff interfere), it was scenic, fun, and worked out in play as well-balanced. It was fun. 

My personal compliments to Jon Davis for being an excellent team-mate; even when he did steal my ships and shoot them, he did so with expert dice control and good results.

There are some things I think David should be careful of in future iterations (the 'Rebel Closest Point Rush' particularly) but otherwise the game is fun and has good repeatability.

Resources: 

• Full Card List for X-Wing
• Squad Creator for X-Wing
• Pilot Card Maker for X-Wing (in French... you can use Chrome and Google Translate to learn which buttons mean what in English, but that process munges up the Pilot text, so just learn which button is which then use the French version and it works awesome)

 Example output from the Pilot Card Maker:

Saturday Afternoon

Lunch saw us hit the Panda Wok. Sadly, no Pandas in the Kitchen making soup and teaching Kung-Fu and none on the menu. False advertising! The food was okay albeit I did have some digestive issues around dinner time that may trace back to lunch. 

The game I played in the afternoon was run by the Odd Couple: Martin Connell and Steve Barosi. They have some off the wall concepts (sometimes with some technical constructions involved in support of) and their games are usually a lot of fun. This one was called "Research Station Belewbeloid".

The game was Stargrunt II. A team of Scandinavian Federation (ScanFed) soldiers was guarding a research installation on an ice planet where some boffins had 'found something'. What was unclear to the security people (first sign of something likely to blow up in your face) and which was (again unknown to the security team) of great interest to other parties.. The other side was a mercenary strike force - highly mobile, high in firepower and with some armour - intent on securing the scientists and/or discovery. 

The map had the research station on one half and the other half was dunes and rock outcroppings the mercenary strike force had to approach through. Half the defenders were on station, the other half in barracks. The scientists were in the central station complex. 

Complex defensive design failures included: 

• VTOL Pad outside the perimeter with no protection for the vulnerable air asset
• Nobody on watch in the elevated central tower. 
• No remote sensors set in place in a wider perimeter around the base to detect movement or EM sources
• No perimeter barrier (enemies could waltz right into the encampment)
• barracks buildings whose ONLY access and visibility was through a door and window pointed inward towards the main complex - no side or rear windows or door
• No active patrolling by Scanfed fireteams

So, as you can see, the installation just wasn't very well defended. 

The Scanfed had 6 squads with no command squad and one of the squads was green-3 (poorly led novices). That was the point of heaviest attack on behalf of the enemy force (quelle surprise!). 

The mercenaries appeared to have 4 units of high speed armed and armoured skimmer mounted troops (think speeder bikes). The armour was enough to shrug small arms fire a lot of the time and the mounted MGs outranged and outfirepowered anything any single ScanFed squad could manage. They also had an APC with a high quality command squad in it and with a roof mounted weapon and some armour (but not very much actually). 

The mercenary attack was not cautious. They came in very fast (for the defensive benefits) and never entered the central compound for the majority of the game. They used longer range bands and heavy skimmer FP to suppress and smash several squads dug in around the edges of the facility and to rip apart any squad trying to get out of the death-trap barracks to someplace they could be effective (usually in the open and thus subject to much machinegun damage).

Stuart Murray, Brian Howland, and I ran the defenders. Mark Kochte, Jim Bell, and Mike Hudak ran the attackers. 

Jim went hell-bent for leather, recognizing speed and firepower as the principal advantages of his skimmers. He actually was able to destroy the VTOL in turn 3 before the defenders could even get a pilot (at gunpoint) to it. (poor landing pad choice)

Jim also demonstrated that 12" range bands and lots of D8 FP dice meant that skimmers could fire at range band 3 at emplaced troops and cause casualties while return fire, effectively in RB 5 of the defending forces, could bounce off the armour or miss entirely. 

To sustain movement bonuses to defense, the skimmers had to spend one action moving each turn more than 13". Jim proved a complete circle using the turning template was 14". So Jim's skimmers did several 360 circles during combat to maintain movement without closing distance with the foe.

The move was legal if odd and certainly coined the name 'The Bell Bowl-Circle" and later "The Bell Circle Jerk". 

The scientists eventually bolted and ran and Stuart (either ticked off at our failure to hurt the enemy or not wanting them to fall into enemy hands) decided to shoot them down as they ran. They released something which started burrowing underground and then eating bodies. 

The attacker's first casualty occurred 2 hours and 37 minutes into a 4 hour game slot. I pointed out to Stuart (rightly) that we could not consider a casualty caused by the alien worm to be a victory for us.

For some part of the game, our only inflicted casualties were on fleeing civilians. The mercs had no such difficulty. They smashed two squads of our troops and drove off at least one more, maybe 2. 

The alien kept eating people and growing. Stuart doggedly pursued the scientist with an ice tractor and kept shooting them. I asked him why he didn't just run them over, but fleeing scientists are apparently FASTER than the ice tractor.... 

Mark (merc commander) felt emboldened by Jim's bulletproof nature and by Mike's successes in close assault. He took the command APC over to capture fleeing scientists. 

This was the first time in the entire game, well past the 3 hour mark, where the defenders were able to roll better than the attackers. The APC brewed up, command squad had casualties, more nearby scientists died.. Finally our casualties inflicted list included enemy combatants! 

As Mark was planning to rescue a wounded scientist for the mercenaries, Brian or Stuart shot again and headshot the mercenary CO. That plan died a-borning. 

At the end Jim's skimmers came without opposition through the compound and picked up a wounded scientist. The alien continued to rampage. 

I think the mercenaries notionally won if that scientist survived his injuries. The defenders had high casualties and several units fled or surrendered.

During the whole four hours I shot a Jim Bell, I never beat his dice enough to kill one skimmer or pilot. My dice tried (9, 7, 6 roll.... Jim rolls a 10). The few times I hit him, it failed to penetrate his body armour or bounced off the skimmer armour. 

The scenario had worked more evenly in playtest with timid playtesters. Jim is not a timid strategist. Mark and Mike went along with the boldness and it mostly worked out for their mercenaries. 

It was a fun game. It would be easy to address a few of the glitches:

• Give the VTOL some cover (a berm for instance) and maybe a guard fireteam )
• Assume the barracks have some windows
• Give the ScanFed a command unit
• Break Jim's fingers so he can't roll dice

The game was scenic, fun, and I will continue to seek out and play anything Steve and Martin bring to the Convention. The fact they are both great guys is a bonus.

I'm sorry Brian Howland got such a rough introduction to Stargrunt. Things don't usually go that poorly for one side.

Saturday Night

I opted to work on preparing my game as I was in fairly rough shape by this point. My voice had went to nothing (laryngitis) and I was worried about my game so I worked on setup and tried to hope my voice would come back. I watched some other games, took more drugs, and did hang around long enough for the 2300 - 0100 chatting and reminiscing session to conclude. Then there was more of that in the hotel room with Jim and Tom. I think Tom stopped drinking beer around 2:30 pm and we went to sleep for an 8:15 checkout. 

There wasn't the usual late night/early morning board gaming - maybe not having JP there cut the energy level. It was more in the line of casual reminiscence and sociability. This meant of course that I had unconsumed beer and liquor to deal with before returning.

Sunday Morning

I looked like crap. I felt like crap. But I had an X-Wing game called Space Rent Asunder to run. So, got up, ate at the hotel, and got to the game area to setup. 

I had 4 players signed up. As it turned out, I had 7. I got Mike Hudak (first half), Jim Bell (second Half),  David Skelley, Thomas Scheu, Carl Scheu, Leo Accord and his dad Jerry Accord. 

The board had 4 quadrants and the whole board was suffused with wormholes (teleporters) and asteroids (hazards). The Imperials had used a new weapon to smash a planetoid containing a Rebel intelligence station (Oracle Station). The main force then departed but left starfighters on patrol in case any Rebel force attempted a rescue or investigation (which is what ensued). 

The Rebels arrived scattered across the system, hyperspace having been affected by the new Imperial weapon. On the board, nearest the station, 3 Rebel ships appeared - 2 Z-95 Headhunters and an A-WIng. The Imperials nearby started appearing including 2 TIE Fighters and a TIE Advanced at the start. 

The Rebels and Imperials wanted to scan all 4 sectors for any intelligence buoys (the Rebels knew what they were looking for but the Empire would scan once it noticed the Rebels doing so). 

Victory conditions were that the Rebels locate some intelligence buoys. They also receives some VPs for destroyed ships. The Imperial VPs came from destroyed ships (a few more VPs than the Rebels) and from recovered buoys (they canted to recover them to backtrack intelligence leaks and assess the penetration, less VPs than Rebels per buoy). 

Carl, Thomas, Leo, Jerry, Mike and Jim had never played X-Wing before and Dave was well experienced. The early turns were mastering maneuver in an obstacle laden stretch and figuring out how to navigate the wormholes.

Carl made a point to avoid the Imperials and pursue scanning as his main intent. Leo seemed to enjoy hopping his Z-95 from wormhole to wormhole. The only one who appeared willing to meet the Imperials was the A-Wing driven by Jerry. 

There was some early combat, but it wasn't very effective, People were dodging vulnerable spots by ducking out in wormholes making the game more like hide and seek and other maneuvers ran afoul of asteroids. The wormholes placed stress tokens at times on ships so that also tended to reduce combat efficiency. Everyone seemed to be getting the hang of flying, but were avoiding fights. 

The Z-95 can stand up to tie fighters. Fighting was entirely feasible if the players had chosen it and felt more comfortable. I admit I expected Carl and Thomas for some reason to have X-Wing before. 

Midgame casualties included a bunch of Rebel shields (but no ships) and the TIE advanced. As the game went on, chances to discover intelligence started to happen in some sectors. 

As the game went on, ships were concentrating in one sector and engaging each other. That streak of combat saw both the original A-Wing (Jerry) and a better A-Wing reinforcement (Carl) die. Carl died somewhat cruelly after outguessing his son Thomas and ending up in his 6 o'clock position then whiffing on the attack roll while Mike Hudak got his TIE interceptor in behind to turn Carl into hot gas. 

The late game saw a couple of TIE interceptors on the board with a TIE piloted by a good pilot ("Dark Curse"). One of the intereptors was piloted by Carnor Jax. On the Rebel side, there was Gemmer Sojan's A-Wing (Carl), a Rookie X-Wing pilot, Leo's Z-95, and eventually a Gray Squadron or Gold Squadron (have to check) Y-Wing (Jerry). 

The final loss count was two A-Wings, and an X-Wing for the rebels, a TIE Advanced and a TIE Fighter for the Imperials. In the last couple of rounds of the game, the Rebels discovered one intelligence buoy and were in a position to recover it (the Y-Wing has a lot of shields and hit points).

I declared a marginal victory for the Imperials based on the fact they had gotten more points of reinforcements and had a slight lead in the VPs assuming the Rebels got the buoy. The Rebels had had a chance at finding the buoy in another sector, but Carl consistently whiffed on the 1 in 8 roll (even when using 2 dice). If the game had went on, perhaps 2 other sectors would have yielded buoys and it is hard to say who might have picked them up. 

The important take away was that everyone got a chance to learn how to fly and shoot in X-Wing and to try both basic ships and more capable ships/pilots. They did so in a tougher environment (the asteroids and wormholes) than normal too.

Folk said they had fun. We let Leo pick the first prize. His ship did contribute to the Rebel victory, both damaging an Imperial in the dogfight and in accumulating a lot of scan points while playing cat and mouse around the boards using wormholes. Besides, everyone likes to see the young ones getting into gaming! 

I thank the players for giving the scenario a try and the game. X-Wing is faster and a little less challenging in more open space. I hope everyone came away with a good impression of the game - they seemed to. 

I am sorry I couldn't speak above a whisper and I'm thankful most people (with a few notable BELL exceptions DAVIS) chose not to mock me for my laryngitis. I was lucky to be vertical and partially operational (much like both death stars....)

The Trip Home 

I was sad to go. We said goodbyes to many friends of many years and talked about next year. We were already looking forward, always a good sign. So was Jon - an even better sign.

I got to leave Jon a small bottle of goodness I had hoped to share with him. He deserves more recognition than he gets (as does Mark) for their legwork and patience and time commitment in making the convention happen. 

Departure around 1330 hrs. We hit a Cracker Barrel at Cicero. I ate pancakes that weren't cooked through but otherwise the meal was good. I felt like crap all the way home - huge headache, congested head, problems equalizing as we went up and down the NY mountain terrain, dehydration, etc. My ears were partly plugged meaning I didn't hear much from the front, but on the other hand my voice was gone so that's probably okay. The Cracker Barrel yielded Zig-Zag, the zebra Beanie Boo. 

We breached the border about 1700 with another latex-free crossing. YAY!

I got home to my partner's place at 1905 and helped with bedtime routine. Zig-Zag made me a momentary hero as my step-daughter is collecting Beanie Boos.

I got a lift back to my apartment at 2015 hrs and crashed around 9 pm for about 12-14 hours of much needed sleep. Now I can just do one thing at a time: Try to recover from this nasty bug. 

A fun convention, some fun games, some great people, and more good memories. I look forward to next year already.