Derrick and I left New Market, MD about 9ish in the AM to start our
journey to New York.  As others have said the weather was a PITA but
because we left early we missed the majority of it.  In any event the
GPS said it'd take us 5.5 hours to get there and it ended up taking us
six.  Not a big deal at all.

This was my first ECC at The Treadway (and not Dreadway mind) having
missed last year's ECC.  Compared to dive in Lancaster the Treadway
seems almost like perfection.  The Gaming area is on the ground floor
and big (though it seems like the room suffers from either being too
hot or too cold but perhaps that's due to my delicate disposition),
the staff don't seem put out if you have any questions, the restaurant
is passable (with breakfast buffets and a pretty good dinner menu),
and perhaps most importantly the bar actually works.  And it's cheap
-- a Rum and Coke could be had for $4.50.  Not that I drank ... much.
No sir.  Anywho...

Friday night I played in Newman's Vampire/Zombie/Nazi/US Paratrooper
FMAS game.  The setup was a German research center "somewhere in
France" maybe but certainly on the West Front.  The Wehrmacht (me) was
assigned to guard the facility with 8 West Front rejects.  Perhaps I'm
being harsh here but they didn't do much.  Surprisingly I only
suffered less than 50% casualties which is odd if you know my gaming
style.  One of my goals was to "survive" the War -- so I played my
troops cautiously for the most part.  One hightlight was having a
Green/2 assault one of Jerry A.'s Elite/1's in a bunker with the
Greenie Meanie pulling out a horrific victory (my 6 to Jerry's 1).
There was too much action to really recount the whole thing -- that's
normal for a sizable FMAS game where each player has their own
objectives.  Though sometimes I think this is overkill and that
convention games should be a bit more straight forward.  Having said
that Aaron puts on a good FMAS game and keeps it moving.

As always Saturday morning appeared out of nowhere and once I was
mobile I shambled over to the game room.

Saturday Mornings game was Lerchy's FMA Bug Hunt.  Modeled after Space
Hulk the rules played fast and furious.  The secret to Space Hulk is
trading casualties for time.  By feeding the alien menace a Space
Marine you buy time somewhere else on the table.  So at game start I
knew my objective and I knew only it mattered.  I moved my Terminators
directly towards an objective thingy as fast as their heavy armor
would allow.  I posted the trailing marine at a door to cover it --
this allowed for overwatch fire until their guns jammed.  This marine
was near an alien spawn point so it was bound to be a target rich
environment soon.  I then proceeded to drop marines to cover obvious
routes and kept pressing towards the teleport pad after my
flame-thrower marine bashed in an alien pod for an objective token.

The two trailing marines managed to take out a sizable amount of alien
scum during the game.  One marine was wounded several times but
managed to club the alien slime to powder for several turns before
finally succumbing to his wounds.  Another marine further up the
corridor was also buying time.  This allowed my three remaining
marines to make a bee line for the teleport pad.  My heavy flamer dude
covered their tracks with flame.  Once these three were basically
clear and moving to the pad the second marine casualty of mine started
to retrograde back to his boarding pod.  Moving back two spaces each
turn for 3 or so turns before he finally died a horrible death.  In
doing so he managed to keep about six of the alien beasts tracking him
instead of going full tilt for my marine holding the objective token.

By game end the marines had secured 2 of 3 objectives so we ended the
game there as the remainder of the game would have been a prolonged
fight to extract the rest of the marine's from the hulk.  Generally
the alien player lost hordes of aliens (which they're supposed to do
anyway) and each marine player ended up losing 2-3 marines.  Not bad
for a large FMA Bug Hunt game.  It was a great time.

During the second session I ran my Predators in Vietnam name.  TomB
has already spoken of this so I won't go into it here other than to
say that I think folks had fun.  I started the game with the standard
"Anything is possible -- if you can imagine it I'll assign a
difficulty and we'll go from there."  TomB really took to this with
some flagrant abuses of FMAS but that's what the system is good at.  I
went for a RPG/Skirmish feel and I think it was successful.

I will say, of course, that Mr. "J" likes to liberate well earned
skullz from other players.  If TomB does run the Predators in the Old
West be prepared to defend your Skullz.  That's all I'm saying.

For the final session of the night I played in Martin and Steve's
Captain Something or Other the Man of Steel ... or Bronze.  It was a
pulp game that was a combination of FMAS and SG2.  It took a few turns
to get a hang of the rules but once they gelled the game played fast.
I'm not a huge fan of pulp games but this one was fun.  Martin and
Steve "get" how to run FMAS games -- half RPG and half Skirmish.  It
was a fun game -- needless to say the forces of good overcame the
forces of darkness.  :)

Off to bed early Saturday night as I was feeling exhausted at this
point (it was my then future cold brewing up ya see).

Sunday Morning, breakfast, checkout, and more gaming.

Steve and Martin put on an FMA Frag game that was fast and furious.
Their only departure from the Frag rules was that when someone died
they dropped ALL their gear and weapons instead of just their weapons.
 This enabled a few crafty players to nuke opponents with good decks
and then move over to swoop up a horde of cards.  Anyone who's played
Frag knows that the cards allow you to shrug off damage, teleport
around quickly, etc.  If you don't have a good hand of cards you're
pretty much toast.  It was a fast playing game and we all had fun.
Lerchy won two of three games and I came close to winning the third
but I got nuked before I could bring the pain.  I think Jerry A. might
have fun the third round.

As always GZG ECC is a great time with a great group of people.  I'm
already planning mayhem for next year which is sign of a good con -- I
always leave ECC recharged for more scifi (and other wacky) gaming.

Damo