GZG ECC XXIV 2022 – Indy’s AAR

Well, after a two-year COVID-forced hiatus (with the second year being a virtual con) we
convened once again in person! While not everyone was able to come out for a variety of Very
Good Reasons (e.g., the Canadians would have had to have quarantined for two weeks or months –
or years if the authorities learned they were gaming at the same table with me – after returning
home), meaning attendance was lower than usual, we still had 19 people come out to play – one of
them (a young man named Devin) being a walk-in on Saturday. Also, even though mask mandates are
being lifted and relaxed across the country, we opted to retain it in respect to those few
members who were coming who have significant immunocompromised issues. Thus, all the masks in
the photos you’ll see.

We moved venues this year, from the Owego Treadway to the Glenn A Warner VFW Post in downtown
Owego. This was probably the single best venue move we have ever done. Spacious for plenty of
gaming, lots of tables, a fridge to store cold drinks or food (didn’t see a microwave for
reheating, though), our own bathrooms, good lighting, spacious ceiling (so you had no
claustrophobic feelings), doors close to the parking lot, and very inexpensive, especially
compared to what the Treadway wanted from us (by a factor of 5, not including the new ‘fees’ for
tables or to have someone come and refill water pitchers during the weekend). The only thing it
didn’t have? Separate side room or rooms to store gaming kit and gear. But that was really the
only downside to the venue.

Being that we moved from the Treadway, I didn’t feel any compunction to get a room there.
Instead, after some asking around, found several options through Airbnb. Tried to register for
the Parkview Inn a few blocks away from the VFW Post, but 24 hours later Airbnb rejected my
application, saying there were no rooms available. The proprietor asked me to try again, that
there were rooms. Tried, Airbnb was uncooperative, so the hotel owner asked that I just register
directly through their website. That worked fine. ?

Typically in ECCs past I tend to only get one, maaaaybe two games in. Usually I’m busy dealing
with the painting contest all Saturday long, organizing prizes, and running a game or two of my
own, so very often I don’t get in but one game over the weekend. This year, since so many are
well-trained in being self-reliant on the miniatures painting contest submissions and voting, I
got to game in every session except the Saturday afternoon block, where I was running a
scenario. This was unique for me! I as exhausted from so much gaming. LOL!!  On the flip side,
in years past I’ll visit all the tables and listen to the banter, and capture some of the quote
moments on the quote board. This year I didn’t go to all the tables near as much as I was very
involved in the games I was playing in at the time. So, the Quote Board was pretty light this
year.

Friday.

The drive up from Baltimore was mostly uneventful. I left around 10am, got into town about 3:30
(took a 20 minute nap partway up; it had already been a very long week work-wise), checked into
the Parkview Inn, and was over to the VFW Post by 4pm. Unloaded the car and then headed out for
dinner at the Original Italian Pizza with the Virginia Guys who showed up. The Friday dinner
crowd was hopping, but we were able to get to-go orders of pizza by the slice. I opted for two
slices while the other guys went for three each. I got a paper bag with two paper plates, they
got pizza boxes. LOL! That was the only downside to the place. The pizza? Was good! And the
toppings? Not only were they touching, but they overlapped! Something I don’t very often see on
pizzas anymore (usually toppings are drizzled or waved over the pizza slice and I have to use my
imagination that there are any at all).

Gaming!

There were three games being run Friday evening: David Skelley’s Hard Vacuum space combat game,
Greg Davis’ modified Tomorrow’s War game (which I got a seat at the table to play in), and Aaron
Newman’s modified Konflict’47/Bolt Action 2.0 alternate history game (which had a fantastic
terrain table!) pitting the Wehrmacht against the Soviets. I played in Greg’s modified TW game,
where a group of first strike power armored guys were attempting to push into a compound where
an anti- air/anti-lander defense platform was denying the attacking side the ability to land
unmolested. Opposing us were an array of regular veteran soldiers, non-power armored. Some of
Greg’s modifications came in the form that one did not fire by squad or platoon, but by
individual unit. That saved the ‘buckets of dice’ from rolling all around on (or off of) the
table. It worked pretty well. Another change he had was the power armored guys had shields,
which prevented suppression from incoming fire – until the shield was taken down, then they
could be suppressed as normal. The shields could be brought back up once each model, thereafter
they were down for the game. I somehow took very few photos of the game. But the basic run of
the game was that Scott Jenks and I divvied up the six power armor troops and charged forward to
the elevated compound, taking fire as we ran. The defenders (Mark and Evan Kinsey, Carl Scheu)
were dismayed by the shields until they went down, but then got dismayed again when the shields
popped back up. Then less dismayed when the shields went down and stayed down, followed by one
power armored trooper after another dropping or being suppressed. We were doing okay, though,
until the defending mortar team DIDN’T miss and landed a round on a building where I had gotten
two of my three power armored troops into – killing them both dead. Sigh. My remaining power
armored trooper (a fast-moving recce scout) had managed to get into the right side of the
compound, but was beset by defenders on many sides, and while he took out two enemy soldiers
(his monoblade was nigh unstoppable, even with my die rolls), the combined fire from the other
six or seven defending troopers spelled his doom. Scott’s three power armored troopers didn’t
fare any better, with two of them down in the middle of open land away from the compound and one
stuck too far from the objective, and so the assault was stopped cold.

During the game Mark Kinsey expressed repeated jaw-dropping amazement whenever I rolled 1s or 2s
on my dice. Which was fairly often. He had heard rumors about my tendency to roll crap dice, but
until this evening he thought they were embellishments that many gamers claim they have. The
“Curse of Indy” indeed. (though I have to say he was also shocked when I would instead roll a
‘9’ or ‘10’ after a series of ‘1’s and ‘2’s, so he was getting a double hammer shock – I’m
surprised he didn’t collapse all evening from adrenaline overload!)

* * * * *

Saturday came all too early. Met up with Jon and Greg Davis for yummy filling breakfast at the
Sugar Maple. This has been our go-to breakfast spot nearish the Treadway; they were doing good
business, and not too long after we arrived most of the tables in the small venue were filled.
Then back to the con!

Saturday morning’s gaming included Mark Kinsey’s Fallout Wasteland Warfare game, Jon Davis
running What A Tanker!, Jeff Aubert running a game of Adeptus Titanicus (“titanticus” is right
as those ‘Mechs were larger than Battletech ‘Mechs!), and Stuart Murray doing a game of Hammer’s
Slammers, that I and Greg Davis got in on (running the Hammer’s Slammers merc company) against
Stuart in a simple ‘recon and hold the valley’ scenario. Who would end up cleaning our clocks
with his non-Slammers force. The greatest weakness to the Hammer’s Slammers force is missiles.
They tend not to have any to shoot with at enemy units, and enemy units tend to have more than a
few to blast Hammers’ tanks. It was great fun, even with the opposing merc force blasting away
our Hammers units. Also, one homerule that I was liking and saw implemented in a number of games
this weekend is that units have to engage the nearest threat target (if reasonable), not
something ‘way over there’ across the table. I have the rules, perhaps one day I can get my act
together, finish painting up some 15mm armored units, and run a game with no Hammer’s Slammers
(I don’t have any HS-specific minis, but a fair number of other GZG 15s).

After lunch, Saturday afternoon saw Steve Barosi and Martin Connell running a modified Rangers
of Shadow Deep game (exploring an Egyptian tomb with some marvelous terrain) that I wanted to
get in on but it was full up quickly (besides, I was also schedule-conflicted with my game),
Chris Masucci running a game of Gaslands, and I running a Star Wars podracing game based on the
Speed Rally rules. I did a playtest of a basic Speed Rally game with Andrew Bergstrom (of
Bergstrom Studios here in Baltimore) a year or so ago, then another solo game for podracing to
test the mechanics of off-road racing, then a full podracing playtest session with my local
gaming group. After some tweaks and modifications, it was ready for ECC. I borrowed some extra
terrain and a playmat from Greg Davis to spice up what I already had (need to look into my
getting some of Greg’s tunnel/arch terrain pieces and a better playmat than what I had). I had
three people sign up for the game: David Skelley, Carl Scheu, and the drop-in-visitor, Devin.
Devin had not done much tabletop gaming, so he played it a bit conservative in running the
course. Carl went pedal to the metal and shot to an early lead, while David took a moderate
approach and stayed in second – all the way up until Carl met with the Rancor in the fog and got
buggered up. Then David caught up and passed him, taking and holding the lead until the game end
(two laps). Carl decided to not deal with the fog canyon and went around it, denying him the
final checkpoint. Devin eventually came around to enter the fog-with-hidden-Rancor and suddenly
his lower skill and reaction levels (7 each; Carl and David’s drivers were 4 or 5 each). Dev got
stuck in the fog for several turns running, unable to get his podracer lined up to depart the
canyon. That slowed him down enough that David was able to secure a solid victory, despite Carl
taking a ‘short cut’ across the middle of the table and attempting to stop or pass David by.

After the afternoon gaming session concluded I headed over to a nearby taco restaurant (Las
Chicas Taqueria) with the vast majority of the con attendees. Unfortunately, I was last in line,
and had strong need to get back because I still had to attend to the miniatures painting contest
vote tallying and prize distribution. At the height of dinner hour, with the influx of our
group, wait times were pushing 40 minutes. Fortunately, Jeff Aubert (who was second to last in
line) did me a huge favor and waited that extra bit to bring my tacos so I could return to the
Post and work on the minis painting contest ballots.

Saturday evening we ate, I worked on the ballot counting for the minis painting contest
(fortunately I did not have to deal with identity and fraud and hanging chads or anything of
that sort, but my tacos did get cold), then Jon Davis got up to give our thank-you-for-coming-
speech, held a moment of silence for Mike Hudak (who had unexpectedly passed away a couple
months ago), handed out some door prizes, and let everyone know that we were happy with the new
venue and that we are returning the weekend of March 24th, 2023. Woot! After that I announced
the winners of the minis contest and handed out prizes and certificates to said winners. Then we
launched into the evening series of games, which included Carl Scheu’s Destroy All Monsters,
another Greg Davis modified Tomorrow’s War, Stuart Murray doing a Cinegrunt game (featuring the
obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey), and Chris Massucci hosting a game of his new rules,
Crystallum.

I joined Chris Massuccci’s game as he only had three players at the time. Normally Crystallum
games are designed for 1v1 play, but we made 2v2 work quite easily. I paired off with Steve
Barosi and squared off against Martin Connell and David Skelley. The background to Crystallum is
that at some point there was a massive world “Shattering”, which left Earth a, well, shattered
wasteland centuries after the disaster. In Crystallum (available from DriveThruRPG if you want
to check it out), players can construct their own forces of armor, infantry, artillery,
monsters, and other war machines. It’s generic in that you can use any minis you want, and any
scale (ideally created for 15-25mm). Chris is developing his own line of minis for his FedCom
(read: Good Guys) and Vlad (read: Russian) forces in both 15 and 25. He had some of each for
sale but I didn’t pull the trigger yet as I need to take serious stock of what I have on hand
already before I make any new minis purchases. Anyway, Steve and I were Vlad. I didn’t have a
good feel for the combat scale of the game, as we battled on a 4’x4’ playing field with 15mm
vehicles and infantry (oh, and air; the Vlads had some derivative of a Hind, the FedCom some
sleek hover jet), but it seemed very compressed to me and I had to let go of my perception of
how close the forces were to each other (kinda like one does in Flames of War, for example). We
each had an array of infantry, APCs, light artillery, and tanks. The Vlads had a ‘Hammer of God’
artillery tank while the FedCom had a Columbia(?)-class massive heavy tank. We battled in the
ruins of some town, attempting to get and retain control of three objective markers (or at least
two of the three). After some vicious, bitter combat, where most of the units on both sides were
destroyed, the FedCom held two of the objective pieces while we had one. It was a good battle,
but I’m still trying to wrap my head around some of the mechanics that didn’t make full sense to
me how they worked or were supposed to work. Some seemed counter-intuitive. But otherwise it was
a good play. Chris, the author of the game, gave me some insights on how he got it published and
where he got the artwork, networking information I plan on following up on later for ESCOM.

Before turning in I met up with Jon Davis (my co-conspirator con organizer since ECC I many
years ago) and we had a quick con organizer meeting, going over how things have gone during the
weekend, what the numbers looked like (from room rental and prize support expenditures to number
of attendees and admission fee total), and that we were on course for hosting GZG ECC XXV next
March (weekend of the 24-26th) at the same place.

* * * * *

Sunday came once again too early. By the time I got myself mobile, packed, and ready to check
out, it was too late to head over to the Sugar Maple, if the crowd Saturday morning was any
indication what Sunday morning might be like. So grabbed a quick bite of breakfast from the next
door Dunkin Donuts and headed over to the Post, going through a short snow squall in that 2
minute drive. Can’t have an ECC without some snow, can we? LOL!

The reduced numbers of attendees this morning (mostly due to departures, folks getting on the
road early for the long trek home) mostly filled the two games offered: Jon Davis’ rerun of What
A Tanker! and Steve Barosi’s game of Strike Legion. I had played What A Tanker! once at ScrumCon
in DC two years ago (a week or so before the outbreak of the pandemic and mandatory
quarantining) but never experienced Strike Legion, so gave that a whirl. I’ll do What A Tanker!
again. I should pick up the rules, since I have a TON of Flames of War vehicles I could use for
it.

Strike Legion is basically a 6mm company-level ground combat game. Each company is made up of
platoons, or units. Units are made up of elements of individual infantry squads or vehicles. At
the basic level, each unit had two actions available to it: basically, Fire and Move. One could
forego firing and do a ‘double move’, which really translates to “one full and one half move
total”. Otherwise, one can fire then move, move then fire, or move partway then fire the finish
move.

The unique aspect to the combat in Strike Legion was that all units had an EW rating that
players could use for Offensive EW (gave you bonuses to hit when firing weapons) or Defensive EW
(which made it harder for someone to hit you). Most vehicles had an EW rating of 8. The turn
order was you decided the OEW and DEW levels for all units, alternated movement and fire by
initiative (each unit performed its two actions before the next unit on the opposite side
performed its two actions). No alternating movement the simultaneous firing a la Alpha Strike.
This added another level to the tactical problems posed to the two sides: when it was your turn
to go, did you activate a unit to pick on an opposing unit that already went, or did you try for
one that had not yet activated in hopes of reducing its combat effectiveness (i.e., killing
elements of the units)?

In our game we had the lower-tech Eurasians (“Euro-Trash”) with two platoons from the Hammer’s
Slammers mercenary unit (a Combat Car platoon and two heavy blower tanks), facing a slightly
smaller but higher tech PacFed force. Between us was a town with data keys randomly hidden
about. We had to go into the town, send infantry into buildings with potential data keys (there
were dummy markers out there as well – 4 real data keys, 4 dummies), then transmit the data back
to HQ. Only infantry could reveal the data keys (chits); no armored unit could do so.

Carl Scheu and Ron Leonard took the PacFed. Stuart Murray, Aaron Newman, and I took the Euro-
Trash, with Stuart nominating me to run his favorite merc unit: the Hammer’s Slammers. In the
books the Hammer’s Slammers are nigh invulnerable in combat against most other armored forces.
The authors of Strike Legion apparently did not read the books very carefully, or didn’t agree
that the Slammers were as fantastic as represented, as would become evident when the PacFed
light and medium tanks started blowing up my Slammers tanks and combat cars while I did nothing
in return. LOL!

Without going into the minutia of each turn, the Euro force pushed hard forward towards town,
while the PacFed took a more cautious approach. Despite the PacFed’s higher tech brewing up more
than a few Euro tanks (including one of the two Hammer’s Slammers heavy tanks and a Combat Car),
the Euros were undaunted (well, we were daunted by our abysmal die rolling, but pushed forward
anyway – eyes on the prize(s)!) and got into town first. The PacFed attempted to move in a turn
or two afterward, but it was mostly too late. The Euros had most of the target buildings either
occupied or about to be occupied. Several buildings were put under contest when the PacFed
infantry also moved on the buildings – but the remaining Hammer’s Slammers Combat Cars, coupled
with a platoon of Euro tanks (the *only* Euro units that had any anti-personnel rating! The Euro
APCs did NOT have any AP capability, surprisingly) pummeled the hapless PacFed grunts into dust,
allowing those Euro infantry to hold the buildings and learn if the data keys were dummies or
real – turned out we found most of the dummies and a couple of real whereas the PacFed got none
of either). In the opening turns of the game it was frustrating for the Euros as our dice were
not at all kind, whereas the PacFeds brewed up a number of tanks. But in the end, aggressive
tactics despite the die rolls paid off, to the frustration of the PacFed. On the other hand,
everyone got to blow up at least one enemy tank during the course of the game!

And with that we wrapped, packed up our kit, and headed home in our various directions. Snow
squalls all around.