From: Shan
Date: Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 9:53 PM
Subject: GZG East Coast Convention



Hey all, this is just a quick impressions of the convention that I just attended.  Indy and Damo are apparently regulars there as well, so we know a few peeps there already.  :-)

This is a very small, focused, one room convention.  It was 100% Sci-fi minis, with a good mix of space games and ground based games. The setting is low key, non-tournamenty, and everyone knows each other.  Me and one other guy were the only two new people this year, which was quite amazing.  It was a kind of counter point to the huge HMGS con's, being much more intimate, and by the end of Saturday, you could meet and mingle with literally everybody.  The sole focus was fun, but there were prizes.  I made a huge stir when I picked a sheep (I need it for SAGA).  Apparently there was some kind of backstory about how it used to be part of a space-sheep scenario.  Might be more than I want to know.

Anyway it was huge fun.  I played a space hulk game using Colonial Marines and Aliens--turnabout is fair play, lol.  What wasn't fair was the sheer number of aliens--the GM chose not to use the weighted values on the blips (average is less than 2), but instead had the alien player roll a D6.  Of course the first four blips were all 6's, and I was up to my ears in Aliens in literally no time.  Luckily for me, my Smart Gunners were up to the job--my Vasquez-alike personally killed over 30 aliens (!!!!!), the nest got burned, and at least one Marine escaped in the AFV.  Go superior firepower!  Actually looking back on it the sheer numbers of aliens made the player overconfident, and instead of the turns of lurking you usually get in Space Hulk, he just ran right into my guns to overpower my with bodies. It turns out the lurking around and playing for position are far more important than large numbers of aliens.....

I also got a chance to play a game of Tomorrow's War.  We were Red Faction space commies and were trying to evac our power armor troopers away from the blue space UN menace.  This is the game I learned a lot more about the action/reaction stuff because there was so much of it.  The game board was a very interesting and effective industrial park looking thing.  Not being stuck on Mars really opens up terrain and figure possibilities.  This was another one of those games that we won handily simply because the opposition was over-aggressive.  Double moving in the open against even commie troops hunkered in buildings is not a good strategy.  We also discovered that a large unit of plasma armed power armored troopers was basically unstoppable.  Even taking 2 or 3 reaction rolls (and therefore being down 2 or 3 attack dice), the simple fact that they started with 8 dice, unlimited range (I think for scenario--in the rules they only have 8" range), and double optimal range meant that the unit was still pushing 8 or 7 dice, which also ignored 2 dice of enemy cover, and are 5/6 kills (which we ignored). 

The main downside of TW--you can easily tip the balance of a scenario if you give a unit too many doo-dads.  I do admit I'm getting a feel for the higher tech end of things, which is kind of important, as the aliens I am designing will need to at the upper end of the tech scale, and I need to get them balanced out. 

However I did enjoy the convention a lot--and you go to play this one, not shop and dork around.  Heck I never even had a chance to work out.  Anyway, enough rambling and here are some random photos:




Shan