Laserlight (Chris DeBoe) writes: Best pre-con comment: "The **con** hasn't even started yet, and the Sheep Game players are already threatening each other." The other pre-con comment was "Aaargh!". I was walking around with a sheep in my shirt pocket, and various people (unwisely) asked about it. It was a sheep measuring tape, which my wife found at the fabric store. Friday night: DS3 Demo by John Lerchey and Indy A playtest of a proposed DS3 ruleset, with significant changes from DS2--no chits, and adding Firefight segments within the normal turn. Our KV armored talon was assigned to occupy a central hill after clearing it of Hu'Man defenders; the HM mission was to bring in a couple of armor companies and relieve the hilltop force. We suppressed the HM relief column and the hilltop force; then a Ro'Kah tank platoon close-assaulted the hilltop and destroyed the defenders. That platoon continued to advance across the hilltop and dropped their grav tanks on top of the remains of a HM tankette platoon, which squeeked in dismay and fled around the hill. The KV platoon followed...exposing their rear armor to the HM relief column. The HM took advantage of the opportunityl, the KV platoon brewed up, and with cascading morale penalties, the Kra'Vak suddenly went from Ro'Kah to Bro'Ken. The entire KV talon turned and fled...except for one platoon--mine--which went Ro'Kah and advanced, unsupported, against the enemy battalion. Just imagine the NSL tank battalion in a long line along the ridge, the three KV tanks bursting out of cover, the commander from the last scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid saying "Three banditos? _Three_?"... Saturday morning: Stuart Murray's game Toward the end of the War of the Worlds, the village of Wopping-on-Sodbury was attacked by a giant Martian war machine but was saved when the Martian crew died. As the game started, a British relief colum (me, Adrian, Joel, Tony) rushed--well, "plodded"--to rescue the village and take custody of the fighting machine, while the dastardly Hun (JP, Jim Bell, Greg Davis, Tom McCarthy) arrived by Zeppelin with an eye on securing the war machine to improve German technology. The Brits entered along a road from the southeast, got bottled up, misplaced our officers, and milled about in confusion. My dinosaur lancers, trying to clear the southwest road for our second column, raced ahead to the village, where they regrettably met Farmer Giles, the town drunk. The farmer, who owned several recently-deceased cows, tried to use a dinosaur in a demonstration of alien probe techniques; the dinosaur, understandably annoyed, used Farmer Giles in a demonstration of alien evisceration techniques. I hastily proceeded out of the village and up the western road, where I encountered the Kaiser's Own African Rifles (who used some salty language and peppered my right flank) and a newly-arrived Martian tripod (who microwaved my left flank). Suppressed into permanent immobility, I sat there and stewed. A group of nuns with rulers appeared and chased the Africans, who withdrew; Adrian's gatling gun and rifle company then fired past (and through) the nuns and some British bobbies ("sacrifices must be made in the name of Empire") to destroy the unit. That improved the situation on the left flank. On the right flank, my Indian sepoys turned off the road; they ran nose-to-nose into a German unit, yelled "holy cow!" and spent the rest of the morning trading fire. In the center, a German naval infantry platoon charged a company of British regulars, broke them, pursued the survivors and wiped them out. The dastardly Huns got into the village, and things looked grim. Fortunately, our Aerial Bicyclist scouts got the idea to land atop a Martian tripod; the monster tried to brush them off with its tentacles, but our gallant lads subdued the beast with their revolvers and captured the fighting machine. So we lost on moral grounds (with the Kreigsmarine infantry pressing their attentions on the flower of English womanhood) but won on material grounds. Quote of the game was JP's line, paraphrased: "Jim, you're our MVP because you're ravaging their women." Saturday afternoon was the Cheese Game, run by Tony Finan and John Crimmins, with various crimes against reason, fashion and humanity committed by players Bryon ("we're privately funded") Gordon, Greg (with his "fearless elite powered armor black ops squad" as the cheesiest unit) Davis, Charlie ("mercenaries") Decker, Damond ("weather and traffic news crew"), Mike ("cockroaches on hovercraft") Hudak, Adrian ("Brun Hilda #4 and fashion news crew") and me (Darth Squidious). The best comment on the game was Tony's oft-repeated, mute stare of stunned disbelief, but "....!" doesn't come across well on the quote board, so we'll go with Adrian's line: "the game hasn't even started yet and the GM's plans have already gone down the drain". My giant squid (4 tentacles, powered armor, a lightsaber, and a flock of sheep I placed as recon drones) slid around through the sub-surface water system, opening sinkholes and grabbing cheese, while using the Force to con...um, "persuade"...the other players into doing what I wanted. The most ridiculous instance was when I encouraged Damond's news chicks to "protect the sheep"; he initiated a non-violent "close assault" on Mike's unit, picked up the struggling bugs-on-roombas, and carried them away. Or maybe it was a bit later, after Adrian's newscrew shot most of Damond's news chicks. when I encouraged Adrian (who wanted to avoid winning) to dump his cheese in the water, he did. Then he sent Brun Hilda # 4 to interview and distract the Fox News terminators while the rest of Adrian's news crew threw the bodies of Damond's news chicks into the water. I'm not sure if Adrian was trying to get rid of the evidence or sacrifice them to Cthulhu. Brun Hilda #5 (of the NPC media team) seemed fascinated when tentacles rose from the lake, grabbed the mini-skirted bodies and sank back into the depths, but I didn't ask why. Meanwhile, Greg's Black Ops squad was nearly arrested by a squad of powered armor who grav-dropped onto the industrial storage tank (of Cheez Whiz) behind him, but he shot through the tank roof and dropped them into the cheese. On the other side of the map, Damond's two surviving news chicks close-assaulted the four survivors of Charlie's mercs and defeated them. When the dust settled, Adrian successfully brought home zero points; Mike and Bryan tied at around 35; Damond's one surving news chick had about 57; and, ahem, someone with lots of cheese and hot dice (of 7d20, not one rolled less than 11) came out with 122 points. Saturday Night, FMAS, run by yours truly, aided and abetted by Adrian (Captain John Atkins) Johnson, Jerry (Sarah Bellum) Han, Jon Mark (Prof Eisenberg) and Greg (Lt Pourcell) Davis, Mike (Mad Doc Maddox) Hudak, Lee (Oersula Anders) Salter, Lorenzo (Evan MacDouglas) Harmon, and Tony (Burke, Anthony T) Finan. This game took place aboard the aethership Nostradamus. Things got off to a good start as Tony summoned a Dark Young of Sheep Niggurath into one lifeboard, and Mike tried to change the codes on the other one and accidentally jettisoned it. Some of the troubleshooters raced to the bridge, and died when they found the Dark Young; others wandered around opening boxes and finding items like Spinal Weapon (backpack claymore mine), Mint Jelly Molotov, and Fusion Canon (not "cannon"--it turned out to be a classic Miles Davis jazz fusion record). Around then Lorenzo's troubleshooter discovered that another Dark Young had been summond to the engineroom. He died, respawned into a clone chamber which had been sabotaged (Mike had sabotaged a second one and Tony a third, but no one else knew that), died, recloned on the engine deck, died again (the Dark Young was right outside), recloned at the same one and died a fourth time, and finally respawned at a clone chamber on the cargo deck. That was much safer place, as there was merely a gunfight between two troubleshooters, which degenerated into a gunfight between one troubleshooter and three UN peacekeepers, and a slap-fight between the other troubleshooter and Captain Atkins (who apparently was using the flat of his sword rather than the edge). Tony decided that Jerry needed more trauma, so he played "American Baa Association" and the players gathered around Jerry and baa'd him. Adrian pressed the button labeled "Do Not Press" (I was amazed that it took that long) and started the self-destruct sequence. Mike heroically planted a baa-mb in the lifeboat with the Dark Young and blew it up. Tony summoned a sheepgoth (a sheep with a black coat is a sheep-goth, yes?), which might have been a trifle excessive; he then tried to talk a Mi-Go into transporting him away from the disaster, but Jerry played "Muttony" and the mutinous Mi-Go declined. Sarah Bellum, being a dedicated reporter, sold herself to Honest Abdul in exchange for Abdul's promise to get the story out; Adrian's female troubleshooter flashed a little Victorian lingerie at Abdul (and you'd better be glad no one took video of *that*, Adrian) and also sold herself to Honest Abdul's Harem Supply as a way of getting off the ship. As the remaining characters watched the self-destruct count down, Jerry's character picked up bagpipes and played "Amazing Grace"; the other played hummed along, with accompaniment by Tony Finan on kazoo. The camera pulled away from the ship; the music changed from bagpipes to the full orchestral version; the ship exploded, and we rolled credits. Mike, as the MVP, got a sheep measuring tape. When asked why he summoned Cthulhu creatures, Tony explained that "something about playing in Chris's game brings out my inclination to destroy the world." After hours, the Canadian Contingent lured me into playing Gullotine, in which the players are executioners during the Terror. The objective is to rearrange the line of nobles so that your executioner collects the most prestigious, um, clients. The Canadians were all interfering with each other's plans and mostly leaving me alone--I'm going to claim that I won for that reason, rather than my natural talent... Sunday morning, John Lerchey (Decals Express) admitted that he might just be willing to create sheep decals. His other decals look really good; I wish I had more painted lead to put them on. Sunday morning was Mike Hudak's Full Sail game. Noam and I gleefully chose the pirates, and managed to slip through a massaive nautical traffic jam to be the first to deliver our courier to the resort island. The first representative to the island makes the rules, so...: Noam: "We have decided to decree that henceforth, no nation shall have warships!" Me: "And furthermore, that all merchant ships shall be stocked with rum!" Noam: And crewed by women!" Me: "Lovely women!" Noam: "Lovely and cooperative women!" Me: "And masseuses!" Noam: "Lovely and cooperative masseuses!" and so forth. Another great ECC. The next one is ECC-X -- make plans to be there, and try not to think about Mutton con Queso.