Tom Barclay wrote:

Notes and Comments from a Good Convention:

1. Jon, Jerry, Mark, and co. did a wonderful job of organizing. Jon's ability
to pull things together despite last minute schedule changes in profusion was
laudible. The convention was a success and I think that, as we approach the
vaunted 10th anniversary, we should be sure to heap profuse thanks upon the
team that made (and makes) this whole thing tick over. Without them, their
would be no ECC.

2. During my time there, I got to play a demo stargrunt game (and got my butt
handed to me in some part due to random bad luck) which Adrian ran to help
teach the wonders of SG2, Aaron's EFSB "All alone in the night" game where
Admiral Indy generously absorbed the majority of the First One's fire (run by
JP Fiset - "Who knew they were French Canadian?"), and I had a chance to die
gloriously under the direction of Admiral Fisetski of the Krasny Flota in
valiant battle with the invading Angliski. That last game was run by a
slightly tired but operational Jon Davis. Kudos to all the GMs. I think Adrian
did a good job of showcasing Stargrunt II, Aaron's EFSB game was great (The
Drazi were adjudjed to have achieved their victory conditions, though Doug
missed the last round suicide ram.... probably the only game where any EFSB
fleet has plotted "RAM" for more than six turns *as an entire fleet*), and
Jon's scenario where the valiant Heroes of the Solar Union were trying to hold
off the NAC as they committed atrocities against unarmed civilian moon
facilities was quite a bit of fun (at least until the round where I thought
the NAC was out of SMs and I sent the fighters off and they then hit my
Komarov with 4 SMs for 46 points).

3. Saturday night, I ran "The Devil Is In The Details", a Stargrunt II
scenario. The players were most excellent. The AAR for this event will appear
here in the next few days, I've already started it. In short, a NAC VTOL was
down, and NAC and UN forces raced to the rescue. The NAC knew that the Duke of
Baltimore had been aboard, the UN did not. Some of the UN forces were not who
they seemed, having been replaced by the "Sons of Liberty", a US
Constitutionalist splinter group interested in freeing the Americas from the
"Anglian Occupation". The fighting took considerable time to start, the game
featured some pretty good role playing out of the Sons of Liberty and Nick
Caldwell as the BBC news crew, and when the violence started, it was pretty
effective since most units were in range band 1 or 2. The summary was that the
NAC and UN were going to take a fairly brutal casualty count, but that the
Sons of Liberty just did not manage to achieve a sufficient cordon to ensure
the Duke would be captured.

That latter event was a special event - with Jon Tuffley's permission. Pending
final confirmation by Jon, the results of this event are going to be
considered 'canonical' in the historical timeline (the event is set in 2150)
and is the first of the ECC "Living GZGverse" events (more to come, hopefully
one for each system, in 2006). The idea of this is to promote GZG events, add
some life to the timeline, and give the ECC further 'special magic' that will
encourage people to come to ECC events since these sorts of things won't
happen anywhere else. I'll have a write up of the final 'timeline entry' after
approval (assuming there are no hitches) by Jon T. (And the players will get
special certificates signed by Jon T. after I get them made up).

I need the various players involved to contact me with email addresses and
snailmail addresses (kaladorn at gmail dot com or kaladorn at magma dot ca). I
can then arrange to get them the certificates once I've got them created and
signed.

Add to all this some good times playing Guillotine with Laserlight and Mike
Hudak, the usual good times with my Ottawa and Kingston and Toronto cronies
(Jim/JP/Tom M, Doug, and Adrian respectively) and the usual snowstorm on the
way back with whiteout conditions, and it was an ECC to fondly remember.

Watch for the AAR for Devil in the Details that should appear along with a
link to whatever pics turned out along about the end of the week.

If you didn't make it to ECC, you really should next year for the 10th
anniversary. It'll be a blast.

Thomas Barclay 
Happily back in Canada