David R. Moody - Sep 4, 2007 6:26 pm (#20212 Total: 20225) What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises-- no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love . . . . It's not for fighting. ConQuest AAR Part I Labor Day Weekend has come and gone, so that means it was time for ConQuest, the biggest gaming convention in the San Francisco Bay Area. Once again, it was down at the SFO Marriott in Burlingame, CA (just south of The City). And once again, Caltrans decided to close the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge all weekend for retrofitting, raising hell with traffic; thus this year I made arrangements to stay at the con with a local gaming buddy, Ryan Kent (the deal was I would buy dinner both nights I was there in exchange for a bed). I left work early up in the North Bay, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, drove through San Francisco and down the Peninsula, arriving at the con around 5:30 PM. And there was no parking at all in the hotel lot--I ended up waaay down by the frontage road, then had to haul my suitcase quite some distance to the hotel (and I had to pee really bad). Finally got into the hotel (which was all torn up and being remodeled), found the bathroom, got ahold of Ryan, dropped my stuff off in his room, rested a bit, cruised the dealer room (which was kind of sucky--not many dealers, though Decision was there along with GMT--just as well as I can't afford to buy anything anyway), had dinner at the one restaurant in the hotel, then headed down to start the first scenario of the Cheneux campaign game from KGP II, which Ryan and I had decided to play and also to start at the con. I was the Americans, and I bought just two extra Para Inf Platoons to go with the three I already had. Imagine my joy when my first roll for my leaders came up a 2. Subtract one for Elite=10-3 leader! I also got a 9-2, plus a 7-0, 8-1, and 8-0. We got through maybe the first three turns. Gaming buddy, comrade, and fellow Consimmer Jason Pipes showed up, and I gave him one platoon and the captured German halftrack to go raise hell with on the left flank while I sent everyone else through the woods and very heavy mist to try and get to the first objective building. In the process my lads ran into Germans hidden in a foxhole, and also blundered into a 12 factor minefield. I consider myself fortunate to have only lost a squad and a half or so so far, especially since the mist lifted quite a bit before it started to rain. At any rate, when we called it for the night Ryan had sent a couple of his AA vehicles down the road to try and block me (he was NOT pleased to see a 10-3 leader leading the way), my follow-on units had taken a foxhole, and Jason's flankers had made it to the woods north of town, drawing off most of the AA vehicles in the process (they immobilized the captured halftrack and caused the crew to bail out). We hope to finish it soon and continue the campaign. So off to shower and bed--Up Front on the morrow. David R. Moody - Sep 4, 2007 6:29 pm (#20213 Total: 20225) What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises-- no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love . . . . It's not for fighting. ConQuest AAR Part II Saturday morning I got up, had breakfast ($20 for all you can eat buffet at the hotel, and I'm not a big breakfast eater--I would have driven to a local McDonalds or Burger King--El Camino Real, the main drag on the Peninsula, is lousy with them--but I didn't dare lose my parking space). I did go check on the car, and moved it a bit closer to the hotel. So off to the Up Front tournament. I got in a game before it started, taking the Germans against the Brits in the Patrol scenario. I was doing very well, getting two men at Range Chit 4 in cover, and killing/routing three Brits; I probably would have won had we not had to start the tournament. Round 1 saw me leading the Amis against Ryan (again)who had Germans, again in the Patrol scenario. I started out in really good terrain (fire base on a hill at start) and mostly sat tight. He tried to get four men to Range Chit 4 behind a wall, and did so, but some were pinned; a Rally card would win him the game. I pounded him with my firebase, and eventually broke his squad. By then, one group (I think there were maybe 5 or 6 of us--twice that many were at the KublaCon Up Front tournament) had already played the first two rounds, and players were leaving to go play other things, so in Round 2 I fought the GM, taking my squad with an M8 armored car up against Germans with two Panzerfausts. My first game with a vehicle. I didn't do as well with this one, though I managed to rout one of the Panzerfaust guys. My firebase kept getting stuck in Streams, I couldn't get decent fire or move cards . . . just ugly. It ended when my opponent took out the M8 with his one remaining Panzerfaust. Oh well--still a fun game. No one to play in Round 3--I had gone 1-1, and no other players who went 1-1 were available. Earlier, my old friend and comrade from the old neighborhood Bill McDonough had arrived (after a long search for parking), so I taught him how to play, taking my Tommies against him in another playing of the Patrol scenario. And this was the best yet--hard fought, back and forth. I got my righthand group into a gully at Range Chit 4; sadly, opposite his firebase, who blasted them, killing all three (I think his sniper got one). But my firebase hammered his righthand group, killing two men. In response, he transferred the last man to his center group; I killed another man, making us even, loss-wise. So I sent my lefthand group driving forward, from cover to cover, and soon had flanked him, causing him to pull back to avoid getting Encircled. I then drove my center group forward for the win. Awesome game. Then the flea market. Got a copy of the old West End Shiloh game off Jason for $5--unpunched even. Not much else of interest. One fellow had some old Wargamer mags, with games, including Napoleon at Lutzen, but he wanted $20 for it; another had some Foundry Early Imperial Romans, but was selling them as a set and I didn't want the scorpiones. Had he sold them as individual bags, I would have gotten some legionaries. Oh well. Dinner, checked on the Cal game (they beat Tennessee--woohoo!), then another ASL game, to warm up for the tournament. Bill and I took the Russians to Ryan and another player's Germans in The Agony of Doom. Weird game--Bill took the flanking force, but didn't go far enough down the Board 5 road, proceeded to get his lead T-34/85 brewed up when it tried to overrun volksgrenadiers in the road, then charged into melee with those same volksgrenadiers. Meanwhile, I demonstrated against the town to pin the enemy in place, driving one of my assault guns on a level 2 hill in the process. Ryan opened up with his Tiger tank, rolled a 12, and fell on the floor screaming, then rolled a six when he tried to fix it. DOH!!!! Each side also managed to throw a track on one vehicle each while trying for excessive speed. It was one of those games. Anyway, we Russians lost, though thanks to a good roll I broke many Germans and pushed through to the town, generating two heroes and a berzerk squad in the process. Fun game, albeit weird. David R. Moody - Sep 4, 2007 6:36 pm (#20214 Total: 20225) What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises-- no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love . . . . It's not for fighting. ConQuest AAR Part III Sunday I risked a Burger King run for breakfast, and managed to upgrade my parking spot in the process, then went to the main event--the Silicon Valley ASL Tournament. Ten players showed up. This year there was a plaque for the winner, as the event was a West Coast Boardgaming Championships event, as were many others--a first for the con. There were supposed to be three rounds, with two scenarios to choose from in each--one easy, one hard. You got more VP for winning and losing the hard scenario, and we had to keep track of CVP for resolving ties. All but two of us picked the hard scenario to start with, which pitted Germans vs. Amis, somewhere in Western Europe. I say "somewhere" because once again, there was fog of war--each player got a copy of the scenario card with information pertaining to enemy forces all blocked out. So thorough was this fog of war that even the victory conditions were missing from the second scenario I played (we asked the GM for clarification). At any rate, the hard Round 1 scenario I played was vaguely familiar--like Han-Sur-Nied, but with Board 10 instead of Board 1, and with Ami reinforcements and no off-board artillery. I was the Germans, and I had to break or eliminate all the Amis on Board 10, or take the bridge entry hex on Board 7. I got my four reinforcement groups in numerical order, which hurt, as I would have loved to have gotten, say, the one with the Brummbaer first, but no. I tried to turn the American right, using my StuG to fire Smoke, but as I advanced into the Smoke hex, my opponent opened up, rolled a 3, broke the whole bally lot of them. It went downhill from there, my cunning plan dissolving in a welter of bad dierolling (on my part) and good dierolling (on his part) and a couple sneaky tricks I should have known better than to fall for (my opponent, who I have faced before, did come in second, losing the tiebreaker to the tournament winner, though I did my best to give him CVPs ). The easy scenario, BTW, was Bone of Contention, pitting Maquis vs. dismounted German tankers. So by then it was maybe 3 PM or so, and the tournament was supposed to end at 6, so no way we'd get in three rounds. So all four remaining scenarios were in play for the last round. I, and Ryan (man I fought him a lot), chose the desert one from Round 3, while everyone else chose the one with lots of fortifications, which turned out to be the old chestnut The Cannes Strongpoint. Interesting choice for a tournament, that one, as Jerry just sits in pillboxes while the Amis try to dig him out. Certainly not one I would have chosen. The desert one, however, I would have, as it was perfectly-sized for a tournament. As I predicted when I saw the packing list for the tournament, it was a Nomonhan (sp) scenario, with Russians (me) defending a bridge in the desert against a Japanese (Ryan) assault. Two high sand dunes were in my front, and Vehicular Dust was present. So I set up my perimeter, positioning my MMG to fire down the bridge, my infantry gun on the left in scrub (so I could hide it), everyone in foxholes. Ryan moved one squad with knee mortar up to the crest of one of the dunes to provide covering fire while he sent everyone else in via Armored Assault behind the two tanks. I engaged with machine guns and rifles, inflicting some loss. My infantry gun swung round to engage, and broke on its second shot, after which I failed the repair roll. Serves me right for laughing so hard when he broke his Tiger main gun the previous night. Anyway, the knee mortar covered my MMG position with Smoke (though my sniper made them keep their heads down, with a Pin result) as the tanks and infantry rolled on, over my furiously firing infantry and gun crew (and my two squads of course broke in Final Protective Fire). I moved my MMG team (by then I'd broken it) and 9-1 leader onto the bridge, which Ryan's mortar smoked, as the tanks and infantry rolled up my left. The lead tank and infantry drove onto the bridge, and the infantry meleed. Hand to hand, so with a five I would have wiped out all the Japanese and maybe won, as all the Japanese demo charges would have been abandoned and I could have gotten a squad up in support. And of course I didn't get it, and the Japanese took the bridge. I tried moving up my remaining three squads for a last lunge to retake the bridge; four failed morale checks later, I conceded. Another 0fer in an ASL tournament. That's 0-5 this year. So the dice went in the trash (I would have thrown them in San Francisco Bay, which was literally a few yards outside the hotel, but didn't want to get cited for littering) and I am in search of new ASL dice. I hung around long enough to see if I would at least qualify for the booby prize (a lovely book, actually--better than the wooden spoons I got at the ASLSK Tournament at KublaCon) but didn't finish dead last, at least--third from the bottom I think I was. So I came home, battered, worn out, sword broken. Did laundry all day yesterday, relaxed, and recovered from all the crappy food and red meat I ate all weekend. Next year ConQuest is down in Santa Clara, and I'm not sure I'm going--crappy expensive food, long lines for everything, as there was just the one restaurant and nothing within walking distance, no parking, strange events. Maybe I should have played in more minis events. Oh well, at least the bed was comfy. And I got some original Rodger MacGowan artwork--the covers for Monmouth and Glory III, the former signed by Rodger as well.