SPACE VOTING RESULTS:
Voters, By Setting - At gaming conventions

Played the Star Wars game at Historicon '98..lost of fun, the game used Full Thrust...the rules were simple and easy to use and rewarded good tactics...I like rules like that. [24 Apr 99]

At Winter Fantasy in Chicago recently, I refereed/demoed several games of Star Blazers Fleet Battle Syetem. One of the more interesting was between the mighty Gamelons against the dastardly Earth "Defence" Force. The Players started by picking out their ships. They got a little coaching so that there was some balance, but mostly they just picked models they liked. play started with two players in dagonally opposite corners.The grain of the hexes favored direct movement. The Gamelons knew right away that they had to close quickly and engage before the EDF heated up their Wave Motion Guns. The EDF also had the advantage in range, the the noble Gamelons, in Samuri spirit, took a step closer to their enemy. The exterminator class destyroyers bypassed the earth destroyers and began scoring hits. The Earth player got emotional and loosed a cloud of missiles against the Gamelons, which, along with the superior EDF beam weapons pretty much wiped out the small ships, but, EDF player rolled cold dice and an attack that should have eliminated the escorts allowed two gamelon destroyers to survive, unscathed. The Gamelon gloated, because he had emptied the missile racks of his enemy, and, they all bunched together for mutual defence. He then used his rather nasty "smite" system to dump a minefield in the middle of the EDF formation. This time, the EDF player rolled well, and the mines were less effective than they could have been, but the Gamelon player got a lesson in EDF destroyers. A cloud of EDF Missiles concentrated on the "flagship" took it out, but, by now the capitol ships were in range. The Gamelon had decided to just charge in and there was no formation of any sort left on either side just bunch of individual engagements. The Gamelons let loose with missiles and beam weapons, and the dice were kind to the Gamelons. All the EDF ships had 3-4 critical hits on them. The Gamelons had more ships, and while the fleet took as much damage, it was spread out more. Most Gamelons had only one critical. Now I gloated as I rolled for the criticals. An Earth Battleship blew up in spectacular fashion! The EDF player knew he had lost, but, by agreement and mutual exaughtion, the players allowed the EDF to use the one operational Wave Motion Gun that was "hot." The result was a dead Gamelon Battleship. The EDF escort screen was intact, but the capitol ships had all been mauled, one destroyed outright and others that had critical hit results that were more than nuisences. The Gamelons had lost most of their escorts, and had lost two capitol ships, but the core of the fleet was in very good shape. The one battleship was really a "gimme" and the EDF commander knew he would have to withdraw. Both playes had fun. I would have enjoyed it more if the mine attack had been successful, as the Gamelons would have been able to envelope the EDF. As it was, the cluster-f*** that resulted could have gone either way. [12 Apr 99]

The last game that I participated in was a Babylon 5 EA vs EA Scenario (Using Babylon Project Rules) that I ran at Slug-A-Thon a few weeks ago. The Scenario featured 11 captiol ships on either side with the goal being the destruction of the other side. The high light of the game was when the comander of the Rebel faction Jumped his with one of his Whitestars, two of his Omega's and three squadrons of Thunderbolts into the middle of the opposing force. within in turn this raiding party was destroyed by the loyalist forces and after five more turns the Loyalist were victorious. [10 Apr 99]

At at the local VallyCon convention, I ran a verson of my Sci-Fi Crossover Full Thrust game. Star Destroyers from Star Wars vs a Federation fleet from Star Trek and a couple Earthforce ships from B5. The Star Destroyers won again mainly due to the novice players on the ST and B5 side not using their ships abilities to the fullest but everyone had fun. Sci-Fi Crossover wil be back at GenCon and this time a couple Battlestars and some SCVNs from Space Above and beyone will show up. [29 Mar 99]

Star Wars setting with several blockade runners trying to get past a squadron of ISDs. [26 Mar 99]

This was the miniature rules from Earthforce Supplement to Babylon 5 Project. A Narn vs. Centauri battle, and my first chance to play the Narn. I was looking forward to wiping those silly hair fans off their heads with the nifty engery mines. But, things started out bad. The time came to launch the engery mines, so I put out a nice line of them just where I expected the Centauri to move to. Well he turned to his port will I moved straight ahead right on top of my own mines. All my engery mines hit my ships and none of his were touched. There was not much hope after than for the Narns. That tactic has already become know as Tom's bonehead maneuver. I'm looking for a rematch, this time with a, hopefully, wiser admiral. Tom [26 Mar 99]