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| This is NOT where we mustered |
Williamsburg Muster is a smaller, cheaper, but very fun convention that we try to make it to every year. Our standard plan is to go down to Williamsburg on Friday night to play some board games and record a
short podcast episode. We then hit up the excellent
Flames of War tournament on Saturday, which is usually hosted by I95.
Luke could not make it this year, so I teamed up with Eric Riha and Sean "Throckmorton" Sarah for festivities. Eric and I got there fairly early in the afternoon and got right down to a one-on-one teaching game of
Eclipse.
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| Why did I teach him this game? I'm an idiot. |
So, this was a monumentally stupid idea on my part. As many of you know, Riha is an economist and a math and stats nerd -- perfect attributes for an Eclipse player. Riha immediately started reading the rules as I set up the game. If you have never played this game before, you need to know that it takes a good 15 minutes to set up. In this time, Riha got the basics down and more.
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| Riha ALREADY catching me cheating. |
So, in the teaching game, Riha caught me cheating a couple of times. I was not paying a ton of attention and was distracted by socializing with the folks who trickled in. As you can probably guess, Riha took to this game like a fish to water and squeeked out a win.
Later on, we set up a big game of X-Wing. In a feat of Stevedom, I had basically refused to set the game up until I had adequate storage for all of the X-Wing miniatures in my possession. During the
Battlefoam Christmas Sale, I picked up
two really good foam trays that fit all my stuff and more.
Team Throckmorton showed up and The Gobel Brothers did a great job of setting up two big fleets for everyone to play with. The Imperials started off with some fury, but Grand Moff Ben could not get Riha and Lauterbach to do anything worthwhile. The Rebels put the smackdown on the Empire, making Muster safe for all attendees.
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| The Axis of Eric sucked at X-Wing. One is drunk, the other gives about 0 f**ks. |
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| My final Desperate Measures list. |
On Saturday, we all got up a little tired and got ready for the Flames of War tournament. It seems to me that this event is growing every single year. This time, we almost ran out of space! I think we ended up with 20 or 22 players. Bob Everson ran an excellent tournament, and fun was had by everyone
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| This is the first table I played on. I already forgot the mission. Free-for-All? |
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| Jon was my opponent. Super nice guy. |
You can listen to all the Batreps in
Episode 71, so I will not be recounting them all here. I ended up going 6-1, 3-4, 6-1 for 2nd place overall. Ed Leland got 1st, and John Desch got 3rd.
For my list, I found that Rudel was very, very nice. He came in and blew stuff up on a regular basis. I found that even the threat of Rudel was a great advantage. I managed to put out a whole platoon of Panthers with Rudel basically all by himself.
In my 3-4 against Riha, I could not find a way to engage SU-100s and IS-2s individually with the Jagdpanthers, which I think I could have won. I made a tactical error in not using the smoke to effectively separate them - something I will correct in future play.
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| Ben putting the smackdown on someone. |
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| Throck lurks in the background, ready to strike! |
....and I am out of pictures. We always have fun at Muster. It is very small and generally filled by "WWPD Guys" - a great time to catch up with friends and do some awesome gaming. If you get a chance, head down to Guns of August or Williamsburg Muster and give a smaller Con a try.
