The not-so-quarterly NOVA Newsletter
Well, welcome back. Sorry about the vast amount of time between newsletters but, as ADQ puts it, it was caused by “pressing educational commitments”.
Anyway, back to the action. Because of all the stuff we have to cover this time around, we’ll have a double sized issue, just for fun. (You can make it as long as you want, when you’re not restricted by petty things like subscriptions, money, and all that.)
Congratulations to our first club champion: Tim Moffitt. Also, special thanks to those who participated in the championship, especially those who survived through all three rounds. Our thanks to Star Realm for letting us use the space and for putting up with the incessant noise of combat (and certain rules arguments...).
Omaha’s northern chapter, OMEN, has yet to form, although two or three people are definitely interested. Hopefully, this will not stop this group. With luck, their membership will double, just as ours has. Current NOVA membership is 12 AADA-affiliated members and 18 “unofficial” members. Speaking of unofficial members, come on guys! If you are interested in the northern chapter, please show some interest.
Among our other happenings during the last few months, we have actually been mentioned in ADQ (Wow!! Really?!) and an AADA newsletter. (As if our full-members didn’t know this.) Yes, being mentioned in ADQ was a definite contributing factor in putting out this edition of Starburst. Now that the editor has no more term papers to do, maybe we can get back on a more reasonable schedule.
We have offered to host the Midwest Regional at ConTretemps V in April. At the same convention we will be holding another autoduelling tournament, and maybe some other miscellaneous events. (Killer, maybe? Could be... ) We may have a team fight against one of the other regional clubs, or if we’re lucky, more than one of the other clubs. It’s out of our hands at the moment.
As you might have noticed, a new Midwestern region club has formed in Kansas. Because Kansas is a little bit (!) more central than Omaha, considering the two groups in Tulsa, the regional might be held there, if the Manhattan Organization of Autoduellists is willing. But it would still be nice to have the championship here as an interesting diversion.
The champions from the last ConTretemps tournament have finally received their prizes. (Yeah!) After a long, drawn out, and utterly frustrating ordeal, of course. Anyway, they - did - get them, so we can no longer complain, I guess. Hopefully, this tournament will not be plagued in the future by as many misfortunes as the last two have. It also helps if the ConTretemps staff doesn’t lose the prizes for four months... hint, hint!
After the ConTretemps IV tournament, we had a rush of new members for the next month or so, and we are certainly glad! I won’t pester you all about the membership anymore. Unfortunately, the ARFs didn’t get the news.
During the first week of May, the ARFs decided to retaliate against us because of their former defeats. To accomplish this daring feat, they stole three tanks from Daimschel Tread Works, the local tank outlet. (Boy, Omaha has a lot of vehicle outlets for such a mediocre sized city... The action seems pretty much proportional to the number of vehicle outlets too. Odd.) The Dempsey tank that was stolen immediately headed itself for the Offutt National Guard Base, hoping to destroy as much of the base as possible. It was eventually stopped by the combined forces of the National Guard and the local Police. The other two tanks, however, headed toward central New Omaha. Their goals: City Hall and the New Omaha Police Headquarters.
The first to arrive on the scene was a new Armstrong experimental Walker. (Don’t ask me, it just type it. -Ed) It was taken care of by several duelists, at the loss of the Joslyn Art Museum, 4 NOVA cars, and a few chunks of City Hall. The Walker Tank was finally stopped when Tim Moffitt shot out one leg, causing the Walker to lean into a tree. The tree was destroyed by Carl Rassmussen (related to Merie Rassmussen of Top Secret. Convenient, no? The Walker, obviously enough, wound up on the ground. Rassmussen was definitely helpful in removing the Walker’s top armor, using a new one-shot MML (test-run during this combat). Meanwhile, Cliff Christiansen aimed his front mounted MFR at the Walker’s rear armor, and quickly installed low cost air conditioning in the Walker. While this happened, the Walker was firing through the Joslyn at City Hall. Needless to say, the Joslyn was a total loss. Fritz, Rassmussen’s gunner, climbed into the Walker through the new air conditioning port and killed the turret gunners. Fritz was himself killed in the process, but not before landing a grenade in the breach of the tank gun. At the same time David MacKinnon managed a lucky laser shot at the tank’s power plant. Because of these two actions, the tank exploded, destroying what little was left of the Joslyn, along with Rassmussen’s trike.
At this point, the third tank entered at high speed. Catching the duellists off-guard and fatigued, the new tank ran a direct path to City Hall, receiving minimal fire from the duellists, while causing a few casualties in the duellists’ ranks. The Roosevelt tank easily breached City Hall’s rear wall, and entered the building. Fortunately, the Mayor was not in.
The tank, ramming through the opposite wall, destroyed the entire building, and went on the Police HQ to do the same. After the ARFs triumphant attack, the Roosevelt came under attack by the combined efforts of Christiansen and MacKinnon. It was eventually stopped, after the loss of a local pub and part of an apartment building. NOVA was heralded as city heros, even after considering the loss of several important buildings. Next time, however, the public would probably not respond so favorably.
That next time came when a road rally was held, with Omaha as the starting place. The race had been planned t stretch all the way to Las Vegas, but the illegal nature of the race became apparent, bringing disfavor upon some of the NOVA drivers, including MacKinnon. He is now “Wanted” under the alias of “Sandy Manta”.
During the race, which was nicknamed “Deathrace 2035", three duellists were taken out by a combination of factors. Over 50 people died in Lincoln by weapons fire from MacKinnon’s vehicle as it went through that city. At this point the illegal nature of the race became obvious and the National Guard and State Police were called. MacKinnon was stopped at a truck stop in Grand Island, NE, while Christansen and Hillhouse were stopped in Lincoln. MacKinnon escaped from custody and is currently on the run with a $50,000 price on his head, dead or alive. At last report, he was seen heading west on I-80.
During the Summer three new arenas opened in and around the Metro area: The Radius Test Track , Civic Auditorium, and Deathstorm II. In the Fall, New Omaha saw the addition of two more arenas: The Sunset Speedway and The War Arena. With all of these arenas New Omaha is becoming the center of Nebraska’s and Iowa’s duelling action.
We hope to be caught up on gaming news by issues 3 and 4. They will include the robot fight, the club championship, and OmaCon IV. In addition to various other grievances, we are slightly annoyed at the location of the Midwest Regional, mostly concerning the apparently random selection by the AADA. If there was any actual reason for the selection made, we would appreciate knowing it.
Real soon now, we’ll be working on a catalogue of local weapons and devices, called “Mad Mac’s Dueling Catalogue”. So, as if we didn’t have enough to do already...
Norman McMullen
President
David Caplinger
Secretary
Re-editing of Starburst Vol. 1, No 2 completed on 11/23/96 by Donald Jacques.
Issue reentered as a WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows document, turned into a HTML document by KEYview 5.0, and edited again in Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0.