Flames of War Mini Tournament!

Maybe I'll write something about it later, but I took 2nd place with two 6-1s and a 2-5 loss. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. Here are the two shitty pics I took with my camera (I took the wrong camera bag to the shop, and its batteries were dead) and a link to the forrum post where Caesar posted his:

Steel City Crucible write up

War Room Tournament -- 2 May 2008

OK, so I'm just a little bit late putting pics up for this. Rickroll me. Anyway, its so long ago that I don't really remember many particulars of any given fight, and who cares -- I cheated big time on my one glorious victory of the day, anyhow. But I did get some nice pictures of cute little toy tanks, so here's a few of them.

I thought my objective looked spiffy sitting with its little bit of road right in line with the on-table road. As this was the exact spot it needed to be for the game, there it went.


And, naturally, there the American armored infantry tried to go...


Until I jumped out and schooled them!


He didn't like it, but I think he won:


Dave was so cool about getting cheated like this...


...and like this:

WarFair 2008

Again with the slow posting... the month and a half delay on writing this up isn't going to do me any favors in the detail department. But my notes show that over the weekend of February 8 - 10, 2008 I was in Kennesaw, GA attending WarFair 2008 and competing in the Flames of War tournament hosted at same. Most of the folks I've come to look forward to seeing at these kinds of things were there, and I met some new folks besides. What more can ya ask for?

The Miniature Building Authority guys were there, throwing down with their 28mm middle eastern modern combat extravaganza.



They also hosted a "Best Table" competition as part of the tournament, prized donated by MBA (thanks, guys!). Kritikalfialure brought his Stalingrad table (below) and I think his frozen Russian table...

While I brought my ghetto table mat for urban fights, even though I can't really fill it. I had to barrow some buildings:



...and of course I brought some of this along. I won "Best Table", which always feels great. And usually comes with a free building when the MBA guys are around! Again, thanks guys! My collection just keeps growing and growing.


There were a lot of cute toys being played with...






...and I got a sneak peak at this year's new release from MBA: The Church (looks a lot like San Marigliese to me...)

The roof on this thing comes off in like six pieces.


Game 1 of the day saw me defending in a Break Through against Sean.

He did well for a new player, and showed a lot of enthusiasm. Good game, Sean!

So I started with a 6-1. Anyone who knows how I tend to do at tournaments can see where this is going to go...

Game 2 of the day for me was a Free For All, again defending, this time against Alec. It was a good game, and I got to try out my new table for the first time in a real game, but I got my ass kicked. I'm going to blame my loss 100% on the distraction caused when Alec's lady friend paid the table a short visit.

my boys tried to hold on hard in the city...

but it was new, unfamiliar terrain, and their enemy was bold and strong.

Alec and I fought it out to a hard 1-2 Tie.

With the onset of Game 3 I met Mitch and his lovely wife. With as much charm and pleasantness as you please they sat me down, set out for a game, taught me a few things, and gently set me down again with a pat on the head and a 1-6 ass-whippin.



It was a smooth tournament, though as always I'm a nervous, bitching wreck at the end of three games.

The next morning DaGrinch laid out a sweet little village for his Kelly's Heroes game. It got all fucked up by a bunch of dumb ass players, and we never really got to finish the scenario before people started leaving. I think something went wrong early on, but I'm not sure cause it was early and I wasn't playing attention, even though I was playing.

Wolfkrieg '08 AAR

General Intro

To begin with, let me just say that Iron Tom has set the standard on herding gamers along through a large event. If he had any serious problems along they way I couldn't tell. At 48 players, this was the largest event like this that I've participated in, but everything ran smoothly.

The best part of the event was the people. Asside from getting to know some of the local and regional guys better (in that road trip kind of way) I got to meat several folks from the forrums and put real faces to fake names, including various "Forum Personalities," like CrazyIvan, General Zod, Mike McMann, Bressiadies, and more. With almost 50 of the central US's most dedicated gamers out for the event, from as far away as Illinois, Kansas, Georgia and all points in between, how could you not have fun? See, look here, this thing was huge!

NOTE: I had my new camera with me, so these pics link to some BIG versions.

It was a great venue, too. Pet Shop Comics is just HIGE!!! The family that runs the joint kept us fat and happy all day with grilled pork chop sandwitches. Uhm... pork chops...

Tables
The tables laid out for the event were pretty good -- none dipped below the "good" mark, and several were offically designated Way Cool. Some belonged to Pet Shop, but many were set up by the local guys. Check it out -- these are pics I took of the tables before a bunch of unrully gamers made a mess of the place.

Armies

I don't think I got shots of every army there. I was expecting the normal buty pagent sort of set up, where everybody lays out their toys to gawk at over lunch, but that didn't happen. Instead, judging for the painting competition was done mid-game. I did get shots of some of them, but I hardly think these show the work in its best light. Unless you wanted your army to look good in a cardboard box top. At any rate, here are a few that looked good (the pictures, I mean. Most of the armies looked pretty good.) If you were there and don't see your army, don't take it personally, I just didn't get a good shot of it.

Game 1 - Encounter

The morning started off spastically, as I tend to do when asked to think before all the coffee sets in. This ended up being one of two training missions I operated on, as my opponent was new to the game. This isn't a bad things -- when you have world class players in the same tournament with folks who don't know the rules, what you've got is a healthy game system with a growing community, which is a Good Thing. And for a new guy, Dave just about kicked my ass! I ended up with a marginal win, just because I killed more stuff -- no one took any objectives in this pointless, non-decisive blood bath. The only reason Dave didn't take it for the win was that I still had more platoons on table. And by "platoons," I mean officers, as I was mostly down to command stands. It was fun, and the bloody indecisiveness of the fight was to set a tone for my day. In the end, no one could take an objective but I killed slightly more (hay, officers still count as platoons as long as they pass that moral check!) and walked away with a 3-2.

You can see here the high cost of stupidity. I didn't have to let him take that side shot, but I did.

Game 2 - Break Through

Sliding my toys over to another table, I got to meet another new player, Shelby, who was there with his dad. Again, new blood is always good and I enjoy teaching. On the other hand, its hard to do at a tournament. Meaning, its hard to teach the rules without giving the other guy hints you wouldn't give a more experienced opponent. You feel bad pulling the woll over their eyes. So I didn't do that, I just played. And Shelby won.

Still, it was close, bloody, and crazy to the last turn -- just the way I like 'em... except for that whole "I didn't win" part. I tried to deply my forces to funnel Shelby through the village in the middle of the table, and it worked. Too bad for me the first Russians through the gap were JS-2s! Very quickly there were burning tanks, including one of my precious panthers and his Company Commander.

On the far side of the table my infantry did make short work of a few tanks...

We danced around the village, both taking casualties, but his reservers arrived on the objective. I tried, but just couldn't put enogh fire on them to force the moral check that would have won me the game.

A 2-3 win goes to Shelby.

Game 3 - Fighting Withdrawl

I don't care to recal this one in any particular detal. It wasn't that my opponent, Mike, wasn't a good guy. Its just that by round 3 my endurance was down, my impatience was up, and I rolled right in there and got myself killed. I nice tidy 6-1 for him. By turn three, I was literally wishing he would just kill me faster.

You see him setting out all those AT guns in ambush?

They ruined my day:

Game 4 - Free for All

This may have been my best game of the day, in no small part because of my reckless, devil-may-care attitude and tactics, as well as a really great guy on the other side of the table. I think his name was Mike -- but if I'm wrong, I blame the swiss cheese effect of time travel on a person's memory.

We pretty much just rolled into range and started blasting away. In the table center I tried to trash the escorting armoured cars before the tank destroyers beamed in, but couldn't pull it off. The M-10s materialized on my Panther's flank, and got a quick easy kill.

This kill was quickly avenged, and the surviving M-10s quickly left the field, leaving my Panthers to hunt for targets.

On my left, we had us a gun fight! He had AT guns and infantry along the crest of a hill, I had halftracks and MG teams in the village. At about 15 inches range, we spent 3 or 4 turns seeing what we could get out of small arms. The fight on this side of the table was mine, despite the burning halftracks. At one point, the crest of that hill was full...

Meanwhile, on my right, I thought I was getting ready for a knife fight in the woods. That was before these Shermans showed up...

Anyway, the right flank was his. Eventually, we ran out of time, and men. I've never seen so many "Last Man Standing" rolls in a single game! We both walked away, bloody and laughing, from a hard-fought tie.

Meanwhile, at other tables...

Awards

So, four games later and we were all houling at the moon, ready to hear the results. Iron Tom called off the names, and it sounds like us southern boys went up there and owned: Disgruntled walked away with the overall Axis win, Rarier took long march (though there may have been some dispute, as the literal award went to another), DakkaDave was awarded Best Allied Army for his pretty little men, and there's a funny story about my own award. As they announced the best Axis army, and I got ready to puff out my chest in acceptance, they called the name of General Zod. What? Are you kidding me? Don't get me wrong, he's got a beautiful force. He'd brought his gebirgsjaeger company, and I LOVE all the base work he did on them, esepcially the deep mountain masses and climbing troops. But at least in my own little unbiased mind, I mine the clearly superrior artist endeavour (and if I put as much time into tactics as I did painting, I might win on occasion...). OK, I'm not really that serious about it, but still. Anyway, all was made right when I checked the actual score sheet -- I'd beaten Zod by 2 points on painting. Now, he had me on unit history, and the award may have been a combination, but those 2 points were all I wanted. I didn't want to make a big deal of it, but word got around. I even got an email from Pet Shop comics after a few days to find out what I wanted for a prize! What a class act all around, from the shop, Iron Tom, and Zod -- he'd given the actual prize to kid in thier gaming group. I can only hope to learn by these classy examples.

Also, did I mention the food? Richard, owner of Pet Shop comics, braved the cold all day long, grilling up pork chops. And by pork chops, I mean mouth wattering goodness. I'm serious. These things were GOOD.

Patton Museum

On the way home, we decided to check out the Patton Museum. Hay, how often do you find yourself with a major armour collection about 20 miles out of your way? It was cool. The tank museum we saw in Diekirk, Luxumberg kept their stuff in better condition, but the Patton folks just had so damn much of it!

I'll let the pics speak for themselves here. But if you ever find your self in Kentucky with a few hours to kill, check it out. There is simply no other way to really appreciate the mass and bulk of WWII armoured fighting vehicles. The things are beasts.

Caesar poses by a Priest, because he doesn't feel the cold

Rarier by another Prist, because they are his favorite

DakkaDave by a randomly selected armoured vehicle

Caesar posing next to his former lodgings

Rarier gives his review of the same vehicle and its utility as a beauty aid

All told, it was a hellova weekend, and I had a blast. I don't like cars or road trips generally, but if I had to be stuck in a metal can I could do much worse for company. The gibberish was non stop. It didn't hurt that we had such a worthy destination, either. Pet Shop Comics, Iron Tom, Richard, and the rest of the gang up there are top notch in my book.