25 November 2014

Interlude (Part 9)

No post last week due to my taking (mostly) a break from hobby-work for health reasons and so had little to report on and less to take pictures of. Add to that my frustration with my Kingforce Churchills (PSC’s instructions were not correct and so mid-way through painting, I realized that certain pieces were not indicated to be glued on and so now I have to go back, file away areas of paint and get that sorted before I can continue to paint.), so I was not in the mood to pick up my paint brushes. I did muddy up the remainder of my Late War Canadian armour and armoured cars though in preparation for….

The last tournament of the 2014 Norcal Flames of War Circuit!



It took place this Saturday at Gamescape North in San Rafael – 1500 point, 3 rounds, strict red-versus-blue D-Day themed Firestorm event. 22 of us showed up with the sides equal (Which was awesome!) and wow, what an event, easily the best tournament I've attended to date. Richard Barnes, who had until early this year (He moved to New Mexico) been a member of our Circuit, travelled back to Northern California to not only run our last tournament of the year, but also provide and paint almost all the Firestorm units required.

Each of the tables were theme’d to specific events during D-Day – Pegasus Bridge (Firestorm units available were some Brit Paras for the allies and rare air support for the Germans), Carentan (Big 8.8 AT guns for the Germans and a P-51 Mustang for the Allies), etc. All 11 tables looked great and most even played great too. (Beach-landing mats and all in some cases!)

As mentioned in my previous post, I brought Canadian armour. Only Confident Trained though, so easy to shoot and being Shermans, well, we all know how good Shermans tanks were/are at suffering German tank/AT-gun fire, right?

I played John Murphy in the first round with the Mission being No Retreat, defending the Pegasus Bridge against his truck mounted Panzer Lehr hoard. My Firestorm unit ended up being a wee platoon of Brit Paratroops (Thematic!) and after mass volleys of artillery and a far too accurate Sporadic Fokke Wulf air attack almost every turn of the game, I managed to withstand him long enough until time was called and I had defended both of the objectives and scoring a 5-2, having only seen my game MVP’s (My Bofors AA guns) finally die off.

This bridge wasn't all that far away afterall.


The Second round I faced off against Wyn Roberts. Wyn is a very accomplished player, who has attended Masters tournaments in the past too. Already I was intimidated. Add to this we were playing Breakthrough on a VERY terrain populated table and my poor tanks were finding it hard to get anywhere without being shot at by “something” as soon as they left cover. Wyn’s deployment was very well done and I just couldn't stop worrying about his Firestorm unit for the game, some Pak43’s that looked so terrifying it they messed up my whole game plan. In the end I managed to take out a platoon of his infantry to scrape by on a 2-5 loss.

Pak43 - these things are bloody HUGE!


At this point, the Commonwealth players weren’t doing all that well with 4 out of 5 of us at only 7 points after the 2nd game. But I was one of them and so hoped I’d pull a favourable match in the 3rd and final game of the day to come out on top and maybe even win an award.

My 3rd game ended up being against Richard Gagliasso and his Confident Trained German Grenadiers list. ELEVEN PLATOONS of the buggers with four of them being some sort of artillery! The game was Free for All which meant that not only did I have to face all that horrid crap, but that I got to face it all at the same time as well. The game was long and drawn out. My troops killed an arseload of stuff, but only ended up managing to kill two full platoons. When time was called, I had just failed a Company morale check and I was left with yet another 5-2 loss. This meant I was out of the runnings altogether. In the end, the Germans thumped us emphatically and so our DDay landings were a total failure. 

We win Tommy!


The event was well put together and a whole bunch of fun – the best tournament I’ve been to yet, and it seems a template that future tournaments are going to be designed by, which is fine by me. The new 2015 Circuit is still in the design stages, but already there are some cool ideas being thrown about from an East Front (For which I have no minis for….) tourney, to a Tunisia theater one (Which would be perfect for my Desert Brits!).

It ain't 'alf  'ot out 'ere Mum...


This current hobby burnout will hopefully pass by quickly what with a 5-day break coming up for me for the Thanksgiving holiday two days away, so hopefully I'll have a new post up over the weekend showing some progress shots of my work. 



*edit* With all this poor hobby progress going on, I can take solace in the fact that I still have yet to purchase any new models, so the hobby pledge isn't a total loss. :)

8 comments:

  1. It sounds like you had a great time. I remember my last FoW tournament was an exercise in frustration. Big points for staying on track with your purchasing hiatus. I *just* used my first joker today. Darn....

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    1. Yeah, it's been a tempting few months and now Kingdom Death has re-opened their pledge manager to allow those of us who didn't back originally to pledge for a copy of Monster.... $225 is a bit much though at this time of year, but if I can sell enough old stuff just maybe. :)

      The format made this tournament worthwhile. I hope this next year's circuit has more like it.

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  2. I admire you for doing the tournament thing. Not my cup of tea, but I don't really have the nerve for it. Sounds like you had some narrow losses vs some tough opposition, but I can't help wondering if these sorts of very artificial matches give the Germans unfair advantages? WW2 wasn't really a tournament competition, it was let's hit Jerry with a crapload of HE and bombs and then swamp him with tanks whenever possible.
    Hope the health situation you refer to is better now. Happy Thanksgiving!

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    1. I think the Germans being dug in defenders for most of the matches gave them the upper hand, but that's okay. I made my game harder by bringing Trained British armour in the first place! :) So hard to play as we light up at the merest mention of AT.

      Thanks for the kind words Mike - likewise to you and the missus!

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  3. Wow - 'sfunny: I only read today about a themed tournament (on the Flames weekly update email) and then I see this!

    I tend to shy away from tourneys, but I'd really love to take part in a themed on: perfect!

    Good show at the ridge, by the way...

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    1. Think I have found my preferred tournament format, and I'll be more inclined to attend should there be more of a bent toward a theme, than an open format.

      Wonder if our tournament will make the front page?

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    2. It probably will if you ask them and write it up...

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    3. The tournament organiser did his own set of posts to cover it.

      http://flamesofnerd.blogspot.com/2014/11/norcal-d-day-firestorm-event-pt-1.html

      :)

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