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 2^nd game. But I was one of them and so hoped I’d pull a favourable match in the 3^rd and final game of the day to come out on top and maybe even win an award.

My 3^rd 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. :)