Last saturday we had our first circuit event of the year at Gamescape North in San Rafael, CA. This is one of the premiere game stores in northern California and is run by a bunch of great guys. The event was an Escalation style tournament, Late War, with points totals of 1280, 1530, and 1780. I decided to be lazy and build my army from stuff I already had painted and kinda suffered for it. Ended up somewhere in the middle. We maxed out our table space with twenty-four players and two alternates, though two guys had to cancel the morning of. We even had three players from out of state register, one all the way from Florida. Eric Riha ended up winning the event but passed on prize support. Dave Ripperda took second and Russ Moore won Best Presentation. I had fun in all three of my games and can't wait until next months event!
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| Round One I played Aaron Gorfein and his Rota Razvedki in Free For All, 1280 points. The board used the new winter rules, snow banks and frozen ponds. My left objective defended by 1iC, Grenadier platoon and Nebelwerfer Battery. |
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| Right side objective held by Grenadier platoon, StuG platoon and Mortars. Marder platoon is off camera in the center. |
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| Turn one Aaron moves his T-34/85s and Recon at me. Rota platoon guarding the objective to their rear. |
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| My attacking force preparing to advance towards his objective only guarded by a Rota platoon. Su-122s off camera. |
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| Here we are about Turn Four. StuGs and Grenadiers have driven the Rota platoon off, destroying it. Su-122s move to contest for one more turn before the StuGs destroy them. Aaron makes his last attempt to score some points. |
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| Aaron's attack on my objective has stalled. His T-34s got hung up in the trees for a few turns or it could have gone very differently. Marders were able to swing to assist this objective and the Grenadiers have barely hung on after several rounds of fire from tanks and Rota. They were also able to drive back the Rota assault. Recon were driven back by rifle defensive fire, killing one and bailing another. (Got some lucky 6s for Firepower) 6-1 final score for me. |
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| Round Two any visions of a tournament victory quickly faded. Surrounded vs. Russ Moore's Commandos... Night attack + four Commando platoons + four Breeching Groups = alot of dead Germans. Russ' right side deployment. Commandos, more Commandos, Breeching Group, another Breeching Group, HMGs, and Mortars. Russ had 10 platoons at 1530 points! |
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| Russ' left side. Commandos, more Commandos, Breeching Group, another Breeching Group! Oh, Bunkers are played as buildings, Trenches as low walls. |
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| My north objective. Grenadiers, PaK38s, and StuGs defending. Marders are off camera to the south with a Mortar platoon. My south objective was defended by Grenadiers, Scouts, a Looted T-70 and an Artillery Battery. Infortunately I didn't get any other shots as Russ came at me fast and furious. Spearheading Commandos Night Attacking... He was ready set for a massive assault for Turn Two, but I preempted him by hitting his leading Commandos with my Greadiers led by Windgruber. Both platoons hit on 2+ and it got ugly quick. I hit him seven times and he declined to come back, hoping his Fearless rating would allow him to stay on table, but it wasn't to be. On his turn he assaulted me back with the follow up Commandos and hit me six times, including Windgruber. My Grenadiers failed their motivation to counter. The game after that devolved into me trying to score some points before he took an objective. The T-70 was able to break out and rampage all over the Mortars and my Marders and StuGs became MG platforms trying to kill Commandos. Eventually he killed five of my nine platoons, breaking my company. I was able to kill two Commando platoons and the Mortars. 4-3 for Russ. |
Feel free to steal some of the photos from our game from Facebook if you want to write it up.
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