TundraCon II – Still Cold

TundraCon II in Appleton WI was this past weekend. Yes it really was -3F when I finally got back to my driveway early this morning…. and further dropping to -13F by sunrise. What a wonderful time of the year for a day of gaming. Held at the American Legion in Appleton once again, here’s how it all went.

This year there were all of 4 vendors on site besides all of the games. Adventure Games (Oshkosh), The Last Square (Madison) were the two stand outs and it was great to see them both there.

It seemed like there was in general more people there than last year. The food was the same (mostly ok), the lighting the same (still dim)….

Far as the gaming offerings there was much to choose from. I had travelled up specifically to play in the Flames of War tournament. More about that in a moment.

There was a rather fun looking  American Revolutionary War game:

There was a Star Fleet battle game (didn’t get a picture) ,

a Wings of War game,

Napoleonic sailing ships,

an ancients game that was using Pike and Shot,

a D&D dungeon crawl game (I didn’t get a picture),

Pre-dreadnaughts with Naval Thunder,

Bolt action… and more that I missed…

All in all, lots of fun stuff. Plenty of things for players to try out new games as well as games that might be your old favorites. Dan and the entire crew that plan out the Con do a really good job.

In the case of the Flames of War tournament, 4 of us had travelled up from Minnesota/LaCrosse to attend. The Battle Badgers put it on and as it would turn out Rick couldn’t make it to run the game but instead Lee (who had I played last year) ran it. There were just 6 of us all total which was crazy low turnout.

There seemed to be probably 2 factors causing the low turnout. One being that many of the potential players were running/playing other games. The other being the weather. When we drove up on Friday, it was raining and by Saturday the temps had started to drop and when we left that evening there had been freezing rain, snow and other fun things to make travel interesting.

Anyway, how about that tournament?

It was a Late War 1420 point affair. I fielded a Russian Guards Armor formation, with 11 T-34-85s, 3 AA trucks, 3 SU-100s and Speznacki platoon. (Infantry dressed up like Germans that can do recon and infiltration).

First game I played Roy and we ended up being on the City table playing Dust Up.

Generally it was a fun but unfortunately flawed game for a couple of reasons. First we weren’t clear on the terrain so the areas in between the builds which was supposed to be rubble caused trouble as far as the effects were concerned. Lee ended up giving us a ruling which was that it gave bullet proof cover to infantry but nothing else. (Our group treats it akin to area effect trees as thing of it as piles of rubble and thus blocks line of sight.) This would have changed my initial placement significantly as my SU-100s needed to avoid Roy’s air as well as position for his Panthers which were in this picture behind the building on the right. As the tournament veterans know, discuss terrain first! My fault.

Turn 1, Roy came across the street with his infantry and into the building,with Panthers behind.

Then we come to the second problem with the game here on turn 2. Roy was popping out and then using Blitzkrieg movement to move back behind the building to try and snipe at my SU-100s. On the turn 3 I brewed up that Panther in the open, there was a second Panther that was partially concealed by the building but certainly available as a target. With the roll I had 4 hits.

Roy claimed that given the concealment I needed to roll at 5s instead of 4s. Roy’s assertion was since the entire platoon wasn’t visible this was the reason. Well the rules read, calculate to hit based on the easiest target and apply hits from easiest, and lowest armor rating to hardest based on line of sight. I didn’t want to throw a stink as I was there to have fun but basically it cost me one more Panther kill, which would have been a major turning of the tide since I didn’t get my reinforcements roll on turn 3, 4 …  and by turn 4, I’d lost my company command and Roy had managed to brew up my SU-100s and assault into my infantry quite deftly.

Ended up a 1-6 loss. Flaws happen, don’t read it as sour grapes. We roll dice for a reason!

Game 2 I took on Matt which was a Fighting Withdrawal game. Matt as the defender having 3 objectives to cover had some very tough choices to make based on their placement. This was a game my force was made for and I was able to overload with the attack of my choice. That was a huge advantage. I ended up aiming the hammer for Matt’s left flank.  I just needed to defeat one Panther at long range, 2 Jadgpanthers in ambush and one infantry platoon around the objective. Panzerfaust MG teams no less! I liked those odds.

Lining up I readied the thunderbolt.

The SU-100s made quick work of the Panther. Here kitty, kitty!

On the other side I had taken advantage of the 16″ infiltration move, managed to not be detected, then had my infantry hop out and press into the woods on my Turn 1 with tanks tanks and more tanks in support. I easily won the assault and was on the objective.

On Matt’s turn he would pop out his Jadgpanther ambush, and moved to contest the the objective. Top of turn 2, with all the firepower to bear I took out both tanks, and charged in to try and push his men off the objective who could contest from the bullet proof cover of the shell holes.

Didn’t work out and my infantry was pushed back in the assault and then later blown away. Given the panzerfausts in the hands of the German infantry while I could have pushed in with my tanks I just didn’t figure it was worth the losses and likely turn back.

Matt would bravely use his last Panther to get a kill on one T-34-85. With the next turn and all the fire power I took out the rest of the infantry securing the objective and we called it Game. 5-2.

I’m not sure how Matt could have otherwise defended better against me on that one. That was a crazy amount of armor to have to deal with.

Game 3 I played against Ken on the Dutch table with Encounter. It featured a fairly open terrain and 3 bridges across a canal.  This was a game that I just didn’t have a clue how to work the terrain much less deal with Ken’s very impressive force.

He had 1 Tiger II, 4 Jadgpanthers, 2 88s, a couple of Wirblewinds, and a small amount of infantry. It was in many ways the perfect long range very very hard hitting force.

I did a feign on Turn 1 to draw out the placement of his Tiger II which cost me an SU-100. My other initial platoon was T-34-85s.

I kept things with the exception of my company commander mostly on my left flank behind the orchard in hopes that would draw Ken in. It kind of worked as here you can see his company commander coming forward. I would end up brewing him up.

On my right flank I was hoping I could keep things to a minimum with the idea of reinforcements enabling me to turn this into the focus of my attack. Didn’t work out. I should have started out in the woods. Dumb placement on my side.

Here’s from the last turn where my other T-34-85s finally arrived on turn 5 but on my left flank. They rushed up with the idea of trying to get on the flanks of Ken’s armor. Between wiffs and good shooting/tactics on Ken’s side he deftly took my force apart.

Without artillery or air to take out the 88s, it was I think a pretty straightforward win for Ken with a 6-1 score.

All in all the LaCross crew ended up with 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th over all in the point standings. (I was 4th) Prize support was through Adventure Games so it was great to have a $15 credit to spend. No more substituting an old T-34 as a T-34-85!

It was a major disappointment that the tournament was so small especially after such a very long drive.

Hoping that in the future the TundraCon guys will have a 2 days event so that tournament games can be on one day and ‘normal’ games can be on the other. Between the X-Wing, Star Wars Armada, Flames of War tournament possibilities AND other good games, I think that would make for better participation in a tournament and be a natural growth of the Con. Guess we’ll see!