April 30th was our 5th installment of Battle on the Mississippi at Deaf Ear Records. This time the Flames of War tournament was set at 1660 points for Late War time, and we strongly encouraged everyone to pick lists that were Dec 1944 and later.
This made for some interesting list selections among the 14 players that travelled far and wide. With players from Missouri, Ohio, the Twin Cities, and plenty of locals, it makes for a great mix. There were several new faces, all former players, getting back into the hobby as they were happy to discover there is once again an active community in their area.
We want to thank Deaf Ear Records for allowing us to utilize the Dungeon for the event and opening up a couple of hours early so we could get in and do the final preparations ahead of time so things could run extra smooth.
We want to deeply thank Battlefront for the prize sponsorship. In addition Chris Novak, Bill Wojahn, the Screaming Eagles all contributed to the prize pool. Of all the things I forgot to do, it was take a picture of the all the swag for the players!
Tables
As the TO for this one, I “over built” on the tables with 3 players dropping with short notice and a few “strong possibles” that I figured best to plan for them to be there. Had it worked out there might have been as much as 22 in attendance. Nice weather perhaps can be blamed. Through the generosity of the players, Will, Keith, Patrick all brought terrain to set tables and that was greatly appreciated to help augment what we have locally. Bringing a list and terrain to boot is no small amount of an extra work. The benefit of having more tables then needed, is it does lower the chances of playing on the same table more than once.
Let’s have a look at the terrain artistry in action:
Poland, Danzig
Central Berlin, Tiergarten
Central German Magdeburg
Eastern Berlin, Seelow Heights
Northern Germany, Haltein
Eastern Prussia
Souther Germany, Potsdam
Central Berlin Kreuzberg
Eastern Poland, Danzig #2
Round 1
The first round was Blind Domination. Unlike past tournaments we didn’t broadcast at all what the rounds were going to be. With Blind domination there can be a bit of list tuning that people will do so I decided not to announce until the crew arrived that morning.
I think I might have heard off in the distance a little “list regret” discussion but as with war, you fight with the army you have and it seemed like everyone had a good time with the round.
As we had one player running late, which put us at an odd number for the first round only, I pulled out one of the two lists I’d prepared a month earlier in the odd chance I needed to play in order to keep to an even number of players and not have any byes. I did ask for volunteers as for just this one match, they would have a little less time as compared to the other tables. Chris Novak volunteered so the two of us squared off.
Match ups were:
- Adam T vs Collin
- Peter P vs Bill W
- Will Y vs Matt V
- Chuck H vs John D
- Richard N vs Patrick B
- Keith G vs Jay J
- (Tom G fillin in) vs Chris N
Bill W vs Peter.
Patrick B vs Richard N
Round 2
With the second round I rolled up Dust Up.
Match ups were:
- Peter P vs Chris N
- Chuck H vs Collin C
- Keith G vs Matt V
- Will Y vs Jay J
- Richard N vs Bill W
- Patrick B vs John D
- Adam T vs Roy H
Collin vs Chuck H
Round 3
With the third round, I hand picked the mission Free-For-All erring on the side of an action that encourages players to be active. It resulted in two fair fight missions in the tournament but there was certainly no sitzkrieg going on.
Chuck H vs Chris N, as of the second round both were the top point holders from the Allied and Axis sides.
Match ups were:
- Chuck H vs Chris N
- Keith G vs John D
- Richard N vs Collin C
- Adam T vs Matt V
- Peter P vs Jay J
- Will Y vs Bill W
- Roy H vs Patrick B
Results
The national break down of results was pretty striking with the vast majority of the Axis players not doing so well. Germany did lose the war after all, so maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised at this.
- Chris Novak – German Panzerspah – 18
- Keith Gilmour – British Rifle – 17
- Adam Trunzo – Soviet Inf – 15
- Richard Novak – Soviet Tank – 15
- Will Yankausky – US Tank – 15
- Chuck Hiner – British Rifle – 13
- Roy Hayes – Soviet Mech – 11
- Peter Peterson – US Tank – 8
- John Dudkiewicz – German Panzer – 8
- Collin Chouinard – German Panzer – 6
- Jay Johnson – German Mech – 6
- Patrick Barkuloo – Soviet Inf – 5
- Matt Vach – German Panzer – 5
- Bill Wojahn – German Inf – 3
Top honors and best overall General went to Chris Novak and his German Panzerspah Company.
Top Allied General went to Keith Gilmour running his British Rifle company.
Top Axis General went to John Dudkiewicz running a German Panzer Company.
For the dreaded Dinosaur, there were two candidates, Patrick Barkuloo and Collin Chouinard, both of which had some pretty rough rounds with colder than cold dice. To decide the winner for bad rolls, we had them roll a dice, low die won! Congrats to Patrick!
Best Painted Army went to Chuck Hiner and his British Rifle company. There was plenty of tough competition as across the tournament, there was lots of well painted lead.
And last but not least, John Dudkiewicz by popular vote was awarded the best Sportsman award.
In closing a big thank you to all those attended. Hope you had a great time and we look forward to the next one which we’re looking in the June/July timeframe. It’ll be mid-war as well.
For those players up in the Twin Cities, sounds like there will be some regular Flames of War gaming start up soon on Wednesday nights at Dreamers Vault. In addition likely some tournaments being hosted there. Stay tuned!
What was in Chris Novak – German Panzerspah list ?
Where was this event held (city, state)?
Lacrosse Wisconsin