BHGS Oxford pairs 14/15 March 2009
Well. What can I say?
First FoW tournament. Sequence of events as follows:
1. Manage to scrape an entry thanks to the kindness of Barclay.
2. Ring Hammy prior to him being my team mate for some off the record thoughts on my MW army as I had never played MW before and only been playing FoW for a short while. Listened carefully to everything he had to say and then chose to completely ignore him!!!!
3. Submit army list and agree to provide two tables of terrain. One Green. One Yellow. Oh bugger...need to get a table of yellow together....what a pillock!!
4. Chase fellow club member Michael to get DAK army painted as did not have time to do everything!! Oh and he is better at it than me. Rang him and gave him grief as suddenly realised that painting was part of the scoring!!!
5. Start making scenery. Rope in Crazy Tom to help with palm trees!!
6. Then realise army background needed submitting!! Oh pants.....had started but not finished it.....23:09 on the Friday evening submitted army background!!
7. 00:47 hours on the Saturday morning of the event finish making scenery!! Grab some sleep before early start to pack car etc..
8. Set off early to get somewhere on time (never ever normally manage that!).....no traffic.....fantastic!
9. Find venue really easily thank goodness. Lots of chaps looking dodgy with boxes under their arms....yup that must be it. Unload car.....set up tables....not sure whether they are balanced enough...conform to some hidden FoW/BHGS secret rules that I don't know about and whether that meant I would be banished and would never get issued my camouflaged apron!
10. Mill around thinking it was doubles not pairs.....see the FoG guys doing just that so mildy and pleasantly surprised when it is pairs not doubles......they call me Nobby for a reason you know!!!
11. Hammy makes me very welcome and then discover from a lovely lady that it is £2.50 for tea/coffee all weekend!! Brilliant!!! Well within budget...might get to the pub at lunchtime after all!!
12. Everyone seems very friendly.....hmmmnnnn....are they just lulling me into a false sense of security?
13. It would appear not. 5 really great fun games. No one threw dice. Everyone was happy to help me with the rules. It was the best 5 games I had played of anything in a long time.
14. I have an apology to make to my first 4 opponents as it seems that I had misinterpreted my Warriors ability so my Stormtrooper moves were not on a 2+ for all three tank platoons only the platoon he was attached to! Sorry! That however may be mitigated by the fact that I forgot most of the time he rerolled misses and rerolled a reserve die (that might have got my infantry dug in Jungle Rhino!!).
15. Bottom line is I would like to thank Hammy for organising and putting up with me as a team mate, all of the guys who played against me for being fantastic opponents/teachers/peeps and everyone else who I chatted to for being a great bunch of guys!!
Nobby
P.S. Mental note....in future listen to Hammy!!!
Some general shots from the day....
Game 1 versus Mike Parker's Indian Rifle Company
Crikey. First outing for the Panzers and they got trounced!!! First Scenario was Cauldron. Really got it all wrong and Mike (who was a funny, interesting and considerate combatant) showed me the power of the 25 pdr.....well eight of them to be precise!!!! 26-6 Loss!!!
Game 2 versus Martyn Bolton's British Rifle Company
Beaten again!! Forgot about the penalty for double moving and the ambush!! Thought I had been clever by careful positioning of my objective marker which I had already decided to ignore when I had placed it. Hah - no such luck. Martyn was as wily as a wily thing and my inexperience soon put paid top any hopes of my bluff and my thrust up the right flank soon met its demise!!!
Game 3 versus Gavin Pearce's US Airborne
Fighting Withdrawl......tricky one this. Decided to go for the objective on the right flank again as all those tough paras hiding in the field and hedgerows did not look appealing to my Panzers!! made good progress with my tanks and troops - once i decided to advance and assault that is! Sitting there firing in at dug in, gone to ground types getting nowhere was not going to win me the game. So on turn three it was time for the big push.
However I was thinking it was going really well when another ambush appeared with big yank guns....but worse than that they were armed with atrestle table which once the only stuff that was left with wa stheir HQ and a Command Squad was what they used to dispose of my two bailed tanks!!!! PMSL!!!
However I did scrape a victory just before he could remove the objective! 29-3 Win!!!!
Game 4 versus Ben Broad's Guard Motostrelkovy
Awesome game. No real idea on how this would be any good whatsoever as soon as I knew I was up against Churchills. Best i could do was bail them on a 1!!! Aaaargghhhh!! Howver thanks to my Stuks taking out 2 of them and one platoon of Panzer III's succesfully taking out a massive platoon of Russian infantry with some help from the Panzer IV F1's making up my command HQ on the hill I was able to take the objective just, and I mean just, beofre Ben could take mine. Poor ben had terrible reserve rolls - as even though they turned up well before mine turned up in the wrong place!! To quote Ben - remeber its a game of skill!!! Final score 20-12 to the DAK!!
Game 5 versus Huw Peregrine-Young's Canadian Rifle Company
Free for all....and it was!!! More Churchills!!! Help!!! They were attacking on my right flank and with a herd of Panzer III's unable to do much normally I thought it was game over very early my Stukas were nowhere to be seem at first. However to prevent Huw winning I did the desparate measure of surrounding his Churchills with all of my pazer III J Late platoons and Huw managed some appalingly bad luck with his dice against one of my platoons that double moved. Then with side armour an all I managed to take out all of his Churchills!!!! Thereafter it was a mopping up excercise. really it was very very bad luck on Huws side that enable me to have such a win. i wish I could say it was superior tactics....but it wasn't!!! 32-0 victory!!
Other shots including some of Hammy's battles and everyones Army shots (sorry about the quality!!!)
