Recently, Chris Hecht (Darqueling on the WWPD Forums and also known for his World of Tanks YouTube videos) was in town and wanted to get his Flames of War on.
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| RangerDane on the left and Steve T (Chris Hecht is in the middle with his back to the camera) |
OK...now to the meat of this article.
So we had to deal with several factors for this ambitious event. First, it had to be quick since we were doing it on a weeknight. Second it had to be "compact"...not take a lot of space so we didn't interfere with other customers. Since we were doing this on short notice, other customers didn't have advanced notice that the store "could" be taken over by Flames players and they might not have space. Third, I need a theme...and Chris' World of Tanks cred sparked the idea for the:
World of Flames of Tanks of War Tourney Format
Say what, you say?
What we did was hold a 3 round, 600 pt, Tanks only tournament using the "Scrapyard Mission" and some (not all) of the Tank Aces rules from Battlefront's Blood, Guts, and Glory.
This idea hit every factor.
- Quick...rounds would be no more than 1 hour. In fact our longest went just over 40 minutes. The "Fast and Brutal" special rule caps the game at 9 turns. On turn 7 you roll 1 die at the start of the attackers turn. on a 4+ the turn continues...or the game ends if less than 4. Repeat the process on Turn 8 needing a 5+ and on turn 9 needing a 6.
- It was compact. Using the Tank Aces framework and 600 points meant we used half of a 4x6 table for a single game...and I had 3 full tables on tap.
- Theme. A tank only tourney where each tank is a Warrior team? A perfect match for a tabletop version of World of Tanks....and it was just as fast and furious as a WoT game.
So, what exactly did we do.
- Each player could pick 600 points from any Late War Army but had to have the mandatory picks from the HQs section and at least 1 combat platoon.
- Army list special rules and Tank Ace skills would be allowed. In a typical Tank Aces game, Tiger Ace skills are not used as the purpose of the Tank Ace game is to earn skills. For this event, the player was paying the points for the unit skills, so they were allowed.
- The Scrapyard Mission allows for "Tactical Edges" to be placed. We didn't use those either...focus was to make it a more traditional game and avoid "power ups". they could be added easily with no impact.
- The Scrapyard Mission continues until either time runs out, the turns end due to the Fast and Brutal rule or one player loses all their tanks.
- We didn't use the typical win/loss scoring. Tank Aces and World of Tanks is all about the number of kills. To keep that theme, we bounced a few ideas (Thanks Michael for being a sounding board) around and came up the highest ratio of the number of points killed to the number of points lost would be the winner. If you just counted the number of kills it didn't balance because not everyone had the same number of tanks in their force. The ratio put the focus on killing the enemy, but not lose too many points.
With that framework we kicked off the tourney.
1. US Tank (Confident Trained Easy 8s, Jumbos and M4A3s)
2. German 2 King Tiger
3. German PzIV/70 (V)
4. Brit 11th Armored Recce (Cromwells, Challenger & CS)
5. German 4 Tiger 1
6. Canadian Shermans
7. US Shermans Confident Vet (2 Jumbos and 2 Easy Eights)
8. German 2 Ferdinands
Congrats to RangerDane with his Confident Trained US Shermans. That is a tough nut to crack.
One major lesson learned, if you have a group of regulars make sure you have a forum or everyone regularly checks or good email addresses for a mailing list. I am confident is saying we would have had a bigger turnout if we had better a means of communication. Our local forum is migrating and the store is the process of getting a website/forum upgrade. We had to resort to individual text messages, emails, and phone calls. We had a little confusion because the information passed each time was little different.
Also thanks again to the whole Huntsville Flames crew and The Foundry for supporting such a short notice event. You guys are the truly the best and are what makes WWPD South rock.
And finally, thanks to Chris for coming being a part of WWPD South! Hope you had a great time and come back to visit.
Picture Time!
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| With the short notice we allowed unpainted models |
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| Chris on the right taking out some Tiger Is |
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| Warriors (teams) come out and Play-ay-ay (Cheesey movie reference) |
SonBae (AKA Jeff Flint) is a long time gamer and painter and runs a blog at Journey Back To The Table where he posts photos of his work, reviews, BatReps and the “Painting Miniatures Declassified” modeling and painting tutorials.
