Huzzah Hobbies Early War Tournament
by Luke Melia
Dirty Jon and I recently went to Huzzah Hobbies in Ashburn, VA for an Early War tournament. Huzzah is always a good time. Thankfully our friend, Bill Dorais, was hosting the event which was a great way to spend an afternoon playing some Flames of War.
There are a lot of pictures here of not only the games, but also of the armies and units being played.
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| This guy always runs a good tournament. Thank you Bill Dorais for a great event. |
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| Breakfast of champions. |
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| Anybody here play World of Tanks? |
There were a total of 24 players representing seven nationalities present. To top it off there were an equal number of Axis and Allies players. That is something you do not see very often now a days in Late War tournaments.
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| This is Chris Hecht's army. |
I played the Japanese for the first time. This was the "surprise" list Eric "THE GOOCH" Lauterbach put together for me. I had no aspirations in the tournament of winning, but just wanted to make use of all the special rules I could.
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| My God that is a handsome man. |
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| Luke's Japanese army |
That is scary. Little did I know I would be fighting this nasty Soviet army in round 3.
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| Joe Moore's T-26 Horde |
The tables were great. I thought there was a perfect balance of terrain. Some tables were a little more open than others, but the terrain was evenly distributed and not overwhelming. Great job Bill Dorais (again) on the tables.
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| Snow boards? What the Hecht? At least there were no bog checks involved. |
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| Ken Jacobson - First victim of Jon's great dice day! |
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| Ken had a hard time with Jon pulling great dice to kill a platoon right off the bat. |
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| Jon was able to hide his other Pz II platoon pretty effectively. |
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| Jon's reserves challenge the objectives that are protected by only an Artillery unit. |
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| French CiC destroyed. |
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| Jon assaults here and wins the game 6-1. |
Round one for me was against Scott. Against British infantry the Japanese excel in assaults. It was tough for him only having 4 platoons to deploy and the Japanese were able to close quickly and take the objective.
Some pictures from other games in round one.
Spoiler alert. Here is your tournament winner, Chris Hecht, in the foreground and #2 (but #1 in our hearts) Dirty Jon in the back.
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| Chris's 88's striking fear in the hearts of his opponents armor. |
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| Ed Leland -- so happy. He doesn't know that Dirty Jon has great dice today! |
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| Ed has hordes of Honey Stuarts. Ugh. |
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| The gun line. These Pz IIs and CiC PzIII have no chance. However, the other 4 Pz IIIs are in Ambush. |
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| AT 7, ROF 3, FA 3 -- NASTY in Early War. |
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| Ed challenges the objective already. |
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| Ambush Revealed! |
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| Jon pushes out a Pz II to keep the objective contested. |
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| Sweeping around the size to challenge the Honeys and the Recce. |
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| It lives! Ed had some pretty bad dice in this game. |
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| The Brit Recce is destroyed. |
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| The PzIIs fire. DJ hists 13 times on 15 shots. D'oh. 5-2 to DJ. |
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| Joe Moore tried to finish off Hecht |
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| Bob E. rolling with the B.A.R. |
There was a surprising diversity in the nations represented as well as the lists that were brought. Ben gets five cool points for the German motorcycles!
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| Joe Moore tried to finish off Hecht |
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| Someone wants to take a smoke break! |
This was the "6-1" table. You had to have a 6-1 in round 1 to sit. Joe Moore was not following the rules with his 5-2 victory, so we had to make an exception.
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| The Hand of Simoneau! Jon's 3rd Game vs. Simoneau's Poles |
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| Jon wiped out 4 gun platoons and took the game 6-1. Another round of great dice. |
Below is what Luke faced in round three. Chris brought massive amounts of Soviet infantry in Breakthrough. Surprisingly I was able to constantly push him back with my tanks. I can honestly say I have never rolled so many machine gun dice in my life.
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| Jon's tanks roll out -- 4th Panzer on the March! |
The Soviets, AKA ZOMBIE HORDE, just keep coming. Hey I break a Soviet company. Oh look at that wave attack, now they come back. In this game I killed over 100 stands of infantry.
I am not boasting when I say this was probably the "epic" game of the tournament. We were the last game to finish so everyone was watching as buckets of dice were thrown trying to stop the horde of Soviets. Cheers were heard when two Nikihaku teams rolled four hits each (with no 1's) only to have to reroll because of turret rear machine guns. On the second attempt I still managed to score two hits each, only to have my Nikihaku explode in a glorious death for the Emperor.
How would you feel about facing this in a tournament? It was ugly, but so much fun. I have to give it to Chris. He played very fast for having to deploy and move so many infantry teams.
Lessons learned from my tournament experience with the Japanese:
Always being the attacker AND being able to use night fight really throws people off. Being able to double time "The Dark Elves" ask Japanese at night is crazy good. Taking six hits in defensive fire to pin is also a game changer. The tanks hold up pretty well, but you have to run them along the infantry as a distraction until sword teams and Nikihaku teams can get into assault.
I do not think they will be a dominating tournament winner, but they are an absolute blast to play.
