With near record attendance, POG is alive and well at WBC.	Keith Schoose and Andrew Cummins peer out of their trenches.
The Mighty Finn takes down Steve Koleszar.	Dave Dockter beats Tom Drueding in a semi-final of former champs.

50 enlisted for the 2009 PoG-A-Thon - only two shy of the attendance record set in  2000: quite a turnout for a wargame now in its second decade. Players  logged 944 player hours over 59 games, covering four days. The finalists, as always, had to play six 8-hour back-to-back rounds in their quest for the gold; hence, the PoG-A-Thon nickname for the annual grueling, but a load of fun, Paths of Glory tournament.
 
Part of the big news in 2009 was that a "modified historical campaign scenario" was used for the first time - despite some initial squawking from the PoG old timers. A number of changes to Ted Raicer's historical scenario were instituted including shifting four victory spaces, making it somewhat easier to play the Tsar Takes Command and providing further incentives for the Central Powers to hold real estate in the West. The effect of these changes was to impact play significantly.  The Yanks showed up in a number of games (in contrast to their usual absence) and most games witnessed a real Western Front meat grinder (in contrast to the usual "Defend-the-Rhine" strategy).  Feedback from PoGer's was very positive (based upon a survey of participants), with many shouts of "This is what we need to be playing in future tournies" being heard.
 
After 52 games in the three preliminary rounds, we arrived with five 3-0s, one 2-0-1 and two "roll-off" spots. In what has become an annual PoG tradition, we had  six prospective giant killers "roll-off" to make the quarter finals. This year, after the usual hootin and hollerin at 9 AM Tuesday morning, Jeromy Martin and Keith Schoose were the lucky winners. The budding PoGer Tom Gregorio with a 2-0-1 and undefeated Gurneau, Mecay, Drueding, Herr Dr and the Finnish Dragon, Riku filled out the field.
 
In the quarter finals, sadly, no giants were slain (in a break with past tradition). Thus, for the semis we had four previous champs with unblemished records to do battle.  Both of the semi-final games went down to the final dice roll on Turn 20. Stefan Mecay's CP, using his traditional Defend the Rhine strategy, defeaed Riku's AP.  In the other semi, David Dockter's CP, utilizing a "Go west, and if that fails, try the Russians",  defeated Tom Drueding's AP. 
 
In the Final, Herr Dockter won the bidding die roll and opened with "CP". Mecay, somewhat stunned, decided to give up his beloved Central Powers (and his Defend the Rhine strategy) and play the AP. During the early turns, Dockter was able to setup the West and Italy, while managing to get the Tsar Takes Command off and beat the AP to total war by two turns. On Turn 8, Mecay finally brought the Italians in, sending three French and three British armies to Italy to prevent a complete collapse. On Turn 10, with such a diversion of allied might to Italy, Dockter began an unrelenting hammer in the west. The CP was able to get both to CT and Amiens. However, CP had forgotten about trenching technology and was able to only hit one of its first 11 trench trys (even using the modified trench attempt rule).  One Turn 14, it appeared that the CP would be able to enter the cafe's of Paris, however a lack of trenches set the stage for an aggressive AP counterattack. Furthermore, the CP left a small, but critical hole, in the eastern front. Mecay jumped and was able to push a flipped russian corps through the gap, demanding that the CP play "ops" and miss replacements for the turn. Without replacements, the CP began to collapse on Turns 15 and 16. The kaiser failed a morale check and a concession was granted, giving Mecay his second PoG gold ring and adding to his 2009 PoG PBeM title. As an interesting aside, Mecay's victory over his fellow Nest of Spies teammate, Herr Dr., cost the Nest their fourth team championship of the decade.
 
The last important "wood" note regarding PoG tourney results was that Peter Gurneau became the newest "sand man", with his roll off for sixth place.
 
As to the changes they clearly breathed new life into an already popular game.  I surveyed the players formally and by a margin of 10-1 players indicated they enjoyed the changes over the old game.  This is in addition to the informal comments received from various players, many who indicated an initial reticence over the rules.  I will admit though that a number of us are still testing it and some minor tweeks will be made for the next PoG email tournament, WAM 2010 and next summer's WBC Pog-a-thon. For additional color on the 2009 WBC PoG tourney, there is an AAR on boardgamegeek  at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/45186  and a great Point2point podcast (#40 - the WBC recap)  at http://point2pointsource.com/xoops/modules/news/

The thrill of victory ... Stefan Mecay stops Riku Riekkinen in the semi-finals, thus preventing the rematch with Dockter for the title.	And the agaony of defeat. Mecay tops teammate Dave Dockter in the Final - thus again knocking the Nest of Spies out of Team contention.

Sixteen players participated in our 8th WAM PoG tournament, with a previous WAM and WBC PoG champ, Tom Drueding, walking away with another gold ring. They played 15 games.

As usual, we allowed gamers to try any of the PoG "family" of games (Barbarossa to Berlin, Triumph of Chaos, Shifting Sands or Pursuit of Glory) in the prelim rounds. And, we are happy to report that all were played in addition to the historical Paths of Glory variant we have recently begun using at WBC. There were an equal split of AP and CP victories in the early rounds among the 16 players.

The semi's included Drueding's CP matched up against Hall's AP and Hickok's CP vs Dockter's AP. In that game, Hickok's Army of Islam dug a very timely trench to save Turkey from a combined French Army of the Orient and Greek force. The CP seemed to be on the ropes the entire game, until the Treaty of Brest Litovsk was played on Turn 18 with only five Russian cities in the claws of the CP. That combined with three victory cities in the West, a push in Italy, Belgrade and a High Seas fleet brought the victory total to 11. Turn 20 witnessed a frantic AP attack in the west and the Italian border to pry one last VP loose, but to no avail. The game came down to one long shot attempt by Laurence of Arabia vs. Kemel in Medina on AP 6. Unlike history, the Turks had their big guns facing in the correct direction and the attack was successfully thwarted. However, Hickok indicated he was "fried" after the marathon game and would not be able to get in another game. The solution we arrived at was to have Dockter play Drueding in the Final; if Drueding won, the gold would be his. If Dockter won, there would be no WAM PoG champion in 2010.

Dockter played the CP with a bid of 0. An early push in the West resulted in the CP getting a trench in Calais and Cambrai verses a lonely AP trench in Ostend. In the Near East, the CP virtually ignored the front after a supply fiasco occurred around Gaza. The Near East eventually fell when the CP decided not to aggressively defend the front or bring Bulgaria into the war. Italy witnessed a number of critical battles at Bologna, with the three southern Italian victory cities eventually falling to the CP, but the AP retaining the Verona/Bologna magic trench line. The late game witnessed a see-saw fight in the East and West, with both sides holding on by the thinnest of gray/white/tan/red/blue margins. On Turn 17, the CP began to collapse in the West and the game was called in time for the late night March Madness tourney to begin. Mr. Drueding had won his third consecutive WAM title.

The "sharks were well represented among the 89-player turnout with most of the top rated players cruising through the initial rounds of what would be a 196-game, three-year marathon.  An interesting addition from past tourney's was a 6-member "Italian" contingent who all did quite well with three of the six making it to the 4th round (at which point the field had been reduced to nine players).  A new innovation this time permitted all players to continue to the second round in either the lower or upper division.  Thus, regardless of how poor one's record was in the first round, these players could continue without any detriment in the lower division (although some chose not to).  Cinsequently, we still had 74 playing in Round 2.  Three of the lower division advanced to Round 3 together with 18 from the higher echelon.
 
Bidding - the game was standard POG with the extra AH corp at Lutsk and Stanislaw.  Probably because so many games have been played, the bidding has become pretty predictable with the average bid at 2 for the AP. The CP has pretty much gone to the defend the Rhine, kill the Russians strategy. I will be starting a new tournament with slightly different rules hopefully to change this a bit.
 
In the Final Stefan Mecay got the CP and in both cases fell back to the Rhine and crushed the Russians.  In the other medal game between Reese and Byrd the same thing was attempted but the CP fell 1 short of victory for a draw. Following Stefan in the Laurels totals were: Chris Byrd, Peter reese, Rob Hassard, Mauro Gasbarrini, and marvin Birnbaum.
 
All in all, a lot of games over a long period of time.  The next tournament will have a shorter period for the games (3-3 1/2 months) as it has been almost three years for this tournament to reach completion.

Rules - sames as before with the following additions
 
1) Use optional corps at Lutsk at Stanislaw as always,
 
2) Use optional trench rolls and the 8 card hand.

3) Use the optional historical setup/rules (on GMTs web site)
 
4) Move VP spaces from Turkey (2 - Jerusalem and Kharput) to Koblenz and Aachen and move VP spaces from Ahwaz and Venice to BL and Sedan.
 
5) CP will get one RP per turn if during TW  (starting the turn it draws its TW cards) so long as it has at least three French Belgian spaces including (the three spaces must include Sedan) during the turn interphase.

To enter, contact preese4@cox.net before August 2009.