advanced squad leader [Revised August 2000]

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Bret Hildebran, OH

2000 Champion

2nd: Paul Sidhu, IL

3rd: John Stadick, VA

4th: Jim Stahler, VA

5th: Rich Summers, WI

6th: Andrew Robin, NY
Event History
1991    Mike McGrath      91
1992    Perry Cocke      112
1993    Mike McGrath      120
1994    Gary Fortenberry      130
1995    Gary Fortenberry      130
1996    Tom Morin      110
1997    Jeff Coyle      81
1998    Bret Hildebran      81
1999   Steve Pleva      43
2000   Bret Hildebran    42
AREA Ratings
 1    Steve Pleva      2342
 2    Michael McGrath      2307
 3    Gary Fortenberry      2279
 4    Robert Bendis      2270
 5    Tom Kirkpatrick      2171
 6    Bret Hildebran      2137
 7    Jim McLeod      2113
 8    Jeff Coyle      2082
 9    Robert Banozic      2081
10    Omar Jeddaoui      2078

Perry to the Rescue ...

"Another DonCon has come and gone, and a good time was had by all. Attendance at the ASL event stayed relatively low compared to the tourney's storied past -- hopefully this can be corrected in the future. Maybe we need to get the locals woofing or something? Personally, I had another good time seeing lots of familiar faces and playing lots of top-flight opponents which resulted in good, close games." Bret Hildebran 08/09/00

No big surprise that Bret had a good time, seeing as how he went undefeated again. Going 23-2 over four years and bagging a second winner's plaque tends to put a rosy glow on things, but not all winners are as classy as Bret.

1st place Bret Hildebran (undefeated)                        GM Perry Cocke (seated) prepares the pairings for the next round.            

2nd place Paul Sidhu (6-1)

3d place John Stadick (5-2)

4th place Jim Stahler (5-2)

5th place Rich Summers (5-2)

6th place Andy Robin (5-2)

Each received a plaque and MMP merchandise certificate.

Tail-End Charlie award to Darryl Wright (0-7) who received a copy of Doomed Battalions 2nd edition (with a dented corner to symbolized his beaten but unbowed stature). Darryl was the defending Charlie this year and could retire the award next year. The thinking here is that anyone who gets in seven games against top-flight competition is a winner.

Honorable mention at 4-2 goes to J.R. Tracy, Ray Woloszyn and Jim Manfredi.    

Bret of course is a past champion and the top seeded player coming in this year, followed by Rich Summers and J.R. Tracy. Paul Sidhu was a major contender last year (fourth place), J.R. Tracy is the two-time defending champion of Winter Offensive, John Stadick has been a force on the regional scene for some time now, as has Andy Robin. If you don't know who Jim
Stahler is, maybe you need to be reminded that ASL in this context does not stand for American Sign Language.

The first round saw the majority of players choosing #77 Le Herrison, from Croix De Guerre which split evenly at 6-5 in favor of the defending French. There were scattered playings of the other selections but none of G46 Triumph Atop Taraldsvikfjell. Too bad, it was one of the ASL scenarios in the last issue of The GENERAL two years ago. The biggest upset of round one saw local boy Ken Dunn knocking off past champ Tom Morin in Le Herrison. Ken has been honing his skills playtesting for MMP while Tom has been busy designing.

The most popular scenario in Round 2 was AP14 Ace in the Hole from Action Pack #2 which split 5-4 in favor of the defending Germans, followed by J1 Urban Guerrillas from the ASL Journal which split evenly at 4-3 in favor of the defending Germans. The upset of this round was John Stadick beating Rich Summers in Urban Guerrillas, while Eric Givler beat hobby legend Jim Stahler in Ace in the Hole.  

Round 3 saw matches evenly split between BRT3 Ryan's Orphans, AP15 Broken Bamboo, A32 Zon With the Wind, and J9 A Stiff Fight, with slightly more players choosing the latter. No one played either the cave scenario or the night desert scenario in this round. Go figure. This is the round where the big boys started knocking each other off. Rich Summers moved up as spoiler to beat Andrew Robin in A Stiff Fight to leave them both at 2-1, while J.R. Tracy knocked John Stadick out of the ranks of the undefeated in the same scenario and Paul Sidhu did the same to Ray Woloszyn in grognard Ray's first ever Blood Reef: Tarawa scenario. Bret continued grinding along, neither getting an easy game nor coming close to losing yet.

In Round 4, The Prize from A Bridge Too Far narrowly won "most Popular," closely followed by A98 Crossing the Gniloi Tikitsch and 79 Bridge of the Seven Planets. This round saw the four undefeated players matched up in two different historical matches: Bret and Eric Givler in The Prize and Paul Sidhu vs. J.R. Tracy in Panthers in the Mist from KGP. J.R. couldn't seem to get much traction against Paul's all-hidden SS defense, while Bret and Eric had a wild and swirling up and down battle for the bridge in Arnhem, with the SS prevailing. Only later did I ferret out the information that J.R. had been suffering from a bad batch of crab soup that brought several others down.

1996 Champion Tom Morin (right) finds the going tougher this year.    

Round 5, Thunderdome. Two go in undefeated, one comes out the winner. As is the custom, the two battling for the championship get to pick any scenario from the tourney list and select U6 Action at Kommerscheidt from the recently
released GI's Dozen. Paul got the Americans defending in the board 12 village. One Sherman that set up hulldown on a hill escaped for a while, but the one with the 9-2 armor leader did not. Then Paul broke the radio for his 100+mm OBA and then only got one out of three fighter-bombers and soon it was all over for the Americans. And all over for Bret Hildebran, who regained his crown from 1998 as the only undefeated player. But it was not yet all over for the tournament, or for Paul either. Round 5 saw John Stadick beating Andrew Robin in tourney classic Shklov's Labors Lost, Jim Stahler barely beating Rich Summers in Smoke the Kents, and J.R. Tracy beating Eric Givler (who had to leave that night) in Mayhem in Manila--the latter two scenarios featuring deluxe-sized hexes.

Round 6. Sidhu, Stadick, Stahler, Tracy, and Woloszyn each had only one loss, and Manfredi, Robin, Sutton, and Summers were all still in the running for spots 2 through 6. Summers moved up again to play Tracy (the highest-rated player with one loss) and bumped him off in this round's runaway winner U7 Han-Sur-Nied. Stahler did the same to Woloszyn, and Sidhu
to Stadick, leaving only two players left at 5-1. Manfredi, Robin and Sutton all won (they didn't play each other due to the scenario columns they chose), and a bunch of people came away impressed by Han-Sur-Nied.

Final round. Unfortunately, Manfredi, Tracy, and Woloszyn all had to leave early Sunday morning and couldn't compete. This round was equally split between the three Stalingrad scenarios: Guryev's Headquarters, Turned Away, and Oh Joy! The main match saw Paul Sidhu take down Jim Stahler in Turned Away to grab second place, while Robin, Stadick and Summers each won to lock up their top-six position.

Due to the three Honorable Mentions skipping the last round to leave early, I was able to give prizes to all the 5-2 players. Special Almost Honorable Mention to Eric Givler (3-2) who had to run home to look for his missing dog.

Conspicuous by his absence was defending champion Steve Pleva. Missed you, Steve.

Absent also were any international ASLers, not even any of our friends from the north. Too bad, because they missed some hellacious competition. The consensus was that despite (or because of) fewer numbers, the level of play was better than ever. Sportsmanship was also up from even its usually high level, as the GM had zero problems to resolve.

Multi-Man Publishing is committed to helping the ASL tournament at DonCon thrive. ASL remains the flagship of our growing line of games, and we want it to be as successful as possible. (While we also continue to support our other games -- witness the merchandise certificates worth over $1,000 we donated for prizes to the various events.) We think there was some confusion over who was running the ASL event this year and what the play list would be, along with a lack of publicity that helped keep attendance down. We are determined to make sure that doesn't happen again for the 2001 event. I am
personally committed to being the ASL GM again, but from the beginning this time, rather than at the last moment I am open to suggestions about format changes. Please drop me a line if you have any questions or comments.

You can link to the WBC and the Boardgame Player's Association through the Player Support section of our website
www.advancedsquadleader.com.

 GM      Perry Cocke (MMP)  [2nd Year]    1664 Forest Park Ave., Baltimore, MD 21207
    PerryCocke@aol.com     (410) 944-3342

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