Once More into the Hunt Campaign
Paul Sidhu's climb to the top reached fruition this year as
he moved up from fourth place two years ago and runner-up last
year to attain the summit of National Champion in 2001. Meanwhile,
defending champ Bret Hildebran won the prize for Biggest Fall
From Grace as his 2-5 record had him losing twice as many games
this year as in the previous four years combined.
Paul ended up beating Bret, runner-up Steve Pleva, and 3rd
placer J.R. Tracy over the weekend, going 5-0 in games that counted.
Attendance was down again, with the date change only partially
to blame. A slight format change this year saw five scenarios
each in two columns for all seven rounds, plus a third column
for the last round, for a total of 75 scenarios to choose from.
Perhaps too much choice? Not according to the participants,
who all seemed to appreciate the scenario selections, except
for one thing. I heard from several people that some of the morning
scenarios were too long for the early round and from several
others that one or two night rounds had only long scenarios.
Which
leads us into my main concern for Round 1: that scenario 90
Pride and Joy would run too long and I would have to adjudicate
it. That wasn't a problem, however, as all three games of that
scenario finished on time. I was less worried about A105 Police
Action, despite it being a 12-turn scenario, since I figured
most partisan players would go for the quick victory via exit,
rather than falling back to protect the hill. Perhaps defending
Champ Bret Hildebran was not concentrating on that possibility,
since Chris Spell exited enough partisans to win in under three
turns, sparking the first big upset of the tourney. Dan Dolan
did not go for the quick win versus Jim Stahler, however, and
I almost had to adjudicate that game halfway through before Dan
gallantly conceded. Two-fifths of the players bolted from the
Column A cavalry scenarios to play simpler U.S. Army scenarios.
Round 2 saw Chris Spell take down another past Champ, Jeff
Coyle, in a close game of Blockbusting at Bokruisk when Jeff
discovered that routing upstairs was not considered getting closer
to the enemy units upstairs across the street. The big news
in this round was the 4-0 record in favor of the Germans in Silesian
Interlude, lending some credence to the belief that it might
be a tad pro-German, even if all the games seemed close. Hank
Burkhalter's win over past Champ Tom Morin hinged on his heroic
leader ambushing a counterattacking Russian squad in close combat
and killing them before they even had a chance to attack back.
Tom swears he would have had him anyway if only his A-T gun hadn't
broken down at an inopportune moment. Bret lost again, stepping
up this round as the highest-ranked player with a loss, this
time against the #1-ranked player, past Champ Steve Pleva. Based
solely on the ratings, Steve would have matched up instead with
Chris Spell, but those two had been playing each other once a
week for the past several months getting ready for this tourney
and I didn't want to match them up so soon in the tourney. The
vast majority of players stayed in Column A, choosing the Russians
rather than the British as the Allied side for Thursday evening's
combined-arms fest.
Round 3 Friday morning saw most people picking a PTO scenario
rather than one of the all-British infantry scenarios in Column
B. The highlight for me was the lone scenario of Chakila Sunrise,
as J.R. Tracy's Americans eked out an "immediate" win
over Chris Spell just as Round 4 was set to start. The other
Battles of the Unbeatens saw Steve Pleva's British hand Hank
Burkhalter a loss in On the Kokoda Trail, Paul Sidhu easily handle
Scott Romanowksi's Japanese in Broken Bamboo, and Jim Stahler
withstand a furious Japanese attack from Kevin Valerien in Cattern's
Position. Kevin prompted the weekend's future Tip From The Trench
for the ASL Journal: "Always attack everyone when you Ambush
the enemy in hand-to-hand close combat; even if the odds are
not always with you, the dice spirits will be offended if you
don't, and you will pay the price". Just like Kevin paid
the price, when we decided to attack only part of the force that
he ambushed in close combat. He easily killed them with dice
that would have killed all the defending force, only to see the
surviving remnants get lucky and wipe out all his attackers.
This round also saw Bret Hildebran get a win under his belt while
simultaneously pushing Bill Pittman into unfamiliar territory
at 0-3.
Round 4 Friday night was not for the faint of heart. Column
A was billed as "PTO Hardcore" featuring five big PTO
scenarios and Column B had five big, Yank-in-Western-Europe scenarios.
Three-fourths again chose the PTO, mostly playing either White
Tigers or A Tough Nut to Crack. The four remaining undefeated
players matched up, with Steve Pleva's British rolling over Jim
Stahler's Japanese in A Tough Nut to Crack and Paul Sidhu's Japanese
stifling J.R. Tracy's exit in Invisible Foes. Paul had finished
Round 3 early and had spent the early afternoon setting up a
Japanese defense for Invisible Foes. Luck was with him; not only
did he get his #1 scenario choice (on his opponent's third choice);
not only did he get the side he wanted (although giving up the
balance); but he ended up facing someone who had only just finished
up a real nail-biter--J.R. Tracy. Round 4 also saw Bill Pittman
finally pick up a victory in the Battle of the Beatens in a long,
hard-fought A Tough Nut to Crack versus Damon Norko, who had
been fighting the valiant fight against commuting: getting his
kids to daycare in the morning and battling the traffic for our
9 AM kickoffs. Falling to 0-4 broke his spirit, however, and
family obligations won out for the rest of the weekend. Ironically,
after finally notching a win, Bill called it quits for the ASL
tourney also, his brain turned to mush and fit only for doily
games. White Tigers brought the shortest candidate for a Tip
From the Trenches (dumbfounding Jeff Coyle and Steve Kyle along
the way): "Fording is NA in a Ford."
Round 5 matched the last two undefeated players: 1999 champ
Steve Pleva and #1 ranked player in the world, vs Paul Sidhu,
last year's runner-up. One would be the Champion, but the other
would still have to play Rounds 6 and 7 to determine his final
standing. As is the custom, the players in the final match could
choose any of the scenarios from the tourney and settled on U4
Climax at Nijmegen Bridge. For the rest of the field, round 5
meant either partisans or airlanding. All three choosing the
partisans in Column B chose scenario J34 Men of the Mountain.
At least two of those games came down to the wire with the Italian
gun intensive firing. In one game the gun crushed a crucial stack;
in the other, it disabled itself for an instant loss. In column
A, Jim Stahler and J.R. Tracy played a classic see-saw match
of A102 On Silent Wings. Things looked tough on Jim after a difficult
landing, but he battled back and took the victory building, only
to see J.R. counterattack and take it back, led by his indestructible
Carriers. The most popular scenario of the round was G39 Desperate
Affair, a well-crafted four-board German 1941 Crete paradrop.
Although not an extremely long game, it played long in round
5, partially due to everyone needing to brush up on their paradrop
rules first. Furthermore, this is a game where the German player
has to hang tough while his forces re-group, as well as a game
that often will not have a clear winner until the last phase.
Which may be why so many games were not finished in time for
round 6 and why I had to adjudicate more scenarios in this round
than in the prior two tourneys combined. When faced with the
deadline, Kevin Valerien conceded that his Germans had lost to
Hank Burkhalter, whereas Jeff Coyle's British conceded to Tom
Ruta. I had to make the call in favor of Tom Morin's Germans
over Steve Kyle, and, in the toughest decision I've had in a
while, I had to declare Mike O'Leary's Germans the winners over
Bret Hildebran, despite knowing that Bret was the much faster
player.
All of which was just putting off the onerous task of adjudicating
the Championship round, something I desperately wanted to avoid.
Paul and Steve are both quick players so I didn't object when
they picked Climax at Nijmegen Bridge, but now they were running
out of time. The loser would have a prominent roll to play in
round 6, which I couldn't really start till this game was over.
Steve's Allies looked to be about a half turn behind where they
needed to be going into the end game, but he clearly wasn't out
of the game yet. If he could get his 10-2 Armor Leader into the
victory area across the river, he stood a decent chance. Luckily
(for me) the Armor Leader's tank was taken out by a panzerfaust
after crossing the bridge. Steve conceded, I declared Paul the
winner, and I immediately matched Steve up against Tom Ruta in
round 6.
Steve and Tom picked J33 The Slaughterhouse, as did the other
pair still in contention for second place, J.R. Tracy and Hank
Burkhalter. Steve and J.R. each won with the Russians, with J.R.'s
game once again going down to the wire. Gary Mei beat Jim Stahler's
Russians in J33, while Kevin Valerien met Bret Hildebran in the
spoiler role again in A25 Cold Crocodiles with Bret going down
in flames again.
Round 7 saw Steve and J.R. matched up for second place. Given
the way the tie-breakers fell, the loser would garner third place.
Battling it out for the remaining top spots were Gary Mei vs
Kevin Valerien, Jim Stahler vs Hank Burkhalter, and Tom Morin
vs Tom Ruta. Kevin, Jim, and Tom Ruta wrapped up 4th-6th places.
Tom Ruta should have been playing Kevin, but Tom had planned
to blow off the last round to play in the finals of Napoleon
and only showed up after most of the pairings had been made.
Hats off to Jim and Hank battling it out in round 7. Hank (a
master of Breakout: Normandy among other games) has been
playing ASL for less than two years, while Jim is the
grognard's grognard, having playtested original Squad Leader
and about everything since. With three columns to choose from
in the last round, no single scenario was played more than twice,
although the Norway scenarios from the new Journal were the most
popular. Steve and J.R. squared off in one: J41 By Ourselves.
It was no blow out, and would have been closer still if J.R.'s
9-2 had not been snipered off the hill in the early going, but
the smart money is always on Steve. And Paul Sidhu put the final
nail in Bret's coffin.
Hats off to all the players who made it through all seven
rounds (including all of the top six). The 2001 scenario list
had some real meat to it. Every round had some meaty scenarios
and some rounds had nothing but meat. J.R. Tracy, a known aficionado
of doily games, was kept busy playing nothing but ASL from Thursday
morning on. Of course, he could have chosen smaller scenarios
(many were available), but J.R. has always been one to go for
the gusto. Maybe next year we can cut him (and the GM) some slack
and ease back on the scenario size a bit.
And maybe next year we should cut back to six rounds. If
so, we'd have to cut either the Thursday morning or the Sunday
morning round, or maybe try to squeeze in three rounds on Friday
(although that won't allow for much breathing space on Friday).
Dropping to six rounds would make it easier to play in all the
rounds, but would make it harder to play in just a round or two
(as some choose to do). What do you think? Drop me a line with
your thoughts. Maybe with a tweak here and some promotion there
we can get attendance back up into the sixties.
The numbers may have been down again this year, but the competition
was fiercer than ever. Despite missing three of last year's top
six [Is all well, Rich and Andrew? John at least stopped by
to make his excuses in person], the level of play this year went
up another notch. Face it, any tourney in which Bret Hildebran
goes 2-5 is not full of easy marks.
Speaking of whom, a big thanks
to defending champ Bret. After getting knocked out in the first
round via a surprise partisan blitz, he didn't blink an eye when
I asked him to step in against Steve Pleva in round 2. Then in
round 4, he didn't hesitate when I asked him to show the ropes
to a PTO-newbie. In round 5, with a winning record in sight,
he showed an easy grace when I had to adjudicate the closest
of games against him, although I am sure it was not his slow
play that made the game run over time. Then, with a chance to
even his record in round 6, he willingly stepped up again to
play Kevin Valerien rather than the lower-ranked player his record
would entitle him to. Finally, in round 7 when I was looking
for a good game for new Champ Paul Sidhu, Bret was there again
when I needed him.
Special thanks to Scott Romanowski and Kevin Valerien who
helped watch over things while I slipped out to eat (and even
took a nap once). And three cheers for Champ Paul Sidhu, doing
it the way you would like to see it done: adding some class to
the place for the past few years as he worked his way up and
then seeing all the hard work pay off. Beating J.R. Tracy, Steve
Pleva, and Bret Hildebran in the same tournament is nothing to
sneeze at!
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