Pulhamus wins 2022 in rematch of 2019 Finalists

Eleven people showed for the Demo Thursday evening, where we experimented with a (unofficially) longer Demo, verging on two hours. We were able to cover the game in much more detail, but we scared some folks away as half didn’t show for the tourney. The Mulligan round immediately followed the Demo and saw eight gamers playing S6 Released From The East (rebalanced). Since three of the four Russians won, maybe it was too rebalanced.

For Round 1 Friday morning, ten players engaged in the now classic S1 Retaking Vierville, where the results came out pretty even. One winner dropped out and Mulligan round winners filled out the field for Round 2.

Six players entered Round 2 War of The Rats (S2) undefeated: Greg Schmittgens vs Buck Karpowicz (returning to the system after a long absence), Derek Pulhamus vs Josh Coyle, and Dan Leader vs Bill Thomson. With the Tournament adjustment of the reinforcements entering on Turn 4, this is a very balanced scenarios, but all three attackers won handily. Admittedly, the attacker was the stronger player in each match, but each benefitted from good luck as well.

With three undefeated players advancing to Round 3, Bill Thomson stepped up as the Eliminator. In the Mulligan round, Bill had shepherded a newbie through his first game, and in Round 1 had performed a similar service for an inexperienced player. He gave Greg Schmittgens a run for his money in S5 Clearing Colleville (and garnering a Sportsmanship nomination). But Colleville was never cleared, with the defender winning both games, eliminating the Eliminator and relegating Dan Leader to the third place plaque. Josh Coyle garnered fourth place courtesy of his victory over Dan in the Mulligan round, with Bill and Buck rounding out the top six.

This matched Derek Pulhamus vs Greg Schmittgens in a reprise of the last ASLSK final, this time in S46 Clearing Carentan (think Band Of Brothers episode). If you’re aware of the last AAR for ASLSK from 2019, Greg’s aggressiveness on the attack had seen him to victory in his final two games, including the final versus Derek in S8 Purple Heart Lane where he paid heavily at first but was able to take advantage of some misplaced aggression on Derek’s part to win. Just like in the last final, Greg got the attacking American paratroopers against German fallschirmjaegers in Carentan. In this scenario, in addition to getting to hide two defending squads from American sight (“HIP”), the Germans get the Starter Kit version of preregistered artillery. But Derek placed it behind where the Americans set up, and then inadvertently disclosed his preregistered hexes, and Greg was mostly able to avoid it. But Greg’s aggression in this game did not account for the HIP Germans who caught the Americans out in the open and hammered them. This year, Greg was not able to recover, and Derek was able to keep kicking him while he was down. Who needs artillery? Derek has clearly paid his dues and is a super nice guy in a field full of nice guys