The Opening Guns ...
Forty-two Poggers battled it out over four Swiss preliminary
rounds followed by two final rounds in the Guns of August Pre-Con
action preceding WBC. A total of 78 games were played with few
players leaving early before WBC even got under way. The rules
were a standard campaign game with the placement of AH and RU
corps in Stanislaw and Lutsk to prevent an early "Dance
of Death" on the East front.
The
bids of VP given up to play the Allies ranged from zero to three
with 43% of the games bid at two. The average Allied bid was
1.55. Although this tournament allowed the offer of Peace Terms,
only two games actually saw offers, with no acceptances.
56% of the games were won by the Allies, 41% by the CP, and
3% were drawn. The Allies won two of the three semi-final and
final games. 82% of the games began with, appropriately enough,
a Guns of August opening. The Defend the Rhine West front
strategy was fairly common as well.
Rob Hassard emerged as the POG champion, wining all six of
his games. Tom Drueding, Marvin Birnbaum, and relative newcomer/shark
Steve Worrell finished in the other top spots. The semi-final
game between Drueding (AL bid of 2) and Worrell saw trade-off
defeats of Turkey and France but an eventual concession by Steve
to Tom's combined eastern armies of RU, SE, IT, BR that finished
off the AH. Despite the accepted use of the Defend the Rhine
strategy, Steve had success in several of his games with a strong
"Blitz the French" attritional strategy.
In the semi-final game between Birnbaum (AL bid of 3) and
Hassard, Rob's CP also opened with a strong Western attack, eventually
forming a line from Bar-le Duc up to Sedan/Aachen. Although Italy
was a quite front, there was much action in the Near East and
in Russia. Rob's CP forces took Basra and were able to hold the
line in the East to Marvin's expert play, garnering a CP win
with VPs in the16 range after bid.
Hassard (AL bid of 2) fought an exhausting ten-hour finals
match against Drueding. Italy was a decisive theater with Tom
marching four German and three AH armies into the boot. Despite
the Allied reserves rushed to Italy, the country was soundly
defeated except for a sole flipped Italian corps. This corps
in exile managed to fulfill five IT MOs during the rest of the
game.
Following this, Rob began a heavy attrition strategy against
Tom's GE units, attacking them wherever and whenever possible.
Tom was able to secure both Baku and Basra on the Near East front
while also eventually playing Fall of the Tsar. Even with the
constraints of that card, Rob's Russians were able to shift their
front from North to South and blitz the AH, taking Budapest and
Vienna on Turn 19. The finals match literally came down to final
rolls with failed CP attacks on Budapest and Nancy (with Peace
Offensive) for a final bid-modified VP of 11. (Draws were AL
wins in the final rounds)
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