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Stefan Mecay holds off the charge
from 2006 runner-up Chris Byrd in the semis. |
Eric Brosius and Tom Drueding observe
as newcomer Rick Byrens goes up against jim Falling in semi-final
action. |
The
Opening Guns ...
An interesting observation is that the game continues to evolve.
For a while it seemed like the AP was winning in the elimination
rounds but that seems to have been reversed with the Final going
to the CP rather than the AP. Attendance was down significantly
with the start date changed from Monday morning to Sunday afternoon.
So next year it will probably be started Monday morning again.
The following Final report is courtesy of Stefan Mecay:
I had a wild Final with Jim Falling. I was the CP as he had
bid 3 for the allies. I started with GOA, but I ended up retreating
to the Rhein early and had an anxious moment when I failed my
trench roll in Frankfurt and he was able to hit me at 9a vs 9a,
but lucked out and survived his 13 in 36 chance to break into
the Rhein. I then got my trench and was able to trench all three
Rhein spots stabilizing the east.
Jim next switched to a heavy Near East strategy. He got the
Caucasus on Turn 4 or 5 and hit Erzerum, but I got my 50-50 flip
hit to stabilize that front. MEF came out and was blocked with
three Turkish corps. I sent a German Army, with a Sud Army and
a total of four German corps to take care of the Serbs and he
countered with Salonika which brought in threeBRc and a couple
of Italian Armies.
Things got really heated in the Balkans when the French Orient
appeared around Turn 8 or 9. I ended up SRing two more German
armies down to the Balkans and the entire Italian army came across
to help while a few French were able to guard the north. At one
point the FR Orient was only two squares away from Constantinople!
Fortunately, I lucked out and got my first trench roll with my
Turkish Army and even more fortunately his Allenby sequence was
messed up with Sinai Pipeline being buried on the bottom of the
deck but Allenby coming out in the first TW hand or Turkey could
have easily collapsed there.
With the extra German Amies and lots of corps, I was starting
to stabilize the Balkans when Romania appeared and some Russian
Armies came screaming down to help. I was able to send more AH
armies to help, and eventually stabilize a battle of Greek/Italian/French/British/Serb/Romanian/Russian/Montenegran
alliance vs a German/AH/Bulgarian/Turkish alliance. It was definitely
the most interesting set-up I think I've ever seen down there,
LOL. Eventually after much effort and back and forth battles,
I was able to stabilize and eventually destroy most of the Russian
Army as well as successfully blitz Egypt during one turn where
I had two 5's, three 4's, and a couple of 2's. The Allies were
able to do a great last push in the west, narrowly missing several
forcing retreats by one spot on the dice and knocking out a couple
of German armies, but on Turn 14, I was able to successfully
play Lloyd George on a BR MO turn for another point and a breather
to rebuild the west wall defenses. At this point, with only four
RUS armies left and the CP set up to push everywhere in the east
and the French Orient bottled up in Greece, Jim saw the handwriting
on the wall and surrendered.
I thought Jim played a magnificent game and came extremely
close to winning the battle in the Near East which would have
given him the win. He did a great job of passing up early events
like FR/IT/BR armies, etc, to keep the pressure up in the NE.
Change a couple of die rolls and/or if the Allenby sequence came
out better, he had a great chance to knock me out. I thought
it was an extremely well played Final and a lot of fun, Jim is
a great guy and a lot of fun to play against.
I'd also like to give kudos to my friend Chris Byrd whom I
played in the semi's. He outplayed me in the Near East by using
MEF a couple of times to eventually set up an attack with three
BRc vs 1 BUc with Hurricanes for a 5c+1 vs 2c. If he gets anything
but a 1 or I get a 1, he wins the game right there, but fortune
smiled on me and I totally lucked out making the one in seven
chance to survive. The little Bulgarian that could I guess.
Paths of Glory PBeM Results:
PATHS OF GLORY CHAMPION: Tom Drueding was the last man standing
in a field of 64 competitors in BPA's third POG PBeM tournament.
135 games were logged in all, before Tom defeated the defending
champion Stephan Valkyser of Germany to claim the championship
and top laurels. Past champ Stefan Mecay of TX finished third,
followed by Peter Reese (VA), Chris Byrd (CT) and Holger Janssen
(Germany) respectively.
Paths of Glory
20 meat and potato wargamers, including four former PoG WBC/WAM
champions, participated in the cornerstone WAM tourney. At the
end of the 2008 PoG-a-thon, one former champion was left standing
clutching the gold.
The usual mulligan round started at mid day on Thursday, with
four games providing participants with first round byes. On Friday
morning, we also continued a WAM tradition, matching up former
PoG champs against one another in the first round: resulting in
Drueding (AP) defeating Dockter and Byrd (CP) defeating Birnbaum
(AP). Finally, we allowed players that prefer Barbarossa to
Berlin instead of Paths of Glory to have at it; resulting
in one epic match between Austin and Brooks going all 18 turns
and being decided on the final die roll of the final card play.
Saturday morning began with semi-final rounds between Byrd
and Hickok and Drueding and Gutermuth. While the Byrd-Hickok game
ended relatively quickly, Guternmuth (AP) took Drueding’s Defend
the Rhine (CP) to the end game with a late threat from an assortment
of angry Italians, disgruntled Serbs and opportunistic French
Orient forces. That set the stage for a Final involving Chris
Byrd (CP) and Tom Drueding (AP bid 2).
The Guns of August event opened the Final. The early game went
very fast as each side played mostly event cards. The AP was able
to prepare for Italy by sending two French Armies to the Italian
border. The CP fortified the Rhine and started moving an Army
to Italy. When Italy came in a British Army was SRed down to Venice
and the French Armies moved to Bologna the next impulse. Both
the British and French were able to entrench on the first roll,
effectively ending the CP aspirations for Italy.
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Chris Byrd (left) battles Tom Drueding
(right)
in the POG Final. |
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Ken
Gutermuth (right) took Tom Drueding
to the final turn. |
In the Near East the MEF landed at MEF 4 and Yudenitch came
in late. Both arrivals were quickly countered by large stacks
of Turks and Bulgars. The Caucasus made one attempt to breakout
and was flipped. In the end it was nothing more than a distraction.
The AP did not get the Sinai off till very late. The Turk armies
arrived quickly and wiped out the MEF and made a move for Cairo
before Allenby arrived but were unable to break out of the Sinai.
Allenby eventually arrived and was threatening Jerusalem by Turn
17.
With Italy locked and the Rhine fortified the CP started the
march on Russia to Grodno on Turn 10. The Russians stopped the
German right at Grodno and were able to dig a trench (eventually
level 2). Grodno became the Verdun of the East with a trench,
a fort and several German attacks (unable to break through). The
Russians were able to funnel replacements continuously. It was
not until the Austrians and three German Armies moved towards
Dubno were they able to get through. Even that it was slow going
against several Russians.The CP conceded on Turn 17; the only
place the CP had to get VPs was Russia and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
was looking very unlikely. The progress in Russia was just too
slow, the weather was turning too cold and the trenches were just
too deep.
Participants
- Scott Moll
- Ken Gutermuth
- Robert Heinzmann
- Mark Popofsky
- Marvin Birnbuam
- Chris Byrd
- Randall McInnis
- Stever Brooks
- Melvin Casselberry
- Michael Mitchell
- Tim Hall
- Jon Hasay
- Doug Austin
- Henry Russell
- Charlie Hickok
- Seth Gunar
- Jason Roach
- Tom Drueding
- David Dockter
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