600-point FOW Scramble Tournament

Sunday I attended a 600-point Flames of War Scramble tournament at The Whiz Store in Westborough, MA. The tournament was run by Jim Huff and was well attended by mostly locals to the area and a few visitors from farther off, including myself. It was almost a two hour drive for me to get to the event, but I had a good time, and as a new player I was, almost without exception, welcomed and treated fairly by the more experienced players. The Whiz store has a fine dedicated gaming room in the back of the store and also stocks the full Flames of War product line, so I was able to pick up a few odds and ends for my Finnish army while I was there.

As a new player, I was soundly defeated in all of my games, losing 1-6, 1-6, 2-5, and 1-2 in my final partial game. In all but one of the games I was dominated to a level that didn't afford me much of an opportunity to reflect on what I could have done to win the game. In my 2-5 loss, I was actually able to recognize two mistakes that may have turned the game my way. At the end of the day I was also able to recognize some mistakes I made in formulating my force for this format tournament. At 600 points, any unit that isn't useful against ALL opponents has to go. Therefore the HMGs I took have to go. Also the 81mm mortars, if kept, need to be upgraded to 120mm so that at least they have a chance of taking out enemy armor. I did learn one valuable lesson, and that is if you don't move first, your troops will often find themselves fighting where you deployed them. I didn't think this was the case and repeatedly deployed in sub-optimal positions which cost me dearly. Deployment is quite possibly the most important 'move' of the game. At least it seemed that way to me.

Tournament director Jim Huff drew me as his first opponent and was a very gracious instructor during our first game, which was a real help starting me off with a good base of knowledge for the day. Jim ran a very organized and fun tournament that went off all day without a single 'hitch'. The only comment I was able to offer to Jim at the end of the day was that he didn't limit armies in which types of armor they could take, and that most 600-point tournaments I've read about on-line do seem to limit armor in one of two ways, either 1) no tanks with top armor of 2 or 2) no tanks, vehicles or guns with AT ratings over 11 and no tanks with front armor over 7.  With neither of these limitations in place almost all of the veteran players chose heavy armor forces. There were two forces with a Tiger tank as their primary attacking element. For the entire day I don't think either Tiger got killed a single time. At 600 points it's tough to have an answer for a Tiger, JS-II, etc. and not either have one yourself or have a force that's not very good against non-big tank forces. Even with that concern, I still had a great time despite being completely destroyed in every game.

Photos below are from my games. I apologize to the other players, but I was too overwhelmed just playing my games to take photos of other games. I was fortunate enough to play all four of my games on the beautiful tables set up by "mikespe2112" from the fownewengland Yahoo Group. Mike's tabletops were as well designed for gaming as they were beautiful.