600 Point FOW Tourney at Adler Hobby

Saturday I played in a small 600-point early war Flames of War tournament that is part of the New England regional FOW qualifier series. The series has many New England stores hosting a day of gaming at their store. Saturday was Adler Hobby's turn. I'm not much of a competitive gamer, but I thought I'd show up to support the store and the series. I played 600 points worth of my Australian kangaroo tanks. Not much of a 'tournament' list, but it's what I had available. There were four of us playing, myself and 3 visitors from other areas. My first opponent was Phil (shown above) playing Italian armor. Phil's nine M13/40 tanks made short work of my three M13/40 tanks and 5 M11/39 tanks and 3 Bren carriers.  Phil was the eventual tournament winner.

My second opponent was Mike playing French armor comprised of three Somua S-35 tanks and four Hotchkiss H-39 long gun tanks. The Soumua were nigh-impossible for my tanks to kill but I did manage to kill one and one Hotchkiss, but other than that Mike made easy work of my lighter tanks. It didn't help that by turn three nine of my 11 combat vehicles were bogged down. Yes I rolled 9 of 11 bog rolls of a '1' by turn 3. Phil was gracious about my bad luck and was the eventual winner of the sportsman award, which he deserved for listening to my complaints about bad dice for a whole game without showing any visible sign of irritation. I'm sure I wasn't very pleasant to be around although I did try to put on my best manners during the bad dice run.

My last game was against Temis (sorry for clipping your face in the photo!). Temis played British infantry with two platoons of 2 pounder AT guns, a platoon of A11 Matilda infantry tanks and a platoon of infantry. Since nothing I had could even scratch the paint on a Matilda I attempted to kill everything else in Temis' list. I managed to destroy the infantry platoon and one platoon of AT guns, but my assault on the final platoon of AT guns went horribly wrong with one of my final 2 tanks bogging to basically end the game with a loss.

All three visitors for the tournament were great guys to game with. They all had a MUCH firmer grasp on the rules than I did and were helpful and understanding in bringing me up to speed on when I didn't know the rules well enough. I would like to thank all of them for their great sportsmanship. I went 0-3 for the day, which is about what I expected from my 'fun to play' kangaroo tank list. Mostly I think I'm more suited to casual fun games than tournament games. I'm not sure I'll ever be the 'qualify for the nationals' type of guy.