Chicago Open 2008
AAR – Chicago Open – 2008
Just got back from the 2008 Chicago Open. I drove over with Ben and Mark again this year. I blogged the AAR from last year on an earlier page so I won’t repeat the description of the Open or how the scoring works; you can check out my earlier blog for that. This one will focus just on the games themselves.
Friday April 04 – Round One & Two
I check in with the tourney director David Goldman when I arrive and then check the seeding for the first round. This is my third time at the Open. In 2006 I was seeded 64th out of 66 and ended up in 37th place. Last year I was seeded 44th out of 56 and ended up in the same standing; 37th. Apparently that is a clue for the tourney director as he seeds me 37th out of 52 this year. Well, slowly moving up and with the higher seeding I have the potential to play stronger players any wins I get should be worth more points.
In the first round I’m matched up against Mike Stubits – a local from the Chicago area. I’ve never played him before and don’t know anything about him. He seems (and will turn out to be) a real nice guy and I enjoy the game. We pick Elephants Unleashed (FrF23) and roll for sides. In this 1943 scenario my defending Russians have to prevent a fairly hefty German force (including 3 PzJg Tigers and supporting Pz III’s and a Pz IV) from exiting units off the far edge of the map or controlling a set of buildings in the Russian set-up area. While my on-board defenders are fairly weak (essentially four squads with some defending stuff) I get a good body of reinforcements in the form of two SU-152 tank destroyers and 5 late model T-34/76’s with some engineers. Briefly, the first two turns go well for Mike. His forces waltz through some minefields in touched – I get worried as I really don’t delay him much. But then after I get my armor on I take out a Jg Tiger with a 152, he Immobilizes and second one on a start-up DR, and the third one malf’s its’ main gun leaving it defense-less. Meanwhile a T-34 takes out a Pz III and a thrown DC from an engineer squad takes out the Pz IV. The second Pz III bogs itself on some wire and is soon targeted by two T-34’s just as he unbogs – but uses too many MP to be able to stop and gets caught in-motion. By the end of turn 3 Mike realizes he isn’t going to achieve either victory condition and gracefully resigns. My winning the armor battle has won me the scenario. Off to a good start. I’m 1-0 and will start the second round seeded in 19th but just as important for me – Mike will go on to win his next three scenarios so his wins count on my total point score. He’ll end the tourney in 32nd place with a 3 – 3 record and 33 points.
Round two finds me matched up with another 1-0 player, Dave McLee from Rockford, Ill. Another player who I don’t know and another very enjoyable person to play. We pick J27 – High Tide At Heiligenbeil. His Russians supported by four SU-76 assault guns have to gain control of a large building on map 45. In this 7 turn scenario, Dave elects to try a strong sweep along my left flank. Unfortunately for him, I had hidden the AA gun on that side. By turn three the crew has shrugged off several MC’s and brings his whole attack to a complete halt. This gives me time to displace my HMG and MMG over to that side and essentially pin almost his whole force against the board edge. Dave sees the writing on the wall and resigns at the end of turn three. He’ll end the tourney in 47th place with 11 points. With the second win and points from both Dave and Mike I move up to 7th (the highest I’ve been in the three years going to the Open) with 22 points. Last year I was 1-1 and holding the 22nd place after two rounds.
For me it is a great start to the tourney and with both scenarios finishing fairly quickly I get to turn in early and get some sleep. Can’t ask for anything better then that.
Saturday April 05 – Round Three, Four, and Five
Course, the problem with ending Friday in 7th is that I know I’ll be matched up against top caliber players. Wes Vaughn (Fayetteville, Arkansas) is my next match. I played Wes several years ago at ASLOK in the final round of a three round mini. Wes proceeded to enlighten me on how to use early war armor as he easily beat me. One of the few times I’ve learned fundamental concepts that changed how I approach the game by playing another player. Wes is always a tourney contender and I believe he has won a few tourneys. We pick Rostov Redemption (FrF11). The scenario starts off with a pretty good start for me. I take no losses and bloody his nose a couple of times – but I’m also having to pull back a bit faster then I want and I leave a couple squads too far out on my right flank to make it back into the building I’m defending. Regardless, I’m in decent shape by turn 5 (of a 7 turn scenario) with quite a few units and leaders in the building and in a decent position to pull off a win. But during the turn everything collapses at once. When I advance a concealed squad into an unconcealed half-squad next to the building – my hopefully ambush turns on me when I miss the ambush roll, miss the attack on him, and then his half squad eliminates my squad. On his next turn, his prep fire phase shatters my defenses – breaking every single unit in the building on a series of NMC/1MC checks followed by me rolling all 8’s or higher. We go into my turn 5 and when not a single unit rallies (and he will be able to keep every unit DM) I resign as there is no possible way for me to prevent him from moving more units into the building and eliminating my units by failure to rout – he already has one squad blocking the rear stairwell. At the time I was pretty happy with my play but upon reflection I did have three fundamental mistakes: 1. I should have been much more aware of protecting the stairwell hexes. Then broken units could rout up to the upper levels and he would have to dig them out. With only two turns left – he might not have been able to do that; 2. I should have placed the AT gun and crew HIP in one of the victory buildings. Steve Dennis pointed out that this is a no-brainer – but I guess I was over thinking the placement and didn’t see the forest through the trees. I think Steve is right on that finally; 3. I should have pulled back the two flanking squads a turn sooner. We moved in quickly to cut them off from the building. If they could have gotten there the extra two squads would have made a difference. A more subtle mistake was that I used the 5-2-7’s in the delaying screen in the beginning. I think I should have used the 4-4-7’s instead. I needed the 5-2-7’s in the building and not the 4-4-7’s that I had planned on. If it had gone down to some CC’s – the 5-2-7’s would have been in their best environment. But it is a dice game and everything did collapse at once so I take my first lose. Wes will go on to place 5th with a 5-2 record and 70 points. I do gain a point from Mike winning again (giving me more ‘strength of schedule’ points) so I’m at 23 points but drop to 11th as some other players move into the 3-0 category.
In round 4 I’m matched up with Larry Zoet from Grand Rapids. Funny, we travel all this way to play each other and we only live about an hour away back in Michigan. We’ve played a couple times. Last time we met was at Oktoberfest and I came out on top in a mini-tournament. We’re good friends and I enjoy playing and chatting with him. We pick RPT 18 Worker’s Settlement No. 8. Strange beginning. Larry’s first combat roll breaks his primary machine gun and his second roll immobilizes his only armor – an early model T-34. This scenario is too small to win with both those major pieces out of play on the first turn (and the T-34 is gone for the game now) so Larry simply resigns. I don’t really know what to make of it. It is a tourney and these things happen – but we really didn’t play and I don’t want to take a win I didn’t at least get a chance to make a dice roll in. So I offer to just simply play a mulligan and start all over. Weird thing is, on the restart he then stalls the T-34 (almost immobilizing it again). Anyway, his attack (held up a bit by the T-34 stalling) runs into what turns into a pretty strong wall of defense. I get good rolls, he doesn’t get the breaks and by turn 4 it is pretty clear he isn’t going to penetrate through my defenses enough to win. We play it through to pretty much the end but the last few turns were just for fun. I think the scenario is tough on the Russians (Larry’s side) and on top of that I had strong die rolls through out the scenario. I immobilized the T-34 with street-fighting and generated two heroes and a fairly small scenario. Tough break for Larry as he had gotten off to a great start in the tourney. Larry goes on to pick up two more wins and finishes 4-3 with 50 points – exactly 1 point and 1 place behind me at 15th. I move up to 8th place with 36 points with a 3–1 record. Last year I was in 20th after the fourth round. What a difference a win and stronger schedule makes.
Round 5. Well of course back up in 8th means I’m back up with the big guns again. No exception this time. Jason Eickmann (Indianapolis, IN) – always a strong contender and experienced tourney player – is my next match. We square off with The Prelude To Spring – I’m the attacking Russians. I play well. I get through the first several turns with all my armor intact and his armor pinned behind some woods. I’m in good shape to make a rush for the exit VP with all 5 of my tanks (I only need to get three off if I have at least 1 squad riding or the armor leader in one of the tanks). But then fate steps in. His gun crew rallies and hauls but across several hexes of open ground (passing all the checks from three -2 shots). Slides up adjacent to my T-34 with the leader in it – and proceeds to calmly find a panzerfaust and fires a way. Scratch my armor leader option and one fast tank. Ratz… Well, I still have 4 tanks – two with riders. I pull over in front of his PzIV’s with my SU-100 and two JS-II’s. He doesn’t have great shots at me (shooting through a couple orchard hexes and being buttoned up) but his first ‘acquisition’ shot with APCR rolls a three (he needed a 4) and proceeds to toast the SU-100. OK…I’m still OK with a T-34 and two JS w/riders left. Ooops…not so fast. His other PzIV fires HE (he really can’t do much against the front of the JS) at the tank hoping for a hit and collateral damage on the riders and CD crew. Bang – critical hit. OK, well, the CH doesn’t actually hurt the tank and doesn’t inflict more damage to the PRC – but when I roll a 12 for the JS crew that recalls the JS. Leaving me with only two tanks left and no reasonable chance to make up the points from my remaining infantry. Wow – that changed tide quickly. Well, I’m pretty happy with my play and gave Jason a game. However, I really had no reason to have the CE crew on the JS – the benefit probably wasn’t worth the risk and I should have bounding fired the T-34 at the crew before starting with the hope of pinning or even breaking him. I guess I just didn’t think he would both find a PF and get a hit and I wanted to be able to fire in the advancing fire phase at his armor. Jason goes on to finish 12th with a 4-2 record and 52 points – 1 point ahead of me. I drop down to 15th with 37points and a 3-2 record. Game ends at a decent time so I get a drink in the hotel bar, chat with Jason and a couple other guys then turn in for the night.
One win and two losses for the day, but the two loses are both good games against great opponents and the third win ties me with my best record at the Open. I was 3-3 my first year going.
Sunday April 06 – Round Six
Ben, Mark and I decide to just play the morning round (6th) and then head home. Ben and Mark pair up to play buddy matches – but I don’t see a whole lot of value in it and I’d rather just play my normal pairing so I stay within the regular seeding match-up as I think it will be Pete Shelling.
When the adjusted pairings are posted I see I am matched up with Pete. Pete is both the ‘Grofaz slayer’ (having beaten Bob Bendis {the 2006 ASLOK Champ} twice now) and an incredible scenario designer. Oh – he is also quite a good player. I chat with him all the time at ASLOK and we play tested one of his Ponyri scenarios a couple years ago at ASLOK. I’m looking forward to this match.
He suggests AP18 – Village Of The Damned. I mention that I play tested this for Mark Pitcavage (the designer) in an early iteration of it – but that doesn’t bother him. We dice for sides and I get the Russians. He sets up his mixed force of Italians and Germans and we’re off. I know the Russian has to move quickly to cover a lot of ground against a fairly brittle Axis force so I take off running – making good guesses as to what are dummies and what are real units. I play a strong attacking game but am helped by things going my way. I just make my morale checks and he just misses his. I get into good positions early on and get a multitude of encircling shots. His units then break on NMC’s and 1MNC and I swipe in to capture them. By the end of the game I’ve captured about 4-5 squads and 2 leaders. It really simply goes my way and there isn’t much he can do about the dice. On his turn 4 my defensive fire breaks his last units on the board and them game is over. For me it’s a great victory – but a tough one for Pete as nothing he trieded to do paid off and everything I tried worked. Pete will finish 3-4 with 39 points and in 24th place. I get my 4th win, end up with 51 points and the final placing of 14th with a 4-2 record. Fantastic finish for me.
Last Thoughts
Well after a disappointing last year at Chicago this more then made up for it. I was hoping to simply get in the top half – maybe around 25th place or so. The 14th out of 52 was more then I expected. In addition I picked up some more ideas on how to play certain types of scenarios and feel pretty good that I’ll take away some ideas that will make me even more competitive in the future. That’s the benefit of getting to play opponents you don’t normally play and witness different styles of play that you don’t see in your area.
….course at 14th I’ll get seeded a lot higher then 37th next year so I’ll be right in the frying pan from the 1st round….
…but I’ll be there : )
CG
PS: Michigan was well represented. There were six of us there and everyone placed in the upper 22. The highest place was Jeff DeYoung from Grand Rapids who ended with a 4-3 record, but with 56 points to end up in 9th place. He only lost to the eventual 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers. The other achievement was Mark DeVries – who after losing his first two matches on Friday ended up winning one of the mini-tournament plaques by going 3-0 on Saturday.
Just got back from the 2008 Chicago Open. I drove over with Ben and Mark again this year. I blogged the AAR from last year on an earlier page so I won’t repeat the description of the Open or how the scoring works; you can check out my earlier blog for that. This one will focus just on the games themselves.
Friday April 04 – Round One & Two
I check in with the tourney director David Goldman when I arrive and then check the seeding for the first round. This is my third time at the Open. In 2006 I was seeded 64th out of 66 and ended up in 37th place. Last year I was seeded 44th out of 56 and ended up in the same standing; 37th. Apparently that is a clue for the tourney director as he seeds me 37th out of 52 this year. Well, slowly moving up and with the higher seeding I have the potential to play stronger players any wins I get should be worth more points.
In the first round I’m matched up against Mike Stubits – a local from the Chicago area. I’ve never played him before and don’t know anything about him. He seems (and will turn out to be) a real nice guy and I enjoy the game. We pick Elephants Unleashed (FrF23) and roll for sides. In this 1943 scenario my defending Russians have to prevent a fairly hefty German force (including 3 PzJg Tigers and supporting Pz III’s and a Pz IV) from exiting units off the far edge of the map or controlling a set of buildings in the Russian set-up area. While my on-board defenders are fairly weak (essentially four squads with some defending stuff) I get a good body of reinforcements in the form of two SU-152 tank destroyers and 5 late model T-34/76’s with some engineers. Briefly, the first two turns go well for Mike. His forces waltz through some minefields in touched – I get worried as I really don’t delay him much. But then after I get my armor on I take out a Jg Tiger with a 152, he Immobilizes and second one on a start-up DR, and the third one malf’s its’ main gun leaving it defense-less. Meanwhile a T-34 takes out a Pz III and a thrown DC from an engineer squad takes out the Pz IV. The second Pz III bogs itself on some wire and is soon targeted by two T-34’s just as he unbogs – but uses too many MP to be able to stop and gets caught in-motion. By the end of turn 3 Mike realizes he isn’t going to achieve either victory condition and gracefully resigns. My winning the armor battle has won me the scenario. Off to a good start. I’m 1-0 and will start the second round seeded in 19th but just as important for me – Mike will go on to win his next three scenarios so his wins count on my total point score. He’ll end the tourney in 32nd place with a 3 – 3 record and 33 points.
Round two finds me matched up with another 1-0 player, Dave McLee from Rockford, Ill. Another player who I don’t know and another very enjoyable person to play. We pick J27 – High Tide At Heiligenbeil. His Russians supported by four SU-76 assault guns have to gain control of a large building on map 45. In this 7 turn scenario, Dave elects to try a strong sweep along my left flank. Unfortunately for him, I had hidden the AA gun on that side. By turn three the crew has shrugged off several MC’s and brings his whole attack to a complete halt. This gives me time to displace my HMG and MMG over to that side and essentially pin almost his whole force against the board edge. Dave sees the writing on the wall and resigns at the end of turn three. He’ll end the tourney in 47th place with 11 points. With the second win and points from both Dave and Mike I move up to 7th (the highest I’ve been in the three years going to the Open) with 22 points. Last year I was 1-1 and holding the 22nd place after two rounds.
For me it is a great start to the tourney and with both scenarios finishing fairly quickly I get to turn in early and get some sleep. Can’t ask for anything better then that.
Saturday April 05 – Round Three, Four, and Five
Course, the problem with ending Friday in 7th is that I know I’ll be matched up against top caliber players. Wes Vaughn (Fayetteville, Arkansas) is my next match. I played Wes several years ago at ASLOK in the final round of a three round mini. Wes proceeded to enlighten me on how to use early war armor as he easily beat me. One of the few times I’ve learned fundamental concepts that changed how I approach the game by playing another player. Wes is always a tourney contender and I believe he has won a few tourneys. We pick Rostov Redemption (FrF11). The scenario starts off with a pretty good start for me. I take no losses and bloody his nose a couple of times – but I’m also having to pull back a bit faster then I want and I leave a couple squads too far out on my right flank to make it back into the building I’m defending. Regardless, I’m in decent shape by turn 5 (of a 7 turn scenario) with quite a few units and leaders in the building and in a decent position to pull off a win. But during the turn everything collapses at once. When I advance a concealed squad into an unconcealed half-squad next to the building – my hopefully ambush turns on me when I miss the ambush roll, miss the attack on him, and then his half squad eliminates my squad. On his next turn, his prep fire phase shatters my defenses – breaking every single unit in the building on a series of NMC/1MC checks followed by me rolling all 8’s or higher. We go into my turn 5 and when not a single unit rallies (and he will be able to keep every unit DM) I resign as there is no possible way for me to prevent him from moving more units into the building and eliminating my units by failure to rout – he already has one squad blocking the rear stairwell. At the time I was pretty happy with my play but upon reflection I did have three fundamental mistakes: 1. I should have been much more aware of protecting the stairwell hexes. Then broken units could rout up to the upper levels and he would have to dig them out. With only two turns left – he might not have been able to do that; 2. I should have placed the AT gun and crew HIP in one of the victory buildings. Steve Dennis pointed out that this is a no-brainer – but I guess I was over thinking the placement and didn’t see the forest through the trees. I think Steve is right on that finally; 3. I should have pulled back the two flanking squads a turn sooner. We moved in quickly to cut them off from the building. If they could have gotten there the extra two squads would have made a difference. A more subtle mistake was that I used the 5-2-7’s in the delaying screen in the beginning. I think I should have used the 4-4-7’s instead. I needed the 5-2-7’s in the building and not the 4-4-7’s that I had planned on. If it had gone down to some CC’s – the 5-2-7’s would have been in their best environment. But it is a dice game and everything did collapse at once so I take my first lose. Wes will go on to place 5th with a 5-2 record and 70 points. I do gain a point from Mike winning again (giving me more ‘strength of schedule’ points) so I’m at 23 points but drop to 11th as some other players move into the 3-0 category.
In round 4 I’m matched up with Larry Zoet from Grand Rapids. Funny, we travel all this way to play each other and we only live about an hour away back in Michigan. We’ve played a couple times. Last time we met was at Oktoberfest and I came out on top in a mini-tournament. We’re good friends and I enjoy playing and chatting with him. We pick RPT 18 Worker’s Settlement No. 8. Strange beginning. Larry’s first combat roll breaks his primary machine gun and his second roll immobilizes his only armor – an early model T-34. This scenario is too small to win with both those major pieces out of play on the first turn (and the T-34 is gone for the game now) so Larry simply resigns. I don’t really know what to make of it. It is a tourney and these things happen – but we really didn’t play and I don’t want to take a win I didn’t at least get a chance to make a dice roll in. So I offer to just simply play a mulligan and start all over. Weird thing is, on the restart he then stalls the T-34 (almost immobilizing it again). Anyway, his attack (held up a bit by the T-34 stalling) runs into what turns into a pretty strong wall of defense. I get good rolls, he doesn’t get the breaks and by turn 4 it is pretty clear he isn’t going to penetrate through my defenses enough to win. We play it through to pretty much the end but the last few turns were just for fun. I think the scenario is tough on the Russians (Larry’s side) and on top of that I had strong die rolls through out the scenario. I immobilized the T-34 with street-fighting and generated two heroes and a fairly small scenario. Tough break for Larry as he had gotten off to a great start in the tourney. Larry goes on to pick up two more wins and finishes 4-3 with 50 points – exactly 1 point and 1 place behind me at 15th. I move up to 8th place with 36 points with a 3–1 record. Last year I was in 20th after the fourth round. What a difference a win and stronger schedule makes.
Round 5. Well of course back up in 8th means I’m back up with the big guns again. No exception this time. Jason Eickmann (Indianapolis, IN) – always a strong contender and experienced tourney player – is my next match. We square off with The Prelude To Spring – I’m the attacking Russians. I play well. I get through the first several turns with all my armor intact and his armor pinned behind some woods. I’m in good shape to make a rush for the exit VP with all 5 of my tanks (I only need to get three off if I have at least 1 squad riding or the armor leader in one of the tanks). But then fate steps in. His gun crew rallies and hauls but across several hexes of open ground (passing all the checks from three -2 shots). Slides up adjacent to my T-34 with the leader in it – and proceeds to calmly find a panzerfaust and fires a way. Scratch my armor leader option and one fast tank. Ratz… Well, I still have 4 tanks – two with riders. I pull over in front of his PzIV’s with my SU-100 and two JS-II’s. He doesn’t have great shots at me (shooting through a couple orchard hexes and being buttoned up) but his first ‘acquisition’ shot with APCR rolls a three (he needed a 4) and proceeds to toast the SU-100. OK…I’m still OK with a T-34 and two JS w/riders left. Ooops…not so fast. His other PzIV fires HE (he really can’t do much against the front of the JS) at the tank hoping for a hit and collateral damage on the riders and CD crew. Bang – critical hit. OK, well, the CH doesn’t actually hurt the tank and doesn’t inflict more damage to the PRC – but when I roll a 12 for the JS crew that recalls the JS. Leaving me with only two tanks left and no reasonable chance to make up the points from my remaining infantry. Wow – that changed tide quickly. Well, I’m pretty happy with my play and gave Jason a game. However, I really had no reason to have the CE crew on the JS – the benefit probably wasn’t worth the risk and I should have bounding fired the T-34 at the crew before starting with the hope of pinning or even breaking him. I guess I just didn’t think he would both find a PF and get a hit and I wanted to be able to fire in the advancing fire phase at his armor. Jason goes on to finish 12th with a 4-2 record and 52 points – 1 point ahead of me. I drop down to 15th with 37points and a 3-2 record. Game ends at a decent time so I get a drink in the hotel bar, chat with Jason and a couple other guys then turn in for the night.
One win and two losses for the day, but the two loses are both good games against great opponents and the third win ties me with my best record at the Open. I was 3-3 my first year going.
Sunday April 06 – Round Six
Ben, Mark and I decide to just play the morning round (6th) and then head home. Ben and Mark pair up to play buddy matches – but I don’t see a whole lot of value in it and I’d rather just play my normal pairing so I stay within the regular seeding match-up as I think it will be Pete Shelling.
When the adjusted pairings are posted I see I am matched up with Pete. Pete is both the ‘Grofaz slayer’ (having beaten Bob Bendis {the 2006 ASLOK Champ} twice now) and an incredible scenario designer. Oh – he is also quite a good player. I chat with him all the time at ASLOK and we play tested one of his Ponyri scenarios a couple years ago at ASLOK. I’m looking forward to this match.
He suggests AP18 – Village Of The Damned. I mention that I play tested this for Mark Pitcavage (the designer) in an early iteration of it – but that doesn’t bother him. We dice for sides and I get the Russians. He sets up his mixed force of Italians and Germans and we’re off. I know the Russian has to move quickly to cover a lot of ground against a fairly brittle Axis force so I take off running – making good guesses as to what are dummies and what are real units. I play a strong attacking game but am helped by things going my way. I just make my morale checks and he just misses his. I get into good positions early on and get a multitude of encircling shots. His units then break on NMC’s and 1MNC and I swipe in to capture them. By the end of the game I’ve captured about 4-5 squads and 2 leaders. It really simply goes my way and there isn’t much he can do about the dice. On his turn 4 my defensive fire breaks his last units on the board and them game is over. For me it’s a great victory – but a tough one for Pete as nothing he trieded to do paid off and everything I tried worked. Pete will finish 3-4 with 39 points and in 24th place. I get my 4th win, end up with 51 points and the final placing of 14th with a 4-2 record. Fantastic finish for me.
Last Thoughts
Well after a disappointing last year at Chicago this more then made up for it. I was hoping to simply get in the top half – maybe around 25th place or so. The 14th out of 52 was more then I expected. In addition I picked up some more ideas on how to play certain types of scenarios and feel pretty good that I’ll take away some ideas that will make me even more competitive in the future. That’s the benefit of getting to play opponents you don’t normally play and witness different styles of play that you don’t see in your area.
….course at 14th I’ll get seeded a lot higher then 37th next year so I’ll be right in the frying pan from the 1st round….
…but I’ll be there : )
CG
PS: Michigan was well represented. There were six of us there and everyone placed in the upper 22. The highest place was Jeff DeYoung from Grand Rapids who ended with a 4-3 record, but with 56 points to end up in 9th place. He only lost to the eventual 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers. The other achievement was Mark DeVries – who after losing his first two matches on Friday ended up winning one of the mini-tournament plaques by going 3-0 on Saturday.
posted by asler @ 5:22 PM
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