That Which Does Not Kill You… - ETC 2015

Today we have a guest post from Bill Wilcox. He was part of Team U.S.A. for last weekends ETC in Prague. Bill brings us very in depth AAR of the tournament.  

Now that I’m back home, and slightly better rested (only just), I thought that I should do write up for the weekend.  For those that aren’t familiar with the event, this year’s ETC (European Team Championships) was held August 5-9 in Prague and is currently comprised of three gaming systems – 40K, WHFB, and, FoW.  For FoW, there are two events over 4 days, attended by players from all over the world.  This is truly a world championship event.  The singles tournament on Thursday was 68 players over 3 rounds.  The team event from Friday through Sunday was the largest FoW event ever held, with 180 players on 30 teams from 4 continents.  We had 28 national teams with two UN teams comprised of multinational players.

ETC Team Profiles - Team Scotland

Groundskeeper Willie: It won't last. Brothers and sisters are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots! Or Welshmen and Scots! Or Japanese and Scots! Or Scots and other Scots! Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!
As you must be aware by now the Tartan wearing, Whiskey drinking Scottish ETC team is making its way to Prague and Victory in the ETC. I thought that our readers here at Breakthrough Assault would appreciate an in depth view on our future FoW champion team.

Robin 'Too much spare time' Spence
Robin is team Scotland's fearless leader, he has more experience with different armies in FoW than any other human alive, able to take an army, sometime only play it once, analyse its strengths and weakness's before selling it on EBay. He is the brains behind team Scotland having worked out all the match ups, and already engaged in vicious psychological warfare with other teams to make them think he's a blithering idiot with no idea. In fact he is as cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University....

ETC Team Profiles - Team Northern Ireland

Guest post by Matt McVeigh 
After a good start, (14th in 2012) Team Northern Ireland have fallen upon hard times over the last two ETC’s, coming last in 2013 and in 2014 last but one. In 2015 a team of elite warriors has been selected to address this issue and to bring Team ‘Norn Iron’ back up the rankings (by one more spot at least hopefully!).

Team Captain – Jonny ‘Jonny 65’ Fisher

The ‘point collector’ of the team using an all-out attack tank list. Jonny will be looking for some good match ups – which is looking good since he is doing the pairings! A veteran of every ETC, Jonny is the first name on the team sheet and our best player. He’s tee-total though, which is a bit odd on this team, but then someone has to drive!

ETC Team Profiles - Team Wales

Guest post by Roger Whittam
Last year was Team Wales first time attending the ETC and surprisingly enough we managed to finish 9th overall with the best result of all the Commonwealth Nations. We were stunned and this year had a flood of offers for players for the team to pick from as a result. Even this became a nightmare as who you do and don’t take and not wanting to upset anybody. Still it was a matter of elimination and we came down to the final 6:

Infantry

Paul Frith – Red Banner Strelkovy.
Paul has the nickname “Digger” for a reason and really I should of had him in with an autodefend force but constraints of painting he opted for a solid Red Banner Strelkovy and trusting to the match up strategy to get him defending. It is true, I expect Paul to win the defensive mission, draw the fair fight games and panic in the mobile mission as he will actually have to move something!

Wins Expected 2 or 3

ETC Team Profiles - Team England

Special article by the most Special Lord C

Jez Evans (Captain)

Jez has been wargaming to a high standard for years getting to the top of DBM rankings. He enjoys wargaminng so much he has his own shop! But this is not his profession. His FoW achievements include being the UKs No.1 ranked player in the past, Currently No.3 (I think due to the site being down), at just about every event he enters Jez is in the top 3 players. He is the only other player to win the Welsh Open besides Steve Charlton, this year he shared this with Steve C. He is very consistant and one of his biggest strengths is the ability to compose a very difficult list to beat.

ETC List Discussion

So I'm currently going through all the ETC lists to try and find some kind of strategy/ edge that will help us plucky Scots on the day. Now I won't divulge our cunning plan but I thought i would look at some of the popular list types at this years event.

For those of you who have no idea about the ETC it involved teams of 6 representing their nation (or other nations depending on mercenaries etc...) against other nations. This year it's held in Prague (Czech Republic) each team has six players, it's EW 1550 and two players must be infantry, 2 mech and 2 tank - oh and you can't have two of the same nation in the same slot, so no two French tank companies, but you could have a French infantry, mech and tank list.