Welsh Open 2015 AAR

Hello All

Last weekend was the Welsh Open, if you have listened to the podcast you will know this is one of our favourite events of the year. This year was 1675pts LW. I was using the 7th Armored with Patton (yes I saw that roll of the eyes!).

 I was planning on doing a detailed run down of my games but I got the podcast edited surprisingly quickly and so I didn't see the point of going into too much detail here.
I started off vs Simon who had Hungarian armour. We played Counter Attack and as I auto attacked I was the attacker. The game was over before it really started and I was able to kill both his artillery platoons and his ambush for little lose to myself. Even my M8 Scouts did well killing the Hungarian Special character. 6-1 to me.

Game Two was against Nobby who runs the excellent Corrivalry tournament. He had also just beaten Steve Charltons 7th Armored in round one! We were playing Fighting Withdrawal, I again attacked and I sent everything to the right side. I lost both my recon platoons early in the game but I was able to deal with his ambushing tigers thanks to a double one for the saves! A lucky assault forced the platoon on the objective to run off and that was game. 4-3 to me.

Game Three saw the start of a of games with the theme being Patton and co's 1945 push into East Germany against the Soviets! I was playing Paul Stovel and his Stelkovy Horde, the mission was Free For All and it seemed from the start it might turn into a 3-3 draw. I managed to kill a platoon of SU-122's very early on, but lost both my recon platoons. Almost two hours later I finally managed to kill Paul's Artillery giving me my second point and thats how the game finished. 3-3 draw.

Day two saw me continue the US vs Soviets 1945 theme vs Ian Crosby's Lend Lease Tank Battalion. The mission was Breakthrough and I lost the dice off and had to defend! I deployed both main platoons on the table and sat back incase Ian tried to infiltrate and get side shots on turn one. I spent most of the game hiding from some SU-100's and picking off what I could. Ian's firepower started to tell and I was losing a tank or two a turn. I got to the objectives just in time and I was trying to break Ian who only had 5 platoons, when time was called. 6-1 to me, but I did not deserve a 6-1 win. I was hanging on by my figure nails and only had 2 Jumbos and a bailed out M4A3 Sherman near the objective.

The last game was against a regular opponent in the form of Robin Spence and his Guards Tankovy. Going into the game we were 3rd and 4th and while quite far from the top two a good win for either of us would make sure of 3rd. The mission was surrounded and once Robin had spread out his two T-34/85 platoons I went for one objective with tanks from both sides (this way I figured all the shots would be against rear armour). The first turn went badly and Robin managed to wipe out a platoon of Shermans! I fought on and killed a company of T-34/85's and a turn later the SU-100 platoon. The game then came down to a fight between 8 T-34/85's and a platoon of Shermans. Robin did a good job of picking off my support platoons and a bad shooting phase from me only needing to kill one T-34/85 to win the game and failing and Robin finsihing off my armoured mortars broke my army. 4-3 to Robin.

Overall I finished 10th out of 56 which wasn't too bad. Three wins, a draw and a 4-3 lose was a pretty good return in my opinion. I'm thinking of taking the 7th Armored to Art of War Too, but I might swap back to British Infantry to complete one of my new years resolutions.

As for the Welsh Open it was a great event. The new Venue is amazing and is clearly the best venue I have ever been too. We might even have to move my tournements to it in the future! The tournament itself was run well which after the rocky couple of weeks leading up to it was quite an achievement. I would recommend the Welsh Open and Firestorm games to any gamer. The Welsh Open is 1500pts MW next year and I might skip a year as it's always the same weekend as Tank Fest at Bovington and as MW is my least favourite period (and with baby number two on the way I need to reduce my tournaments next year) it seems a good year to miss it. But I will definetly be going to 2017 which should be EW.

My photo dump.

Adam's photos from the weekend.

After one round Laurance was 1st, Adam was 2nd and I was joint 3rd for a
Bournemouth 1,2,3.



Thanks for reading and until next time

Ben