Toby Pilling
Member
I had a great time at the Bounding First Fire tournament in Blackpool last weekend, culminating in my reaching the final, where I just lost out to Ian Morris. I thought I'd pen a few lines regarding that final game and give some general thoughts on the tournament itself.
The unusual aspect about the whole tournament, its 'unique selling point', as it were, is that it requires no preparation in advance as all the scenarios are unpublished and have gone through many rounds of playtesting already. Unfortunately, for the first time this year, I came across players who were part of the playtest team of BFF, so was most surprised when in the first round my opponent disclosed that he'd already played earlier drafts of the scenario we were about to play - half a dozen times! He was gracious enough to allow me to choose my side and we had a good game, but I must admit that I found this a development a little disquieting, although I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it.
What I also observed was that all the scenarios (though not the final one) appeared to my eyes to favour a skilled defender, though they might appear balanced at average levels of play. Perhaps this observation influenced my choice of sides in the final round, which was a PTO scenario called 'Aggressive Response' and featured a Japanese force of second line quality attempting to overcome defending Red Chinese partisans. The Japanese could enter on three different mapboard edges, which I find a great advantage when attacking, but I chose the Red Chinese because I could see a decent defensive strategy for them - my opponent chose the Japanese, so we both got what we wanted.
The funny thing was that, after I set up and walked around the venue looking at the deployments of my fellow Chinese players, I could see that my own strategy appeared unique - every other player had stretched out their forces across the board, whereas mine concentrated the defenders around the jungle mass. I feared for the chances of my Sino brothers-in-arms, for I worried that they would simply be overwhelmed and surrounded in short order - a prophecy that came all too true, as it turned out.
Anyway, my own game started badly as the Japanese advanced blithely into my stealthy defenders but I could not get an ambush for love nor money. I did like the way Ian used his leaders aggressively to benefit from their stealthy status but even so, I should have been doing far better ambush-wise. This provoked a mini-counterattack on my part as I judged that I could take advantage of a numerical imbalance and some concealment to take out some of his vulnerable units - alas, my dismal rolls for ambush continued and I must admit, dear reader, that I did whine a bit.
As an aside, I thought I should mention here my general loathing of any dice that have alternative symbols to a simple 'one' dot on them. Whether it's a roundel, a star or a rising sun, my brain takes a nano-second longer to process the result and the irregularity of the symbol also causes me to notice it more. This means that I have the annoying feeling that such dice roll a one more often that normal dice, even if they are otherwise machine-tooled precision dice. Perhaps part of my antipathy towards them rubbed off on me from the great Gary Trezza, who I seem to recall despised all such dice and actually banned them from his tournament when he ran Albany. Anyway, be that as it may, Ian was using some of those dice and when I mentioned my hatred of them, he did straight away offer to use his other, normal dice - if they'd been precision dice, I would probably have taken him up on the offer. As it stood, I simply asked him not to use the dice with symbols when rolling for ambush - and he still rolled lower than me!
Getting back to my game, my defense was getting chewed up, though at some cost to the Japanese. Happily, one part of my counterattack did work - my last remaining dare-death squad, appropriately. They went on a rampage and led the Japanese on a merry chase across the board to stymie the swathe of carnage they were causing. Neither of us played perfect games - Ian missed out when he could have wholly encircled my remaining strong stack and I mistakenly revealed a concealed unit late on. Regardless, on his last advance phase I had the odds in my favour, but the damnable ambush rolls let me down again and he won. A great game though, hard fought - he'd lost ten of his fourteen squads by game end (I calculated my heroic dare-death squad had eliminated, through fire and hand-to-hand, 3 squads, a crew and a leader.) I look forward to playing Ian again some time.
So there you have it. My only feedback would be that the Saturday afternoon/evening scenario was, I feel, a little too ambitious in rules challenges and size to provide an easily completable experience - most games were abandoned early. Many thanks to the organisers, Martin and Simon, though, as my feelings towards the tournament remain extremely positive - I truly believe it proffers some unique challenges to ASL gamers, that more top players from abroad ought to visit to sample.
The unusual aspect about the whole tournament, its 'unique selling point', as it were, is that it requires no preparation in advance as all the scenarios are unpublished and have gone through many rounds of playtesting already. Unfortunately, for the first time this year, I came across players who were part of the playtest team of BFF, so was most surprised when in the first round my opponent disclosed that he'd already played earlier drafts of the scenario we were about to play - half a dozen times! He was gracious enough to allow me to choose my side and we had a good game, but I must admit that I found this a development a little disquieting, although I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it.
What I also observed was that all the scenarios (though not the final one) appeared to my eyes to favour a skilled defender, though they might appear balanced at average levels of play. Perhaps this observation influenced my choice of sides in the final round, which was a PTO scenario called 'Aggressive Response' and featured a Japanese force of second line quality attempting to overcome defending Red Chinese partisans. The Japanese could enter on three different mapboard edges, which I find a great advantage when attacking, but I chose the Red Chinese because I could see a decent defensive strategy for them - my opponent chose the Japanese, so we both got what we wanted.
The funny thing was that, after I set up and walked around the venue looking at the deployments of my fellow Chinese players, I could see that my own strategy appeared unique - every other player had stretched out their forces across the board, whereas mine concentrated the defenders around the jungle mass. I feared for the chances of my Sino brothers-in-arms, for I worried that they would simply be overwhelmed and surrounded in short order - a prophecy that came all too true, as it turned out.
Anyway, my own game started badly as the Japanese advanced blithely into my stealthy defenders but I could not get an ambush for love nor money. I did like the way Ian used his leaders aggressively to benefit from their stealthy status but even so, I should have been doing far better ambush-wise. This provoked a mini-counterattack on my part as I judged that I could take advantage of a numerical imbalance and some concealment to take out some of his vulnerable units - alas, my dismal rolls for ambush continued and I must admit, dear reader, that I did whine a bit.
As an aside, I thought I should mention here my general loathing of any dice that have alternative symbols to a simple 'one' dot on them. Whether it's a roundel, a star or a rising sun, my brain takes a nano-second longer to process the result and the irregularity of the symbol also causes me to notice it more. This means that I have the annoying feeling that such dice roll a one more often that normal dice, even if they are otherwise machine-tooled precision dice. Perhaps part of my antipathy towards them rubbed off on me from the great Gary Trezza, who I seem to recall despised all such dice and actually banned them from his tournament when he ran Albany. Anyway, be that as it may, Ian was using some of those dice and when I mentioned my hatred of them, he did straight away offer to use his other, normal dice - if they'd been precision dice, I would probably have taken him up on the offer. As it stood, I simply asked him not to use the dice with symbols when rolling for ambush - and he still rolled lower than me!
Getting back to my game, my defense was getting chewed up, though at some cost to the Japanese. Happily, one part of my counterattack did work - my last remaining dare-death squad, appropriately. They went on a rampage and led the Japanese on a merry chase across the board to stymie the swathe of carnage they were causing. Neither of us played perfect games - Ian missed out when he could have wholly encircled my remaining strong stack and I mistakenly revealed a concealed unit late on. Regardless, on his last advance phase I had the odds in my favour, but the damnable ambush rolls let me down again and he won. A great game though, hard fought - he'd lost ten of his fourteen squads by game end (I calculated my heroic dare-death squad had eliminated, through fire and hand-to-hand, 3 squads, a crew and a leader.) I look forward to playing Ian again some time.
So there you have it. My only feedback would be that the Saturday afternoon/evening scenario was, I feel, a little too ambitious in rules challenges and size to provide an easily completable experience - most games were abandoned early. Many thanks to the organisers, Martin and Simon, though, as my feelings towards the tournament remain extremely positive - I truly believe it proffers some unique challenges to ASL gamers, that more top players from abroad ought to visit to sample.
