Toby Pilling
Member
A week has passed and I’ve had time to compose my thoughts, so decided to write up a bit of a report on the first Bounding First Fire tournament that was recently held in Blackpool.
Let me say at the outset that I thought it was superb: Martin and Simon were excellent hosts and there were surprisingly few hiccups, given this was their first experience of tournament organisation.
What made the tournament unique in my eyes, was that each of the five rounds featured a brand new, unpublished scenario from Bounding Fire Productions. Though one could bid for a side, the balance on offer was minimal (upgrading a 7-0 leader to an 8-0, for example), so one often ended up pretty much dicing for sides – only once did my opponent and I each bid for different sides, the rest of the time was a dice-off (two I won, two I lost).
Of course, this means that one is pretty much at the mercy of BFP and the tournament directors (who also tested them in advance) to provide balanced fare, which thankfully they excelled at.
The other unusual thing about the tournament was that it had a sort of World Cup type organisation, in that players had to qualify from groups in order to progress to the semi-final stage. Unlike the World Cup though, the groups weren’t seeded, so there was a certain inevitability about proceedings when Mark Blackmore and I were not only drawn in the same ‘group of death’, but were scheduled to play in the first round, thus pretty much knocking one of us out straight away. As we were the two clear favourites in the whole tournament, this was somewhat odd - in the future I suppose groups could be seeded after all, if it was deemed desirable to do so.
Anyway, as to be expected, my first game was indeed the hardest test of skill, as Mark is a great, aggressive player who can really press the attack, especially when he has elite infantry, scornful of the risks he takes with their cardboard lives. As no-one else has yet seen the scenarios we played at the tournament, it seems pointless to describe the action in detail – it was an infantry-only affair where I was defending with Norwegians against Gebirgsjäger. I ended up hunkering down in a factory and Mark needed to roll a 7 or less to win the scenario in the last close combat – he rolled an 8.
Interestingly, though the first scenario was a fairly ‘standard’ one, the next three were all very unusual, with multiple defensive options and often a lack of skulking possibilities. I defended in two of these and attacked in one and found them very much brain teasers – one featuring Italian defenders had all of us constructing completely different plans. Suffice to say that, though there was the odd scare, I progressed to the final where I met David Blackwood and we played a 1940 scenario called ‘Senagalese in Souain’, which was depicted in diorama form on the tournament trophy – a brilliant idea. This is a cracking scenario that I think might feature in future tournaments, and has a German combined arms force attacking a French reinforced company in a village. We both wanted the attackers and I won the roll-off, so unleashed a bit of a Blitzkrieg which steamrollered through the gallant Poilus, ending their resistance around turn 4 (of 7). Both main prizes were valuable modules and I picked up Objective Schmidt, which I was very pleased with.
The great thing about this tournament is that one cannot prepare for it – each round, one is presented with a new and novel tactical situation to examine, bid for sides and begin playing, completely from scratch. It requires a different skill set from traditional tournaments and truly tests a player’s abilities, pushing them out of their comfort zone.
Also, those with constricted spare time in real life don’t have to worry about competing at a disadvantage because they weren’t able to try some scenarios on the tournament list in advance - one can pretty much just turn up and play. I just hope Martin and Simon can maintain the format and get more excellent scenarios from BFP in the future.
So, I can win a tournament without preparing in advance. Who knew, eh?
Let me say at the outset that I thought it was superb: Martin and Simon were excellent hosts and there were surprisingly few hiccups, given this was their first experience of tournament organisation.
What made the tournament unique in my eyes, was that each of the five rounds featured a brand new, unpublished scenario from Bounding Fire Productions. Though one could bid for a side, the balance on offer was minimal (upgrading a 7-0 leader to an 8-0, for example), so one often ended up pretty much dicing for sides – only once did my opponent and I each bid for different sides, the rest of the time was a dice-off (two I won, two I lost).
Of course, this means that one is pretty much at the mercy of BFP and the tournament directors (who also tested them in advance) to provide balanced fare, which thankfully they excelled at.
The other unusual thing about the tournament was that it had a sort of World Cup type organisation, in that players had to qualify from groups in order to progress to the semi-final stage. Unlike the World Cup though, the groups weren’t seeded, so there was a certain inevitability about proceedings when Mark Blackmore and I were not only drawn in the same ‘group of death’, but were scheduled to play in the first round, thus pretty much knocking one of us out straight away. As we were the two clear favourites in the whole tournament, this was somewhat odd - in the future I suppose groups could be seeded after all, if it was deemed desirable to do so.
Anyway, as to be expected, my first game was indeed the hardest test of skill, as Mark is a great, aggressive player who can really press the attack, especially when he has elite infantry, scornful of the risks he takes with their cardboard lives. As no-one else has yet seen the scenarios we played at the tournament, it seems pointless to describe the action in detail – it was an infantry-only affair where I was defending with Norwegians against Gebirgsjäger. I ended up hunkering down in a factory and Mark needed to roll a 7 or less to win the scenario in the last close combat – he rolled an 8.
Interestingly, though the first scenario was a fairly ‘standard’ one, the next three were all very unusual, with multiple defensive options and often a lack of skulking possibilities. I defended in two of these and attacked in one and found them very much brain teasers – one featuring Italian defenders had all of us constructing completely different plans. Suffice to say that, though there was the odd scare, I progressed to the final where I met David Blackwood and we played a 1940 scenario called ‘Senagalese in Souain’, which was depicted in diorama form on the tournament trophy – a brilliant idea. This is a cracking scenario that I think might feature in future tournaments, and has a German combined arms force attacking a French reinforced company in a village. We both wanted the attackers and I won the roll-off, so unleashed a bit of a Blitzkrieg which steamrollered through the gallant Poilus, ending their resistance around turn 4 (of 7). Both main prizes were valuable modules and I picked up Objective Schmidt, which I was very pleased with.
The great thing about this tournament is that one cannot prepare for it – each round, one is presented with a new and novel tactical situation to examine, bid for sides and begin playing, completely from scratch. It requires a different skill set from traditional tournaments and truly tests a player’s abilities, pushing them out of their comfort zone.
Also, those with constricted spare time in real life don’t have to worry about competing at a disadvantage because they weren’t able to try some scenarios on the tournament list in advance - one can pretty much just turn up and play. I just hope Martin and Simon can maintain the format and get more excellent scenarios from BFP in the future.
So, I can win a tournament without preparing in advance. Who knew, eh?
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