So here it is the big one, the 2014 Bolt Action Welsh Open at Firestorm games. 2-Days, 22 players, 11 tables of awesomeness and one big bloody weekend battle!
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| 2015 For People Interested |
My journey began at 1pm on Friday, leaving Newcastle with a holdall packed with clothes, supplies and a fully painted army I began the road trip down to Bristol to my parents for the evening. What should've been a straight forward 5-hour drive soon became a hellish 6 and a half hour drive with numerous accidents and roadworks on the road determined to slow me down! So finally rocking in at 7.30pm at night I was greeted the best way with the puppy going absolutely crazy and then being told we're off out for tea to the local pub, result!
Anyway the next morning at a dully and rainy 6am I was up and onwards to Bristol Temple Meads train station for the early morning train to Cardiff Central station. Muggins here hadn't packed a jacket at all and the rain was in full flow. Thankfully when I arrived in Cardiff I managed to check into the Marriot at 9am rather than the advertised 3pm check-in time. Granted they only had 2 rooms spare and they were both next to the elevator but they were apart of the Executive Suite so I wasn't complaining one bit!
I then made my way onto Firestorm where I was greeted by a shop lined with every game system you could imagine. Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, Flames of War, Infinity, Warmachine, Bolt Action, Avatars of War, Perry Minatures, X-Wing, Magic, you name it they had it. I could've easily spent into the hundreds that weekend but somehow I left the weekend having spent absolutely nothing....what was wrong with me?
Venturing to the back of the shop was the gaming area, I instantly walked into a huge hall that was filled with amazing gaming tables, I've never seen so many tables in one place. Cardiff really is lucky to have this place bang in the city centre for all wargamers to use. I know if I lived down there, hell if I lived back in Bristol still, I'd be down there so frequently. The Welsh Open was held down the back where some of the lads were already forming. The tables were already set up and they looked absolutely amazing, props to all the guys who had helped making the tables as they had done a bang up job. They were all completely different and had their own unqiueness, there was one desert table which looked a little dissapointing compared to the others but overall they absolutely rocked.
Tea and coffee was supplied free of charge, being the tea-a-holic I am I definitely took this offer up, but then noticed the full blown bar at the back of the club. It didn't take long on the Saturday before the Budweiser took over the tea drinking, I think you can guess where my results were going when I was drinking at 11am in the morning....
We had a ice-breaker doubles armoured platoon game. Everyone randomly joined together with 2 Axis and 2 Allies players on either side and basically played you had to get your units off the opposite ground. I joined up with H from Southampton Strike Force with his Germans, Bob Emmerson yes the guy from Mad Bob Minatures with his French and a chap named Chris who had just moved across from Australia. As we all knew Japanese tanks are not a thing, you look at them and they normally blow up. Well not really this time! We basically turned this into a Maximum Attrition game and had a good laugh, me and H agreed on the parking lot technique basically boxing in the opponents units so they couldn't get off the board. Though they did get one unit off the board and won by 1 point. Oh and my mission for the weekend of blowing up a tank with a Suicide Tank guy was already achieved as I managed it in the very last turn! It was a good ice-breaker for everyone though having to get some extra Japanese tanks which I'll probably never use again was a bit of a pain.
First pairing for the tourne was up and I had Ian one of the other Southampton lads and his US Marines in Maximum Attrition on the absolutely amazing Pacific board. This was a list with 3, yes 3, flamethrowers! Oh and they were outflanking. Ian also had a Artillery Observer and Air Observer. The Air absolutely obliterated my right hand side especially being called in twice while the flamethrowers toasted my left hand side. Despite being destroyed I had a great time, my dice were awful, rolling 1s to hit and 6s for morale. It left Ian laughing when I rolled 8 dice needing 3s to hit and rolled 6 x 1s and 2 x 2s.... So yeah not the greatest start but it was the start of a reoccuring theme for the weekend.
Total Tournament Points - 0
Second game, after an amazing cooked meal of Chicken Curry and Rice from the cafe next door (included in the ticket price), was on the city board against Geoff and his British Paras on Demolition. I hated this list, it had so many quick jeeps and recce jeeps I just couldn't hit anything without it reversing out of the way. My two sniper teams had a snipe off with his team but failed to take it off the board before both teams were wiped out by the combined efforts of the Artillery observer and sniper team! I was trying to hold out for a draw until all of his outflanking units came in on the right, wiped out the squad defending the objective and then proceded to blow up the objective. Again it was a great game but all of those jeeps were frustrating to play against. It didn't help my one outflanking Vet squad lost their NCO to a precision shot from the Artillery Observers pistol, 6 to hit, 6 to Kill, 6 for Exceptional Damage on the NCO. You know when dice are coming up like that against you there is no chance!
Total Tournament Points - 0
This is where the day should've finished
however we found out a week before that the Cardiff half-marathon was taking place on the Sunday closing down alot of the roads in and out of the city. We all voted and decided to stay late on the Saturday for one more game and was drawn against Brian an American who lives in Ireland and came over with a couple of other lads early doors on the Saturday morning. He brought his Soviet Horde in a Hold Until Relieved mission where I had to hold a bridge for the game. This was another brutal game with Brian's Assault Engineer Squad flaming all the way up the board. Having the Body Armour meaning they were 6s to kill also helped as they stormed up flaming one squad, then another, then my sniper. Adding insult to injury the building caught fire and burnt down my officer who was barking orders from the back room to the surrounding areas! A couple of assaults and concentrated fire later and the remaining infantry squads were down and Brian was free to move his Soviets up to take the bridge. I did win one assault though so I won a tournament point for that! WOOOOO! Brian was a great opponent who like me was drinking most of the day, so we took it in turns throughout the game to buy the next round. Always good to play some Wargames while having a couple of beers at the same time.
Total Tournament Points - 1
Saturday evening saw us leaving Firestorm at about 9pm. Thankfully we could leave our armies and that there for the night so we didn't have the faff of carrying everything back to the hotel and back again. Brian, Tony and Ulick the Irish lads invited me out for the night so a quick trip to the hotel, shower and change I was back out for 10pm in a very vibrant nightlife of Cardiff looking for food, despite numerous attempts of restuarants that were just closing the glowing lights of the golden archers of McDonalds beckoned us in, before we found a pub for a couple of pints and good chat about football and wargames before we all went out separate ways to get some much needed sleep. Cheers to all three for adopting me for the night they're all great crack and if it wasn't for them I'd of spent the night in the hotel on my own probably going to bed pretty early.
Day 2, I was pretty confident I was sitting at the bottom of the table, one measily tournament point from three games and a hell of a lot of units lost in those battles. But this was my first tournament, I had previously had exactly three turns worth of gaming with this list and yet I was loving every single minute of it. After a quick redenvouz and one missing person from the day before we had to do a quick rejig. One minute I was about to play Japanese vs Germans then we got mixed with three allied players, Ian, Brian and Geoff so I'd already played them.
Finally one final rejig and I was set and sorted on one of the desert
boards, this one was littered with buildings and was again Hold Until
Relieved. Ben, another member of the Southampton Strike Force with his British Paras list was my opponent and I was sure I could muster up some sort of performance as this list had no jeeps, woop! However it did have a metric shit load of Bren carriers all with LMGs and Machine Guns which came on with their squads and then proceeded to shoot the crap out of squads. I had one full squad of Vets sat in a building holding the objective, my plan was to keep them their and just hold the objective. That was until they FUBARd a order test and proceeded to run out of the building and towards my table edge basically giving the British an opening to take the objective. I tried one final dash with a squad of regulars and my officer in the last turn to try and contest but they were shot up and assaulted for their efforts. My final last act of the tournament and game was to charge a Stuart head on with a Suicide guy, he doddged all the MMGs from the Stuart, detonated and I rolled a 6! Two dice on the penetrating damage table, 1 and 3....yup that sums up my tournament in a heartbeat. Especially as Ben made the morale check to put out the fire. Another game nil points as they say and a final standing at
FINAL TOURNAMENT POINTS - 1. UNITS LOST OVERALL - 47 out of 56.
So imagine my surprise when I didn't come last! There was a great amount of prize support. Walord, 4Ground and Bob had supplied loads of prizes and Bob had also create some custom Bolt Action Welsh Open 2014 Objetive markers that everyone got for participating. It was a prize select where the player called up could select anything, I was the very last person to win a prize and ended up with one of the 4Ground Ruins which I will definitely be using in the near future!
Overall it was an amazing weekend which was well organised throughout with a great group of people at one amazing venue. A big thanks to all my opponents, to the organisers and everyone else who was welcoming and friendly throughout. I wish I could attend next year but it falls on the one weekend where I'm best man for my best mates wedding on the Saturday and have another wedding on the Sunday for another close friend. Maybe 2016? Who knows, by then I might actually win a game!
Final Standings
Allies
Dave Hunter – LRDG
Ian M - USMC
Dai G – US Army
Mike Lock – Brits
Ben G - Paras
Bob E – Free French
Brian M – Red Army
Geoff P – Paras
Tony B - Commando
Chris D – US Army
Kieran W – US Army
AxisSteve Jones – Germans
Rich H – Finns
Mark V –Germans
Stefano P – Germans
Mike B – Italians
Ulick O’S - Germans
H Crocker – Germans
Paul G – DAK
Rob G – Germans
James C - Japanese
Chris B – Germans
