Mid War Monsters and Tournaments? Over the past few weeks we have received a lot of questions from people asking about how Mid War Monsters fit into tournaments and whilst there are a few suggestions in the back of the Mid War Monster book, we thought it would be great to give you a little more info about where we came from with Mid War Monsters. When we initially started playing with the idea, we were adamant that these would be a fun way to help people dust off their Mid War armies that have been a little neglected over the past couple of years whilst we focused on Late War. The array of vehicles we chose covered the whole spread from one-off prototypes through to short production run vehicles, they were however all items of historical fact rather than science fiction. We still wanted to make sure that the Mid War period (and especially the tournament scene) did not end up being “broken” by some uber-tank that was never really combat tested. On the flip side though, it would be dreadfully boring if people could not bring a KV-5 to an event some day.

We see Mid War Monsters as being similar to Warriors, in so far as them being something that a tournament organiser can either allow or disallow. The important thing is that the players are aware of what the setup of the event is, prior to coming along. Not only would it be a shame if someone could never field a Mid War Monster at an event, it would be more of a shame if you were not aware that you might be coming across them! In the Mid War Monsters book, Phil outlined a number of suggestions for tournament events that could be run using the Monsters, we have included them here as a reminder.

Big Guns Tournaments There are plenty of ways you could organise this. The simplest way is to allow each player to field one Experimental Support Platoon as a support choice for their army. Perhaps you could give them an extra 250 or even 500 points over your normal game size as some of the more exciting choices are quite expensive to field. You could make things even more interesting by requiring each player to field an Experimental Support Platoon-this is a great way to introduce Mid-war Monsters to your gaming group! The Breakdown Rescue and Key Position missions would be fun to include in a tournament like this.

Experimental Forces Tournaments If you want even more experimental equipment in your tournament, you could allow players to replace standard equipment in their forces with experimental equipment as outlined in each tank’s description. You might even see players fielding nothing but experimental tanks in a Soviet Eksperimental Tankovy Batalon equipped with T-43 medium tanks or an American Tank Company full of M27 medium tanks, perhaps backed up with some M6 heavy tanks. If you go this route, you might need to increase the points even further.

Heavy Metal Head-to-Head As an alternative to your normal games, you could try 600-point heavy metal head-to-head knockout games. The idea is to build the toughest, nastiest force you can and take on all comers. The last one standing wins! The only rules are that your force must contain legal platoons from the same side, and at least one of them must be from Mid-war Monsters (although there are some platoons from our other books, like the German Heavy Assault Gun Platoon equipped with Ferdinand assault guns, that you might want to allow as well).

Heavy Metal Tournaments You could even hold a tournament with 600 or 1000-point heavy metal forces to see who is the king of the mountain. Since the big tanks are so expensive, the forces will be very small (often only a single platoon!) and the games quick.

You could run a knockout tournament in a couple of hours or a round-robin tournament in an afternoon. Putting it simply, yes you can definitely take Mid War Monsters to a Tournament event, assuming the tournament organiser has included them as one of the tournament options. If they have not specified whether or not they can be used make sure you drop them an email or phone call to be sure because you would not want to miss out on an opportunity to field some of these truly unique vehicles!