ETC Prague 2015 Tournament Report With Anders Johansson When the question came if I wanted to go to the ETC in Prague and be the Battlefront representative there, it didn’t take me long to say yes. Having been to the ETC in Novi Sad, Serbia 2013 where I had amazing time, a chance to go to another in Prague, a city that of course features an abundance of cool historic buildings, fantastic beer, good food and beautiful ladies, was really a no brainer. The fact that it was an excellent opportunity to meet up with FOW-playing friends from all over Europe was of course also a huge bonus!

Above: Karel Zitny from the UN2 team in high spirits during the first game of the tournament.

My flight was leaving 07.15 on the Friday morning, so I had to leave home at the crack of dawn and get out to East Midlands Airport. Everything went very smoothly with the air trip and I landed at the Prague airport at 10.30. As the first games were already underway, I thought I should go straight to the Venue, so I jumped in a taxi, gave the driver a note with the Venue address and off we went. In the taxi I could see a thermometer and it said 34 degrees Celsius… After a reasonably long drive we arrived at the venue and I was at first a bit unsure we had come to the right place. It looked a bit odd from the outside, but as I walked up to it I saw the ETC sign.

Above: Well, I guess it does the job.

I walked through the lobby, basically guided by the smell and the buzzing sound of hundreds of wargamers talking over their respective games. I did know from Serbia what to expect when I got into the hall, but it was still an awesome sight to see all that wargaming going on in what reminded me a bit of an aircraft hangar.

Above: the view from the entrance to the hall.

I proceeded down to the corner where the Flames Of War tables were, and can I just say that 30 rows of six tables each is a lot of Flames Of War tables! The players were in the middle of the first game, playing Dust Up. I started discreetly sneaking around saying hello to people I knew and taking pictures.

Above: Austria playing Canada in the first round.

Everybody seemed to be in a good mood; of course it was just the first round, so way too early for any tantrums and dastardly tricks yet. The heat was building up in the hall, though, and there was no air conditioning, so it would be quite an experience for the players playing Flames Of War for seven hours a day in that heat.

Above: Roger Whittam and Matt Haywood from Team Wales takes a well-deserved rest after the first round. Not that the outside provided any escape from the heat, though…

Everybody had survived the first round - no heat strokes of fist fights where reported. The winners of each game were a little bit happier than the losing opponents. And of course there were a number of draws, which in ETC don’t give you any points but of course don’t give away any points either. Sweating like a pig before Christmas, I headed off to the Beer stands. While the guys did their best, it should of course be girls manning these kinds of things. It’s enough looking at sweaty blokes while playing; we don’t need more of it when we are taking drink breaks. (editor's note: Anders joke is of course intended as an ironic parody of misogynistic attitudes. Like all of us at Battlefront, Anders understands that women in the hospitality industry have an important job, and are more than just pretty distractions for the male gaze; so, for that matter, are sweaty wargamers. )

The beer was very nice, but losing that amount of fluid I soon had to match it by drinking at least as much water or face the dreaded dehydration headache. Crisis averted, I watched as round two got underway. The second mission was Fighting Withdrawal, and some new teams had already done quite well!

Above: the draw for round two.

In addition to the national teams, there were also two UN teams with players of various nationalities. One of the teams filled Team Sweden’s spot (who had to bow out) and the other evened up the numbers. It has to be said that the UN teams took their role very seriously, having done up team shirts, and acquitted themselves well with the gaming too.

Above: Team UN1 in action against Russia.

After round 2 it was time to get into the city centre and check in at the Hotel, which was aptly named Hotel City Central. Avoiding the expensive taxi, we went by subway, which had an entrance just a few minutes’ walk from the venue. The subway in Prague consists of three lines, A, B and C. We just used the red C line that basically went straight form the venue to the IP Pavlova station that was two minutes’ walk form my Hotel. The Hotel was nice, the classic type of big city hotel - not too expensive, and breakfast was decent. After checking in and taking a shower, I was to meet up with the guys (Karel Zitny, Martin Wrobel and the Finnish team) at a restaurant that sounded like it was named Zhicka-Zhicka - of course the name was something completely different (something to do with 72 types of beer).

I duly missed the place and ended up by the river, called the guys and was directed back to the place which of course turned out to be three minutes’ walk form the hotel! The dinner and beer was very nice and, like most of the food and drink in Prague, very reasonably priced.  After a hot night which I mostly slept through due to being very tired, I had nice simple continental breakfast and got back on the subway, heading out to the venue for day two.  At the start of day two and round three, the Poles where in the lead, with the US as Second and the plucky Danes as third!

The third round scenario was “No Retreat” and I think one of the most critical matches during the tournament took place there when the Team USA managed to beat Team Poland with a 4-2 win.

Above: USA and Poland square off in the third round of the tournament.

One table was set aside from the others and that was Shawn Morris stunning table with Rommel’s Asparagus, Horsa Gliders and working lights in the buildings. A fantastic table that I nearly played on (more on that later).

Above: Shawn Morris's (Team Canada) outstanding table!

The tables looked good, with the right amount of terrain and so on. The guys setting them up before the tournament had done a stellar job. Can’t say that I heard much complaining about the terrain at all, which is very rare indeed! Left: There were a number of these excellent winter tables present at tournament. I don’t know who made them but I’m sure it will be pointed out in the forums. Below: Between the rounds they presented the nominees for the best painted team armies. This was done by putting balloons next to the armies and then having the armies set up on trays to show them off.

Above: Tim Harris's stunning Gebirgsjäger army for Team Wales that won the prize for Best Painted. He even had a custom tin with dice and tokens!

Above: A Finnish Mannerheim Line army from Team Poland, also nominated in the best painting competition.

The mission for round four on day two was Breakthrough. Right: The draw for round 4: USA Slovenia Poland Denmark Australia

Finland vs Russia was interesting. The Finns told me they applied Finnish Ice Hockey philosophy towards their games: 'As long we beat Sweden (always most important) and Russia, we have done well!' As Sweden was not there, this game became quite important. I think it ended with a Finnish loss, though.

Above: Finland and Russia battling it out in round four, under very not-Winter-War-like conditions.

During round four I was asked if I could jump in and play the Sunday games for Frank Rönspiess, Team Greece, who had to return home for family reasons. Of course I told Bill and Frank that I would be happy to help out! During the tournament the heat and the increased competition between teams as the matches progressed sometimes meant that the judges had to step in and help clarify matches. Most of that seemed to have gone well, and I didn’t see anything too horrible personally, but of course there were some reports of occasional bad behaviour. Well, it happens in highly charged tournaments like this; don’t forget that when grown men gather to play with toys soldiers, laughter and tears are close companions. Left: “But Monsieur Braveheart, I did roll for Platoon Morale!”

The day was coming to an end, I had taken 799 pictures, and the camera battery died on me
	(Most of the photos can be seen on Facebook...)
We went and had another lovely dinner and then I crashed into bed. After watching that much Flames Of War being played, I was very ready to play a couple of games myself on Sunday!

On the Sunday I arrived at the venue at 09.00, thinking that the games would start about that time. It turned out I was right, but that was because the time had been changed the day before and been put earlier than originally intended. The problem was that Team Greece had missed that crucial bit of information and where nowhere to be seen. So as I stood there with Team Germany, who were to be our opponents, and time ticked on, we decided to choose the match-ups. Obviously as stand in and happily unaware of Team Greece's lists it was far from ideal, but anyway I did it. I picked my friend Mark Helbing as my opponent and to play on the super nice Shawn Morris table! But just as we were about to set up, Team Greece walked in, the draw was redone and I was picked to play against Michael and his Polish Mechanised list.

Frank Rönspiess's Army, which I played for the last two games of the tournament. Its an 8th Army Guards list from Hellfire and Back, consisting of:   HQ 2 Combat Platoons Small HMG Platoon Mortar Platoon Bren gun Carrier patrol 2pdr Portee Platoon AA 40mm Bofors Platoon  and a platoon of two Matildas   It did well during the tournament, with five victories and one draw. The scenario was Counterattack, and I elected to forego Night Attack and instead defend as Infantry list vs Mechanised list. There was very little if anything at all Michael could do about the Matildas so I went over and parked the non-command Matilda on the far objective, then sent the Command Matilda to hunt by itself. The rest of the army was pretty much defending the objective in the defenders' set-up zone, seeing off hordes of little tankettes and some 7TPs. Bofors and 2 pdrs were of course very good at that job. The game was great fun and played without any hassle at all, and ended up with a 4-3 victory for me and Frank's British Guards.

The next match was against South Africa, a new team for the ETC and to my surprise not consisting of ex-pats living in Europe, but the guys had actually travelled from South Africa to play Flames Of War at the ETC. Truly awesome dedication there!

Above: The globe-trotting Team South African (khaki shirts of course!) posing with Team Poland

The mission was Free-for-all and I was facing Reinherd's Leichte Pioneere Kompanie. Well, I’m no big fan of Free-for-all last round with two infantry companies facing each other. Let’s face it - it probably will be low-scoring draw. I was hoping that Reinherd, not an experienced tournament player, would come marching in, giving me the chance to kill off the attack and then counterattack. While he did that with one Pioneer platoon and some Pak36s, he kept his two Panzers well away from my Matildas and AT assets, while Huebner's 88s protected his objectives. We had a lot manoeuvring and fun, but in the end it was 2-2 draw. He lost a Pioneer platoon and I lost the HMG platoon, which I deployed poorly in both of my games. After that it was the prize ceremony, with Team USA coming out as the victors. It might have been the loudest and most heart-felt cheering from a European crowd that a US team have ever known in anything! Second were Team Poland (obviously disappointed, and there was quite a bit controversy around it) and third Australia. Best Painting was won by the Welsh Team, and Favourite Opponents went to the Romanians. You can see the full ETC results here... A couple of teams to watch for in future are the Irish, who came fourth, and the Danes, who came eighth. Both teams have advanced in skill and will definitely be dangerous opponents in the future.

I had lovely night out with Team Greece after the tournament, a great bunch and very Greek with some German Flavour thrown in, Jammas!

Above: Team Greece - Panos, Frank, Thomas (aka Schnuffi), Diana (the wife of Panos, resisting a 'Goddess of the Hunt joke there), Harry (team Captain), Thomas (level 24 in Witcher 3) and Wasilios.

Next year's ETC will be in Greece, and it will be Mid-war. I'm already starting to think about what list to play! Another thought that struck me is how cool it would be if Battlefront could get a team for a future ETC with some of the guys from NZ, with the rest of us filling up the gaps…

Lastly, I want thank Battlefront, Bill, the ETC Chairmen, Karel, Martin, team Greece (not least Frank for going home and letting me play his army), the various UK teams, Team Germany (Mark) for the Team Yankee chat and everybody else involved in getting me there and making my time at the Prague ETC 2015 such an superb time! To anyone reading this that is contemplating whether they should go, please do so - it is as much fun as you can ever have enjoying your hobby with toy soldiers! ~ Anders.