2012 US Masters Report with John Matthews Between Friday 30 November and Saturday 1 December Battlefront Miniatures was very please to run the second North American Flames Of War Masters event. We really looked forward to this tournament, as it is a way to give, albeit to a very small group of players, a token of our appreciation for entering into tournaments and doing well. We tried to make this tournament as tricky as we could for the 16 gamers. We attempted to tax them on army selection, scenery, and games. Left: John congratulates this year’s Masters winner, Jacob Mayer.

This year’s format was Mid-war. Each player was allowed to choose their army from two formats. They could either take an Infantry force and Tank force; or Infantry force, Mechanised force, and Tank force. There were to be six battles fought. You could only one of your chosen forces per battle. A player taking the first option could play each force three times during the tournament, playing three games with his Tank force and three games with his Infantry force. If a player chose the second option he would play two games each with his Tank, Mechanised and Infantry force. Each type of force had to be the same with no changes to composition between games.

All these decisions were made in secret after the mission and table was revealed. Both players revealed their decisions at the same time, creating a level of uncertainty as to what you would be up against. This allowed you to make choices about playing a type of army that suited the table’s terrain density, but that had to be weighed against the possible forces that may be fielded by your opponent. This format seemed to go down very well and we may try it in a larger setting in 2013.

There was to be no Sporting or Army scores, so winning was based entirely on gamesmanship and skill. There was also only one prize the winner! We had decided on a couple of tiebreaker methods just in case. The first method was to record each victory with a point, so at the end if two players had 25 points each, but one had won five games the other only four, the player with five wins would be in first place. However, if there was still a draw after Round 6 we would ask all the entrants to not say what their last game result was until everyone was finished and each player chose one player they had played as their favourite opponent. This would be used as the second tie breaker.

In the end we had one clear winner, so there was no need for the tiebreakers. We did use the system to calculate all the places out of a sense of completeness. The players’ qualification for the Masters was decided on from their rankings position. In addition to the US qualifiers there were also the top two Canadian ranked players and the winners of the national events. Just a quick note on the Canadian places as there was a little confusion here, so to make it very clear if the Canadians drop out (which sadly they had to this year) their place goes to the next highest ranked player whether they are USA or Canadian. The reason for this is to keep the attendees to as high a rank place as possible. If we get down to a ranking position that we feel is too low, we will reduce the field number and not keep going down the list.

During the event we tried to keep everyone up to date on the pairings, results and anything else that might have been of interest. You can find the thread here: View the thread on the Flames Of War forum here... ~ John.

Final Standings Final Ranking Name Total Victory Points 1. Jacob Mayer 26 2. Chris Jackson 25 3. John Desch 25 4. Bill Wilcox 25 5. Erin Masheski-Preston 25 6. Jim Rush 23 7. Bill Dorias 22 8. Jeremy Harder 21 9. Bryan Koches 20 10. Wyn Robertson 19 11. Eric Turner 18 12. Joe Lewis 18 13. Dan Larson 17 14. Kurt Reese 15 15. Charles Clay 15 16. Ian Baker 13

The Participants & Their Respective Armies (in alphabetical order by first name)

Bill Dorias

Bill Wilcox

Byran Koches

Charles Clay

Chris Jackson

Dan Larson

Eric Turner

Erin Masheski-Preston

Ian Baker

Jacob Mayer

Jeremy Harder

Jim Rush

Joe Lewis

John Desch

Kurt Reese

Wyn Robertson