Arcanacon 2005 Flames of War Umpire’s Report

At Arcanacon 2005 I ran my first Flames of War tournament. I used the standard tournament format from the Battlefront website. With only 10 players the umpires job wasn't too strenuous although there were a number of tricky rules questions and the draw got a bit complicated towards the end.

The tables were preset with a fair bit of terrain. The tables were a wooded valley, desert hills, country town, oasis town, farm, ruined city and boggy valley. Missions used were Cauldron, Free for All, Hold the Line, Fighting Withdrawal and Breathrough.

The armies used were evenly split between the Axis with four Germans and one Italian and Allied with two Russians and three British, but had only one motorised and 3 tank armies so infantry forces dominated. The draw resulted in many "training exercises" due to the small number of players but this would be less of a problem with larger comps.

The players armies were all well presented with only a couple of unflocked bases showing and quite a few scratch built features.

The backgrounds were highly varied and this caused the most variation in the "historical army" score.

Play was smooth with few rules questions but quite a few queries on the definition of various terrain pieces.

The players generally got through their games fairly quickly with all games being played to a conclusion.

Things I would change for next time are:

- Change "Historical Army" score to a vote the same as for Sportsmanship as armies are universally well painted and it relies on the subjective view of the umpire. Players will provide a maximum of one page of background for their opponent to read.

- Fully define all terrain pieces on a map for each table to save time and umpire queries.

- Allow optional missions as there was plenty of time available.

Awards:

* Jared Lynn - First Place

* Parshia Lee-Stecum - Second Place

* Neil Todd - Best General

* Parshia Lee-Stecum - Best Historical Army

* Parshia Lee-Stecum - Most Sporting Player

Results:

Placing	Name	Army	Player Number	Opponents	Generalship Scores	Generalship total	Historical Army Score	Sporting Play score	Total	Countback of Generalship scores
1	Jared Lynn	Russian Infantry	10	6, 4, 12, 5, 8	6, 5, 4, 5, 3	23	12	3	38	91
2	Parshia Lee-Stecum	Italian Motorised	3	5, 8, 6, 9, 2	1, 1, 3, 5, 4	14	15	9	38	79
3	Neil Todd	Russian Infantry	12	9, 5, 10, 8, 4	6, 4, 3, 5, 6	24	13	0	37	90
4	Ara Harwood	British Infantry	5	3, 12, 4, 10, 9	6, 3, 5, 2, 6	22	12	3	37	88
5	Tristan Powell	German Infantry	1	8, 2, 9, 4, 6	5, 1, 5, 1, 6	18	14	3	35	74
6	Brad Hann	British Infantry	2	4, 1, 8, 6, 3	1, 6, 3, 6, 3	19	10	3	32	77
7	Michael Bornstein	British Tank	8	1, 3, 2, 12, 10	2, 6, 4, 2, 4	18	11	0	29	98
8	Mark Audley	German Tank	4	2, 10, 5, 1, 12	6, 2, 2, 6, 1	17	9	0	26	106
9	Chris Cowie	German Infantry	9	12, 6, 1, 3, 5	1, 4, 2, 2, 1	10	11	3	24	88
10	Jeff Dare	German Tank	6	10, 9, 3, 2, 1	1, 3, 4, 1, 1	10	7	6	23	84

Player numbers 7 and 11 were reserved for players who had entered but didn’t turn up.