Origins `90 Tournament Report
Part 3

Saturday: Main Tournament Finale!

by J.D. Webster

Given the fact that I was now left with two finalists each from the U.S. and Canada, I thought it would be appropriate to bring up the National honour thing and made up a scenario slanted to that end. Inspired by the Canadian's T-Shirt logo which had an F-18 Homet chasing an F-15 Eagle in the top comer and, as I am now led to believe, a Beaver wearing cap and goggles plucking the tail feathers off a bald Eagle, I chose a team game with two Hornets versus two Eagles.

Battle Over Detroit!

Background:

The United States of America decides to donate the city of Detroit to Canada, proposing that it become a part of Windsor. Unfortunately, the Canadians refuse to graciously accept this gift so the U.S. mobilizes its armed forces to force them to take it. Canada responds by sealing the border and deploying F-18 Hornets to the area.

American F-15 Eagles are also deployed and even though diplomats attempt to diffuse the situation by accepting a ransom of 32 cases of Canadian beer in exchange for keeping Detroit, a clash occurs. A pair of Eagles meets a pair of Hornets in a duel to the death. It turns out the American pilots don't like Canadian beer.

Game-Length: 15 game-turns.

Notes

1. All aircraft begin sighted, all are Air superiority gray.

2. F-15 Loads: Stations 2 and 4 = two AIM-9L each. Stations 6,7,8,9 = one AIM-7M each. DDS = 8 chaff and 8 flare.

3. F-18 Loads: Stations 1,2,8,9 = one AIM-9L each. Stations 4,6-- one AIM-7M, DDS = 8 chaff and 8 flare.

4. For game-turn one only, there will be no initiative roll. All players must pre-plot their first move and they are revealed and executed simultaneously.

Overview Of Play

This is a vicious furball-inducing set up and I intended for it to be merciless. The National rivalry theme also helped to remotivate the tired finalists and at least the spirit of it was catching.

Unfortunately, I failed to make clear that in this round it was possible for anyone to take first and that I viewed the winning of the scenario as the most important factor with previous scores being more for tie breaking. This was another of those late night snap-judgements that only confused those involved. I know that Tony and Mike didn't understand this at the time and based their strategy on survival first in order to retain their first and second place standings to the end rather than on winning the scenario.

For Ray and Steve, it didn't really matter how I scored it as they both knew they needed to win big-time in order to improve their standings. The game did turn out as I envisioned with all four tangled up in a nasty whirl of missile and gun spitting machinery. Predictably, the missiles were easily decoyed and guns decided the issue.

Results

I didn't stay to record the actual battle but I know that it took about three hours to play and drew a lot of admiring bystanders. The following description of the action comes from the combined recollections of Tony, Ray and Steve. I wasn't able to get a hold of Mike prior to this write up.

On turn one both Hornets went to idle, one turning and the other extending out with a half roll and dive: vertically rolling to face the Eagles. Both Eagles used Break turns and ended up disadvantaged by the low Hornet since the positions of advantage rule only takes into account facing and vertical seperation and not nose attitude. The ability of an aircraft extremely nose low and several thousand feet below another, to disadvantage the higher one is legitimately disputable but the players stuck to the rules.

From there, a furball erupted with the Eagles quickly neutralizing things. There was much twisting and turning with players swapping off from one to the other opposing targets. Everyone let fly with missiles at the earliest oppurtunity and most were successfully decoyed. About mid-game however, Cougar threaded an AIM-91, through several decoys to score a proximity hit on Madman's Hornet. As luck would have it, the damage roll was a 10 for no effect. Shortly thereafter, Cougar was hit for "L" damage losing perforinance which would begin to allow the Canadians to gain an edge. Killjoy artfully dodged several missiles and soon the battle began turning into a knife fight. As the game plodded on, fatigue and stress caused things to become more intense and the players began to commit errors in movement.

Around turn 10 Mojo opted for a high pitch rate pull up from level to vertical climb and vertically rolled several times for position. The rule only allows you to vertically roll once at the end of such a thing. His illegal maneuver was not noticed until two turns later when it was too late to retrace or correct it. The players opted to continue on and shortly thereafter Tony did a vertical dive losing only one level per VFP instead of the required 2 or 3. This too went unnoticed until it was uncorrectable. A few other mistakes were made and fatigue was the culprit.

A strong testimony to the calibre of the players involved, is that they in each case accepted the errors graciously and continued on. The early hit on Cougar began to tell and he was hit at least two more times resulting in him being crippled. Killjoy took an "11" hit from a cannon shot by Ray on turn 13 and from that moment the American strategy became survival. Knowing that he held the lead in kills and points, Tony opted to ignore damage control and unfortunately progressed to "C" going into the final turn. The game ended a turn later with both Eagles still alive but crippled and a Canadian Hornet was to the rear of each. A clear Canadian victory in the duel for National honor.

Origins `90 Tournament Report Part 3

Origins `90 Tournament Report Part 2

Origins `90 Tournament Report Part 1

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