Origins `90 Tournament Report
Part 3

Saturday: Surprise Finale
and Air Strike Tourney

by J.D. Webster

Saturday: Surprise Finale!

I returned to the table in time to witness the last few turns. However, as I was still in low brain gear and suffering from schizoid fevers, I remarked that as it was obvious that both Eagles would have been dead had the game lasted another turn and that as the Canadians were on the tails of each I credited them with full kills instead of half-kills for each crippled Eagle.

This left Tony and Ray tied at 3.5 kills and Mike and Steve tied at 3 kills. I then awarded first place to Ray and second to Tony: third to Steve and fourth to Mike. Tony and Mike's look of shock is dimly etched in my mind and I remember scoffing at their pretense of protest with the statement that the Canadian's clearly dominated the game and deserved to edge out the Americans as they had won the scenario. In fact, the Canadians had not dominated the game and it could have gone either way until the end.

In closing, I would like to say that all the players were good. The Americans probably could have been awarded first and third just as deservedly as the Canadians. However, I bear the responsibility for my decisions and the awards will stand. However, let me take this moment to apologize to all entrants as the lack of a usable scoring system and my own lack of preparation for the tournament which led to my sudden and repeated rulings changes was unprofessional and certainly unfair. I critique myself openly in this newsletter with the hopes that others who run tourneys in the future will learn from my mistakes.

On the upside, we've taken steps to cure this by developing the usable and fair scoring system which was written up in AP #10 and which will be used as the standard in all future tournaments. I thank Tony for his efforts in this regard and for limiting his mail bombs to one per month since Origins.

Saturday: The Air Strike Tourney!

Unlike the Air Superiority Marathon described above that the players went through, the Air Strike Tournament was quite fun and educational. It consisted of a single game featuring an Israeli strike of four F-16s against a nuclear reactor in a Middle-Eastern country defended by SAMs, AAA guns, and two F-20 Tigersharks. This was obviously loosely based on the Israeli raid into Iraq that occured in 1981. The Scenario was jointly designed by Tony Valle and Joel Williams of Georgia, not to be confused with Joel from Australia.

Unfortunately, I don't have the scenario on hand for reproduction but I'll briefly recap the action. The game was played twice. I don't have a list of who played in the first one, but the first play through was a disaster for the Israelis. The defenses consisted of an I-Hawk site, three Bofors 40mm batteries, a ZSU-23 Shilka mobile AAA unit, and an SA-11 vehicle. Those combined with the two F-20s simply overwhelmed the four F-16s which carried Iron bombs and Mavericks plus some ARMs and two AIM-9Ms each. All the F-16s went down although they managed to hit the reactor, destroy a SAM site and cripple an F-20 in the process.

At this point I decided to intervene and have the scenario replayed with some changes. The second playing counted as the official Air Strike Tourney and was quite different. The defenses remained the same except that the F- 20s were turned into Mirage F-1s which do equip several Mid- East air forces. Also two F-16s were added to the Israeli side to create a strike force of six jets for better play balance. I also allowed the Israeli players their pick of weaponry and coached them in the attack plan. The mobile AAA and SAM unit was allowed to start hidden though all other units were placed on the map in known locations.

The six F-16s were split into three pairs. One pair was for AEG CAP, one for defense suppression, and the last pair were the reactor attackers. The F-16s were loaded strictly for their mission. The CAP had an ALQ-131 pod (DJM-C) and four AIM-9M only. The defense suppression birds had the same pod plus a mix of Mavericks and rocket pods. The attackers had the same ECM pod plus a laser designator and two Skipper laser guided rockets each.

The CAPs were not given bombs and the others were not given air to air missiles to prevent any player from being distracted from his assigned tasks. Two stations on each jet were left unloaded under the assumption that external fuel tanks would have been carried there and then jettisoned due to the long range of the mission. No Falcon was greater than 1/2 loaded at the start of play.

Joel, who hosted the tourney, ran the F-1s while I ran the ground defenses. Actually I spent a lot of time hopping between the Air Strike and Air Sup. tournament tables and didn't participate that much in the game. The F-16 players were as follows:

    MiG-CAP lead. Ken "Goldie Locks" Maniscalco.
    AEG-CAP Wing: Mike "Bouncer" Daniels.
    Def. Sup. lead: Roger "Woof"Taylor.
    Def. Sup. Wing: Curtis "Slash" Maki.
    Bomber lead: Fred "Target" Grey.
    Bomber Wing: Jeff "Badman" Billings.

To make a long story short, the attack was flawlessly executed and no F-16s were downed although two suffered light damage. The CAP did a great job sighting the Mirages first.

Ken fired AIM-9Ms nose on immediately putting the Mirages onto the defensive and then had to dodge an SA-11 SAM fired his way. As the Mirages dodged his missiles, Mike closed in unseen and downed both with blind missile shots. The defense suppression unit worked a good attack with Roger suppressing a dangerous Bofors site with rockets while Curtis trashed the Hawk site with Mavericks. Roger took a hit and cleared the area but Curtis continued in finding the hidden Shilka which damaged him but died under a volley of rockets immediately after. Not stopping there, Curtis also sighted the SA-11 vehicle as it launched another missile at Ken and blasted it with a Maverick. While this was going on, the two laser bombers went in and easily trashed the reactor, molested only by long range Bofors fire. 'Mere was much jubilation as all the Falcons checked off target alive and well and raced for home.

Curtis was awarded first prize for his spectacular Iron Hand (and Brass Balls) attack on the defenses. Mike took second prize for his sweeping CAP attack. This tourney was fun because the contestants were playing the hosts instead of each other and a spirit of teamwork prevailed.

Origins `90 Tournament Report Part 3

Origins `90 Tournament Report Part 2

Origins `90 Tournament Report Part 1

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© Copyright 1990 by J.D. Webster
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