GMT-West
Sept. 2001 DIF Event
Debriefing Report
Here is the DIF recap and results:
First, a big thank you to Gene and his crew for
putting on the weekend. It helped me and the other attendees to forget, if just
for a few hours each day, the recent tragic events on the east coast
Attendance was naturally down as 4 of the usual DIF players were unable to
attend. But 27 participants got to play in at least one mission with 12 players
flying the majority of the 46 missions with 10 or more missions.
Taking top honors as the "Ace of Aces" for one pilot personality with 6 kills
each were Troy Nichols' Japanese pilot, A. Akebono, and my East Front Luftwaffe
pilot, Karl Eisner. Troy won the book, "Samurai", about one of the top Japanese
aces, Saburo Sakai.
Last April's top ace, Martin Scott's Shintaro Mendo, added two more kills to
increase his total to 15 to retain the top spot as the pilot with the current
highest kill total.
There were 15 new pilots who achieved "ACE" status, 2 previous aces became
double-aces, and one previous double-ace became a triple-ace this weekend.
Aces from the April events were awarded a special card created by Martin Scott.
Each pilot with an ace ability was presented with his own personalized ace card
with the current ace's ability and the player's own name. And all new "Aces"
each received the special "I Made Ace Pilot At GMT's Games Weekend" t-shirt.
There was a high amount of pilot casualties for only 46 missions. There were 67
pilot personalities that were killed, wounded, or captured, nearly reaching the
70 pilots lost from last April (and April had 28 more missions). Five of the
returning aces and 4 newly created aces were lost.
The biggest shocker of them all was the lost of Gene's double-ace, Wolfgang
Galland. Having just achieved his 12th kill, Galland was lost to an exploding
fuel tank by Pat Brownlow's Soviet pilot on Saturday night. This was Galland's
one and only mission for the weekend.
Because many ace pilots were getting killed soon after making ace status,
usually within their next two missions, the players jokingly talked there must
be an ace "curse" going around. In this weekend alone, 7 aces were lost on their
next mission, and 2 during their 2nd mission after earning an ace ability.
Two of my ace pilots managed to escape the curse but they flew early in the
competition before there was any talk of a curse. My 7-kill RAF ace tried and
soon died on turn 1 by the second player to move!
But Jim Jones openly defied the curse and survived as he flew his 8-kill ace on
two missions late in the weekend.
SPECIAL BOMBER MISSION:
The special "Raid on Henderson Field" mission on
Friday night drew the maximum 9 players. To introduce the "fog of war" element
into the mission, each side was not told how many or what type of aircraft the
other side would use. And each side got to pick 2 resource options to assist
them that were not revealed until used. Also, a strict "radio silence" pre-turn
1 rule was used. At the beginning of the game, a designated squadron leader
determined his side's player order before the cards were dealt and each player
was not allowed to compare each others' cards.
The US Marine Wildcats saved the day and the airfield with an outstanding score
of 170-to-94. Half of the Japanese bombers failed to return to Rabaul, with the
other half needing extensive repair work. The Zero escorts came through without
a loss but that was more due to American strategy of ignoring the escort and
concentrating only on the bombers. The only other high-light for the Japanese
was that they managed to destroy their other assigned target, a supply depot.
TEAM
DOUBLES TOURNAMENT:
On Saturday, the partner team doubles competition
was captured by the #1 seeded team of the father/daughter team of Gene and
Samantha Billingsley, last April's runners-up. They defeated the #6 seeded team
of Ken Tee/Jordan Nichols 3 games to 1 with the deciding game still up for grabs
going into the last turn. Both of the winning team members received autographed
"ZERO" poster artwork donated by Rodger MacGowan.
I am planning to continue the "aerial mayhem", as described by Leo Paulo, again
at the next weekend (tentatively scheduled for April 25-28, 2002) to allow
surviving pilots to continue their careers. For the Friday night special event,
I was thinking of either another 9-player Pacific theater mission, this time
with the American attacking and the Japanese defending, or to create an east
front multi-bomber DIF mission.
For any DiF players, if you like playing DiF all day like I do, you should
consider making the trip to Hanford to experience the Aces' Campaigns.
I hope everyone enjoyed it and had fun playing. I hope to see everyone again as
well as some new players in late April 2002.
The GMT Games Weekend DIF Events Coordinator