7th Annual Burning Wreck Barbecue: President's AAR

[Jim Aikens]

I’m pleased to say our 7th Annual Burning Wreck Barbecue was perhaps our best barbecue event ever! I want to extend a sincere thanks to our hosts Stance Nixon and his charming wife Cheryl for opening their home to us for the day and making us all feel welcome. Our goal this year was to take the barbecue back to its roots, back to the early days of SoCalASL and back yard barbecues at Bryan Earll’s house. I think we accomplished that. Meeting at a private home instead of a hotel really gave the event a much more personal feel of friends getting together for games and food. That’s exactly what we were going for.

We had 19 members in attendance, and we had plenty of room to spare. Our format entailed pairing up randomly to play the designated scenario of the day: Hill 253.5. Everyone showed up promptly at 11:00 AM (thank you all for that), signed in and received a ticket for our prize raffle. We then paired up, rolled for sides and got right into the action. All of our games were well underway before noon. At 1:00 PM Stance brought in pizzas and we chowed down lunch and beverages compliments of the Club, then resumed our games.

Rob Feinstein’s Germans defeated Dave Nicholas’ Russians.
Scott Thompson’s Germans fell to Mike Cornellison’s Russians.
Eric Visnowski and Stance Nixon’s Germans fell to Matt Cicero’s Russians.
Dan Plachta’s Germans defeated Fen Yan’s Russians.
Dave Perham’s Germans fell to Hank W.’s Russians.
Eric Morton’s Russians defeated Fred Timm’s Germans.
My Russians defeated Jim Cotugno’s Germans.
Mike Soffa’s Russians defeated John Lehman’s Germans.
And in the last game to clear (at 11:00 PM) Kyle Li’s Germans gutted out a down-to-last-DR win over Blair Bellamy’s Russians.

As games cleared throughout the day and early evening, the winners (me, Rob, Mike, Matt, Dan, Hank, Eric, Mike and Kyle) received a second ticket for our prize raffle.

We adjourned for dinner at Fuddruckers (again, compliments of the Club) at 7:00 PM. When we returned, we still had 3 games that hadn’t cleared. So I assigned a raffle ticket to each of those games, to be claimed by the winners, and we went ahead with the prize raffle:

Eric Morton won the Critical Hit scenario pack “The Canadians In Italy”.
John Lehman won the March Madness scenario pack “Commissar Pack”.
Dan Plachta won the George Kilin scenario pack “Battle of Abby des Ardennes”.
Stance Nixon won the Critical Hit scenario pack “Leibstandarte Pack 5”
Matt Cicero won the East Side Games scenario pack “Dezign Pack 10”.
Kyle Li won the scenario pack “Friendly Fire 9”.

I’ll leave others to provide their analysis of Hill 253.5. Clearly the winning strategy was ‘take the Russians’. J But there were some German wins, and everyone enjoyed the scenario choice. With both sides receiving armor, air support and OBA, plus all those fortifications, you know every playing is going to be epic. From a personal perspective, Jim Cotugno and I really enjoyed our game together and had a lot of laughs.

Everyone really liked the new format for our barbecue, and we have an invitation to return next year. J Stance’s house is pretty centrally located, and we saw a nicely balanced mix of guys from San Diego, Orange and LA Counties. The food options worked out great, allowing for just enough socializing without restricting our game time. Everyone got plenty to eat and drink, we gave away some cool prizes, and we came in under budget.

I want to thank Matt Cicero for handling the prizes, drinks, registration and dinner, Eric Visnowski for his help with event planning, and again, a special thanks to Stance and Cheryl for opening their home to us, and to Stance for handling lunch. Everything went perfectly, and everyone had a great time. Finally, I want to thank those who came and supported the event. Everyone showed up on time, and came prepared with a Russian set-up. That made a big difference when it came to getting the event underway and made the timing work.

Next Saturday we have a Special 5th Saturday Game Day lined up at Gameology. Check the website for details.

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