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Tournament style

The Alpenfestung is played as a so-called Round Robin Tournament. That means, there are always four players, who play against each other in three rounds of face-to-face games. The player who wins most of his three games wins the tournament. 

There are two special cases:

• First, If two players win twice each, and two players win once each, the player who won the round of direct confrontation between the two players with two wins each wins the tournament. 
• Second, in the rare case of a so-called «circle of death» result, in which one player loses all games, and three players each win two and lose one game, a tiebreaker is needed. In that rare case, the player who won the last two rounds of the tournament is the winner of it.      

What kind of scenarios will I be looking for?

Scenarios that:

• can be played to conclusion in the time that we have available (no more than 16 hours of playing time, excluding setup time, for all three rounds)
• have an interesting touch to them
• are reasonably balanced (according to ROAR recordings and Chi-square statistical tests)
• are taking place either in the European (ETO) or Pacific (PTO) Theatre of Operations. This excludes scenarios in the desert. There might be one night scenario in one of the rounds.
• do not require an unusually large playing area, so that the boards fit on our available gaming tables

Now, what is the scenario selection?

These will be the scenarios for Alpenfestung XVI: 

As you can see in the program, Alpenfestung XVI will be a three-round tournament. Scenarios will vary in size, but I aimed for a maximum total playing time (excluding setup) of 16:00 hrs. during two days.  

First round: Fortitude and Frostbite: Swedish Volunteers

I. Ten-Ton Tank. Swedish vs. Russians. February, 1940. 4.5 Turns. (2:50 hrs.)

II. Absolut Märkäjärvi. Swedish vs. Russians. March, 1940. 5.5 Turns (3:40 hrs.)

III. The Swedish Voluntary Corps. Swedish vs. Russians. March, 1940. 5.5 Turns. (4:00 hrs.)

Second round: Shattered Peace: Poland's Darkest Hour

I. A Polish Requiem. Germans vs. Polish. September, 1939. 6.0 Turns. (5:40 hrs.)

II. Along the Vistula. Germans vs. Polish. September, 1939. 6.5 Turns. (7:00 hrs.)

III. Round One. Germans vs. Polish. September, 1939. 7.0 Turns. (7:30 hrs.)

Third round: Red Storm Rising: Russia's Last-minute Offensive

I. A War of their own. Russians vs. Japanese. August, 1945. 5.5 Turns. (4:20 hrs.)

II. Forging Spetsnaz. Russians vs. Japanese. August, 1945. 6.0 Turns. (4:50 hrs.)

III. The deadly Line. Russians vs. Japanese. August, 1945. 5.5 Turns. (5:40 hrs.)

Download all Scenarios (PDF, 9 MB) 

How do players agree on the scenario to be played?

• In each round, you can select one of the three scenarios that you don't want to play.
• If each of the two players of one pairing select different scenarios that they don't want to play, the remaining scenario gets to be played.
• If both players exclude the same scenario, both players try to find an agreement about which of the remaining two scenarios they want to play. If they fail to find an agreement, they let the dice decide.

May I train or prepare the scenarios?

Feel free to study the maps and units that show up in the scenarios. But please - don't play the scenarios in advance (including solitaire). Also, don't check any LOS or write down setups. It's no problem, of course, if you have played any of the scenarios in the past. 

Do we use the IFT or the IIFT (Incremental Infantry Fire Table) at Alpenfestung tournaments?

The 'classic' IFT is the standard results table that is used at Alpenfestung tournaments unless both players of a particular pairing agree to use the IIFT. You can download the 3.6 version of the IIFT in Black & White (.pdf, 143kB) and in Colour (.pdf, 139kB) here.