ITASLIA Open Tournament is an Advanced Squad Leader tournment that was held at VERCON 2006 convention in Verona Italy between 8 September 2006 and 10 September 2006.
Results and final order and stats and pictures are avaiable.

"There is no ASL without Verona walls, But purgatory, torture, hell itself."
Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene III - William Shakespeare - ASL open Italian tournament ITASLIA 2006

ASL was reborn in Italy in 2004. Some Italian players met on VASL and started a public forum, more people joined and a small community was born. In September 2004 ASL ITALIA met at VERCON (a big gaming convention in Verona ) and again in November for an ASL-only event, which turned out as the first ASL GATHERING. Friendships were forged and a lot of new gaming buddies start to play each other in Italy. This let to our second ASL WINTER GATHERING in December 2005 with 22 players (2 from California ), and straight we went for organizing our first big tournament ever. We decided to stage it at VERCON 2006 in order to attract new gamers and let old Italian grognards known that ASL is still alive and kicking. Enrico Catanzaro, Mario Nadalini and yours truly volunteered as organizers and Loriano Rampazzo (an old chess glory) as referee. We decided the scenarios, the ABSs, let the word out in the ASL world and waited. Things started to go well with some 32 peoples from all over the world and Italy inquiring about the tournament. 27 of these confirmed their participation, but unfortunately starting two weeks before the event, a lot started to drop out for the most various reason, a pity. But enough with the story, 16 people showed up on September 8 th , Peter and Liz Struijf made the trip from Holland and picked up Chriss Mazzei in Switzerland, Georges T. flight from France, Enrico Catanzaro from Sicily, while other players came from Terni, Bologna, Milan, Turin and Venice. Enrico Catanzaro, Massimiliano Tuzzi and Sergio Puzziello are the only Italians present with some international ASL experience. All others Italian players are here out of curiosity or just for fun, except Fabrizio Da Pra who's here to drain blood from his old nemesis “captain rabbit “ Andrea Pagni.

In the first round there is the first surprise, Enrico Catanzaro met his destiny early by the big hands of Fabrizio Da Pra , who has been playing (very well) for just one year, all foreigners players win their games, while I managed to get a win against my good friend Nicola Marangon after having been wiped out from the map on turn 3 as German in “By ourselves”. In the second round both Massimiliano Tuzzi and me played Road to Lyon with Mazzei and Strujif, but the scenario is way too long for the short time we have got and both game finish with a draw. 4 other games are American victories in the old Niscemi-Biscari highway, the near-great-surprise here is again Da Pra, losing an almost won game with Georges T. only thanks to an American leader which rolls snake eyes while rolling for interdiction, becomes heroic, gets a bazooka and fries a group of 3 boches squads in a stone building, all of this while rallying the entire American flank (4 squads) which had been previously routed by the Germans. Marangon and Nadalini go exotic with Wetlet and the former prevails.

Saturday starts with bad news, gaming convention are good for recruiting people (20 guys played 10 - games of Valour of the Guards with our instructor) and getting old hands back to ASL, but are not good for silence and concentration (we are definitely not coming back here for next year). All ASL players go back to their tables for nice armoured scenarios, my game with Chriss Mazzei is the only one that needs the referee on the entire tournament, three judges come and I lose with 62%, Georges T. beats San Marino 's champion Andrea Pagni, meanwhile Sergio Puzziello (which rolled a staggering number of 2 during the tournament: 21 – 16 in a single match and it's not this one) managed to win his only game against Sandro Coriasco. In the forth round we played some Oldie but Goldie scenarios with Wintergewitter getting' the lion's share. I fail my morale check against Da Pra after some really evil snake eyes against my advancing Germans in Le Herrison and some equally bad boxcars on my 150s and MGs. Paolo “kamikaze” Mengoli beats Chriss Mazzei in a tense Le Herrison match, while Struijf and Georges T. draw their Cream of the Crop. It's 21:00 and we have been playing 12 straight hours so we need to get some rest: In Italy this means one thing: sitting down and eating. All players go to “Grotta Azzurra 1” restaurant where we had a delicious meal, all people not from Verona met “pizza a metro” which is a 100x36 cm pizza which is typical of “Grotta”, traditional food from Verona and pizzas fill the dishes, wine and beer is liberally consumed by everybody (it's just a 5 minutes walk to VerCon). Mario Nadalini and Alessandro Canevese leave early, they obtained permission from the judges to continue their match till midnight. Mario wins thanks to the erroneous interpretation of VCs (suggested by a passer by – that you should never listen, especially around midnight).

Sunday comes and the matches that really count for determining the winner are just two: Georges T.-Mengoli and Pagni-Da Pra and the possible results are:

• if Georges wins, he's the winner;
• if Georges loses, and Andrea wins the latter will be the champion;
• if Georges loses and Fabrizio beats Andrea there will be no winner (gosh!!!)

Georges save the organizers the pain of scenario 3) and proceed to win a gruelling match with the Yugos, in the meanwhile Da Pra and Pagni ( I Duellanti) fight their personal war over the same hills, but all planning and execution abilities of Fabrizio are of no use against the 2-toting Pagni who proceed to annihilate the Italian assault after Fabrizio gained a foot on the hill on turn 2 (?!?), losing the game and some temper to the ever-smiling Pagni. I think that we are going to see an interesting match between these two next time (even if poor Fabrizio was heard chanting “IcannotbeathimIcannotpossiblybeathimIwillneverbeathim” All players choose Morire in Bellezza which is possibly and indication of poor choice from the organizers and Mazzei beats Struijf for 3 rd place.

Georges is declared the winner and walks away with plaque, Operation Watchtower, Operation Veritable and Journal 7, 2 nd (Pagni) and 3 rd place (Mazzei) get their plaques and some minor prizes, as the players who rolled more 2, 12 and obtained more CVC in CC.

The tournament was a real success, with everybody playing ALL their matches till the end (even Claudio Prandi who lost all of them); and not less important for us, 30 people tried the simplified ASL on the giant board we set for newcomers, and 3-4 ASL games were constantly played along the main event. We did some organizing mistakes but everybody had a lot of fun, and that's the really important things. We all hope to have installed some curiosity for tournaments in Italian players and hope to see some more travelling foreigners next year.

See you in Verona and … Remember the Bard!