2026 AAR

I present to you my Tournament Director recap of the 30th edition of the Canadian ASL Open. We had 29 players from all over North American: British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Maine. The odd number meant that I needed to fill my chosen roll as a filler player; I did not register to play in the tournament. Of course, we won’t know until September where the event will be. One can visit the web page of the Canadian ASL Association to find out the location for 2026 after it has been chosen. I believe everyone should go to an ASL event at least once. Even if the idea of competition isn’t for you, you will learn ASL stuff from playing different people.

The hotel’s meeting room was perfect for our event. It had great lighting, lots of doors and lots of space for people to stash their gear. We had eight foot tables, which encouraged people to be sociable without us being crowded (i.e., there were usually two matches going on at each table. The hotel’s restaurant was decent and they accommodated our scheduled break time of 3 PM when they would normally be closed. My hotel room was fine; I trust that applied to everyone because I heard no complaints. As I mentioned at the tournament, the meeting room cost was one thousand dollars, plus taxes, per day. For the people who may  have not attended because of the cost of registration, this should explain the price. Thankfully, the Canadian ASL Association exists and has the money to cover the shortfall between CASLO expenses and CASLO revenues when necessary, which happens often now and did for 2026.

The sponsors that provided prizes were Calian (a defence related company), Bounding Fire Productions, Lone Canuck and Multi-Man Publishing. Jeff Wilson, a war gamer and ASL fan, works for Calian and contacted me to offer prize support. Calian contributed the prizes for the top three finishers. Len Kay, at the event, also provided some popular 3D printed ASL accessories (of his own making) as a prize. He had brought some to sell as well and he sold several. He sells these items on Etsy.

I asked local players for help to handle the tasks associated with running a tournament. Dean Limosani, with a little help from Erik Lindblad, sourced the souvenir T-shirts and coffee mugs, as well as images to appear on them. Dean also purchased a very fine Scotch (Dalwhinnie single malt, aged 15 years) for the traditional toast that begins our event. Five players handled making the scenario list for the five six-hour rounds of the tournament. I chose the scenarios for the late-start round that had a length of five hours. Andre Escobedo, Bruno Larcheveque, Daniel Lavoie, Erik Lindblad and Mathieu Ouellette decided they wanted themed rounds. The themes chosen were “before and after WW2”, paratroops, Italians/Italy, Canadian designers and bridges. I provided some guidance and after they had chosen the scenarios, I decided which theme would appear in which round. The order was as I wrote them above. At then end of this document there is a list of the scenarios available and the number of playings. Six players chose to use the late-start round; two of them arrived near or after the 11:30 AM start time. The regular round started at 9:30 AM on the first day and 9 AM on the other two days. I thank Wai Wong for volunteering to help out with TD administrative work.

I thought it would be interesting to share with you the matches of the top five seeded players. Paul Sidhu (#1 seed) defeated Larry Flaherty(15), Andre Escobedo(13), Wai Wong(6) before being matched with Jeff Wasserman(4) in round 4. This was a rematch of the 2025 CASLO final, when Paul defeated Jeff to win the championship. They played GD4 ROAD TO LYON. This year, Jeff won their match. Paul lost with the attacking Germans. That was Paul’s only defeat; he won against Andrew Robinson(16). Paul wrote an AAR of his experience with a few. You can find it at this LINK.

Second seed Darren Kovacs defeated Ray Kruger(21), Daniel Lavoie(14) and Andy Beaton(7). In the fourth round he played against George Kelln(5). They played GD4 ROAD TO LYON. The VC were modified for the CASLO to a bidding format for the tournament. Darren lost as the defending French. Darren defeated Erik Lindblad(23) in the final round.

Third seed Blake Ball had a difficult time the first two rounds. He lost as the Nationalists in 137 ITALIAN BROTHERS against Andrew Robinson(16). He then lost to Dean Limosani(11), but went on to win against Bruce Stevenson(17), Daniel Lavoie(14) and Larry Flaherty(15).

Jeff Wasserman was the fourth seeded player at the CASLO. He beat Steffen Knippel(18), Andrew Robinson(16), Dean Limosani(11), [which was good for Dean, he had tickets for an event and wanted to skip round four if he lost] and Paul Sidhu(1) before meeting George Kelln(5) in the final. They chose to play AP143 LATE FOR CHOW. Jeff had the defending Americans; George won with the Germans.

Fifth seeded George Kelln played against David Garvin(26), George Hiotis(22), J. P. Hoekstra(29) and Darren Kovacs(2) before meeting Jeff in the final.

I compared the Final Rank of each player to their seed number. Quite a few players finished with a Final Rank within one to three points of their seed number. Jean-Pierre Raymond was the only player whose Final Rank exactly matched his seed number.

The CASLO gives a Sportsmanship prize to the player having the least number of wins after participating in all five rounds. The prize is a reimbursement of their registration fee. Nick Faryna was the recipient with zero wins during the event. He graciously declined to take the reimbursement. I want to acknowledge two people: the American player who couldn’t come but donated a registration fee to support the event and the Canadian player who had registered but couldn’t attend at the last minute and then let us keep his registration fee. I don’t know if they want their names known. This was probably the last time that I will hold the CASLO because the stress bothers me a bit. I believe their is a good chance that other Montréal players will take up the task in the future.

Michael Rodgers
2026 CASLO TD

FINAL RANKINGS