merchant of venus   

Updated Nov. 23, 2013

 2013 WBC Report  

 2014 Status: pending 2014 GM commitment

Eric Wrobel, MD

2012-13 Champion

Event History
1991    Duane Wagner      24
1992    Kathy Stroh      21
1993    Michael Anchors      41
1994    David Thompson      43
1995    Greg Mayer      56
1996    Tom Stokes      48
1997    Mark Hunter      78
1998    Greg Mayer      80
1999    Steve Crenshaw     67
2000    Debbie Otto     68
2001     Bill Crenshaw     72
2002     Charley Hickok      60
2003     Luke Koleszar      64
2004     Eric Wrobel      64
2005      John Koskl      50
2006     Eyal Mozes      39
2007      Kathy Stroh      47
2008     Ewan McNay      57
2009      Debbie Gutermuth      57
2010     Eric Wrobel      64
2011     Bill Crenshaw      48
2012     Eric Wrobel      59
2013     Eric Wrobel     66

 Laurels

Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  Eric Wrobel        VA    13    188
  2.  Bill Crenshaw      VA    13    138
  3.  Joe Abrams         CT    12     72
  4.  Luke Koleszar      VA    13     66
  5.  Eyal Mozes         MD    11     61
  6.  Kathy Stroh        DE    13     56
  7.  Steve Dickson      CA    10     56
  8.  Debbie Otto        MO    00     56
  9.  Charles Hickok     PA    11     55
 10.  Ed Wrobel          VA    03     52
 11.  Chuck Foster       TX    06     42
 12.  Richard Irving     CA    13     40
 13.  John Koski         NC    05     40
 14.  Lance Ribeiro      NH    05     40
 15.  Jeff Bakalchuck    NY    02     40
 16.  Steve Crenshaw     VA    99     40
 17.  Greg Mayer         MO    99     36
 18.  Vassili Kyrkos     NY    11     36
 19.  Ewan McNay         CT    13     34
 20.  Debbie Gutermuth   NC    09     30
 21.  Tom Stokes         NJ    10     24
 22.  Duane Wagner       NJ    07     24
 23.  Phillip Shea       VA    09     22
 24.  Doug Faust         NY    12     18
 25.  Peggy Pfeiffer     FL    07     16
 26.  Rich Meyer         MA    04     16
 27.  Eric Monte         NY    12     12
 28.  Ken Gutermuth      TX    11     12
 29.  Patrick Shea       VA    10     12
 30.  Kevin Wojtasczyck  NY    07     12
 31.  Abby Cocke         MD    02     12
 32.  James Hopkin       CA    00     12
 33.  Chris Gnech        PA    12      9
 34.  Frank McNally      MA    06      9
 35.  Tom DeMarco        NJ    03      8
 36.  Gary Dickson       CA    02      8
 37.  Lauren Hickok      PA    00      8
 38.  Ray Stakenas Sr    NC    05      4
 39.  Jim Fardette       ae    04      4
 40.  Lynn Ribeiro       NH    01      4
 41.  Tom Browne         PA    12      3
 42.  David Fritsch      VA    08      3

2013 Laurelists                                                 Repeating Laurelists:

Richard Irving, CA
2nd

Kathy Stroh, DE
3rd

Bill Crenshaw, VA
4th

Luke Koleszar, VA
5th

Ewan McNay, NY
6th

Past Winners

Duane Wagner, NJ
1991

Kathy Stroh, PA
1992, 2007

Greg Mayer, MO
1995, 1998

Tom Stokes, NJ
1996

Mark Hunter, MO
1997

Steve Crenshaw, MD
1999

Deb Otto, MO
2000

Bill Crenshaw, MD
2001, 2011

Charlie Hickok, PA
2002

Luke Koleszar, VA
2003

Eric Wrobel, VA
2004, 2010, 2012-13

John Koski, NC
2005

Eyal Mozes, NY
2006

Ewan McNay, CT
2008

Debbie Gutermuth, NC
2009

Anni Foasberg and Patrick Shea

Chris Entwistle and Charley Hickok

 Phil Entwistle and Craig Reece

 Daniel Farrow, Patrick Shea and Tom McCorry

To Infinity and Beyond!

Déjà vu All Over Again!

With the release of the new Fantasy Flight Games edition, both the old AH edition and the Classic Game of the FFG edition were offered for heat games. However, players were nearly unanimous in their preference for the good old AH version -- both in terms of artwork and game rules. So for the next year, the AH version will be the standard version in use for this tournament, but if a FFG version is brought, full AH rules will be used (purchases with an IOU count against the "buy 1/sell 1" limit and demands will not pay out on Factory Goods -- the only difference will be a new navigation circle in Colony World system.)

The 2013 tournament started on Monday. 39 players participated in ten games to get the tournament off to a strong start. In memorable contests, Bill Crenshaw found three relics (Shield, Switch Switch and Yellow Drive) in the first five turns to get off to a flying start, earning an easy victory to advance. In the slower lane, Christopher Ellis won his qualifying game by never upgrading from a lowly Scout ship. The other Heat 1 winners were Charlie Hickok, Bob Woodson, Vassili Kyrkos, Steve Koleszar, Keith Corbino, Ewan McNay, Rich Meyer and Jeff Kahan.

On Wednesday, the tournament returned to the vast, cold expanses of Ballroom B (with no other games taking place yet, it was really cold! BRRRR!) Defending champ, Eric Wrobel, appeared, hobbling in on crutches earned in a rough soccer game. Would the injury affect his performance? Not at all! He cruised to an easy win. Apparently strong ankles are not a prerequisite for victory. In another game, Philip Shea received a commission to push his score to $2050, enough to win, but since the winner must declare victory on their turn, Philip lost and had to settle for 1st alternate status. (But as cruel fate would have it, exactly 20 winners appeared for the semifinals, so no alternates were admitted.) The GM, Richard Irving, admits it is occasionally better to be lucky than good. Finding not only the only system to sell his cargo, but an Open Port as well -- allowing both goods to be cashed in and buy two more plus a shield all in one turn. Later he had a "bad" roll of 1-1-1 that occurred when he only had to travel 2 MP up to his newly built space port. Timing is everything! The other winners in the heat were Chris Entwistle, Wade Fowble, Bill Navolis, Patrick Shea, Ewan McNay (his second win) and Luke Koleszar.

The third heat, held on Friday, was held in Conestoga 3, a new location for this event which hosted six games involving 24 players. One of the games featured a variant, called Green Taters. Roderick Lee won that game by finding a Red Drive, Blue Drive (included in this variant) and Shield, which powered him to an easy victory. The other heat winners were Wade Fowble and Christopher Ellis (gaining their second wins), Joe Delaney, Kevin Wojtaszczyk and Kathy Stroh.

The highlight of the semifinals was a WBC first visit from the designer of the game, Richard Hamblen. All those present applauded the designer of their favorite game and gave him three rousing cheers.

In the semifinal games themselves, Steve Koleszar unfortunately had a memorable bit of bad luck when he rolled the maximum 6-6-6 with his Transport, only to be stopped at Shuttlestop Navigation Circle after moving all of two dots. Ouch! This equivalent of a galactic flat tire allowed Richard Irving to slip into the Final along with former champions: Bill Crenshaw**, Kathy Stroh**, Luke Koleszar* and defending champ Eric Wrobel***, possibly the best resume of any Final in the tournament's history. ( * = times won the MoV tournament.)

Like the 10's-2's poker hand was made famous by Doyle Brunson, the roll 3-3-3 will likely become famous as the "Bill Crenshaw roll" as he opened the game by choosing to explore the Cloud. But he rolled those dice sending him uselessly away from his intended route, where he would have found a Relic Yellow Drive, as Bill tirelessly reminded his fellow finalists throughout the game. That valuable relic was snatched up by Richard, who used it to forge an early lead. The turning point came when Eric, swooped into Water World, home of the Qossuth, and bought two Psychotic Sculptures at Richard's newly built spaceport, leaving Irving with nothing to buy there and several wasted turns reloading his ship. That gave Eric a lead he would never relinquish, to repeat as our champion, limp not withstanding. Déjà vu all over again! Will anyone stop the Wrobel juggernaut? We will see in 2014!

Eric wrobel, Gary Dickson, Nicola Bradford and Roderick Lee

GM Richard Irving and his fellow finalists.

 GM      Richard Irving  [12th Year]  1505 Caceras Circle, Salinas, CA 93906
    rri12@sbcglobal.net   NA

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