commands & colors: ancients 

Updated 12/2/2009

2009 WBC Report  

 2010 Status: pending 2010 GM commitment

Rick Young, NC

2009 Champion

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Event History
2006    Tony Curtis     40
2007     Bill O'Neal     36
2008     Brian Conlon     40
2009    Rick Young     34
 Laurels

Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  Bill O'Neal        NY    09     79
  2.  Brian Conlon       CT    08     46
  3.  Tony Curtis        OK    09     42
  4.  Rick Young         NC    09     30
  5.  Jack Morrell       NY    07     24
  6.  Jeff King          ME    08     18
  7.  Andy Finkel        uk    06     18
  8.  Riku Reikkinen     fn    08     12
  9.  Allan Kaplan       NJ    07     12
 10.  Steve Cuyler       NY    09      9
 11.  Rob March          CA    06      9
 12.  Peter Stein        OH    07      8
 13.  Eric Raymond       PA    09      6
 14.  Andy Joy           MD    08      6
 15.  David Burkey       PA    06      6
 16.  Jeff Cornett       FL    07      4
 17.  James Terry        NJ    09      3
 18.  Paul Skrabut       FL    08      3
 19.  Mike Gentile       PA    06      3

2009 Laurelists                                                Repeating Laurelists:

Bill O'Neal, NY
2nd

Tony Curtis, OK
3rd

Steve Cuyler, NY
4th

Eric Raymond, PA
5th

James Terry, NJ
6th


Past Champions

Tony Curtis, OK
2006

Bill O'Neal, NY
2007

Brian Conlon, CT
2008

Rick Young, NC
2009

The blocks outdrew the figures this year as Ancients outdrew its sister game Battle Cry for the first time.

GM Andy Lewis and ex-champ Tony Curtis watch Ric Young roll to victory to become the newest CCA champ.

Blocks & Blades ...

The first round was the pod system where we divided into four-player groups and each player played all the others in their group in the same scenario, Bagrades, with the best record in the group advancing automatically. We did have one group of six and they only played three of their five opponents. Side selection was handled by players bidding victory banners; something with a more known effect on the outcome than the things we tried the last two years. Carthage improved on things considerably this year as they went 31-18 (I had two games where neither player listed which side they played). 15 of the games were decided by one banner and 12 more were won by two banners. None of the victory banner bids were the difference in the outcome as the difference was always greater than the bid by more than one. Last year, Carthage had gone 33-27.

As we had eight pods, we took the group winners only and advanced to quarter-finals which were conducted as two-game matches, playing both sides of a battle against the same opponent. The quarter-final battle was Cynoscephalae from the 1st Expansion. Tony Curtis and Rick Young won both games in their matches. Stephen Cuyler and Eric Raymond split but Stephen's Romans were tougher -- allowing him to advance. Bill O'Neal also advanced as he won the first battle and had captured enough victory banners in the second game to guarantee the win so his opponent offered surrender; Bill has made the semis all four years.

The semi-finals followed the same two-game format using Ticinus River from the base game. In one semi, Stephen Cuyler faced Bill O'Neal, in an upstate New York match-up. Bill won as both sides to earn a chance to be our first repeat champion. In the other semi, Rick "Leaping Lemmings" Young took on former champion Tony Curtis. Rick also won as both sides and so prevented a Final pairing of two former champions.

The final battle was Ipsus from the1st Expansion. The contests couldn't have been closer as it was a split decision with Selecuus winning both battles by an 8-6 banner score so we had to go to a tie breaker. Rick Young was victorious as he only lost 57 blocks to Bill's 66.

We had a slight decrease in the number of players this year. We are still drawing a large core following who are strong players yet welcoming to newcomers. We stretched the players a little further in their need to understand the game to win this year in our scenario selection. We will push it a little further next year so check the scenario selection early for more practice time next year. The most interesting tidbit about the tournament this year was that the numbers worked out so I could play this year and with Ted Racier joining us for the first time, we had six GMT designers/principals participating and none had been arm twisted to play.

 GM      Andy Lewis (4th Year)  NA  
    NA   NA

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