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Pete Stein, sans gall bladder, engages
Zack Terry while Danny Lewis ruins Rob Winslow's day. |
Grant LaDue meets Josh Githens in
a full ballroom as WBC's second tournament of the week gets underway. |
No Sophomore Jinx
Despite making the transition from a new B event to an "old"
A tournament, Manoeuvre maintained a strong following
in its second year at WBC. The tournament consisted of four swiss
rounds to advance the top eight to single elimination based on
points. Points were awarded for the type of wins and losses with
penalties for not completing the battle before the time limit.
The mapboard was the same for all four swiss rounds - an open
affair with little terrain in the middle of the board. The later
rounds offered new terrain challenges with a different board
in each SE round. Since the game comes with eight different countries,
the tournament was designed for the winner to show their skill
with the entire game. The players were allowed to play one country
twice throughout the tournament and all other countries a maximum
of once.
During the swiss rounds, not surprisingly Britain and France
were the most played as they are powerful and straightforward.
However it was good to see that many players went for some of
the other countries in much larger numbers than the previous
year and with a lot of success even against Britain and France.
The W-L records for the countries in winning percentage order
were Ottoman Empire 15-7, Austria 6-4, Britain 16-15, Prussia
9-9 (same as last year), Russia 8-9, France 18-20, Spain 5-10,
and United States 1-5. The biggest movers were Ottoman Empire
up from 8-9 and Austria up from 1-5. The biggest loser was France
dropping from 27-14.
Three 4-0 players advanced along with five 3-1 players after
points and tie breakers were applied.
The Quarter Finals saw the following results:
John Emery's British defeated Steve Raszewski's French by
concession
Jeff Paull's British defeated Bill Powers' French at nightfall
9-7
George Young's British killed five of Bryan Collars Prussians
Richard Beyma's French killed five of Josh Githens' British
The Semis saw John Emery's Russians defeat George Young's
Austrians 15-5 while Richard Beyma's Ottomans edged Jeff Paull's
French 8-6 in a pair of games ended by nightfall.
The Final was a two-game match. John Emery had the Prussian,
Spanish, and US left to play. Richard Beyma had the Austrians,
Spanish, and US left. Neither player wanted to play the US so
we had a Prussian-Spanish and Austrian-Spanish clash. In the
opening match, Richard's Austrians were able to squeak out a
10-8 nightfall win. This left the Final well up in the air. As
the dust settled in the second battle, John's Prussians managed
a 13-7 nightfall win which meant John captured the victory 21-17
on aggregate score. As John said, "the win was great but
almost better was seeing the future as my son and yours battled
it out in the 3rd round when both were 2-0." Kevin Emery
took this meeting. I expect they will meet over many more games
in the future as Danny aged out of the Juniors at this WBC.
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The age old battle of experience vs
the resilience of youth is tested yet again. |
And then there were just two. John
Emery bests Richard Beyma in the Final. |
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