manoeuvre  

Updated 11/30/2009

2009 WBC Report  

   2010 Status: pending 2010 GM commitment

John Emery, SC

2009 Champion

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Event History
2008    Chris Byrd     57
2009     John Emery     50
 Laurels

Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  John Emery         SC    09     30
  2.  Chris Byrd         CT    08     30
  3.  Richard Beyma      VA    09     18
  4.  John Miklos        GA    08     18
  5.  Jeff Paull         IN    09     12
  6.  Scott Moll         VA    08     12
  7.  George Young       VT    09      9
  8.  Mark Giddings      NY    08      9
  9.  Bryan Collars      SC    09      6
 10.  Marc Berenbach     MA    08      6
 11.  Bill Powers        VA    09      3
 12.  Bob Heinzmann      FL    08      3

2009 Laurelists                                                Returning Laurelists: 0

Richard Beyma, VA
2nd

Jeff Paull, IN
3rd

George Young, VT
4th

Bryan Collars, SC
5th

Bill Powers, VA
6th


Past Champions

Chris Byrd, CT
2008

John Emery, SC
2009

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.

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.
 GM      Andy Lewis (2nd Year)  NA  
    alewis@mchsi.com   NA

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