brass  

Updated 11/15/2011
2011 WBC Report  

 2012 Status: pending 2012 GM commitment
Rob Flowers, MD
2011 Champion

Links

  Treefrog Games

Event History
2010    Bruce Hodgins     32
2011    Rob Flowers     45
 Laurels

 Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
   1.  Bruce Hodgins      on    11     33
   2.  Rob Flowers        MD    11     30
   3.  Daniel Speyer      NY    11     18
   4.  Tom McCorry        VA    10     18
   5.  John Corrado       VA    11     12
   6.  Chris Skuce        on    10     12
   7.  William Kendrick   uk    11      9
   8.  David Platnick     VA    10      9
   9.  John Dextraze      on    11      6
  10.  Paul Sampson       OH    10      6
  11.  Philip Shea        FL    10      3

2011 Laurelists                                                Repeating Laurelists 

Daniel Speyer, NY
2nd

John Corrado, VA
3rd

William Kendrick, uk
4th

John Dextraze, on
5th

Bruce Hodgins, on
6th


Past Winners

Bruce Hodgins, on
2010

Rob Flowers, MD
2011

Anthony Daw finds humor in Joshua Gottesman's play in the opening heat.

Greg Thatcher, Evan Davis, Bill Burch and Charles Ward in the first heat on Wednesday morning.

Martin Wallace still on the rise ...

Attendance at the second Brass tournament grew by more than a third with four nations represented. Coupled with similar results for his Autombile design and the talk of open gaming with his latest, A Few Acres of Snow, Martin Wallace designs are really taking off at WBC. After 17 preliminary games, 13 of the 15 unique winners opted to advance to the semis, so three runner-ups (based on percentage of their winner's score) were added to make four 4-player games.

On this occasion the four semi-final winners advanced in orderly fashion and the Canal Era progressed evenly, with all players building iron and developing. Speyer shipped two mills to market early, but got caught later, losing an M1 and failing to flip an M3 to finish the Canal era last. Corrado was confined to the west coast by his cards and built ports up to P3, allowing Kendrick to use them to ship two M3s. Flowers shipped an M2 to another Corrado port and overbuilt his own ironworks in Rochdale. At the halfway point Kendrick had a clear lead with 34 points, of which 18 were going to score again.

But round about then the wheels began to wobble on the Kendrick chariot. The others had coaled up and spread a rapid network of rails while he borrowed and developed. By Turn 4 Speyer had built another M3 and shipped both to market, used a two-card build for an M4 in Bury, built another M4 in Rochdale and shipped both the next turn, and after that Kendrick was always playing catch-up. Corrado built out all his ports and negotiated with the zoning authorities for permission to build mills, eventually erecting an M3 and M4 in Stockport - only one of which ever shipped. Flowers built his I4 and plunged into a shipyard in Liverpool. Coal was in shortage and there was some overbuilding, most strikingly with Speyer offing Flowers' I3 in Rochdale to win the Rail era, but failing to make up for his poor start. A second shipyard with a solid coal and rail foundation - and no mills or ports - took Flowers to a low-key but very competent victory with 138 points to Speyer's 131.

Over the 22 games the average score was 123.6 - slightly higher than last year- and the highest belonged to defending champion Bruce Hodgins with 166. There was again one game decided on a tie-break - this time during the heats - and Chris Senhouse qualified with the highest possible alternate score of 3.00.

If attendance for the 2012 tournament rises again as anticipated and we have more than 16 heat winners, qualifiers will be ranked by their best second score - so playing twice or three times can't hurt your chances and can only improve them. Canadian Bruce Hodgins has agreed to replace Roy Gibson as second assistant GM, so we will have a truly international panel, eh?

Daniel Eppolito and Chris Senhouse in the first heat.

GM Ed Kendrick shepherds his finalists thru the second Brass Final.
 GM      Edward Kendrick  [2nd Year]  NA
   Edward.Kendrick@perceptive.com  NA

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