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Joe Angiolillo moves on our resident
paramedic Rex Lehman. |
Roberto Fournier and Carl Adamec contest
the Middle East. |
The Tides of History ...
The 2015 tournament involved quite a bit of activity months before it even took place. First, nobody was sure who would be GMing the event until the game's original WBC GM (back in the days when the blue box version was used) decided to attend for the first time in five years; then, the semifinal had to be moved from Friday to Thursday to avoid a conflict with the Advanced Civilization Final. This wouldn't be the only conflict, as the Age of Renaissance title game was also inconvenienced. The GM almost had a conflict of his own, with B-17 scheduled to override the semifinal, but the big birds landed early this year.
45 players played at least one heat, with each heat manning six boards, although a few were 5-players. A change in the procedure to advance to the semifinals put an emphasis on finishing place over how close you were to your board's winner, with the top two from each semifinal board advancing.
The Final started with everyone wondering if Mark Smith, the #1 seed after the heats, would appear or opt for the Age of Renaissance Final instead. In the end, he chose History of the World, and managed to draw the Chinese dynasties in each of the first four epochs—a once in every 2,401 games probability—which put him into sixth place after Epoch 2, and kept him there through Epoch 6. Meanwhile, the lead changed hands frequently, with four of the other five finalists—Graeme Dandy, Kevin Youells, Christina Harley, and Stephen Scarangella—taking the lead (and the pre-eminence chit that goes with it) at one time or another. Only Ty Hansen never rose to the top. In the last Epoch, Youells had Russia, played a Civil War, placed three Armies—and watched as his opponent threw 5, 6, 6 to defeat all of them. Still, his five pre-eminence points was good enough to finish ahead of the others—or at least it would have been had Smith not been passed Britain. He turned in a 71-point turn to take the lead, got the 6-point pre-eminence marker, and after being in the "sand" position at the start of the last turn, the only sand he needed to worry about was if it happened to be the color of the Centurion shirt he gets for winning.
The other places were a close affair, with Youells finishing second on 178 (behind Smith's 187), then Scarangella, Dandy, and Hansen on 175, 174, and 173, respectively, with Harley's 161 earning the sand. Scarangella’s third was notable not only for being his first taste of laurels (and wood), but because he had just learned the game at the demo. Fast learner.
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GM Don Del Grande (at left) with his
six finalist conquerors. |
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