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War Of The Ring (WOR) WBC 2018 Event Report
Updated November 27, 2018
24 Players Joe Yaure 2018 Status 2019 Status Event History
2018 Champion & Laurels
 

Yaure Thwarts Three-Peat Attempt

Another year of War of the Ring tournament is in the books. We dropped a little in numbers but the early Mulligan round followed by the next weekend Round 1 and SE elimination rounds still seemed a popular slot. Christopher Yaure again did wonders running the demo which added a couple more players to the mix. Christopher Yaure and Chris Trimmer also are due a great thanks as assistant GMs because they shepherded the whole Saturday SE elimination rounds to completion as I had to cut out early to attend a 50th wedding anniversary in Michigan the final Saturday. Yes, it was tough, but such celebrations are once in a lifetime to attend and God willing there will be more WBC's to stay the full time.

The biggest heat was the Mulligan round which had 8 games live and 3 more matched opponents decided to play their matches later in the week. All games were completed before the required start of Round 1 on Friday and that heat just had 4 games going, possibly from the wealth of other events to choose from? We ended up with 11 players advancing to Round 2 and Mark Schultz agreed to play as eliminator using his highly detailed painted WoTR set. Everyone who participated got Dwarven Rings counters I created and had printed on counters and I was able to kick off Round 2 on Saturday morning before trekking off to Michigan. The final write up was graciously supplied by Chris Trimmer below.

Final

After round 3 the tournament went from 6 players down to 3 once again creating the need for an eliminator. Eric Stein who had just lost to Joe Yaure volunteered to play in this round along with Chris Yaure and Chris Trimmer. Because we wanted to keep the Yaures from playing each other unless forced and Joe has just played Eric, we paired Joe against Chris Trimmer while Chris Yaure would play Eric Stein (eliminator).

Chris Trimmer rolled for the right to bid first and immediately offered three dwarven rings to Joe to play the Shadow Forces. Joe pondered on this for a minute before offering four which Chris accepted to play the Free People.

Turns 1 and 2 started off slow for Fellowship movement as T1 had no character dice or Wills of the West while T2 resulted in a single Will. The FP instead utilized Gandalf’s Guide ability to play as many events as possible while able to draw free replacements.

Joe meanwhile moved his nations towards war and summoned Saruman early in the game. In the midgame he summoned the Witch King while moving to establish sieges at Lorien, Helm’s Deep (with Saruman troops running around Minas Tirth rather than Isengard troops), and the Woodland Realms. Meanwhile Strider headed with Boromir to Dol Amroth for an eventual crowning as Aragon.

Joe also played to the table a nasty event, Worn With Sorrow and Toil, that caused a FP discard of a random character card should a companion be taken as a casualty to reduce corruption from successful hunts. The FP could not easily eliminate this event once Lorien was taken so the Fellowship slimmed down to just hobbits remaining. Gimli made it to the Woodland Realms before it went under siege which become significant later.

While Lorien fell easily for the SP, in later rounds Helm’s Deep and the Woodland Realms put up incredible resistance and routed the Shadow forces. In fact, a single troop survivor along with Gimli was able to sortie from WR and kill the Witch King’s single body guard (and thus the WK as well!) without taking a loss themselves! By T9 a second SP force returned to WR only to be routed again with the FP reinforcements that made it into play. And Saruman died to Ents on T11 as the Isengard forces were eventually rounded up for the unsuccessful bid to capture HD.

Despite the SP military forces being a total disaster, their hunt for the Fellowship netted good results and slowly whittled them down to Smeagol by time they made it to Mordor. While the Fellowship entered Mordor with relatively little corruption, a flurry of good tile pulls and event cards soon placed the FP in corruption danger. With little military pressure to worry about, the FP only advanced one space per turn while threatening FP military action that Joe easily countered.

And so the game went to T14! The Fellowship was at 11 corruption with a single space left to Mount Doom. Every FP character card was now drawn so there would be no further help there. The Fellowship would be forced to move or take an automatic corruption at the end of the turn. Nine tiles remained for draw with five of them favoring the FP and four favoring the SP. Chris Yaure had shortly beforehand lost to Eric Stein so this draw would now decide the victor for the entire tournament. Chris Trimmer passed the draw bag to Chris Yaure for the final tile pull. Happily for Joe, a draw of 3 corruption sealed his inaugural championship for the WOR tournament!

 
2018 Laurelists Repeating Laurelists: 5
Chris Trimmer Chris Yaure Eric Stein Stan Myszak Michael Sosa
2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
 
Who wouldn't want to play with this set. Chris Kizer leading the Shadow.
Chris Yaure's free folk defending against evil. Finalists Chris Trimmer and Joe Yaure
 
GM  Kevin Wojtaszczyk [11th Year]  NA
 kwojtasz@roadrunner.com  NA