axis & allies [Updated 11/6/05] |
2005 WBC Report | |
2006 Status: pending 2006 GM commitment |
Offsite links: |
|
|
|
Past Winners | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
While player participation was less than in years past, there were still enough top players in attendance to make it extremely tough for Charles Michalek, a WBC first-timer, to climb to the top of the Axis & Allies heap. After the dust had cleared on a long day of pool play, Charles emerged from the toughest of the four pools to join three prior champs, Kevin Keller, Patrick Mirk, and Philip Shea, in single elimination play the next day. Pool play had some interesting moments- Promotional swag provided by Xeno Games, Table Tactics, and the GM was raffled off during each round. Especially gratifying (to the GM) was the fact that Alex Gregorio played three rounds and was rewarded with a copy of Axis & Allies Revised in the last drawing. This happened much to the consternation of Patrick Mirk, who was the one "shark" not to receive a prize in any of the drawings and was the one who drew out Alex's name for the last prize. Single-Elimination Highlights- The second semifinal had two-time defending champ Philip Shea playing the new guy, Charles Michalek. In a grinding match that really worked the gray matter, Charles targeted the peripheral Japanese Victory Territories (VTs) (East Indies, Borneo, and the Philippine Islands) with the United Kingdom. Philip's Germans took the Caucasus and were staging to take Moscow while the Japanese had reached all the way to Novosibirsk. The win went to Charles because of his holding 13 VTs versus 11 VTs for Philip as the game reached the time limit. The Final pitted Charles against Patrick. Patrick once again took the Axis, this time receiving 4 IPCs. In a theme that played itself out in four of the five victories that he accumulated, Charles proceeded to play with an eye on the VTs at the expense of IPCs. In the second to last round, Patrick finished the Japanese turn with a VT lead of 15 to 9. But by the end of the last round, the game came down to the United States making two tight amphibious assaults to steal the game. The first attack, into Australia, was an armor and an infantry against one defending infantry. But the second was a lone transport being sent to Borneo with two infantry aboard to battle a lone Japanese fighter. Needing a hit in the first round against the fighter to have any real chance to succeed, Charles rolled a 1 and got the win. In the four games that Charles won by tight scores, the Victory Territory count in each game was 13-11. But his average IPC deficit was more than 7 per game as the Allies and in his lone game as the Axis it was 3. I guess they play more than craps in Las Vegas. Tournament Stats- The bidding was quite even in its distribution between the Axis (7), Allies (8), and no bid/zero bid (8). The Axis getting a bid went 3-4 (W-L). The Allies getting a bid went 5-3. The "no bid" games went 5-3 for the Axis. Six of the games drew early concessions. Three were stopped because the winner occupied 18 or more VTs. The other 14 were played to time limit and the wins were evenly split between the Axis and the Allies. No game ended in a VT tie, so there was no need to go to the IPC tiebreaker. The average number of rounds for a non-concession game was a shade under six (5.88). With rounds being 4.5 hours long and the cutoff point for starting a new round being at the 4 hour mark, I think that this is an acceptable lower limit for speed of play. Hopefully, as players gain familiarity with the new version of the game, we may get more rounds in and see more games reach the threshold for a VT win. Then again, players may get better at hanging in and pushing the game to the time limit anyway. For any other information about the event, email me at the address below. Thanks to all who participated and I hope to see you next year! |
GM | Craig Yope [1st Year] | 1313 Mayer Rd, Saint Clair, MI 48079 |
CraigYope@yahoo.com | 810-367-3020 |
2005 Preview Page | View the Icon Key | Return to main BPA page |