After the Sealed Deck tournament on Day 1 and the Theme deck tournament
on Day 2, the action stepped up with a Final Brawl tournament on Day 3.
It was my honour to be running this event and the first task was to shepherd
all the players to the area for the event - you needed the program book's
errata sheet to find the right location - just like a game. Still, despite
this, we had a good turnout of 28 players - the biggest Shadowfist tournament
I've ever attended.
This event was the final qualifier for the Nationals and so it was
important to have a good ranking system for the players. After some thought,
I used a swiss-style system which has worked well at all-day events back
in the UK. Each game was worth 1 point per player plus 1 point for a win
inside the distance. This meant that a standard 4-player win was worth
5 points to the winner and the losers got nothing. If the game was timed-out,
then the points would be split between the leader(s) as assessed by the
formula: feng shui sites + (2 * burnt for victory). E.g. a game might be
scored:
Feng shui BFV Tie-break points Tourney points Andrew 3 1 5 1 Bruce 4 4 0 0 Charlotte 3 1 5 1 David 1 2 5 1Note that fractional points are dropped - 4 into 3 gives 1 point each. The benefits of this system are:
Round 1
2,2: Lance Guth & Blair Lafferty beat Michael Nickoloff, Jim Ericson
5: Damon Schereck beat Robert Roberts, Kirk O'Brien, Charlotte Henkle
5: Joseph Livotte beat Ray Brown, Kevin Masterson, Stefan Vincent
5: Ken Kurpiel beat Janifer Cheng, Dan Deerwester, David Deerwester
5: Matt Widmann beat Brian Carty, Brett King, Jeff Williamson
4: Robert McNulty beat Matt Miller, John Rogers
5: Yuit Vong beat Michael Jackson, Danny Cruz, Jason Rownd
Round 2
5: Damon Schereck beat Danny Cruz, Michael Nickoloff, Brett King
5: Jeff Williams beat Blair Lafferty, Charlotte Henkle, Jason Rownd
5: John Rogers beat Dan Deerwester, Yuit Vong, Stefan Vincent
5: Joseph Livote beat Michael Jackson, Robert Roberts, Brian Carty
5: Lance Guth beat Janifer Cheng, Kevin Masterson, Robert McNulty
5: Matt Miller beat Ray Brown, Kirk O'Brien, Ken Kurpiel
5: Matt Widmann beat David Deerwester, Jim Ericson, David Mitchell
Round 3
5: Brett King beat Dan Deerwester, Robert Roberts, Matt Miller
5: Stefan Vincent beat Jeff Williams, Lance Guth, Michael Jackson
2,2: Ray Brown & Yuit Vong beat Janifer Cheng, Jim Ericson
4: Jason Rownd beat David Deerwester, Robert McNulty,Damon Schereck
4: Brian Carty beat Ken Kurpiel, Michael Nickoloff
5: Matt Widmann beat John Rogers, Kevin Masterson, Charlotte Henkle
5: Joseph Livote beat Kirk O'Brien, Danny Cruz, Blair Lafferty
Round 4
4: Joseph Livotte beat Matt Widmann, Damon Scheckel
5: Robert McNulty beat Brett King, Jeff Williams, John Rogers
4: Ken Kurpiel beat Yuit Vong, Lance Guth, Ray Brown
4: Brian Carty beat Matt Miller, Jason Rownd, Stefan Vincent
It's a shame that two of the games in the final round went to the time
limit and so were decided by the tie-break. I did allow 80 minutes for
this round but I think the players were especially cautious at this stage.
The top table was a three player game. Two of the players were undefeated
- Joseph Livotte and Matt Widmann. I have full details of both of their
decks and they are published in accompanying articles. Unfortunately, I
didn't get a close look at Damon Schereck's deck but it appeared to be
a very tight DE deck - to my London eye it seemed to have hardly any cards
in it. I didn't see much of the action - the game seemed to be over fairly
quickly and so must have been a straightforward, brutal affair. The only
detail I recall was some banter about Joseph's use of Bzzzt! This is not
often seen and Matt didn't realise until too late that he could Hack this
card. I'm not sure that this was significant though - perhaps one of the
participants can tell us more.
The overall standard of play seemed to be quite high - there were very
few questions about the rules. There were a couple of inexperienced players
who exclaimed that they had learnt a lot about the game and they seemed
fairly happy with the experience.
At the end I was mainly concerned to get details of all the players
and their decks and the results are presented in this final scoreboard
(use fixed pitch to view this). The Dragons were easily the most popular
faction. They and the Architects nearly monopolised the qualifying decks.
Various players took note of this for the following day...
Scoreboard & decks Scores Total Faction Theme/Name Joseph Livotte 5 5 5 4 = 19 ..F.... Trinity Matt Widmann 5 5 5 0 = 15 .D..... Smack Back, Yak Attack Damon Schereck 5 5 0 0 = 10 ..F.... Dangerous Experiment Ken Kurpiel 5 0 0 4 = 9 .D..... Independence Robert McNulty 4 0 0 5 = 9 .D...J. Brian Carty 0 0 4 4 = 8 .DF.... Godzilla + ITT degree Lance Guth 2 5 0 0 = 7 .DF.... Yuit Sum Vong 5 0 2 0 = 7 .DF.... Butch - - - - qualifying threshold - - - - Brett King 0 0 5 0 = 5 .D.H... Drunken Style Jeff Williamson 0 5 0 0 = 5 ADFHLJM XY Gambit John Rogers 0 5 0 0 = 5 .D....M Matt Miller 0 5 0 0 = 5 ADFHLJM Feast of Souls Stefan Vincent 0 0 5 0 = 5 ...H..M Displaced Chicks Jason Rownd 0 0 4 0 = 4 ..F...M Blair Lafferty 2 0 0 - = 2 ..FH... Chi Ray Brown 0 0 2 0 = 2 ADFHLJM Supercomputer Michael Nickoloff 0 0 0 - = 0 .D..L.. Bronze Sentinel Charlotte Henkle 0 0 0 - = 0 AD..... Danny Cruz 0 0 0 - = 0 A..H... Dan Deerwester 0 0 0 - = 0 .D..... Comrade in Arms David Deerwester 0 0 0 - = 0 ...H... David Mitchell 0 0 - - = 0 ..F.... Janifer Cheng 0 0 0 - = 0 .DFHLJM Melting Pot Jim Ericson 0 0 0 - = 0 .D..... Guns Kevin Masterson 0 0 0 - = 0 .D..L.. Kirkpatrick O'Brien 0 0 0 - = 0 .D.H... Drunken Stance Michael Jackson 0 0 0 - = 0 ....L.. Assassins Robert T. Roberts 0 0 0 - = 0 .D..... John Woo's a Wuss!Faction popularity
Last modified: March 13, 1998.
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