 |
 |
|
The change to a two-player, Single
Elimination format was a big change from the multiple heat four-player
games of prior years. |
Tom McCorry lives up to his name as
the Eliminator by defeating Tom Oksiekik - thereby shortening
the event by one round and making a champ of Robbie Mitchell. |
Five New Laurelists Again ...
This year brought a major change to the Carcassonne
format: two-player single elimination. The change from multi-player,
multiple heats knocked the event out of the ranks of triple-dikgit
participation, but had other benefits. This format was adopted
since it is used for the official Carcassonne World Championship.
We hope that the WBC will be selected as a qualifying site for
this tournament next year so we adopted their format. The use
of the standard basic game with the single starter tile was retained.
The Saturday afternoon start found a large crowd with a slight
shortage of games. We managed to get enough copies to get through
the first round however.
It took six rounds to crown the eventual winner. The highest
single game score of the tournament was recorded in the first
round when Chris Greenfeld beat defending champion Katie McCorry
189-116. By the start of Round 5 we had five players remaining.
The GM played as an eliminator (not eligible to win in the tournament)
to try and get the numbers even and avoid a bye but was beat
by eventual runner-up Meredith Mattingly so three players advanced
to the next round. In the final round Steve Ok sienik ended up
losing to the GM eliminator so the winner was determined by the
other match which went to Robbie Mitchell. If Steve had beaten
the GM, there would have been one more round to determine the
winner.
Feedback was generally positive with the main positives being
the quicker games, the higher skill level required, and the avoidance
of the 'sitting next to the novice player' syndrome. The main
concern raised by players was not being able to play more games.
To address this concern, next year we will use a Swiss elimination
format: groups of four players competing in a round-robin
of three games with the top player from each group advancing
to a single-elimination playoff. The early Saturday afternoon
start time seemed to work for most and allowed weekend players
to participate. For those who downplay the latter when scheduling
events, it should be noted that two of the top three players
in this year's event were there only on Saturday. Hopefully,
next year we will be part of the World Championship qualifier.
| 2006
Euro Quest Laurelists |
|
Steve Crenshaw, VA
1st
|
Legend Dan Hoffman, MD
2nd
|
JP Roberts, MD
3rd
|
Kate Taillon, SC
4th
|
Bill Crenshaw, VA
5th
|
|
|
Tom McCorry [1st Year]
NA 
NA