history of the world w/bidding [Updated August 2000]

HWB   
    18-23    19-24
       9-14    
   

  Maryland 4    Maryland 1-2

Kevin Wojtaszczyk, NY

2000 Champion

2nd: Robert Destro, NJ

3rd: Nick Henning, CT

4th: Chris Byrd, CT

5th: Stephen Mayer, FL

6th: Michael Mullins, MD
Event History
1991    None      -
1992    None      -
1993    None      -
1994    None      -
1995    None      -
1996    James Pei      35
1997    Bill Crenshaw      34
1998    Harald Henning      41
1999    Mike Fisher     43
2000    Kevin Wojtaszczyk     23
AREA Ratings
 1    Bruce Monnin      1618
 2    Timothy Greene      1601
 3    Gordon Bliss      1593
 4    George Young      1592
 5    William Crenshaw      1571
 6    Lauren Hickok      1570
 7    Craig Dudley      1569
 8    Kathy Stroh      1562
 9    Ross Edwards      1561
10    Mark Giddings      1555

Bring on the accountants ...

History of the World with Bidding took a participant hit this year after growing in attendance the past few years. Maybe the early Tuesday start for heat #1 or all the other options available on Tuesday night this year is to blame, but for next year a later start is envisioned. Overall, we managed two full tables of six players each night. On Tuesday, Robert Destro and
John Koski managed to win their heats. The notable guffaws were Rich Irving's 61 bid for the Romans in which he lost 12 Roman armies while throwing three sets of snake-eyes, andMark Smith's terrible streak of bad luck in whiffing with
his Barbarians, losing his Elite Troops before they won a battle and overall coming up short on way to many die rolls. In the second night, Chris Byrd and Stephen Mayer won their tables. In those games the high Roman bid was Tony Cadden's 50. Needless to say, he fared as well as Rich the previous night.

The Friday morning final had three of the heat winners show up and the top three seconds based on the pre-tournament tie-breaker of percentage of VP points verse bid points. The final had Robert Destro, Stephen Mayer, Chris Boyd, Kevin Wojtaszczyk, Michael Mullins and Nick Henning going for the Wood.

The bidding was very close early on and everyone was having difficulty winning any offensive die rolls. Combining the Persians and Celts vaulted Stephen into an early lead and good board presence at the start of Epoch III. The Romans went for 41 to Robert but they held the same fate as the Romans in the previous heats. To start with, the Fanatical Romans lost four boats trying to navigate the Western Med, and continued to show non-Roman quality fighting by dropping an additional eight armies along the way. Epoch IV saw Chris's Arab Jihad cut short in their first two attacks by the Jewish fort in Palestine. The worst luck, however, was experienced by Nick's empires. Starting in Epoch III, his Macedonians with their imitation Weaponry rolled snake-eyes four times and lost six armies. In Epoch IV, Nick's Byzantines lost five armies and then, to make matters worse, Nick's Seljuk Turks lost another five in Epoch V. Even with all the unlucky offensive die rolling going on, by the end of Epoch V everyone was still neck and neck with only seven points between 2nd and 6th with Kevin as the target a dozen points in front of Chris's second place 52 heading into the critical Epoch VI bids. Michael had the biggest board presence at the time and was poised for a big early score after running the Mongols in Epoch V. Michael however bid too high on Portugal, grabbing them for 20. This allowed Kevin to mop up all his China presence with the Ming, before Michael could score them with Portugal. Kevin's early empire however, launched him to 91 points and had everyone looking to take a piece out of his green empire. Nick decided against the luck of the dice for Epoch VI and chose the Incas/Aztecs and scored an impressive 29 points to jump into third place with 70 points by the end of the Epoch. The high bids for the Turks (21), Portugal (20) and Spain (26) didn't help Stephen, Michael or Chris's VP totals for the Epoch but did establish them some good board presence heading into the Epoch VII bids. The biggest winner of the round was Robert's Mughals which raked in a whopping 40 points. This moved Robert into second place at 78 points before the final round of bidding. Needless to say a premium was going to be paid to go early in the last round. Robert won the bidding war and edged out Kevin for Russia 20 to 19, while Chris edged out Kevin for the Manchu Dynasty 18 to 17, only to have Kevin fall into the Netherlands for 9. Michael grabbed France for 25 and Stephen got Britain for 32. Lastly, Nick defaulted to Germany for 10. Going first in Epoch VII after scoring 40 in Epoch VI was a big coupe for Robert's purple and they managed to crank out 62 more points. This vaulted Robert to a leading 120 points and thoughts of HWB Wood. Chris followed up with the Manchu's and jumped into a possible 2nd place by rolling up 49 points and getting to 87 overall. Next up, however, were Kevin's Netherlands, with at least 38 points to make up to catch Robert. Luckily his first attack into the North Sea was successful to get to his previous Atlantic fleet. From there, he gained dominance of Northern Europe, some monuments and with his final army he sacked Spain's capital and monument to gain presence in Southern Europe for a 4 point play. 38 was the total, which put Kevin at 120 with Robert, both awaiting France, Britain and Germany to go. Michael managed to grab 47 points with France and pulled just behind Chris to 84 overall. Next Stephen revealed his Japan minor nation to go with his British empire. However, Japan failed to expand to China or to grab the Manchu capital and the Brits had to populate their navy before attacking so Stephen got up to 66 points and just edged past Michael to 85 overall. Lastly Nick tried his hand with the dice one last time, and as before, they failed him. Half of his Germans were lost, but he did manage to grab 33 points. This put him at 93 overall and secured a 3rd place finish. Double checking the addition had Robert and Kevin truly tied at 120 which forced the tie-breaker decision of percentage of VPs verse amount of bid points. Robert had Shang (5), Vedic (7), Romans (41), Goths (10), Chola (9), Mughals (13) and Russia (20) for a total bid of 105, or a percentage of 1.14 VP per bid point. Kevin had Sumeria (5), Assyria (8), Sassanids (11), T'ang (11), Vikings (12), Ming (12), Netherlands (9) for a total bid of 68, or a percentage of 1.76 VP per bid point. So in the closest HWB final to date, Kevin edged out Robert for the Wood. Hopefully with more participants next year we could have another close battle for theWood!

See http://members.aol.com/wafflehq/howbid.html for current information on this event. Knowledge of standard HWD rules is required.

 GM      Kevin Wojtaszczyk  [1st Year]   81 Yeager Dr., Cheektowaga, NY 14225
    kwojtasz@adelphia.net   NA

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