britannia [Updated October 2004]  

2004 WBC Report     

 2005 Status: pending 2005 GM commitment

Nick Benedict, PA

2003-04 Champion

2nd: Ralph Gleaton, SC

3rd: David Yoon, NY

4th: Ewan McNay, CT

5th: Rick Kirchner, KY

6th: John Emery, SC

Event History
1991    Richard Curtin      39
1992    Duane Wagner      53
1993    Brett Mingo      91
1994    Scott Pfeiffer      73
1995    Randy Schib      69
1996    Scott Pfeiffer      55
1997    David Gantt      52
1998    Jim Jordan      49
1999    Scott Pfeiffer     46
2000    Ewan McNay     62
2001    Mark Smith     42
2002    Ewan McNay     42
2003    Nick Benedict     48
2004    Nick Benedict     34


Offsite links:

AREA Ratings

boardgamegeek

 Laurels
Rank Name

From

Last
Total
 1. Ewan McNay

CT

04
171
 2. Nick Benedict

PA

04
144
 3. James Jordan

MD

02
  72
 4. David Gantt

SC

03
  70
 5. Mark Smith

KY

01
  60
 6. Scott Pfeiffer

SC

02
  58
 7. Jonathan Squibb

PA

00
  40
 8. Bruce Young

SC

02
  36
 9.   Ralph Gleaton

SC

04
  24
10.  David Yoon

NY

04
  24
11. Randy Schilb

MO

00
  24
12. Richard Curtin

NY

03
  20
13. Richard Jones

UK

02
  18
14. Jonathan Price

NJ

00
  12
15. Llew Bardecki

ONT

03
  10
16.  Rick Kirchner

KY

04
    8
17. Brett Mingo

MD

02
    6
18. John Strand

CO

03
    5
19. John Emery

SC

04
    4

Past Winners

Richard Curtin - NY
1991

Duane Wagner - NJ
1992

Brett Mingo - DC
1993

Scott Pfeiffer - SC
1994, 1996, 1999

Randy Schilb - MD
1995

David Gantt - SC
1997

Jim Jordan - MD
1998

Ewan McNay - CT
2000, 2002


Mark Smith - KY
2001


Nick Benedict - CA
2003-04
     
 


The First of the Fast Forward History Games ...

It was a somewhat slow year in Britannia land,, with only 33 players vying for the silver tray. But, we had a special guest on tap to observe the games. Lew Pulsipher, the long lost designer of the game, showed up to watch! Lew observed every round of Britannia with an eye towards coming up with a rationalized set of rules for Britannia 2. We'll all look forward to the new game.

In the meanwhile, Lew had a couple of short scenarios for Britannia that received extensive playtesting during the tournament. A number of people had fun with those as well as two other games Lew's working on, Germania and Dark Ages. You can check these out at http://www.pulsiphergames.com/projects.htm.

In the wins and losses column this year an unusual thing happened, Blue won three games in the heats! Generally, Blue is lucky to achieve even one win. Not only that, but all of the wins were solid at 110 points or better. It is to be hoped that this unusual result stems from the random distribution of colors in the heats that was started this year.

Nonetheless, as usual, Red claimed the highest number of heat wins with five, Purple and Blue followed with three each, and Green trailed with two. High scores in the heats were claimed by David Yoon (Purple ­ 121), John Emery (Green ­ 111.5), Jon Squibb (Red ­ 147.5), and Jim Jordan (Blue ­ 127.)

The final featured two serial rivals, Nick Benedict and Ewan McNay, being paired with David Yoon and Ralph Gleaton. David is a calm veteran of the game who has shown up in the finals before while Ralph is new to the tournament this year and won his way into the semis with a Blue victory.

Much to Ewan's disappointment, random selection bestowed Blue his, umm, favorite color in the final this year. Meanwhile, Nick had Purple, his favorite (or perhaps just the one he always seems stuck with.) Rounding it out, Ralph pulled Green, and David Red. The game was thus set for a furious fight.

The beginning of the game was not happy for Blue with the Belgae only striking one of the Purple horde of legions. The Brigantes also faired poorly with taking down but one legion. So, the Romans did well at the beginning, coming up with 52 points. In general, after that, the Purple turn was inauspicious with few points for the Romano-British or the Dubliners, but the Scots pulled in a steady round of points, maintaining a balance with the Picts in the north.

The mid-game looked positively normal, with Red and Blue maintaining a strong presence in England. The Danes managed to score well on their major invasion, but were swiftly beaten back to a small presence. Green nonetheless held on to steady points with the Welsh and the Caledonians. And, somehow, Ralph's Jutes hypnotized David's Saxons into leaving them alone for rounds and rounds to score a massive 12 points.

All of the strong presences on the board meant that the final invasions were not going to be easy. It was somehow fitting that Nick and Ewan's rivalry came down to the end with Nick's Norwegians and Ewan's Normans. The Norwegians came into the thick of it and managed, just, to get the standard 14 points. But then there was the denouement. The Normans came into a nasty wall of units and, in a horrible turn of dice rolling, William was run over with boxcars. And that was it for Blue. But it was not it for the game.

In the last event, the few remaining Norwegians, reduced to two spaces, were attacked by the Normans in one space. This allowed them to retreat to two spaces, ensuring an extra point for Purple and pushing Nick into a 107 point win over Ralph Gleaton's Greens with 106.5. Nick thus becomes the first person on the Britannia plate to add his name two years in a row. We'll see what happens next year.

Thanks to everyone for playing! In notes for next year, we'll continue with colors being randomly picked in each round. Additionally, three heats worked fine this year, as did the demo, so we'll continue those as well. For the demonstration next year we'll use one of the short variants that Lew came up with which demonstrates the mechanics of the game very well. The variant is for two players and has the Romans playing against everyone else for the first five rounds. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone next year in Lancaster!

 GM      James M. Jordan  [6th Year]  NA
    jmj@ieee.org   NA

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