titan [Updated October 2004]  

 2004 WBC Report  

 2005 Status: pending 2005 GM commitment

Aaron Fuegi, MA

2004 Champion

2nd: Joe Harrison, KY

3rd: David Finberg, MA

4th: Russ Cleaveland, WA

5th: Kyle Moore, WA

6th: Ed Rothenheber, MD

Event History
1991    Steve Rareshide      43
1992    Kevin Quirk      48
1993    Brian Sutton      58
1994    Chuck Kaplan      67
1995    Steve Koleszar      65
1996    Ben Foy      66
1997    Dave Finberg      72
1998    Jung Yueh      78
1999    Dave des Jardins     51
2000    Rich Atwater     60
2001    Steve Koleszar     55
2002    Ed Rothenheber     51
2003    David Finberg     60
2004    Aaron Fuegi     39


Offsite links:

AREA Ratings

boardgamegeek

 Laurels
Rank Name

From

Last
Total
 1.  Aaron Fuegi

MA

04
123
 2. Dave Finberg

MA

04
104
 3. Rich Atwater

WA

02
  92
 4. Steve Koleszar

VA

03
  78
 5. Brian Sutton

MD

03
  71
 6. Ed Rothenheber

MD

04
  70
 7. David des Jardins

CA

99
  50
 8. Dan Strock

PA

00
  48
 9. Chuck Nail

GA

01
  36
10. Joe Harrison

KY

04
  30
11. Andrew Gross

WA

03
  30
12. Jason Ley

GA

02
  27
13. Kevin Quirk

FL

00
  20
14. Michael Pustilnik

NY

99
  20
15. Kevin Hillock

VA

02
  18
16. Russ Cleaveland

WA

04
  15
17. Justin Childs

FL

99
  10
18. Kyle Moore

WA

04
  10
19. Arthur Wines

NJ

03
    6


1991: Steve Rareshide - VA
1992: Kevin Quirk - PA

Brian Sutton - MD
1993

Chuck Kaplan - IL
1994

Steve Koleszar - VA
1995, 2001

Ben Foy - VA
1996

Dave Finberg - MA
1997, 2003

Jung Yeah - MA
1998

David des Jardins - CA
1999


Rich Atwater - WA
2000

 
Ed Rothenheber - MD
2002
     


Always a Titanic Struggle ...

The big story this year is that the number of preliminary games was way down this year. Typically we have had in the 40s, but this year we had only 23. This affected what was needed to qualify this year and will change how the tournament is run next year.

This year only 13 different people won preliminary games. This was in part due to some players winning multiple preliminary games. (Kyle Moore won three plus another as an eliminator, Kevin Hillock and Ed Rothenheber three, Rich Atwater, Brian Sutton and David desJardins two each) One player with a win was unable to play in the semi-finals and so four players without
a preliminary win made the semi-finals. Three of these four (Aaron Fuegi, David Finberg and Russ Cleaveland) won their semi-final game and Aaron went on to win the final. Steve Koleszar is the only other person to win the event after not winning any preliminary games.

I am not sure what the reason for the big drop this year was, but it was probably some combination of the following:

* Competition from other events, particularly from "German" games.
* Titan has been out of print for several years now and sets are selling for around $100.
* Several fairly dedicated players had conflicts this year and were unable to attend.
* Feedback from the lower number of games going on at once making it harder to get new games started. This cost us some potential players who did not want to wait a long time for a game to start.
* Only having our initial start time in the program making us less noticeable to people looking for events starting at any particular time.

For next year I twant to make a change to reverse this trend. I don't think the current format works well when new games aren't being formed every half hour or so during the afternoon and early evening. Initially I wanted to hold on to the current system for another year to see if things went back to normal, but I have come to the conclusion that a change really needs to occur next year. I am very interested in feedback about my proposal below and would like to hear back from people whether they favor, are opposed or are neutral to the proposed changes. You can reach me at the address below.

I still want dedicated players to be able to play lots of games while accommodating a drop in players as well. I don't want to have to cut games off before they are finished. However there isn't enough time to both have rounds completely separate and get a reasonable number of games in. I think what we can do is start games about every four hours or so. Some games will still be going on, but normally one or two players will have been eliminated after four hours. Most of the games should be finished in eight hours. There isn't much point in starting at the same time as the two-player event. So the times I was thinking of starting rounds were Wednesday 14, 18 and 22, Thursday 10, 14, 18 and 22 and Friday 10, 14 and 18. The semis and finals would still be on Saturday.

If we change to this system we will not be able to just have four-player games for the preliminary matches. I will use three, four or five player games and will slightly prefer three-player games to five-player games determining the matches in a particular round. I think five-player games are too crowded and take longer to play. Three-player games shouldn't play that much different than four-player games.

I also want to adjust the scoring a bit. Getting third place in a three-player game will not count as a third. And getting fourth in a five-player game with be worth between a third and a titan kill.

We really didn't have anything else come up that suggests making any other significant changes.

 GM     Bruno Wolff III  (10th year)   NA 
    bruno@wolff.tobruno@wolff.to   NA

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