axis & allies [Updated 11/6/05]  
 2005 WBC Report 
2006 Status: pending 2006 GM commitment
Charles Michalek, NV
2005 Champion

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Event History
1999    Kevin Keller     43
2000    Tim Rothenhoefer     43
2001    Patrick Mirk     41
2002    Phil Rennert     50
2003    Philip Shea     34
2004     Philip Shea     31
2005    Charles Michalek     19
  Laurels
Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  Philip Shea        VA    05    148
  2.  Kevin Keller       MD    05    120
  3.  Phil Rennert       MD    04     96
  4.  Joe Powell         VA    05     94
  5.  Pat Mirk           FL    05     90
  6.  Tim Rothenhoefer   MD    00     60
  7.  Brian Fitzpatrick  VA    03     54
  8.  Charles Michalek   NV    05     40
  9.  Jeff King          ME    02     36
 10.  Alfred Wong        IL    01     30
 11.  Greg Berry         VA    04     24
 12.  Don Tatum          MD    02     24
 13.  Phil Rollins       ME    00     24
 14.  John Sharp III     FL    00     18
 15.  Mike Terrana       GA    99     18
 16.  Eric Lind          CA    03     12
 17.  Joe Collinson      MD    01     12
 18.  Barry Shoults      MI    99     12
 19.  Richard Beyma      MD    99      9
 20.  James H. Long      PA    05      8
 21.  David Rynkowski    NY    04      6
 22.  Russell Vane       VA    03      6
 23.  David Huss         NY    01      6
 24.  John Koski         MD    00      6
 25.  Rich Curtin        NY    99      6
 26.  Kevin McCarthy     OH    99      3
          
2005 Laurelists

Patrick Mirk, FL
2nd

Philip Shea, VA
3rd

Kevin Keller, MD
4th

James H. Long, PA
5th

Joe Powell, VA
6th
Past Winners

Kevin Keller, MD
1999

Tim Rothenhoefer, MD
2000

Patrick Mirk, FL
2001

Phil Rennert, MD
2002

Philip Shea, VA
2003-04

Charles Who? A New Champ for a New Version

While player participation was less than in years past, there were still enough top players in attendance to make it extremely tough for Charles Michalek, a WBC first-timer, to climb to the top of the Axis & Allies heap. After the dust had cleared on a long day of pool play, Charles emerged from the toughest of the four pools to join three prior champs, Kevin Keller, Patrick Mirk, and Philip Shea, in single elimination play the next day.

Young Alex Gregorio gives ex-champ Kevin Keller all he can handle in Preliminary Pool play.

Pool play had some interesting moments-
- Kevin Keller came close to losing his first round game to 10-year old Alex Gregorio. Tom would say its in the genes.
- Ian Lange handed prior laurelist Jeff King a quick loss with a highly improbable amphibious assault of Germany by the United Kingdom.
- Veteran player Joe Powell had a chance to move on to SE play but lost a tight head-to-head match against Charles Michalek in the third round.
- James D. Long was also in the running for advancement from the same pool until a loss in the third round knocked him out of contention.
- James H. Long (son of James D.) lost in the second round of pool play to Kevin Keller but still ended up 2-1, giving him the best record among the non-advancing players.
- Second-generation WBCers that played in the tournament were: Alex Gregorio, John Schoose, Kevin Broh-Kahn, Vincent Sinigaglio, Ian and Teddy Lange.

Promotional swag provided by Xeno Games, Table Tactics, and the GM was raffled off during each round. Especially gratifying (to the GM) was the fact that Alex Gregorio played three rounds and was rewarded with a copy of Axis & Allies Revised in the last drawing. This happened much to the consternation of Patrick Mirk, who was the one "shark" not to receive a prize in any of the drawings and was the one who drew out Alex's name for the last prize.

Single-Elimination Highlights-
In the first semifinal match between highly laureled Kevin Keller and seasoned veteran Patrick Mirk, Patrick received 3 IPCs for being the Axis. Early on Kevin invaded Norway with the United Kingdom and as a result left the Home Island lightly defended. That coupled with the German naval might being in a position to exploit the situation spelled an early end to the Allied cause. Patrick's Germans invaded and conquered England. While the Western Allies temporarily displaced Germany from London, the Kriegsmarine was not squashed and England was once again taken over drawing a quick concession from Kevin.

The second semifinal had two-time defending champ Philip Shea playing the new guy, Charles Michalek. In a grinding match that really worked the gray matter, Charles targeted the peripheral Japanese Victory Territories (VTs) (East Indies, Borneo, and the Philippine Islands) with the United Kingdom. Philip's Germans took the Caucasus and were staging to take Moscow while the Japanese had reached all the way to Novosibirsk. The win went to Charles because of his holding 13 VTs versus 11 VTs for Philip as the game reached the time limit.

The Final pitted Charles against Patrick. Patrick once again took the Axis, this time receiving 4 IPCs. In a theme that played itself out in four of the five victories that he accumulated, Charles proceeded to play with an eye on the VTs at the expense of IPCs.

In the second to last round, Patrick finished the Japanese turn with a VT lead of 15 to 9. But by the end of the last round, the game came down to the United States making two tight amphibious assaults to steal the game. The first attack, into Australia, was an armor and an infantry against one defending infantry. But the second was a lone transport being sent to Borneo with two infantry aboard to battle a lone Japanese fighter. Needing a hit in the first round against the fighter to have any real chance to succeed, Charles rolled a 1 and got the win.

In the four games that Charles won by tight scores, the Victory Territory count in each game was 13-11. But his average IPC deficit was more than 7 per game as the Allies and in his lone game as the Axis it was 3. I guess they play more than craps in Las Vegas.

Pat Mirk moves in the Final as new champion Charles Michalek, Joe Powell and Kevin Keller observe.

Tournament Stats-
A total of 23 games were played with an even split of 10 wins for each side in pool play and two wins for the Allies vs one for the Axis in the money rounds.

The bidding was quite even in its distribution between the Axis (7), Allies (8), and no bid/zero bid (8). The Axis getting a bid went 3-4 (W-L). The Allies getting a bid went 5-3. The "no bid" games went 5-3 for the Axis.

Six of the games drew early concessions. Three were stopped because the winner occupied 18 or more VTs. The other 14 were played to time limit and the wins were evenly split between the Axis and the Allies. No game ended in a VT tie, so there was no need to go to the IPC tiebreaker.

The average number of rounds for a non-concession game was a shade under six (5.88). With rounds being 4.5 hours long and the cutoff point for starting a new round being at the 4 hour mark, I think that this is an acceptable lower limit for speed of play. Hopefully, as players gain familiarity with the new version of the game, we may get more rounds in and see more games reach the threshold for a VT win. Then again, players may get better at hanging in and pushing the game to the time limit anyway.

For any other information about the event, email me at the address below.

Thanks to all who participated and I hope to see you next year!

 GM      Craig Yope  [1st Year]   1313 Mayer Rd, Saint Clair, MI 48079  
    CraigYope@yahoo.com   810-367-3020
 
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