titan [Updated October 2005]  

 2005 WBC Report  

 2006 Status: pending 2006 GM commitment

David des Jardins, CA

2005 Champion


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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
2005    David des Jardins     51

 Laurels

Rank  Name             From  Last  Total
  1.  Aaron Fuegi       MA    04    123
  2.  David des Jardins CA    05    110
  3.  Dave Finberg      MA    04    104
  4.  Rich Atwater      WA    05     98
  5.  Steve Koleszar    VA    03     78
  6.  Brian Sutton      MD    03     71
  7.  Ed Rothenheber    MD    04     70
  8.  Jason Ley         GA    05     51
  9.  Dan Strock        PA    00     48
 10.  David Gubbay      TX    05     36
 11.  Chuck Nail        GA    01     36
 12.  Kevin Hillock     VA    05     30
 13.  Joe Harrison      KY    04     30
 14.  Andrew Gross      WA    03     30
 15.  Arthur Wines      NJ    05     24
 16.  Kevin Quirk       FL    00     20
 17.  Michael Pustilnik NY    99     20
 18.  Russ Cleaveland   WA    04     15
 19.  Kyle Moore        WA    04     10
 20.  Justin Childs     FL    99     10

2005 Laurelists

David Gubbay, TX
2nd

Jason Ley, GA
3rd

Art Wines, PA
4th

Kevin Hillock, VA
5th

Rich Atwater, WA
6th


Past Winners

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

Aaron Fuegi, MA
2004
       

Always a Titanic Struggle ...

This year David desJardins became the first player to win both the multiplayer and the two-player Titan tournament in the same year. Changing to scheduled start times seemed to help participation levels, but we were still below two years ago. This year we had 51 different people participate in 36 preliminary round games. 27 of these games were four-player and nine were three-player games. We didn't need to set up any five-player games (which generally don't work as well). We had a couple complaints related to scheduled starts that I want to try to address next year. One is that four hours apart is a bit too long. And the other was that a couple of times several people got eliminated from games just after a round of games were started.

What I am thinking of doing next year is cutting the time between games to three hours except for between the first and second rounds on Thursday and Friday where I will keep it at a four hour gap. For the first round of the day I think without overlap from a previous round a four-hour gap works better. I also want to allow for additional games to be started at my discretion not less than two hours before the start of the next round. That way if some people become available shortly after a round starts, I can get them into a game. However it is important to not do this too close to the start of a new round, because I want to make sure there are enough players at each scheduled start to start up games. Otherwise we will be back to where we were last year.

I also want to make another tweak to the semifinal seeding. A few years ago we switched to random seeding (with cliques to split up friends) in order to avoid situations where people made decisions about whether or not to play (or worse whether or not to throw a game) in a round based on who they would be matched up against in the semifinals. However this system has the disadvantage in that the semifinal games may not be balanced. So next year I will be grouping the top sixteen people in groups of four (based on their ranking) and splitting each of these groups across the semifinal games, but still randomly putting them at each table. Cliques and splitting up teammates will take precedence over this if there is an otherwise unresolvable conflict allocating people to games.

This year we had both a semifinal game and the Final run so long that they needed to be adjudicated. While adjudication seemed to work well, we really could use some mechanism to keep play moving. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has tried to use chess clocks or egg timers to keep either masterboard or battleboard play moving. I doubt I will put in a system for next year, but I do expect to discuss possibilities with the players.

On the sportsmanship front we had some good and bad things happen.

Cliff Ackman made a classier variation on the classic winner says to loser "Good game" remark by making it before making a key roll that was going to effectively eliminate him or Rich Atwater from a game. Rich appreciated this and used it himself after Mutualling with David desJardins in one of the semifinal games before making the roll to determine who would end up advancing. While players won't always be in a position to do this, but keep in mind when you have played a good game with someone, that it comes off as more sincere to let your opponent(s) know before the game has been decided.

Also on the good front was the cooperation of the players involved with the adjudicated games. Despite these being critical games, the players involved were all very cooperative and accepted the results gracefully.

On the not so good front, we had a couple of incidences of conflicting opinions on how the game should be played with respect to it being a multiplayer game. While it is common and reasonable for gaming groups to put extra limits on what is OK to do in order to make the game more fun for them, it is unreasonable to expect all gaming groups to impose the same limitations. I would appreciate it if players would be more open to (or at least tolerant of) other ways of playing and not get upset at some other player who does something that would be frowned upon in your gaming group, but that isn't against the rules or universally regarded as unsporting.

Some specific examples follow.

Players are allowed to make nonbinding deals with each other. If you get out by yourself while some other players get tangled up, don't count on them not making a temporary truce to allow them to disengage from each other without falling too far behind.

Players (still in the game) are allowed to give advice to other players, both on the masterboard and on the battleboards. So be aware, that if you attack a weaker player hoping they will misfight a battle, that other players may advise them in order to hurt your position.

Players are allowed to pull their stacks at certain points in the game. So be aware that if you spend a lot of effort trapping someone's Titan, they may get a chance to (and) pull their stacks denying you the points for eliminating them.

If on Turn 1 you teleport into a tower next to another player's stacks, don't be surprised if they make a suicide attack on you in retaliation.

While I have my own opinion about what extra constraints make multiplayer games more fun, when we all get together I think we need to go by what is allowed by the rules and be tolerant of how other players play.

I hope to see you all again next year.

 GM     Bruno Wolff III  (11th year)      NA  
   bruno@wolff.to      NA

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