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"No ... No ... I'm not the leader
... honest, I'm not." |
Don't you just love reading over someone's
shoulder? |
The Brawling Battleships Steel
Tale
Brawling Battleships Steel championship games are always
full of strange and zany moments. This year was no exception.
For the first time in tournament play we saw the legendary curse
of Mata Hari strike a player. Patrick Mirk -- a veteran WBC player--
was the victim. In an almost impossible play Andrew Chitwood
pulled three event cards, both Mata Hari cards (a spy card that
lets you draw two cards from an opponent's hand) and the Radio
Intercept card that lets you draw two cards from the discard
pile. Andrew Chitwood the youngest player ever to make the Final
decided to steal two of Pat Mirk's cards, who was sitting immediately
to his left, normally the play is better against players to the
right, but since he needed a ride home he decided not to play
Mata Hari on his stepfather Stephen Shedden, who had also qualified
for the Final in a separate heat. Everyone at the table was surprised
though when Andrew played the second Mata Hari on Mirk reducing
him to two cards. When Andrew then played the Radio Intercept
card and picked up both Mata Hari cards from the discard pile
everyone at the table immediately encouraged him to play the
third spy on Mirk to let him have the distinct honor of being
the sole recipient of Mata Hari's curse. For his trouble Pat
received a nice prize to commemorate the notoriety. No real damage
was done since Pat refilled his hand at the end of his turn,
which followed immediately after Chitwood's fortuitous opening.
After that good natured start the gloves came off and all
the fun and frolic that existed in the qualifying rounds evaporated
from the table as everyone competed for wood. In the first hand
Shedden kept setting up dreadnoughts for other players to sink.
Frank Mestre played a defensive waiting game but only managed
to nab three points and Shedden was shut out after providing
a generous supply of damaged battleships for his opponents. At
the end of the first round the score was Steve Raszewski 19,
Andrew Fedin 11, Mirk 5, Chitwood 4, Mestre 3 and Shedden 0.
Raszewski quickly realized he was the main target for the second
hand and did his best to play defensively but against a determined
series of attacks his fleet was wiped out. Fedin assumed the
duty of damaging ships that others would sink. Shedden quietly
sank the majority of the dreadnoughts with Chitwood, Mestre and
Mirk finishing off the kills. At the end of the second round
the score was Shedden 26, Raswewski 19, Mestre 19, Mirk 16,
Chitwood and Fedin 11 apiece.. Shedden was playing the game with
sure understanding of the mechanics. He had quietly moved into
the lead.
In the third hand Chitwood really stepped up play and was
sinking ships at an astounding rate, before his demise he had
scored over 40 points in destroyed battleships. However, his
suddenly high visibility drew attention away from Shedden and
a flurry of attacks sank all his ships reducing his score to
0 and knocking him out of the round. Shedden continued a spirited
defense as Raszewski, Mestre and Mirk tried to knock him out
of the lead. Shedden knew he had fallen behind Raszewski and
timed his moment perfectly on his last turn launching a destroyer
attack that sank a 7-point dreadnought but missed the second
battleship. In the end the final score was Rszewski 35, Shedden
33, Mestre 28, Mirk 24, Chitwood and Fedin 11 each.
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