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Ray Stakenas seems to be enjoying
his foray into CBC |
The event was the largest for a new
wargame that was not a CDW in many years. |
Balanced and Clear ...
Combat Commander was a big hit in its inaugural showing
at WBC, drawing 48 players who competed over a Mulligan (win
and advance but no problem if you lose) round and six Single
Elimination (one loss and you're out) rounds. Overall, 50 games
were played. Here are some fast facts and highlights:
First, the event format allowed players to play any scenario
they chose if both agreed, with defaults if they could not agree.
With that, here is the breakdown of Scenarios played and Won-Loss:
Scenario 1: Played 16 times, Axis 8 Allies 8
Scenario 2: Played 6 times, Axis 3 Allies 3
Scenario 3: Played 20 times, Axis 11 Allies 9
Scenario 5: Played 1 time, Axis 0 Allies 1
Scenario 6: Played 2 times, Axis 1 Allies 1
Scenario 7: Played 1 time, Axis 1 Allies 0
Scenario 12: Played 3 times, Axis 0 Allies 3
Generator: Played 1 time, Axis 1 Alies 0
Rather more even than I thought.
Second, in order to even out rounds, an eliminator was used
instead of awarding byes. Basically the odd player had to defeat
the eliminator to advance. Eliminator duties were split between
a close friend of mine and myself. As it turned out, those who
played me effectively got practise and a bye, as I lost every
time (oh well).
Third, this was a big test of the tightness of the rules as
we had a lot of games played by a large field of players. I am
happy to report that not one rules question got posed that was
not quickly answerable by direct reference to the rulebook. Hat's
off to Chad and to John Foley on quite possibly the tightest
set of wargame rules out there.
The games themselves were quite entertaining, and in fact
in the semi-finals we had a hilarious (and very sportsmanlike)
event. The scenario had just ended via sudden death, with David
DesJardins the winner. David also held the initiative. He surrendered
the initiative to allow his opponent to reroll the Sudden Death
roll (funny and sportsmanlike). The new roll had the same result,
putting David into the Final versus Bob Heinzmann.
Ultimately, Bob took first place and David took second. That
meant Bob got the Combat! Season One DVD set and David got the
Cross of Iron DVDs I added as extra prizes.
Even now a group consisting of myself, my assistant GMs and
other players are reviewing the results and looking for ways
to tweak the format for 2008 to result in an even better event.
If you want to get in on the process we are in the Combat
Commander folder on ConsimWorld.
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