history of the world [Updated October 2007]  

2007 WBC Report    

 2008 Status: pending 2008 GM commitment

Gregory Kulp, NJ

2007 Champion

Offsite links:

 

Event History
1993    Ben Grimes        53
1994    Gordon Bliss      102
1995    Tim Johnson      105
1996    Keith Levy      102
1997    Bruce Monnin    108
1998    Greg Crowe        72
1999    Jonas Borra        68
2000    Robert Destro       70
2001    Harald Henning       56
2002    Rolinda Collinson       52
2003    Mike Backstrom       49
2004    Haim Hochboim       55
2005     Mark Pitcavage       42
2006    Craig Yope       44
2007     Gregory Kulp       39

 Laurels

Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  Harald Henning     CT    03    126
  2.  Rolinda Collinson  MD    05     90
  3.  Jonas Borra        NY    02     84
  4.  Mike Backstrom     MN    03     68
  5.  Haim Hochboim    Israel  04     60
  6.  Robert Destro      NJ    00     60
  7.  Mark Pitcavage     OH    05     50
  8.  Allen Kaplan       NJ    01     48
  9.  Kevin Youells      FL    06     42
 10.  Gregory Kulp       NJ    07     40
 11.  Craig Yope         MI    06     40
 12.  Joe Collinson      MD    07     38
 13.  Jamie Tang         MD    06     36
 14.  Peter Busch        OH    04     36
 15.  Tony Cadden        MD    00     36
 16.  Bob Aarhus         NC    99     36
 17.  Jeff King          OH    07     24
 16.  Christina Hancock  NH    04     24
 19.  Malinda Barnes     NY    01     24
 20.  Graeme Dandy   Australia 00     24
 21.  Joe Burch          MD    99     24
 22.  Terry Coleman      BC    04     23
 23.  Bill Boynton       ME    05     20
 24.  Paul Bean          MA    00     18
 25.  Chris Hancock      NH    99     18
 26.  Michael Mullins    MD    07     16
 27.  Duane Wagner       NJ    06     14
 28.  James D. Long      PA    07     12
 29.  TJ Halberstadt     IN    06     12
 30.  Rachel Power       MI    04     12
 31.  Andrew Kutzy       NY    02     12
 32.  Greg Crowe         VA    01     12
 33.  Michael Pacheco    CA    99     12
 34.  Evan Davis         IN    05     10
 35.  Chris Trimmer      TX    06      8
 36.  Keith Altizer      FL    04      6
 37.  Richard Fox        IL    02      6
 38.  Ivan Lawson        MD    01      6
 39.  Paul McCarthy      NY    00      6
 40.  John Rinko         VA    99      6
 41.  Scott Bowling      IN    05      5
 42.  Rachel Harley      VA    07      4

2007 Laurelists

Jeff King, OH
2nd

Michael Mullins, MD
3rd

James Long, PA
4th

Joe Collinson, MD
5th

Rachel Harley, VA
6th


Past Winners

1993: Ben Grimes, SC
1995: Tim Johnson, MD

Gordon Bliss, MA
1994

Keith Levy, MD
1996

Bruce Monnin, OH
1997

Greg Crowe, MD
1998

Jonas Borra, NY
1999

Robert Destro, NJ
2000

Harald Henning, CT
2001

Rolinda Collinson, MD
2002

Mike Backstrom, MN
2003

Haim Hochboim, Israel
2004

Mark Pitcavage, OH
2005

Craig Yope, MI
2006
   

The sands of time haven't exactly squared things between Petter Pollard and young Michael Corrigan.

The finalists settle down to business with five new faces contemplating their share of the laurels.

The Tides of History ...

For the want of a Pre-eminence marker...
 
     History of the World was marked by change.  No defending laurelists won their first round games, and defending champion Craig Yope, wearing his special "bullseye shirt" clearly had a death wish and was obliged with a fourth place in his game.  Five first time finalists qualified this year, with only Joe Collinson as the lone prior laurelist to return to the Final.
 
     Joe had a dominating performance in his first game, getting the highest scores in the tournament for both game (225) and a single epoch (65 with France).  Rachel Harley won her way into the Final with the largest margin of victory, defeating her closest competition by 31 points in the semi-final round.
 
     Jeff King had the longest-lived unit of the event, as his Epoch I Indus empire had a unit survive the entire game.  A first round game featured a set of cursed leaders, where Dave Bohnenberger's Ottoman Turks and Pete Pollard's Manchu Dynasty both lost leaders to triple-one rolls early on.  In fact, Pete's second roll of the turn resulted in the death of his leader--and probably cost him the victory.  Bad dice abounded as Jamie Tang lost four of six possible units to the Black Death.  Such low quality die-rolling was later calculated as a 1 in 1866 chance!  By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that we will be letting players bring their own dice next year.
 
     The Final was a well fought affair, and any of the top four could easily have won the game which was decided by the pre-eminence markers.  Michael Mullins and James Long ended up being tied for first place after Epoch II, so neither one got the bonus points.  There was another first place tie at the end of Epoch VII, which denied two players the points, and crowned our champion.
 
     Jeff King had the disadvantage of being forced into China the entire game by his fellow players.  Eventual winner Greg Kulp later stated that it was a conscious strategy to try to contain Jeff in one area because he felt that Jeff was a threat and began passing him the China-based empires for a few epochs and others later did the same.  Still, he played a very strong game and was in a first place tie at 176 points with James Long at the end of Epoch VII.  Greg was two points behind at 174 while Joe and Michael were at 172 and 171 respectively.  The pre-eminence markers were then scored, and due to the Epoch II and VII ties, Greg had enough points to take over first place with a two-point win over Jeff.
 
     I would like to thank everyone for their excellent sportsmanship and help in running a very smooth event.  I'd like to ask everyone to bring their game next year, or at least not eliminate all of the people who did bring theirs, as we almost had a shortage of copies of the game during the semi-final.  The only planned changes for next year are to begin the rounds an hour earlier, starting at 6 pm and establishing a six hour time limit instead of the current five.  See you in 2008!
 
     Finally, our GMing team found a France Empire Card following Round 1.  If yours is missing, please email me and we will make sure that it gets returned to you.

 GM      Kevin Youells [2nd Year]   NA
    kyouells@bellsouth.net   NA

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