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Rebecca Hebner and Joanna Melton war
against David Platnick. |
Bill Place is about to lose his Secret
Base to Laura Brown's play. |
Year of the Tie Breaker ...
I have to say its one thing to be the GM of a WBC tournament,
but when you're also the defending champion, it seems like everybody's
gunning for you even more so than before. In one of his heats
the GM scored a total of five points and had to rely on a tie
breaker to win a game in another heat to qualify for the semis.
In that semi-final, Tim Evinger had the last card play to end
the game and go to the Final or allow yours truly to continue
the defense of my 2008 title. He had a choice of playing a card
that would kill the Divergence, which was his secret base, or
a card that would kill another world in which he had a lot of
points. He chose the former, killing off his own secret base
and reducing the game to yet, another tie breaker! In the end,
Tim still had a few Divergence cards in his hand which were not
as valuable as they would've been had he spared them. So, the
"lovable" GM went on to play in another Galaxy
Final by virtue of having more points in his hand at the end.
The fact is, 2009 could very easily be called the Year of the
Tie Breaker. I didn't calculate the exact numbers, but it seemed
like this tournament had more games decided by tie breaker than
any of the previous four years I have been the GM. In fact, in
one 5-player game there was a FOUR-way tie for first with each
player knotted at 11 points! With that, it was only fitting that
the Galaxy Final, for the second year in a row, had to
be decided by a tie breaker. Not only that, but it broke the
record for the smallest margin of victory as well. Joe Burch
edged out Rob Kircher to become the first two-time champion by
only two tie breaker points when all of the totals were added
from each player's hands!
Including the semis and Final, there were a total of 22 games
played, and as usual there was much balance in evidence. The
Erithizonians and the Myrmidon were eliminated 16 times each
and the Cylor was the leading survivor, but was still victimized
nine times. Not surprising was that the Cylor was chosen the
most (14 times) and the Myrmidon the least (four times) as secret
bases. However, much more surprising was the Erithizonians being
chosen as a secret base 12 times. In addition, there were two
very brutal games that ended with the winner scoring only eight
points. And one of them was a 4-player game which tend to score
higher, so this was one where points were at a premium. Another
interesting note is that on more than one occasion, the winner
eliminated only one world. - the last one to end the game. So,
it just goes to show, the key to winning Galaxy isn't
always being a death star, but when you do your dirty work.
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Defending champ and GM Mark Mitchell
fends off the intrusions of Consul Andy Latto and ex-champ Sean
McCulloch. |
Rob Winslow, Anna Marion, Kaarin Engelmann
and Steve Cameron wage the war of the worlds. |
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