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Craig Melton, Dave Gubbay, Dan Strock
and Jarrett Weintraub wage fantasy wars on the tried and true
old AH version of Titan. |
Rich Atwater, Steve Koleszar, Arthur
Wines and Marc Berenbach dispense mayhem using the new Valley
Games version of Titan. |
A Titanic Struggle of Champions
David Finberg became the first three-time multiplayer Titan
champ. This year, as an extra benefit to winning, David received
a new copy of Titan, signed by Jason McCallister, courtesy
of Valley Games.
Jonathan Barnes became the youngest player to make the Titan
final at an amazing 11 years of age. In his semi-final game he
was matched against three players with former Final experience,
so he didn't have an easy path to the Final. Talk about your
David and Goliath scenarios. Well done young man! We hope to
see more of you in the years to come.
Akihisa Tabei further increased his reputation as an extremely
aggressive player by attacking David's titan legion on Turn 1
of the Final! As far as I know this is the only Turn 1 attack
that has occurred in an official WBC game, let alone a Final.
Akihisa decided to attack David's titan legion knowing that it
had recruited a troll, but not that it contained his titan, with
his titan legion which did not have any ogres. He did not get
lucky early and had to commit his titan to try to get his angel
in, forcing David to risk his titan to end the battle before
the angel arrived. In the end David ended up with the same legion
contents he started with, 84 points and a more open board near
him. However he was shaken by the attack and felt that it negatively
impacted his play for a while.
Jonathan was the next player out. David attacked him in the
plains with a 13-4 titan, two angels, two rangers, two trolls
and an archangel available to summon. So even though Jonathan
had a legion that in many games would be very good, 6-4 titan,
dragon and four unicorns, he had little hope. David survived
with s 15-4 titan, archangel, two angels, ranger and troll.
Jason Ley resigned once David had turned that troll into a
giant and Jason felt he couldn't win even if he got to David's
titan legion, giving him no reasonable chance to even get lucky
at that point. David had a pretty commanding position at the
end, but up until the giant was recruited Jason thought that
he might have a small chance in a titan on titan battle.
Unfortunately, we did not see a big increase in participation
with new Titan sets being available for the first time
in a long while. New sets were seen being used and perhaps it
will take a while for them to have an affect on attendance. I
am still hoping for an increase in interest with reasonably priced
sets available for people again. This year we had 42 different
players, four 5-player games, 22 4-player games (including the
elimination rounds) and eight 3-player games, for a total of
132 player seats. Last year we had 37 different players, no 5-player
games, 24 4-player games and seven 3-player games, for a total
of 117 player seats. The difference is comparable to other year
to year changes, so while an increase is nice, the change isn't
really significant. This year was odd in that we had a fair number
of 5-player games. A couple of times we had just one game starting
and five people to play, but in at least one case there was a
preference for a 5-player game (and a 4-player game) to having
three 3-player games.
Unlike last year, this year when Bruce Rae left his titan
off the map in a battle, it was intentional. He wanted to minimize
the points his opponent was going to receive in a battle he had
essentially no chance to win. By leaving just the titan off,
his opponent gets full points only for the titan, all of his
other characters count only as half points.
There was an interesting final battle between Joe Harrison
and Steve Koleszar where having too many serpents can be a problem
even outside of the desert. Joe was attacking with an 8-4 titan
and six serpents and no angel to summon against a 19-4 titan
and three angels in the woods from the left side. The way it
played out was that Steve set up with titan in F4 and the angels
in F1, F2 and F3. Joe then considered whether or not to leave
a serpent off as if he entered all six, he would have to expose
his titan to the risk of an 8-4 titan and a serpent killing an
angel in one shot. In the end he decided to take that risk and
Steve decided to stick with his plan of defending in the corner
with his titan. But it was noted that if an angel had been able
to reach A2, Joe would have had to have left a serpent off, which
got us thinking about the initial setup. It turned out that the
first serpent that Joe threw into the double team at E4, got
eight hits, popping an angel and damaging the titan. After that
he just needed to make some careful play so that Steve's titan
couldn't reach his and ended up winning the battle. After the
battle we went back and looked at possible setups for the defender
and found that if the defender put the titan at A2 and an angel
at B2 the attacker would be forced to leave one serpent off (or
face instant death) and another would have to start in the titan
angel double team and very likely get only one shake. This makes
the battle very close.
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Jason Ley loads up on dice as he prepares
to battle young Jonathan Barnes in the Final with his father,
Daniel Barnes, rooting in the background. |
David des Jardins (center) watches
the finalists battling for wood. The young Californian broke
into some exalted company to reach the final four. |
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