war of the ring  

Updated 11/30/2009

Middle Earth Pre-Con

2009 WBC Report  

 2010 Status: pending 2010 GM commitment

Kevin Wojtaszczyk, NY

2009 Champion

Offsite Links

  

Event History
2006    Phil Rennert     21
2007     Kevin Wojtaszczyk     26
2008     Chris Trimmer     28
2009    Kevin Wojtaszczyk     23
 Laurels

Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  Chris Trimmer      TX    09     76
  2.  Kevin Wojtaszczyk  NY    09     74
  3.  Phil Rennert       MD    06     30
  4.  Jason Levine       NY    08     24
  5.  George Young       VT    07     24
  6.  Nick Anner         NY    07     17
  7.  Lyman Moquin       DC    08     16
  8.  Andy Latto         MA    07     16
  9.  Jacob Hebner       CO    09     15
 10.  Ty Hansen          DC    09     12
 11.  Chris Yaure        PA    07     12
 12.  David Pack         CO    06     12
 13.  Michael Sosa       FL    09      9
 14.  Mary Ellen Powers  VA    09      9
 15.  John Pack          CO    08      8
 16.  Dick Jarvinen      OR    06      6
 17.  Jim Doughan        PA    07      4

2009 Laurelists                                          Repeating Laurelists:

Chris Trimmer, TX
2nd

Ty Hansen, DC
3rd

Michael Sosa, FL
4th

Mary Ellen Powers, VA
5th

Jacob Hebner, CO
6th


Past Winners

Phil Rennert, MD
2006

Kevin Wojtaszczyk, NY
2007, 2009

Chris Trimmer, TX
2008

GM Kevin Wojtaszcyk and Michael Sosa do the Hobbit thing.

Jacob Hebner and Mike Shea kill lots of plastic orcs.

A Concession Retracted

Greetings fellow Hobbits, Elves, Humans, Dwarves and Orcs! We had another great Middle Earth pre-con. The Sunday night start allowed everyone to come in a day later and some decided to head over to other games on Monday if they lost Sunday night while others joined us Monday morning.

The competition was tough through all three rounds with many instances of critical card plays, action dice rolls and hunt tile pulls. Michael Sosa won a SP military victory without moving any Mordor armies in one game. Ty Hansen's Helm's Deep stand killed off an attacking Witch King on four 6's to hold off Jacob Hebner's SP. Early Minas Tirith successful captures for Tom Holliday and Jeff Pattison weren't enough to stop the FP in those games. Chris Trimmer's SP killed Aragorn and Galadriel in a SP win and Ty Hansen's FP bought time with the Ents killing Saruman and got to use four elven rings after getting two back in card play to seal a FP victory.

With everyone using the additional expansion rules, the free people lead the way in victories 15 to 11. Three were FP military victories while 12 were ring dunks. On the SP side, nine were military victories and two were corruption victories. Even though the FP won more overall, both semi-finals were won by shadow military victories. The Dwarven Ring's bids varied from none to three rings, with the most being five given once to the FP. Only three times were they given to the SP, with one, one and three those times. Ten of the games had no Dwarven rings bid.

The semi-finals featured Chris Trimmer vs Ty Hansen and Kevin Wojtaszczyk vs Michael Sosa. Ty's FP held Chris's shadow at bay for most of the game, launching many offenses against the SP forces and requiring second and third waves of SP armies to march on FP strongholds. In the end the shadow forces were overwhelming and Chris took over ten victory points to make the Final. The other semi-final had Kevin's shadow roll lots of musters almost every turn and Michael try to race the FSP before the shadow could execute their multi-pronged attack. Due to all the musters, the Corsairs were an early play and siege towers were in vogue. What turned out to be the final turn, had the shadow sieging Dol Amoroth, Erebor and Helms Deep, all with siege tower superiority setup from the previous turn. Michael tried for a stab at a FP military victory, hoping the shadow wouldn't be able to grab all three strongholds, but Gondor was still one away from War which gave the FP one fewer dice to try it and Kevin's military successes with just the right combat cards and die rolling 6's managed to take out all three.

The Final pit the past two War of the Ring champions, Chris Trimmer and Kevin Wojtaszczyk against each other. It was also a rematch game as they met in the preliminary rounds, where Chris won an SP military victory. In the bidding Kevin got three Dwarven rings to play the Free Peoples. Chris got the Gates are Closed card down early along with the Balrog to make a trip through Moria ugly. The first seven FP moves were unfound with only a couple non-reveal corruption tiles drawn, including one 3 which took out the guide Gandalf the Grey. Strider separated from the FSP at Turn 3 from Rivendell all the way to Minas Tirth due to the FSP at the +5 level and We Prove the Swifter. A Will and Muster later had both Aragorn and Galadriel in play. Mordor marched north toward DEW while Saruman uncontestedly mustered with the Voice due to the Ents never entering play. Saruman's troops laid Helm's Deep under siege and took over all the other Rohan muster spots besides Edoras while the Corsairs mustered in the south. Mid-game turn had six Eyes rolled/allocated, which pushed the FP to muster troops and not move the FSP. This strengthened the West and got Gandalf the White and a couple additional elites dug in at the Woodland Realm. The FSP were then revealed when attempting to move their eighth step toward Mordor. Going through Moria would be three tiles, but taking the mountain pass extends the route, so Kevin chose to take the short route and get the FSP established in Osgilith. The FP got blessed, getting hit by an Eye that knocked out Legolas as guide, a normal 2 tile and the Smeagol tile to get Smeagol into play. A couple turns later, Smeagol declared mid-turn in Mordor with the FSP at 2 corruption and containing Smeagol, Gimli, and Pippen. Kevin figured he was in good shape, with the shadow's military partially in check and the FSP corruption low but then Chris nailed the fellowship with a handful of corruption cards one after the other. This pushed the FSP to 7 corruption and only Gollum was left standing and the FSP only two moves deep into Mordor. The shadow military then started to get the upper hand at Dol Amorth and Erebor and the end game was looking very near. All the FP bonus blue tiles made it into the hunt pool and only the 1 stop and Shelob made it in for the SP. In the final turn Chris drew the Shelob tile with the FSP's second last move attempt, rolling a 5 and pushing the FP to what looked like a game winning 12 corruption and Kevin began to congratulate Chris, however Gollum was shouting up from Mordor in defiance of the dark lord. Sure enough, the Shelob tile does not have a reveal on it, so Kevin used Gollum's ability to reveal the fellowship and thus reduce the FSP corruption by one. Two eyes were in the pool, along with the SP 1 special, three FP specials and grey 0r, 1r, 1, and 2 tiles. Chris decided to put Lorien under siege while the FSP hid, then attacked Lorien to try and knock out Galadriel to prevent any Eye drawn from being killed with an Elven Ring. The first battle knocked out most the troops on both sides, leaving three shadow regulars (plus Witch King and Nazguls) and two elven regulars. The FSP moved safely with a 0r tile and Lorien held with one regular remaining on the next attack, then the FSP's -2 was drawn for the final move to dunk the ring in Mount Doom. So at the end the FP were at 11 corruption and the SP were at 10 VPs when the ring was dunked to have the FP win this year's struggle for Middle Earth!

Thank you to everyone who attended the tournament and I hope to see you all back again next year for another epic battle for Middle Earth!

Michael Sosa and Jeff Heidman pair off in the first round.

The last two champs meet in the Final.
 GM     Kevin Wojtaszczyk (2nd Year)  135 Siebert Rd, Lancaster, NY 14086  
    kwojtasz@gmail.com   NA

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