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Michael Pacheco vs George Young |
Keith Wixson vs Otis Comorau |
Keep Wargames Away from Stefan
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The Twilight Struggle tournament maintained solid attendance
with 55 participants, essentially unchanged from last year. Once
again, the tournament used the Deluxe Edition, with the Chinese
Civil War variant, as the default game, although players who
did not have these were permitted to use earlier editions. Players
were then allowed to bid for sides, with the added bonus of being
allowed to over-control countries.
The selection of the CCW variant was intended to dampen the Russian
advantage, which had been strong previously. Russians still prevailed
this year (34-26, but this was down from previous years. Bids
were in the 2-3 range, again a slight drop, so it looks like
we're near a good balance point.
As with the previous year, the tournament itself moved at a good
pace. After the first round, which usually runs slow, the majority
of games were completed in slightly over two hours. A key match
occurred in the second round when perennial laurelist George
Young had four-time defending champion Stefan Mecay on the ropes,
but got caught in a Bear trap for which he missed four consecutive
rolls, allowing Stefan to turn the tide.
The final four consisted of Stefan, Kevin Hammond, Keith Wixson,
and Chris Byrd. Keith managed to edge Chris in a game that went
to final scoring. Chris held a consistent lead throughout, and
needed only to draw Wargames to finish off the victory, but Keith
held the stronger board position. When Wargames did not materialize,
final scoring gave Keith a substantial victory.
Stefan's Russians led pretty much throughout the other semi,
taking advantage of early Decolonization and Destalinization
to build a favorable board position. Wargames gave him the win
on Turn 8.
In the Final, Stefan took the US with a bid of 3. Keith gained
the early advantage in Asia as both players had poor hands. Keith
won an early Arab War, but Stefan returned the favor with an
Indo-Pakistani War win. On Turn 2, things switched dramatically
for the US as Stefan got three 4-cards plus a headline of CIA
which gave the US the first shot at a coup. Stefan got one of
his typical great rolls of a 6, not only letting him get Egypt
and Libya, but also preventing Keith from couping Panama. This
let Stefan race down into South America which Keith countered
with De-Stalinization. However, Stefan had tons of ops as well
on Turn 3 and Keith was stuck with a couple of scoring cards,
a theme that would prevail throughout the match, so by the end
of Turn 3, South America was a push, Stefan had control of Africa,
Keith had Asia, and the Middle East was also pro-American, and
Europe a push. In mid-war Keith got six out of seven scoring
cards. However, he still had a slight lead and even though the
Russian board position was not good, he still was well within
Wargames range until the key Turn 6. Keith headlined De-Colonization
while Stefan headlined Grain Sales. Stefan pulled a random card,
and got Africa Scoring! This was huge as Stefan could play it
immediately for 10 points wheareas Keith could have used his
De-col to cut it down to 1 for Russia. That sent the score from
RUS+7 to US+4 and with Keith stuck with three other scoring cards,
things snowballed downhill from there for the Russians, with
the US winning via Wargames at the beginning of Turn 8. Curiously,
Stefan won all five of his games with Wargames.
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Allen Kaplan vs Paul Skrabut |
Randall MacInnis vs Bill Edwards |
There were a lot
of entertaining games in the early rounds. Bill Burch showed
his sense of humor by being able to chuckle when he lost his
second straight game to an opponent's play of the Wargames card
late in the game. Amanda Mecay was happy to reach Late War in
a game for the first time at WAM - though once she got there,
her cards didn't exactly cooperate...and Bob Jamelli missed his
first 4 coup rolls in a game versus Terry Coleman, but still
took the game to the final turn before succumbing. James Terry
managed to score OPEC no less than three times in a win against
Roderick Lee, which gave him a fast 2-hour win. Bruce Monnin
broke open a close game against Steve Brooks with Double Terrorism
during Turn 10. And of course, there were also a handful of games
where someone would be tired enough to forget that if they play
CIA as the USSR at DEFCON 2, that the US player could simply
coup and end the game with Thermonuclear War...and a win (technically,
anyway).
Running Twilight Struggle at WAM (and other events) for
many years, I had never seen a draw in tournament competition
before. But this year, there were three, all involving top players.
In the first round, Tim Bina and Kirk Harris missed critical
dice rolls toward the end of the game, only to find themselves
in a tie. Then, in Round 2, Keith Wixson and Chris Byrd went
after each other like heavyweight boxers, yet both managed to
survive for a draw at the end of final scoring. Amazingly, Chris
(who at one stage was behind by 15), then had another draw with
Kirk in Round 3. As a result, there were no less than eight players
who had a legitimate shot at the title with just two rounds to
go.
When the penultimate round results were in, however, the mists
began to clear. For my money, the best game of the tournament
was Keith Wixson going all-out against Stefan Mecay, to see who
would make it to the championship game. Keith opened up with
Red Scare and fell just short of overrunning all of Europe. Stefan
held on to Italy for dear life, and won a key Brush War victory
in Pakistan, which kept him in the game. Other key war wins,
along with some good hands for the US, gave Stefan the counterplay
he needed to build a dominating position. In a wonderful demonstration
of finesse, Stefan was able to Space Race the Decolonization
card no less than four times. Although Keith managed to max out
in the Space Race for the first time, it wasn't enough to overcome
Stefan in final scoring.
With this win, it was no surprise that Stefan Mecay (who had
already defeated Doug Austin, Randy MacInnis and Michael Mitchell)
was within reach of another TWS title at WAM, to go with his
five others, from online and WBC. Stefan's opponent would be
Tim Bina, who after his draw with Kirk in Round 1, had won three
straight over veterans Bill Edwards, Justin Rice and James Terry.
This loss, though only by a scant margin, dropped James from
the unbeaten ranks, and put Tim in his first WAM Final.
Meanwhile, Roderick Lee had a well-earned fourth-round victory
over Michael Mitchell, and Jeff Finkeldey beat Mark Yoshikawa,
which meant that Rod and Jeff would match up in the final round.
Having failed all three of his Space Race rolls, Roderick knew
he had to shake things up a bit. So, he played Central America
Scoring during the headline phase, resulting in a 7-point swing
in his favor. That gave him the edge he needed for a close 3-point
victory over Jeff in final scoring. Rod's impressive 4-1 record
would loom larger as more of the contenders went down in the
final round. Keith used a well-timed play of Wargames to close
out a 6-point win in Turn 10 over Bruce Monnin, and Michael Mitchell
fell to Chris Byrd, who managed an auto victory on Turn 6.
Tim Bina had already showed that his online expertise translated
well to face-to-face play, and he kept the pressure up in the
Final. Mecay had Asia early, but Bina countered with domination
in both Europe and Middle East. De-Stalinization gave Stefan
South America in mid-game, but Central America went back and
forth. Tim built a double-digit lead by Turn 9, and both players
agree that he probably would have won in final scoring. But Stefan
followed Aldritch Ames redux with Terrorism, and as the US, Tim
was stuck with having to play Lone Gunman, with no way to stop
blowing up the world, along with his chance at a title. Both
players were understandably gracious after such a hard-fought
game, and it's a safe bet we'll hear more from Tim in the future
- hopefully, we convinced him to try for WBC this summer.
With Tim's loss, his earlier drawn game dropped him to 3rd place
behind Roderick Lee, the only 4-1 finisher. Keith Wixson took
4th, and James Terry and Bruce Monnin were 5th and 6th respectively.
Defending WAM champ Chris Byrd and Jeff Finkeldey finished just
out of the running. Accumulating two wins were Kirk Harris, Mark
Yoshikawa, Michael Mitchell, Terry Coleman and Larry Fryer.
There were 48 total games played: 23 Soviet wins, 22 US wins
and three draws. While the preference was again greater to play
the Soviets (average bid of just under 3 VPs), the results were
about as close as you can get, with one more Soviet win (and
three drawn games). Best Soviet players were Stefan Mecay and
Bruce Monnin, while the best US players were Roderick Lee and
Keith Wixson. About one-third of the games used the optional
cards from the Deluxe Edition, and two games even used the Chinese
Civil War rules. All in all, a well-balanced tournament that
shows how Twilight Struggle continues to engender inspired
play years after its initial release. It's certainly become a
cornerstone of WAM.
2011
WAM Laurelists

Roderick Lee, CA
2nd
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Tim Bina, CA
3rd
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Keith Wixson, NJ
4th
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James Terry. NJ
5th
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Bruce Monnin, OH
6th
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