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Alex Lange vs soon-to-be champ Ty
Hansen |
AJ Sudy vs Michael Sosa |
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Lyman Moquin vs Jacob's sparring
sister, Rebecca. |
Kevin Lewis vs James Denam |
In Praise of the Eliminator ...
The sixth battle for Middle Earth concluded this summer with
the new Single Elimination format generating a pair of new finalists
as the rotating even/odd championships of Chris Trimmer and Kevin
Wojtaszczyk were laid to rest! 26 games were played with the
Free people dunking the ring 11 times and the Shadow achieving
military victory 11 times. Ted Lange had the only Free People's
military victory and there were three corruption wins. Half the
Dwarven rings were either 2 or 3 with one big bid of 7 going
to Rebecca Hebner's Free people in the first round which was
instrumental in getting the ring dunked. The rest of the bids
were 0, mostly in the early rounds. The Witch King was a marked
Nazgul, with Saruman a close second. The Witch King fell in his
first battle in Chris Yaure/Todd Treadway's game to Fateful Strike
and was killed by Ents a couple times. Saruman met his end courtesy
of the Ents a couple times too, including Brian Jones's Turn
2 double Ent play that hit eight times on 15 dice to kill Saruman,
with icing on the cake being the final post Ent card play of
Mirror of Galadriel to change a remaining die to a Will of the
West! The fastest game turned out to be Jacob Hebner's 80-minute
military blitz during the mulligan round which started off with
a Turn 1 Balrog and Saruman.
The single elimination format whittled the field down to three
unbeaten players by Monday night. Ty Hansen narrowly avoided
defeat vs two-time champion Kevin Wojtaszczyk when there was
no dawn on the final turn, eliminating a possible game dunking
Will of the West. A.J Sudy needed a couple free people wins to
stay undefeated and Lucas Rhodes had to put down defending champ
Chris Trimmer to round out the top 3.
A.J. was randomly assigned to play Ty, handing Lucas the eliminator
game vs the GM. Lucas's Free people were found early and had
a slow go of it while Kevin's Shadow had great action dice and
event cards which enabled him to militarily blitz taking out
all the DEW, Lorien and HD with Peligar to close out the 10 VPs
before the fellowship could get to Mordor. This successful eliminator
role transformed the Ty vs AJ game into the last one with unbeaten
players and thus became the Final. Ty managed to get Aragorn
crowned in Turn 2 while AJ managed to get the Corsairs in play.
The Ents were mustered and Smeagol guided the Fellowship on a
steady pace. The extra action die for Aragorn enabled Ty to slow
down AJ's military advances. On Turn 11 the Shadow were sieging
three strongholds in position for the win, but Frodo got to dunk
the ring giving Ty his first War of the Ring shield and
the first of three titles he would earn that week!
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Tripp Killin (a great name for a War
of the Ring player)
vs two-time champ Kevin Wojtaszczyk
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Ted Lange vs Andy Waller as Americans
living in Germany and Kuwait meet at WBC
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