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GM Houde with his finalists. |
The year of the Deathmatch
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The rules of Deathmatch - Rule 1 - Nobody talks about Deathmatch
- Rule 2 - No flags - Rule 3 - No heads - Rule 4 - No shutdowns
- Rule 5 - Last robot standing wins. For those who don't know
the rules of Robo Rally, usually the game is played as
a race to flags which must be touched in the order printed on
them. Players receive a number of "heads" at the beginning
of the game that they may trade in for new robots, and as you
might imagine there are various ways that robots can be killed,
including laser fire, pits, and various other weapons robots
can acquire throughout the game. Shutdowns are a way for robots
to recover any damage they may have taken by not moving for a
turn. For the Deathmatch (the first ever Wacky Wednesday offering),
table captains had the choice of four different gameboards, robots
started in random pre-defined locations along the edge of the
board facing toward the center (Or directly away from the edge
depending on how you want to look at it.) Surprisingly, thee
games take significantly less time than the typical three flag,
two board race. The average game length seemed to be a bit over
an hour, and the longest only ran two hours. Unsurprisingly we
had the quickest ever winner of the Kaarin Engelmann Memorial
Crash & Burn Award and Playing Aid during the Deathmatch.
With Andy Latto winning the award. Andy was eliminated before
I made it back to my own table after passing out timers to all
the tables that needed them. My personal estimate for his time
in game is under 1 minute. Other winners of the KEMC&B Award,
for Heat 1, Ryan Friedman, and for Heat 3, our 2012 Champion,
Chris Gnech.
The Deathmatch also provided one of the two most memorable
moments of the tournament for me. The last table to finish had
three people left on as we approached the two hour mark, including
Assistant GM Mike Mahady, Ewan McNay, and Matt Kucic. At this
point in the game Mike had two locked registers due to damage
taken, so he was only getting three cards a turn to program but
was off in a corner by himself. Ewan and Matt had both spent
several turns on double wrenches on opposite sides of the board,
and had just decided it was time to try to kill each other. Several
moves later, as Ewan and Matt are coming up on each other, Mike,
who has been desperately trying to keep his robot as far from
the leaders as possible, ends up directly between them in the
first opportunity where they could have hurt each other. Needless
to say, this did not end well for Mike. or for that matter did
it end well for Matt who ended up eventually being taken out
by Ewan.
Ewan had a great run this year, winning in each of the three
preliminary heats, as well as the semifinal. That ended in ironic
fashion during the most memorable moment of the tournament, when
Ewan and Keith Boone were neck and neck for the final flag. Both
players actually misread a pusher on the board, the end result
being that the pusher pushed Ewan off of the conveyor he was
on into Keith. This caused Keith to be pushed onto the final
flag, thus giving him the game. Note that this is not the first
time Mr. McNay has appeared in memorable Roborally events.
Read the report for the 2010 Roborally tournament in which Ewan
played a deciding role in the final outcome of that game.
On a final note, I will give a hint of what's to come in 2015.
For Wacky Wednesday, the theme will be Death Race 2015, and for
those that make the Final, I am looking at shortening it a bit.
( I will still reserve 4 hours for it, but we've gone slightly
over or had to adjudicate the final few places each year, and
I'd like to be able to play out all six places within our allotted
time slot, which means I will target something more like the
semifinals in length.)
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