A Henning Sandwich

Galaxy Trucker turnout was down a bit this year. While being banished into the hinterlands may have hurt attendance a bit, I think it was also due to regulars not playing in multiple heats once they got their qualifying win. We again had 11 qualifying winners on the preliminaries which we bumped to 12 with an alternate for the semis; four 3-player games.

Duncan McGregor reached the Final with a well timed hyperspace on the second to last card of the last round, knocking out his competition instead of becoming a slaver.

In a return to form and a repudiation of last year, the Final had plenty of carnage. With no big rounds, Nick took the victory with a steady stream of positive rounds. Kate Fractal was also positive in each round, but it was a battle with diminishing returns, making less each time. The rough roads were all fairly difficult, piercing projectiles, meteoric inversion, and defective connectors.

In the second round, only Duncan accidentally built onto an illegal space with the tricky 3B ship, but still had a very nice design. During the race, Nick forgot he had a hyperspace drive, and lost four of his five crew to a combat zone. He eventually wound up withdrawing from the race. While scores were hidden, Nick was in the lead with 18 to Kate's 10, and Brian and Duncan were negative.

In the third round, Brian Hanechak aggressively flipped the timer during the build. Kate quickly withdrew from the race after grabbing a few goods, again setting up a positive round (6!). Duncan managed to avoid a dangerous combat zone by use of a hyperspace drive, but missed the next card, a huge checkpoint evil machination that he had seeded, paying off 16 to Nick. Nick later avoided a nasty double commando via the diplomat, and that card did a number on Duncan's ship. The last indignity was Nick winning a sabotage against Duncan, 2 crew to 1. Ultimately, it made no difference. Nick tag-teamed his absent brother Karl to create a Henning sandwich with their fourth straight family GXT title and his third championship of the week.  The payoff from the checkpoint was enough, and Nick took the victory with a whopping final score of 23.

Next year we'll look into using Missions for the final round, since the expansion will have been available for a while. I think increasing the difficulty in the elimination rounds has worked well, allowing newer players to get some experience, while still allowing the veterans to bubble to the top.