Three-peat for Jack Morrell

Command and Colors Napoleonics began with a demo given on Tuesday night by assistant GM, Tim Hitchings. The attendance was good with 8-10 potential new players participating. The real fighting started in earnest on Wednesday morning with 23 combatants. The gaming continued for 12 straight hours until the last shot was fired at around 9 pm that evening. A very long, but very gratifying day of gaming.

The Napoleonics tournament is run on the premise that if you come to play, you want to play a LOT. So instead of single elimination games that could knock you out after an off game, the first round is Swiss elimination which allows every player, win or lose, to play a minimum of four games, if they so desire. After the first round, the field is narrowed to four players who participate in a single elimination semifinal, with the final two players battling it out for the championship.

The big change in format this year was the addition of clocks. Using clocks, we could avoid having to end games early in order to force participants to move on to the next round. The clocks served two purposes. First, they forced players to exercise time management, allowing the games to move along at a steady pace of about one every two hours. Second, the clocks meant every player got the same amount of time, which meant no one was forced to end their game prematurely. The clocks were a great success. They were easy to operate. No one complained about them (and, as you know, we gamers complain about everything), and no one ran out of time. They served their purpose without interfering with the natural flow of the game.

The four swiss rounds consisted of four matches:

• Vimiero: a British vs. French scenario contained in the base game
• Bassano (Ney’s Assault): another British vs. French scenario contained in the base game
• Barossa: a Spanish scenario, but most of the participating allies were British. This allowed players who had the Spanish scenario and those who only had the base scenario, to participate
• Czarnowo: a Russian vs. French scenario

Play balance was remarkably good. With the exception of Bussaco, the French and the Allies each won an equal number of games and even in Bussaco, the French only had an 11 games to 8 game advantage over the British.

The semifinals at Dennewitz allowed the Prussians to make an appearance, while the finals at Brienne returned to the Russians but with a twist. This year the finals were played with the new Generals, Marshals and Tacticians rules.

The games for next year have not been set but, to paraphrase Damon Runyon, it may not be that the games remain the same but that is the way to bet.

This year’s top six players in the swiss portion of the tournament were:

• Jack Morrell: 4-0
• Chris Thibault 4-0
• Sam Gatto 3-1
• Charles Speer 3-1
• Mike Polcen 3-1

Charles Speer and Mike Polcen were eliminated on tie breakers and the semifinals were set with two-time reigning champion Jack Morrell facing off against Eric Filipkowski while Chris Thibault took on Sam Gatto. Jack Morrel and Chris Thibault, the only two players to go 4-0 during the swiss rounds, eliminated their opponents and met each other in the finals. Chris put up a valiant fight, but his Russians simply didn’t have enough firepower and enough staying power to thwart Jack Morrel’s relentless attacks. At the end of the day, two-time champion Jack Morrell became three-time champion. Congratulations to Jack and to all those participating in the tournament.

I am grateful to game creator, Richard Borg, and to GMT, and particularly to Tony Curtis, for sponsoring Napoleonics at this year's tournament. My special thanks goes to assistant Game Masters Tim Hitchings and Jack Morrell, who spent endless hours helping me to prepare for the tournament.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or wish to stay informed about next year's tournament, please feel free to contact me at mr.johnkirk@gmail.com.