New Speed Kills Award

2019 was a year of firsts for Roborally at the WBC. A new award certificate was introduced for the death-match heat. The Speed Kills award is given out to the first player to cause the death of another player in the death-match heat. James Kendrick won this award by helping Scott Romanowski leave the game early. Another first for this year was we had a double winner of the Kaarin Englemann Memorial Crash and Burn Award and player aid (new and improved version). For those that do not know this is awarded to the first player eliminated (losing all 4 lives) in a regular heat or the semi-finals or finals. The double winner was my daughter Annabelle, who won in it both the first heat and the semi-finals. (Which she made it to by winning the death-match heat) America Yamaguchi also won this award in the third heat. Finally, also a first, yours truly actually won in two games during the tournament, both the first and the second heat. In both of those games, eliminating seven time champion Brad Johnson, who has been going through a Roborally dry spell since they replaced his liver. Coincidence? Who can say?

One event of note during the final - Rich Shipley, making a bid for third place with a very beat up robot managed to convince the cards to carry him to the final flag, only to be killed by laser fire before he could tag. A tough break that took this past Champion to 6th place.

And finally, some things of note for next year, the boards we used for the final made for a too short game, once Mark Jensen got out in front, he quickly ran away with it, and there was no time for other players to catch up. Unfortunately, I created that map on the fly and failed to take a picture of it, so I don't remember which maps I used. I'm sure one of the players from that game will enlighten me however. Also, we need to remove the Spin zone from the acceptable set of maps for deathmatch. The table that used that particular map was the only one that ran up against the adjudication time limit - though they actually finished the game during the hand that would have ended in adjudication.

One modification that I am hoping to make for next year is to create my own maps, (At least for deathmatch and probably for one of the later rounds.) There are a few pieces of software out there that will allow this, I just need to remember to do it more than a week before the con.