Drueding Wins Inaugural Storm Over Jerusalem Title!

WBC 2023 was the first year that Storm Over Jerusalem was available to qualify for a WBC event and Multi-Man Publishing was gracious enough to sponsor it for the first year. As this was my first game design, it was my first year running an event at WBC. My good friend and developer, Wray Ferrell, was the assistant GM.

We hosted a demo on Tuesday evening and had eight players attend. After doing a quick summary of the rules, we ran part of an example turn so that players could get a feel for the rules in action. After the hour demo we moved to our assigned room and began the Mulligan round.

Eight players participated in the Mulligan round, including several players who attended the demo. In the Mulligan round the Roman players won three of the four games.

Starting up on Wednesday morning we had fourteen players for Round 1. We had three Roman victories with two games ending in auto victories for the Roman player (capturing both Herod’s Palace and The Temple Mount). The Judean players ended up with four victories, including a dramatic tie which was won by the Judean player Greg Schmittgens. Greg ended up losing a total of 34 units but retained control of the Victory Locations for the win.

Round 2 consisted of four more games being played. Round 2 was a strong Judean round, with the Judean players winning three of the four games. The only Roman win was Chris Byrd who pushed hard and ended up winning on turn 6 after the Judean player conceded.

After a long day, the evening saw four players facing off in the Semifinal. Jack Stalica won his game as the Romans and Tom Drueding won his game as the Judeans, so the Final were set.

Jack and Tom met for the Final. During the event Jack had won as both sides, Tom had only won as the Judeans. Tom ended up as the Romans and launched his attacks on the city. Jack’s Judean tried to hold out, but Tom’s Romans were too much and captured much of the city to ensure victory for Tom.

During the event we did not see any rules issues or things that needed to address in the rules, we were happy with this outcome. Players tried many different strategies on the way to victory, there did not appear to be a single winning strategy, which was also good.

At the end, the Roman players won nine games and the Judean players won nine games. The Roman players in round 1-4 averaged between 14 and 17 victory points and the Judean players averaged between 15 and 19 victory points. The final averages were 16.2 victory points for the Roman players and 15.9 victory points for the Judean players.

Overall, we were very happy with the outcome of the event and everyone seemed to have a good time during the event. I want to congratulate Tom Drueding for winning the event and Jack Stalica for making it to the Final. I also want to thank Multi-Man Publishing, LLC for sponsoring the event.