Titan The Arena Continues With New Management For A Second Year!

This is my second year as GM for Titan the Arena. Thank you everyone who participated in the tournament to make it another great year. We had 82 unique participants and 125 player starts during 3 Heats. This is an increase of 17% for unique participants and almost the same in player starts versus 2022. With the help of my assistant GM, Roni, we continue to honor the work of Greg Crowe and do our best to continue the traditions he established for this event.

A few notes from the preliminary rounds. Of course, we do our best to ensure there is no nonsense, hijinks, shenanigans or tomfoolery during this event. But the GM was lax during one of the Heats and forgot the reminder which did result in some shenanigans at a table. There were no permanent injuries as a result, but some excess fun was had by all. Competition became especially fierce during Heat 3 as two games each had 10 power cards placed upon four creatures in the final round of play.

Prior to the Semifinal, the awards for this season of Titan the Arena were presented: Tim Packwood is the Battling Behemoth for this year with 7 kills, Brady Detwiler is the Shining Serpent with 11 points lost in the final round of a game, Max DuBoff is the Overachieving Ogre with 34 points combined across all heats, Doug Kolpien is the Weary Warbear with an 8 point win (appropriately by tiebreaker), and Bruce Monnin is the Ardent Angel with a 7 point last place finish.

For the Semifinal there were 25 participants at 5 tables. It was a rough day for Hydra. At three of the tables Hydra was the first casualty and Hydra only survived to the end of the game at the Unicorn table. Play went smoothly and it was fierce competition at all tables to determine our 5 finalists. After the Semifinal games were completed the Mighty Minotaur for this year was acknowledged as Andrew Freeman with his loss by one point (92.3% of the winner’s score) to finalist Charles Squibb.

The five finalists for this year are Jordan Shea, Charlie Squibb, Brendan Coomes, Jefferson Meyer, and Ben Collinson. The first two rounds are almost amicable with the Cyclops being killed first with no bets placed upon it and the Dragon dying second by agreement of all backers and no visible bets placed upon it.

The third round seems to start with agreement to kill Hydra, but then Jordan bets upon Hydra and plays a 1 strength card on Ranger which he backs along with Brendan. Jefferson backs Ranger and Unicorn this round which makes him somewhat of a target with the double bet, but Troll ends up being the one to fall causing Jordan to lose his first round bet and Brendan to lose his second and third round bets.

Fourth round definitely becomes more tense. Ranger is threatened halfway through the round with a 2 strength card played upon him. Brendan joins Jordan on Hydra, but they are not able to protect it from Jefferson playing the final card resulting in Hydra’s death.

During the final round, the deck runs out with a zero Ranger card and an 8 Warlock card being the only strength cards on the board. Fortunes change as Ranger is reinforced and a Unicorn switch occurs for a 7 strength card on Unicorn. A Behemoth (10) card is played by Brendan and Jefferson plays a Wyvern (8) card which causes Unicorn to fall despite having a sturdy 7 strength showing.

Charlie suffers most with the loss of Unicorn losing his secret bet and his first and fourth round bets. All other secret bets survive with three of them being placed on Warlock and Jefferson’s upon Ranger. Jefferson carries the day with his secret bet, first round, second round and one of his third round bets surviving for 14 points. Ben comes in second at 12 points with his secret bet, first, third and fourth round bets surviving. Jordan comes in third with 9 points by second tiebreaker versus Brendan and Charlie is fifth as a result of his disastrous losses (10 points) with the death of Unicorn.

Congratulations to Jefferson and thank you again to everyone supporting Titan the Arena for another year! I also want to thank Andy Latto for the wonderful spreadsheet he creates for the WBC GM’s which makes the recordkeeping for the tournaments so much easier!