Amidon Wins Cold War!

First of all, thank you to the players for putting up with a rookie gamemaster. We had several new players for WBC, for a net increase of five from last year, which means we should be able to keep our four plaques and perhaps even increase to five.

Round 1 had 18 games played, with 10 Soviet wins and 8 American. Round 2 also had 10 Soviet wins, but only 6 American as some round 1 winners dropped. Round 3 was more even, with 6 Soviet wins and 6 American. Round 4 was down to nine games played, with the Americans taking their first lead with 5 wins to 4 for the Soviets. Round 5 went 5 wins for the Americans, including the title match, and only 1 for the Soviets. If my math is right, the Soviets had a final edge of 31 wins to 30 for the Americans, about as even as we could get. We eliminated ties by changing the point value of The China Card in final scoring from a full point to half a point.

The players did not report the victory condition for all of the games. I got notes for nine games resolved by DEFCON going to one, 18 by twenty point automatic victory before the end of the game, 7 with Wargames, one for control of Europe (with a victory point total of 16 for the losing side), and 16 in final scoring, with at least three of the final scoring games decided by possession of The China Card.

We had to adjudicate more games than I wanted to in order to try to keep to three hours playing time. If I end up as the GM for 2024, I am going to request three and one half hours between rounds, which would mean Round 5 would be played Tuesday morning rather than start it at 11:00 PM Monday. I didn’t do any seeding, the only re-match request was from a player for whom Twilight Struggle was his team game and his random opponent was another member of his team. I did try to make sure every player played both sides, which seems to have worked out well with a 31 – 30 win split. The tournament winner, David Amidon, went 5 – 0 with three American and two Soviet wins, and the four players who went 4 – 1 all had two wins with either side to take second through fifth places. The tiebreaker was the AREA rating as if the beginning of the tournament for the opponents defeated. Several players mentioned that other rating systems were available and that some games played before WBC might not have made it into AREA before the tournament. I used the ratings provided by AREA.

Thank you again to the players who were new to the tournament, with 40 members playing at least one game we are sure to be back in the competition century for 2024. Hope to see all of you again next year, and if you know any players who were not able to join us this year, please invite them to come along.