Ericson undefeated in Title Run!

The 2025 Battle Line Tournament stayed about the same size as last year’s, bringing 55 players to be split (mostly) into pods of 4 people. The group stage was hard on past champions, the only past champion to advance was 2002 champion Kevin Youells. 2024 champion Sean McCulloch went 2-1, but lost to Luke Heinz, who also went 2-1 and won with the tiebreaker. Five-time champion Bruce Reiff had a similar fate, losing to Dan Leader, going 2-1 and losing the tiebreaker. 2023 champion Nicholas Metzger and two-time champion Jim Kramer Jr. found themselves in the same group, and neither advanced. Nicholas won the head to head match, but both former champions only went 1-2 in the pod. Both Alexander Lange and Itamar Hochboim went 2-1, but Alexander advanced from this “group of death" by winning the head to head match against Itamar. Alexander was one of two members of the Lange clan to advance out of the pods, as Jeff Lange Sr. also advanced. The pods were also kind to the Shea family, as 2024 runner-up Michael Shea advanced, along with his son Jordan Vo’Shea and Jordan’s wife Kelly Vo. Other pod winners included David Schneider, Tom DeMarco, Bruno Wolff, Jim Bodenheimer, Ed Ericson, and Zach Goldstein.

With 14 players advancing, the single elimination bracket had two byes. The first round of the bracket was unkind to the Lange family, as both members lost, but all three members of the Shea family advanced. Unfortunately, in the quarterfinal round, Jordan and his wife Kelly were paired up against each other. In a long, tense, battle, Jordan prevailed over Kelly, but he seemed pretty drained after that. In the Semifinal match against David Schneider, Jordan lost and David advanced to the Final.

On the other side of the bracket, Ed Ericson advanced over Zach, and then beat Michael Shea in the Semifinal to advance to the Final. Both Ed and David had gone 3-0 in their pods and had won all of their games along the way to the championship. David was a semifinalist in 2022, but this was his first Final. Ed used to play Battle Line a lot, but this was his first time advancing out of the bracket in the WBC tournament.

The final was tense and interesting. I have posted a log of it on BoardGameGeek at https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3557100/2025-wbc-battle-line-final-transcript but here is a quick summary.

Both players drew tactics cards early but didn’t play any for most of the game. The key moment happened when Ed was able to claim a 3 of a kind flag against David having only one card out against it. David chose not to dump a card on the flag before Ed claimed it, thinking all of the cards in his hand were useful, and there was not a clear choice to dump. But the loss of 2 card slots seemed to hurt David later on, as the game became a long one, with the troop deck running out. As legal places to play diminished, and David had trouble drawing the cards he needed, Ed was able to force wins on more flags and take the win. Congrats to both finalists, and to Ed Ericson, our new champion!

Perhaps next year the pod rounds will be kinder to former champions.