D'Tela Undefeated in Title Run!

This was the fourth year for the Dune Imperium tournament at WBC and the event continues to be popular among players. Attendance dropped from 98 unique players last year to 83 entrants but continues to draw new players hoping to plot a path to victory through a field of scheming faction opponents. The format remained as before - Heats: Most Wins-Points using a GM tiebreaker of Most Victory Points. The number of qualifying Heats remained at three. The last Heat continues to be the least attended but players seemed to enjoy having the flexibility of an extra Heat to fit in at least two qualifying games before the Semifinal. The game count per Heat consisted of 3 or 4 players per game with 15 games in Heat #1, 11 in Heat #2, and 9 in Heat #3.

Top Players

Congratulations to the 2025 Champion, Sceadeau D’Tela, for defeating his field of opponents with an undefeated record of 4-0 across the four rounds he entered. As champion he took home the WBC plaque along with an extra prize donated by the GM Tom Cannon, a Dune Upgrade pack of miniatures in a non-standard box.

The top laurelists for the event had two repeats from last year, Sceadeau and Drew and 3 who made the Semifinal each of the past two years, Curtis, Michael, and Christian.

The remaining Semifinalists in alphabetical order were Imran Akram, Aaron Blair, Nick Chauvin, Omar Chbaklo, Ben Collison, Jr., Carrie Fleming, Nicolas Hungerford, Reid Mackey, Jim McFarlane, and Mason Murray.

In the Running

Achieving a Top 16 position to join the Semifinal was a bit easier this year with only 7 players winning two Heats. No player won all 3 heats and only six players in the Top 16 chose to enter all three Heats. Over half of the players who won a single Heat also qualified for the Top 16 position in the Semifinal and no alternates were needed to fill the field. At the end of 35 qualifying games in 3 Heats there were a total of 28 players who won at least one game. Winning just two games was sufficient to qualify for the Semifinal round and some players had only a single win plus one or two other finishes to round out the field.

Thanks to Assistant GMs

Special thanks go to the following players who volunteered to be assistant GMs for those Rounds when the GM competed in the event. This gave me the opportunity to play my favorite game with many new players in a competitive environment and I really appreciate their willingness to assist.

Hats off to Eric Engelmann and Christian Kasilag!

Just the Facts Please

Here are some highlights from a review of the game score cards collected during the tournament (Total of 40 games played). Reminder, the leader pool for selection during Setup was randomized for every game resulting in a mix of six leaders to select from out of the total 17. Every game is likely to have a different mix of which leaders could have been selected during that game.

Top Winning Leaders by Game Count

1. Tessia Vernius – 5 wins
2. Count Ilban Richese – 5 wins
3. Prince Rhombus – 4 wins
4. The Beast – 4 wins
5. Paul Atreides – 4 wins