Dice At Sea
Pat Richardson (Warrenton, VA) took top honors this year and
became, at 16, the youngest champion in the history of the tournament.
He bested former champ Steve Packwood (Eagan, MN) in the final.
3rd and 4th place honors went
to newcomers Ed Menzel (Fullerton, CA) and Ron Dietz (Massillon,
OH). The 5th place plaque was captured by returning vet Mike
Knautz (Brookfield, WI), edging 6th place finisher and rookie
Dave Streamo (Massillon, OH) by strength of schedule.
Though our new champ is but 16, he's no novice. This is his
fifth consecutive appearance in the event; his best previous
finish was runner-up in 1997 at the ripe age of 13. The tournament's
43 entrants were just shy of last year's record 45, but
the 80 total games played and the 18 players who played all five
rounds were all-time highs.
WAS GM and PBeM champ Vince Meconi
(left) appears to be giving pointers to defending WBC champ Ray
Freeman.
A record 40 players competed in Round 1. One of the day's
best matches took place on that round, as defending champ Ray
Freeman took on three-time semifinalist Chuck Stapp. Although
Ray is known as an Allied specialist, he took the Axis when Chuck
offered 2.5 POC, the day's highest bid, to take the Allies. The
players wrestled to an exhausting raw-POC tie that became a Freeman
win only because of the bid. Although Ray held serve, otherwise
after just one round it was apparent that the day would be a
rough one for favorites. Four of the top ten seeds dropped their
initial contest. Overall, excluding runnerup Packwood, the other
four former champions posted only six wins against ten losses.
Nine hours later, as 18 of us answered the bell for the 5th
and final round, fully ten players were still firmly in the running
for the final four single-elimination berths. Only Pat Richardson
and Steve Packwood had managed to win all four rounds by 2 POC,
scoring 40 Victory Points each. They faced off and, in a harbinger
of the championship, Pat's Allies bested Steve
Packwood's Axis by five POC after the bid. Pat, with 50 Victory
Points, was in for the final 4, but Steve with 40 had to await
the other matches and a strength of schedule tiebreaker. Of the
other eight competitors with a chance at the semifinals, only
one, Mike Knautz, had playoff experience. Mike took on Joe Collinson,
competing in just his second tournament, and won going away as
the Allies. Veteran Bob Hamel met rookie Dave Streamo and Dave
eliminated Bob, leaving him one victory short of the final four
for the second consecutive year. Another rookie, Ron Dietz, engaged
another second-timer, Larry York, and again the rookie emerged
victorious. At this point, Packwood, Knautz, Streamo, and Dietz
all had 40 Victory Points, with the day's last preliminary round
game still underway. That matchup featured yet another rookie,
Ed Menzel, and Andy Gardner. Ed was the higher seeded player,
having scored 36 VPs with four wins, two of them by a single
POC, while Andy had logged three wins and one loss for 30 VPs.
Ed needed a win or a draw to clinch the final four, and got it
with yet another narrow triumph, this one by 1/2 POC. Andy's
32 VPs were good for 7th place, but Andy didn't go home empty-handed;
his consolation prize was the championship in our sister game,
Victory in the Pacific.
Ed Menzel's 44 VPs secured the second final four berth, but
Steve Packwood, Mike Knautz, Ron Dietz and Dave Streamo, with
40 VPs each, had to sweat out the strength of schedule calculation.
Schedule strength is computed by taking the total victory points
scored by a player's opponents and dividing that number by the
total number of games played by that player's opponents. Steve
Packwood, with 6.10, and Ron Dietz, at 5.71, edged out Mike Knautz
with 5.29 and Dave Streamo with 3.95. Steve was very happy to
win the tiebreaker, having lost a similar tiebreaker to finish
5th back in 1995. In fact, Mike and Dave are just the 3rd and
4th players in the history of the tournament to score 40 VPs
and not make the final four. Mike grabbed the 5th place plaque,
but Dave had to content himself with the congratulations of his
fellow competitors.
In one semifinal, top seed Pat Richardson took on number 4
Ron Dietz. Pat took the Allies, while Ron favored the Axis, with
no bid. Pat's "Barents on 1" deployment found the Germans
and Italian cruisers sailing in force for the South Atlantic.
Despite having two pocket battleships fail their speed rolls,
the Axis won a narrow victory to open a 3-POC lead. However,
the Allies established a blockade that the Axis were not able
to remove for the rest of the game. The Axis in turn used U-boats
aggressively and the Luftwaffe effectively. The Axis LBA sank
Convoy 1A on Turn 4, disabled Convoy 2B on Turn 5, and disabled
Convoy 3C on Turn 7. As a result, the Axis maintained their lead
through Turn 7. However, on Turn 8 the Allies were
able to land both Convoy 3C in England and Convoy 2B in Russia,
the latter's 3 POC winning the game for the Allies.
In the other semi, runnerup Ed Menzel squared off against
3rd-ranked Steve Packwood. Steve's Axis took a 1/2 POC bid. This
game, too, featured a Turn 1 battle in the South Atlantic. While
the Germans lost two ships, they took the area and sank four
British ships. On Turn 3, the players repeated a big battle in
the South Atlantic, with the Axis again putting four British
ships down while suffering only one of their own sunk. The Axis
built up a big lead, but the Allies landed two convoys to keep
within striking distance. The deciding battle took place on Turn
6, once again in the South Atlantic. Hot shooting U-boat torpedoes
took out three of four British battleships to let Italian cruisers
control the area and build up an unassailable Axis
lead.
The final contest thus was a rematch of the Pat Richardson/Steve
Packwood faceoff on Round 5. [My thanks to Andy Gardner for these
detailed notes.] Pat again took the Allies after paying a 1-POC
penalty. Pat's "Barents on 1" variation featured this
unorthodox deployment in the North Sea: 2x553, 2x443, 117, 016/2.
Steve decided to test it, with near disastrous results. Allied
airstrikes took out one 225, and their gunnery claimed the other
two pocket battleships as well as a 127, with the loss of only
one 443 in return. The Allies controlled the North Sea and led
by two POC. The Axis faced a very bad situation after just one
turn , blockaded, with four German ships on the sea bottom and
behind in POC. However, Steve is known for his comebacks. More
than one player in the history of this tournament has thought
he had Steve on the ropes, only to find that three turns or so
later the tables have been turned. Steve deployed his U-boats
and LBA to maximum effect; on Turn 4 they broke control in the
North Sea, sank a carrier, and killed the convoy via airstrike.
As a result, at the end of that turn the Allied lead had widened
only to 3 POC. However, Turn 5 proved decisive. With the North
Sea open, Steve sailed his entire remaining fleet (2x496, 2x357,
127, 128/2, 3x117) to the South Atlantic to face this Allied
fleet: the Eagle, 4x444, and 3x117. Meanwhile, Axis U-boats decontrolled
the Baltic and North Atlantic. But, the Bismarck failed
its speed roll and the first round of British gunnery sank the
Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gniesenau, Graf
Zeppelin, and the remaining German cruiser, leaving the
Axis navy with three Italian cruisers afloat for round 2. In
reply, the Axis could sink but one British 444. With the Allies
landing a convoy the same turn, that was the ball game.
This year's final clearly matched the day's two best competitors.
Pat's 7-0-0 record marked only the second time in the history
of the tourney that a player has won seven in a row. Tim Hitchings
pulled off a similar feat in 1997. Steve's 5-2 mark was marred
only by the pair of losses to Pat.
Pat's 7-0-0 tally included 3-0-0 as the Axis and 4-0-0 as
the Allies, meaning that, in addition to the championship, Pat
copped both the Best Axis Player and Best Allied Player awards.
Following close behind Pat were Lee Kendter, Jim Kramer, Ed Menzel,
and John Pack with 2-0-0 finishes as the Axis, while Mike Knautz's
3-0-0 ledger as the Allies gave him runner-up as Best Allied
Player. Of this year's 13 first-time players, three finished
in the top 10: Ed Menzel (3rd), Ron Dietz (4th), and Dave Streamo
(6th). Ed thus claimed Rookie of the Year honors. It should be
noted that Ron Dietz and Dave Streamo comprised the two-member
Massillon, OH delegation. While they are longtime gamers and
conventiongoers, this was their firstWBC/Avaloncon. We suspect
they'll be back for more, provided that the ride home wasn't
too rough with Ron having gained the final four on the tiebreaker
while Dave lost out to the same tiebreaker.
We don't give an award for Comeback Player of the Year, but
if we did it would surely go to Mike Knautz. Despite a three-year
layoff, he grabbed the 5th place plaque and missed the final
four only by a tiebreaker. Larry York skipped the same three
years but came back with a strong 9th place finish.
Bids and play balance: 25 years after the game's release,
there seems to be a consensus emerging that the Allies have an
edge, if a narrow one. That view is reflected in this year's
bidding. For the first time, more games featured bids than did
not: 41 to 39. The fact that bids were allowed in half-POC increments
for the first time this year probably contributed to the increase
as well. Of the 41 games with bids, 39 had bids for the Allies
and only two for the Axis. As recently as 1997, more players
bid for the Axis than the Allies. That's not to say that everybody
wants to play the Allies. Of our top 11 finishers, five played
more games as the Axis than Allies, and two of those five played
all their games as the Axis. To win you need to be able to play
both sides, it would appear, as our top six finishers all won
as both sides. Overall, the Allies won 42 games, the Axis came
out on
top in 37, and there was one tie. Bids changed the winner in
three games. In another six, a 10 VP win became an 8 VP win,
or vice versa, due to a bid.
Competition seemed tighter than ever, and here are a few facts
to back up that impression. Eight of the 80 games, fully 10%,
were decided by fewer than two POC or tied. One player, Ed Menzel,
won three games by a single POC, something
never before accomplished. Defending champ Ray Freeman lost two
games by one POC and gained one of his victories only after the
bid was taken into account. The keenness of the competition proved
that seedings and AREA ratings didn't mean much this year. After
1999, when all four semifinalists were well known and top-ranked
players, this year only three of the top ten seeds (and none
of the top five) actually finished in the top ten.
|