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Rolinda Collinson and Laura Brown |
Luke Koleszar and Drew DuBoff |
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Steve Shambeda gives Christian Winicki
his "let's be friends" pitch. |
Natasha Metzger and Bill Place |
Winning Two is Still Twice as Nice ...
Tiebreakers still rule! ...
The latest Galaxy tournament again did not disappoint
with a tense Final that, as usual, came down to the last card
before before it was decided. One of the surprises was that three
of the five finalists were under the age of 18. One of them just
learned the game at the demo that week! So it is encouraging
to know that this game has a new crop of up and coming players.
It also means us old fogeys better be prepared or we're going
to be watching from the sidelines during future Finals.
The Final came down to the last card play for Max Duboff.
He had a choice of eliminating one of two worlds and he chose
the Cylor. The good news is that after all was said and done,
he had the high score at the table. The bad news is, so did Dan
Eshleman. So, once again the title required a tie breaker and
Dan's hand proved to be the better one by a wide margin (99 to
33). Dan thus became our fifth two-time champ.
The Erithizonians were the world that was eliminated more
than the others. It was culled 17 times and that's the first
time it held that less than meritorious distinction since 2009.
On the flip side, the Felowi survived 11 times in 22 games to
take top honors in that more promising category. Usually the
most successful world survives a little more than 50% of the
time, so this year proved more balanced than usual. The Erithizonian
and Imperial tied for the most choices for secret base and the
Cylor came in at a disappointing low of 5 for the fewest. Also
if you were a player who ended the game with the last world elimination,
your chances of winning were but 7 in 22, so maybe its not always
such a good idea to be the "game ender."
As good as the Final was, the third heat had a 5-player game
that was unlike any this GM has ever seen. For most of Round
1 the Felowi world drew no ship card. So during that time, there
were multiple bases played on it, mostly by shooting the base
already there to move it down a level. There was one card played,
but it didn't last long. As a result, ownership of the world
changed hands four times in the 1st round. After that round there
were seven total bases on the world. But wait, it gets better.
In the end, there were 53 points, including secret bases, on
the table and 40 of them were on the Felowi alone! This isn't
data that has been kept since the tournament began, but I'm declaring
this a new record for points on a world that I doubt will ever
be broken!
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Virginia Melton, Alex Metzger, Ben
Collinsin and Tim Mossman |
GM Mark Mitchell and his fellow finalists. |
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