For more information on Titan see my Titan Home Page.
The very short summary is that Jason Ley won the multiplayer event and Aaron Fuegi won the two player event.
Below is essentially the report I turned into Don for use in the yearbook.
This year there were a total 32 games played. 25 of these (including the semis and finals) were 4 player games and the other 7 were three player games. This works out to 121 game seats, compared to 156 last year and 138 the year before. This is not a big enough drop that I want to change the format. The current system seems to be working pretty well and I am anticipating the pending release of the Valley Games edition should boost interest next year.
Steve Koleszar has a reputation in the Titan community of being mister nice guy. This year he let me know that he wanted to try more seriously to do well and there wasn't going to be any more mister nice guy. Later while fighting a final titan on titan battle in a preliminary match against Bruce Rae, Bruce forgot to enter his titan on to the board and Steve neglected to remind him of that until it was time to eliminate units that didn't enter. Both Steve and Bruce went on to make the semifinals and Steve had some good chances in his, but didn't end up making the final.
Bruce was not alone in making that faux pax. Mark Smith also did this in another preliminary game. While you might do this intentionally do reduce the points your opponent will receive when you are hopeless, these two cases were inadvertent. Players seem especially prone to accidentally leaving titans out of battles. My supposition is they put the titan aside while setting up everything else, planning to come back to placing the titan safely later and then forgetting this last step. Other units don't typically get that kind of consideration. My suggestion is that when doing this, leave the titan counter on the battleboard map rather than off to the side, as it will be more noticeable there. Hopefully this topic won't come up next year.
Two of the semifinal games had upset final titan on titan battles. In the first Akihisa Tabei had attacked Bob Masso with a significant edge. But Bob took a chance with a giant hoping that Akihisa wouldn't kill it with 16 50/50 dice so that he would get two strikes with it against Akihisa's 12 die titan and then be able to throw his second giant giving him almost an average kill. This was a long shot, but things went his way and Bob advanced to the final.
In the second David desJardins had a significant edge over Joe Harrison. David kept his titan back while most of the rest of the material in the battle was eliminated. Then he closed his fresh titan on Joe's heavily wounded titan. Both were 12 die titans and Joe's had 9 hits on it already. Fortunately for Joe, David didn't roll 3 hits on his first strike and Joe was able to get a total of 12 after getting two strikes with his titan. This made the result a mutual. David rolled low on the roll off and Joe ended up advancing to the final.
The last two players standing in the final were Bob Masso and Jason Ley. Jason had done well in the preliminary rounds and had finished with the top seed. However Bob was doing well in the final with a colossus in his titan stack. But before he could get a second colossus, which probably would have sealed a victory for him, Jason was able to catch him with a very unusual stack. Jason attacked with an archangel and three angels and summoned a fourth angel during the battle. Bob had a 7 die titan, colossus, 2 dragons, unicorn and warlock. While Bob had more meat in his stack, his titan was vulnerable and he needed to play to preserve pieces or Jason would be able to finish him off before he could recover from the battle. Jason did end up engaging the titan and killing it to win this battle and the tournament.
I received a comment regarding active players giving advice during a battle in which they were not directly involved with. The comment was that since the other active players are not fighting the battle they should not be giving advice to the participants.
My response is that since other players can be significantly affected by the outcome of the battle, they have a legitimate interest in it and should be able to protect that interest by giving advice. The only exception is if the person being given the advice asks the giver to stop.
I can certainly see gaming groups agreeing not to do this for various reasons, but not all groups see things that way. At the WBC I prefer to not impose restrictions on multiplayer aspects of Titan that are not included in the rules (except for very extreme things, such as pre-planned collusion). Especially since players that don't like the multiplayer aspects of Titan have the chance to play in the two player event where they don't come in to play.
David Platnick was kind enough to leave a copy of the Valley Games edition of Titan out at the Titan base camp throughout the tournament. He obtained the copy at Origins for doing well at a Titan tournament sponsored by Valley Games. Hopefully by next summer the game will be released, as that should spur more interest in Titan. The unit counts are the same, so using the sets next year will be fine. While I haven't seen the final version of the rules for the new edition, the intent seems to be to leave them alone and only make changes for clarity. So I am not expecting any rules changes for next year.
David desJardins recorded the final.
Fin Sem Pre Opp Opp Opp Opp Opp Opp Game
Name Ran Ran Ran 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Kil 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Kil Gam Gam Numbers
Ley, Jason 1 1 1 3 0 1 0 9 9 10 6 0 40 35 4 2 6 19 25
Masso, Robert 2 2 3 2 1 1 0 8 19 13 16 0 70 65 6 12 14 18 23 25 27
Finberg, David 3 3 4 2 1 1 0 7 13 8 9 0 52 47 4 8 12 14 25
Harrison, Joe 4 4 14 1 1 0 0 1 6 7 2 0 24 31 3 5 9 16
desJardins, David 5 5 7 1 2 1 0 3 10 11 10 0 42 50 4 7 17 23 24
Koleszar, Steve 6 6 12 1 1 0 0 3 5 5 3 0 16 24 2 3 16
Northey, Rich 7 7 13 1 1 0 0 2 4 4 6 0 17 20 2 21 22
Tabei, Akihisa 8 8 16 1 0 1 0 4 5 7 7 0 20 32 3 4 5 15
Pustilnik, Michael 9 9 5 2 0 1 0 7 10 17 5 0 36 42 5 2 6 7 13 16
Fuegi, Aaron 10 10 9 1 1 0 0 5 12 7 6 0 43 33 3 6 10 17
Klercker, Nick 11 11 11 1 1 0 0 3 12 13 14 0 45 50 6 3 9 17 20 23 26
Hillock, Kevin 12 12 15 1 0 2 0 4 8 10 6 0 28 41 3 17 23 26
Atwater, Rich 13 13 2 3 0 0 0 9 8 9 8 0 36 35 4 1 4 10 12
Sutton, Brian 14 14 6 2 0 0 0 6 4 5 8 0 17 25 2 22 27
Rae, Bruce 15 15 8 1 1 2 0 5 12 15 10 0 42 51 6 3 11 14 21 22 24
Johnston, Tom 16 16 10 1 1 0 0 5 8 7 5 0 29 31 3 5 10 18
McCulloch, Sean 17 17 17 1 0 0 0 3 1 3 5 0 6 13 1 11
Pounder, Geoffrey 18 18 18 1 0 0 0 3 1 3 0 0 4 8 1 20
Shambeda, Jed 19 19 19 1 0 0 0 2 3 2 0 0 10 6 1 1
Strock, Dan 20 20 20 0 2 0 0 2 11 1 6 0 38 23 2 2 6
Murphy, Anne 21 21 21 0 2 0 0 1 9 7 10 0 33 36 3 4 7 24
Betz, Joseph 22 22 22 0 2 0 0 1 6 1 0 0 17 12 2 1 20
Rogozinski, Michael 23 23 23 0 2 0 0 0 12 6 5 0 38 33 4 7 13 16 19
Meacham, Peg 24 24 24 0 1 2 0 0 12 9 13 0 48 48 5 11 15 18 22 26
Rothenheber, Ed 25 25 25 0 1 1 0 1 7 4 4 0 27 22 2 10 11
Gubbay, David 26 26 26 0 1 1 0 1 5 2 8 0 20 24 2 15 27
Bassin, Bob 27 27 27 0 1 0 0 1 12 9 7 0 42 40 4 5 8 9 14
Gathmann, Pete 28 28 28 0 1 0 0 1 7 2 3 0 24 14 1 25
Effinger, Robb 29 29 29 0 1 0 0 1 2 2 2 0 8 9 1 8
Platnick, David 30 30 30 0 1 0 0 1 2 2 2 0 7 8 1 21
Berenbach, Mark 31 31 31 0 1 0 0 0 3 3 3 0 13 14 1 18
Romeo, Vincent 32 32 32 0 0 2 0 1 16 8 9 0 58 44 4 4 12 15 27
Monte, Patrick 33 33 33 0 0 2 0 1 7 7 5 0 27 24 2 2 24
Page, Nick 34 34 34 0 0 1 0 0 2 3 1 0 9 9 1 8
Smith, Mark 35 35 35 0 0 1 0 0 2 2 4 0 7 14 1 26
Wolff III, Bruno 36 36 36 0 0 0 0 0 3 2 1 0 9 8 1 19
Ackman, Cliff 37 37 37 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 1 0 7 9 1 13
10 am on Wednesday ranks as one of the most exciting moments at WBC every year, as the 2-player Titan hopefuls gather to see who they will play in the first round. The selection method is random, with the only constraint that past champions will not be meeting each other in the first round. Once first round pairings have been made, the tournament bracket is created, placing each ongoing game into a random slot, with games including past champions into seeded locations within the bracket.
2008 saw an increase in players from the previous year, and there was an odd number, meaning that one player would not have a first round opponent. As it turned out, there was also one player who requested to be included and would be unable to make the 10 am start time. It does not always work out this way. Compare with last year when two players who requested a late start that also happened to be roommates were required to play each other in the first round.
The first round included two upsets, as past champions Dan Strock and Sean McCulloch were beaten by Nick Page and Rick Northey, respectively. Six other past champions made it through the first round. Mike Rogozinski outlasted Eric Monte in the longest game of the tournament at 7 hours 50 minutes. As an experiment to confirm average length of the matches, players were asked to record the start and stop time of each match. After 28 games in 2008, the average length of time to finish a match was found to be 2 hours 28 minutes. The two fastest games were both recorded by Aaron Fuegi, who has demonstrated a propensity for rolling sixes on the first move or two and recruiting warlocks. His semi-final win took a mere 20 minutes. It is this variability in the duration of matches that makes it impossible to have regularly scheduled starting times other than in the first round.
In the second round, Nick, and the six past champions each won their games, while Rick advanced with the only bye of the bracket. One of the more interesting final scores was Geoff Ponder 662 to Ed Rothenheber's total of 69, with Ed winning the final battle. It is pretty unusual to outscore your opponent ten to one and still lose. David Finberg, arguably the most skilled player in the field who had not previously won the tournament, bowed out to past champion Brian Sutton. In the quarterfinals, Brian lost to multi-champion David DesJardins, Bruno Wolff was put out of his misery in an hour by Ed Rothenheber, Jason Ley spent nearly four hours before advancing past Rick Northey in a remarkably low scoring 246 to 108 match for that length of time, and Aaron schooled Nick Page in 25 minutes. The presence of six past champions in the quarters made this the most powerful field in memory for this stage of the 2-player tournament.
Both semi-finals were quick, but both were interesting. Jason moved first against Aaron. In his first three moves, he recruited a troll, a second gargoyle, and a Cyclops in his Titan stack. Aaron rolled a six each time and recruited two warlocks, the second in a tower within striking distance of Jason's Titan. Aaron did not know it was Jason's Titan stack, he was actually convinced it was the Angel instead, but the warlocks this early in the game plus the Angel call would be decisive against either lord, even six on seven. On his third turn he attacked the stack that he could reach. This is the match that lasted twenty minutes. Jason would later become champion of the 2008 multiplayer tournament.
In the semifinal pitting David against Ed, the decisive battle occurred in the jungle. David attacked with two Cyclops and two gargoyles against Ed's three Cyclops. Since the attacker will eventually be facing a fourth Cyclops at defender's fourth movement turn, this battle only makes sense if the Angel is called into battle. David made his first kill on attacker's third movement turn and was ready with the Angel, but an unusual situation developed. If Ed could kill the last attacking creatures after this next movement phase, it would be too late for the Angel. But the new recruit would need three movement points to get into the fray, and without the additional dice, the attackers would not all perish. So Ed down-recruited to the Gargoyle, which was able to fly the needed three spaces, and the extra four dice provided enough hits to finish the last attacking creature. No Angel summon, Ed wins. However, even more important was the 60 points gained, putting Ed at 88. He was able to attack a small stack with his Titan stack shortly after this battle, earning the Angel in his Titan stack and giving him the firepower needed to attack and defeat David's Titan within a few turns.
The most unusual aspect of the final was the intermittent play. Both players had alternative events at noon on Friday. They set up at 11:10 and played for fifty minutes, adjourning until they could get back together. They played an additional hour and a half from 4:30 to six, followed by a second adjournment for additional WBC events. They reconvened at 10pm, where Aaron Fuegi prevailed in a final battle, ending at 10:23, final score Aaron 361, Ed 576. The playing time was 2 hours 35 minutes but the elapsed time to completion was just short of 12 hours.
It was a very enjoyable year, and the 2-player tournament ran smoothly. I look forward to seeing all of you again next year.
Rich Atwater