For more information on Titan see my Titan Home Page.
This is pretty much what I sent in as my WBC report.
Akihisa "Aki" Tabei donated old style counter sheets to all of the players in the multi-player final. He also donated three sets to hand out next year, when he isn't sure he will be able to return.
Aki continued his aggressive play again this year. In one of his preliminary games he attacked Nick Klercker on turn 2. This time it didn't work out for Aki, but when he's in the game, you don't want to give him a shot at your titan legion if he'll have any kind of edge.
This year we had 32 preliminary games, with 14 three player games, 16 four player games and 2 five player games for 116 player starts in the preliminaries (and another 20 in the playoffs). This was pretty close to last year's 112.
While a number of players had secured virtual locks on a semi final slot relatively early in the tournament several people were still scrambling for the last couple of slots in Friday evening games. Nick Klercker held on to his spot, and Steve Koleszar, while not winning moved up enough to earn a spot. Kris Giesing, Peg Mecham and Bruce Rae all needed a win but were not able to get one. Jason Ley who spent much of his time taking third in the Titan two player tournament, already had a win but was unable to finish high enough to get one of the last semi final spots.
Semi-final 1 featured Dan Strock, Ken Nied, Bob Masso and Brian Sutton. The first key battle was Brian attacking with titan(8), 2 cyclops, 2 angels, 2 rangers with an angel to call against behemoth, guardian, 3 cyclops, and 2 gargoyles in a jungle. Dan was able to recruit a behemoth and Brian was unable to bring in his angel. The last cyclops killed Brian's titan putting Dan over 200 points and the lead in the game. Dan's lead eroded a bit with Bob getting teleport first. However Bob had only two legions for most of the end game. Ken was the first to recruit a serpent which arguably put him a head of Dan at that time. Dan's recruiting picked up and took the recruiting lead with serpents and hydras. Dan caught Bob's titan legion first and gained an archangel and titan teleport and then Ken resigned a few turns later when his titan legion was trapped.
Semi-final 2 featured David des Jardins, Nick Klercker, Jonathan Barnes and Charles Coats. David killed Charles' titan with an angel, minotaur legion in a brush. Then he killed Jonathan's titan with a titan, wyvern, gorgon legion in the hills. And then rolled a 6 and teleported to kill Nick's titan in a plains waiting for a roll to get a dragon.
Semi-final 3 featured Aaron Fuegi, Kevin Hillock, Akihisa Tabei and Rick Northey. Aaron attacked Aki's titan legion and at the end Aki risked giving a troll a swing at his titan with had already taken 5 of its 7 hits in order to keep it from swinging at a dragon that had taken 8 out of 9 hits. Aki had another dragon that was going to survive the battle and was due two angels for points, but judged that he really needed to come out of the battle with both dragons. Unfortunately for him, Aaron's troll got two hits to eliminate him. Rick didn't recruit well and was chased by Aaron into Kevin's area of influence who eliminated him. Aaron ended up teleporting onto Kevin's titan legion and the battle came down to Aaron's 11 point titan versus Kevin's 10 point titan. Aaron ended up winning the battle cleanly (no mutual roll off was needed).
Semi-final 4 featured David Finberg, Rich Atwater, Sean McCulloch, and Steve Koleszar. The game didn't start well for David as a mulligan'd a 2 and got a 5 on the re-roll and a 2 on his next turn. Sean jumped out to a lead with an early hydra from wyverns in his titan legion. While waiting in a hills with a one third chance for another hydra, Steve attacked with a griffon and some lions and rangers. Steve lost but stripped the recruiters from Sean's legion. David then moved into the lead getting two giants into his titan legion. He then went on to miss 7 chances to get a colossus. This gave time for Sean and Rick to get serpents. David had gotten over 400 points by this time. Both he and Rick were trying to catch Sean's titan. Just as Rick was about to close in for the kill, David teleported on Sean to get his points. Rick then won a pyrrhic victory in a tundra battle with his titan legion. David then teleported into a plains under the mountains and beat a strong legion of Rick's losing only one giant. Soon after he replaced it and Rick conceded.
In the final, again things start poorly for Finberg. He was last and mulligan'd a 2 only to re-roll another 2. One of his legions didn't recruit until turn 3. A bit into the game Aaron made an attack on one of des Jardins' legions. Though des Jardins got about a one third chance to kill Aaron's titan, he missed and Aaron ended up with titan(8), 2 angels, warlock, gorgon, and cyclops. A bit later des Jardins teleported to get a second wyvern in his titan legion but shortly afterwards was trapped by Aaron. David then attacked Dan's angel legion with his angel legion to try to clear a way though. des Jardins tried to make a run for it but was caught and killed by Aaron. At this point Aaron had titan(11), 2 angels, warlock and cyclops for his titan legion and another legion with a hydra. Things were looking very good for him. Aaron then attacked Dan's 2 behemoths, gorgon, and 3 cyclops in the jungle. Aaron later said that given his position in the game, he should never have made this attack. Things went wrong in the battle and Dan ended up getting a serpent and Aaron had to make a bad choice of likely being killed outright or needing good rolls to kill everything fast enough. In the end he ended up losing the battle on time. Dan had 397 points at this time, but wasn't able to get over 400 until after it was an immediate win to teleport. Finberg had few points, so it took a long time for him to catch up. He recruited very well, eventually recruiting all 10 colossus in the game. He eventually got 400 points and was able to teleport on Dan's titan to get the win. This game was an example of being patient to give oneself a chance to win.
Since a question came up about seeding for the semi final games, I thought I'd go through a bit of the history for the multi-player tournament to explain how we got to using the current scheme. The first three years Bill Scott ran the tournament and used a six player final without a semi-final. When I took over. I felt we had enough participants that we could support having sixteen semi-finalists. In six player games, typically two people get eliminated early through bad rolls and not really any fault in their play. With four player games players getting eliminated early due to bad rolls is much less frequent. As such I thought four player games would be better for the playoff part of the tournament.
The first year I ran the event, seeding was based strictly on how players did in the preliminary part of the event. I also tried to have consolation games for the semi-final players who didn't win their table. That turned out to be a mistake. Note to anyone thinking of being a GM, people aren't very likely to show up for consolation games. I also had mutuals resolved by having the player with the higher seed advance.
I ran this way (minus the consolation games) for a few years, but there were some issues that still needed to be corrected. Players didn't like having the seeding affect who one mutuals. So I eventually switched to having a 50-50 roll off to see who advances. (That has worked out well and I also am now using it in the preliminary rounds.)
The seeding itself had a few issues. One is that strict seeding could result in team tournament players being in the same semi as a team member. While I don't think anyone ever threw a game, it is best to defer these match-ups to the final (as they may not be needed). A similar issue is that people from the same game club were asking to not be matched up with each other as much as possible.
Along a different front the seeding was a bit misleading. People who were good players would sometimes win two games fairly quickly and then play in other events until time for the semis came. This and normal randomness resulted in the seeding not really matching up with player skills. And it was also noted by some players that near the end of the preliminary part of the tournament the players could look at the preliminary seeding results and perhaps have incentive to throw an in progress game or to not play another game in order to get a lower seed which would get them an easier semi-final game.
So I then used the preliminary ranking just for deciding who was in the semis. I also started allowing groups of up to four mutualling agreeing people to be split up in the semis. This was used by people to avoid being matched with friends from the same area of the country (as by that point most of the regular players were friends at some level), some people to avoid playing with people that had styles they didn't like (generally involving what kinds of deal making are OK) and players who thought there were all good players to provide some extra seeding. This solved the problems above, but went to far in that the seeding information wasn't being used at all to help fairly divide the semi-final participants up.
So several years ago, I started breaking up the semi-final participants into four groups, based on seeding, that all needed to be split apart in the semi-finals. This retained some randomness, the ability to split friends apart, split up teammates and use the information from the seeding to fairly evenly divide up the players for the semi-final games. And the uncertainty keeps people from being able to game things at the end, by deliberately finishing with a lower seed.
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
Finberg, David 1 4 9 1 3 0 0 5 10 12 4 0 33 39 4 9 20 21 28
Strock, Dan 2 1 1 3 1 0 0 10 11 16 6 0 38 47 4 3 19 23 26
Fuegi, Aaron 3 3 8 2 0 0 0 7 6 8 6 1 21 32 3 2 5 7
des Jardins, David 4 2 2 3 0 0 0 10 9 10 6 0 31 34 4 4 10 12 19
Hillock, Kevin 5 5 3 2 1 1 0 6 16 16 7 1 60 54 5 19 24 27 29 32
Atwater, Rich 6 6 4 2 1 1 0 4 9 15 2 0 33 40 4 3 9 17 24
Klercker, Nick 7 7 15 1 1 1 0 5 10 16 5 1 36 40 4 14 15 22 32
Nied, Kenneth 8 8 17 1 0 2 0 3 8 13 3 0 29 37 4 2 6 25 30
McCulloch, Sean 9 9 5 2 1 0 0 8 6 18 7 0 27 40 3 8 14 27
Masso, Robert 10 10 10 1 3 0 0 3 15 12 10 1 50 48 6 1 3 13 16 22 30
Barnes, Jonathan 11 11 12 1 2 0 0 4 14 21 8 1 53 49 6 5 8 9 18 20 21 24
Tabei, Akihisa 12 12 16 1 1 1 0 4 10 10 3 0 38 33 4 4 13 15 26
Sutton, Brian 13 13 6 2 1 0 0 5 9 9 4 0 35 32 3 2 21 22
Coats, Charles 14 14 7 2 0 0 0 7 11 14 8 0 40 42 4 2 11 16 26
Northey, Rick 15 15 11 1 2 1 0 4 11 11 4 0 41 39 4 8 12 16 29
Koleszar, Steve 16 16 14 1 1 1 0 5 12 18 4 1 44 45 4 20 27 28 32
Harrison, Joe 17 17 13 1 2 0 0 1 8 7 3 1 31 27 3 1 10 28
Thompson, Justin 18 18 18 1 0 0 0 5 2 5 2 1 4 13 1 1
Goldbaum, Richard 19 19 19 1 0 0 0 4 1 2 3 0 4 12 1 25
Ley, Jason 20 20 20 1 0 0 0 3 8 5 3 1 27 21 2 10 32
Koleszar, Luke 21 21 21 1 0 0 0 3 0 6 2 0 2 13 1 31
Wolff III, Bruno 22 22 22 1 0 0 0 1 1 2 1 0 5 8 1 18
Meacham, Peg 23 23 23 0 4 1 0 1 15 13 9 0 59 49 6 6 14 15 23 27 31
Rae, Bruce 24 24 24 0 3 1 0 1 14 17 7 1 52 55 5 5 8 11 23 30
Giesing, Kris 25 25 25 0 2 1 0 1 17 11 8 0 56 48 6 7 11 17 19 25 31
Fardette, Jim 26 26 26 0 1 0 0 1 6 2 1 0 21 12 1 26
Platnick, David 27 27 27 0 1 0 0 1 4 2 2 0 14 10 1 12
Betz, Joseph 28 28 28 0 1 0 0 0 2 3 2 0 5 10 1 17
Smith, Mark 29 29 29 0 0 1 1 0 6 10 2 0 21 26 2 1 5
Lange, Ted 30 30 30 0 0 1 0 1 6 3 1 0 19 16 2 4 18
Pounder, Geoffrey 31 31 31 0 0 1 0 1 4 6 0 0 14 13 1 21
Rogozinski, Michael 32 32 32 0 0 1 0 1 4 5 1 0 14 14 1 16
McCandless, Brad 33 33 33 0 0 1 0 0 7 8 2 1 24 21 2 1 12
Ricchiuto, Angelo 34 34 34 0 0 1 0 0 2 5 2 0 9 15 1 11
Carnahan, Tim 35 35 35 0 0 1 0 0 2 2 1 0 8 10 1 7
Samual, Ken 36 36 36 0 0 0 1 0 5 3 3 0 19 15 1 32
Gubbay, David 37 37 37 0 0 0 0 0 9 11 2 0 28 25 2 3 28
Smith, Clifford 38 38 38 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 5 0 18 20 2 25 29
Lee, Roderick 39 39 39 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 2 0 15 10 1 4
Ricchiuto, Anthony 40 40 40 0 0 0 0 0 2 4 1 0 7 10 1 13
Sulven, James 41 41 41 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 0 8 10 1 7
Weintraub, Jarett 42 42 42 0 0 0 0 0 1 6 2 0 5 13 1 31
Cornett, Jeff 43 43 43 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 3 0 4 10 1 6