Event History

2001 - winner : Mark Smith

Final board
Mark Smith, purple, 106 points
Nicholas Benedict, blue, 104 points
Ewan McNay, red, 104 points
David Gantt, green, 96 points

Events review (by Ewan McNay)

Jim Jordan did his usual excellent job of GMing Britannia at the WBC; numbers were slightly down, at 42 entrants, probably mostly due to the date change. As ever, even those among the group with a tendency to attract small contretemps passed through peacefully, and everyone certainly seemed to have a good time - even John Emery after my Romans took out most of his Caledonians.. ;) The Greenville Mafia (for non-US readers, Greenville is a city in the Carolinas with a large group of gamers and especially Brit gamers, including the esteemed Mssrs. Pfeiffer and Gantt but several other worthies also) were present in force, together with several other usual suspects.

I played three heats, a semi and the final... and to give away the punch line, didn't win and in fact even lost the tie-breaker for 2nd (done by having Harold with 4 Saxons roll off against William with 4 Normans; I killed only 1 Norman, which was a fitting end to my dice in that game... but a little more anon on that.) Mark Smith, with Purple, was a great champion, genuinely not believing that he was going to win - despite being repeatedly told so - until it happened. Nick Benedict, with Blue, pulled into a tie for 2nd and won the roll-off, while Dave Gantt's Green forces were nibbled to death from all sides.

Nick had suffered with Blue at the hands of my Red forces in the final last year, and was clearly determined to prevent that at all costs this year; likewise, Mark displayed a remarkable paranoia for the length of the game, something about having read in the yearbook the report from last year's final :-/. {{In both Brit and AoR I spent the week with a big bullseye pinned to me, despite my attempts to point out that Scott was (and is) a much better player and bigger threat than I. I even managed not to have my name engraved on the Brit shield from last year, but alas my picture was still on the game kiosk :).}} Even Dave's Welsh got in on the Red-kicking fun early, squashing an isolated stack of Brigantes on turn 3 to reduce me to 3 Brigs in the world. To be fair - and give credit - to Dave, though, his Danes did an admirable job of keeping the game balanced right to the end despite him not really having a chance to come other than 4th.

The big story of the game was that mountains were no place to hide. I thought that everything wad going basically fine, game was looking won on turn 13. I had stacks of 2 Norse in each of HEB and ORK, and two Brigantes in GAL. Each of these stacks was taken out by 3-high opposing stacks without inflicting a casualty (well, I may have got one Pict in ORK, but no Scots in either HEB nor Dubliners in GAL!). Bang go 8 or so points, plus any future revenue. My Irish - somewhat greedily misplayed early, around turn 4, I confess - were limping into oblivion, and only the Saxons were now healthy - and even with being King for the remaining turns, that just wasn't going to be enough. Sad :). Still the Saxons did manage to completely bottle up the Norwegian invasion *and* get back South to form the anti-Norman shieldwall, but Nick's Norman dice were hot and got him enough on land to (just!) kill Harold and be king when my remaining Saxons knocked off Harald. [Interesting dilemma. By killing Harald, my Saxons were sitting on enough territory to be one point ahead before the final Norman move. It's their only chance for the win or tie. but it gives up a sure 2nd - the Normans can't be King if I don't kill Harald, and hence can't catch me. I believe that it's first or noweher, so the choice is clear, but it might have been argued differently as this was my team game] Alas, Nick's few remaining Normans continue to out-roll me and kill off first the win-chance, then the tie-for-first chance, then the 2nd! Damn cavalry...

All credit to Mark: his Romans did Roman things, his Scots were well-played and strong throughout, and he made the most of a tough situation and opposition with his later forces [Harald faced 4 or 5 Saxons in York, 2 more in PEN, 3 each in MAC and NOM, or something similar; the Dubliners had earlier been faced with a stack of Danes in York.] Final scores something like 106-104-104-96 (Jim, is that right?)

Past winners

 

Year	Winner	Number of players
1991	Richard Curtin	39
1992	Duane Wagner	53
1993	Brett Mingo	91
1994	Scott Pfeiffer	73
1995	Randy Schib	69
1996	Scott Pfeiffer	55
1997	David Gantt	52
1998	Jim Jordan	49
1999	Scott Pfeiffer	46
2000	Ewan McNay	62