AAR - FULL
Monday night saw a turnout of 33, highest of the week and vindicating I think the decision to move a heat there. While it was not intended to run a demo table that night, it ended up happening.
This round saw I think the only French conquest of Britain during the week, Napoleon getting into London and the Spanish playing Capitulation. Austria launched a major invasion and got as far as Marseilles, however in the last card play of the turn Blake attacked over into Languedoc and Charles intercepted. Charles won the battle, but had left Marseilles empty allowing a secondary Spanish force to come in by sea and retake the key. This kept France at +6 VP causing an automatic game end.
Tuesday saw 25 players overall, as well as the formal demo with a much appreciated use of Rich Shipley’s 3D pieces. The demo result was posted after 1 turn; however we played a second turn to demonstrate some of the logistic difficulties involved in invading Russia. Attrition and Cossacks wore Napoleon, Davout and Blake down to little more than their corps by the end of the turn. Nappy pulled the conquest off, even if reduced to fending off kamikaze Finnish cavalry by himself at times. Britain also conquered Denmark, a feat that was pulled off twice during the week. The Danes did however a moment of glory were their one squadron sortied under Admiral Fischer and accounted for 1 Brit SQ but were left in the Irish Sea, the British fleet converged on them and proceeded to get 2 disrupts on 12 dice. The Danes got two kills on two dice prompting a second day of battle at 6 dice to 0 which finally sank them.
Thursday’s heat saw 15 players only, perhaps not helped by the conditions in the Lampeter or perhaps a dip anyway as the con was going full on then and so many people had played already. At this point both Casselberry’s made a Bernadottesque late appearance to slot in as Prussia in two games. Melvin then managed the rare result of losing all keys except his capital to conquest, posting a -5 and thereby edging out Rejan Tremblay for the wooden spoon.
Other highlights of the heats included one game with Wellington being hit with just about every debilitating card: Dysentery, Generals Health, Leader Wounded and killed twice in battle. In that reality he presumably has a very large statue in London that is missing a great many body parts.
Semis were, for the first time ever, seeded based on performance in the heats, with the best performing players getting first pick of side. This change seems to have been universally considered an improvement. There were 5 drop outs and no shows, thereby allowing some wild cards a seat in the last 24, one of whom went to on get 6th place.
In the only 4 player game John Emery’s French took a commanding win, with dark horse Bart Pisarik (who had attended the first demo Monday, then stayed to play the Tuesday game til 0400) picking up 2nd with Britain – making that 3 2nd places in his first 3 games ever.
In the 5 player semi’s the first pick was more usually Britain, though France swept all 4 games. Despite being preferred however, Britain did no better than 1 second place with Jesse Boomer scoring 3 VP. Jesse looked tied with Bill Burless’s Prussians and Henry’s Russell’s Russians until Lane Hess narrowly missed out on a Nobel peace prize by posting 4 VP as a neutral Prussia with 3 pacts to take 6th place overall.
The final proved to be the shortest final ever, indeed one of the shortest games ever. John Emery took only 35 minutes to win as first pick France, advancing to 5 VP and then playing Drought when the bulk of the rest of the table had 1 card + reserve each, causing them to lose their cards and be deprived of the chance to pay their reserves. Europe Exhausted was out, and France was allowed a shot at a peace die roll and made it.
I’d like to thank everyone who played, especially Rich Shipley and Henry Russell for agreeing to act as assistant GMs. Inshallah I will be able to return next year and move on forward. Despite the issues in the Lampeter Nappy posted its second highest player numbers in 5 years, and I would like to build on that with a stable ref team.