# Torrance Fisting - February 1998 Report

by Stefan Vincent
March 1, 1998

Eight players showed up on a busy Saturday (simultaneous Warhammer and Highlander tournaments also going on) - several regulars out of town on business (ya'll missed a good game!) or choosing to play Highlander instead. Dragons and Architects present in large numbers, as has been usual lately. Also, we experimented this time without a third tie-breaker (no counting up body of sites and fighting of characters) and just split the points if folks were still tied at the second tie-breaker (total burned for victory and seized from opponents). Ironically, we had a *lot* of ties this time...

    Ray     - Architects/Dragons
    Matt    - Dragons "Smak Bak Yak Attak"
    Stefan  - Ascended "I'm Huge" (to make up for the lack of Ascended we've had lately :)
    Mike N. - Architects/Monarchs "Blightman's Jewelry"
    Tim M.  - Hand/Lotus/Monarchs "Closet Queens and <?> Things"
    Garrett - Dragons "*New* Roll Over And Die"
    Brandon - Dragons/Architects
    Randy   - Ascended/Architects

Round 1
We delayed the start until about 1:30 waiting for Brandon and Randy but (as we found out later) they were stuck in traffic. They finally made it at 2 pm so they jumped into the second round. At the end of the first round, Tim took a fast win on table 1 and I grabbed the win (literally - gotta love Shadowy Mentor) on table 2 after a bad start. We scored for 3-player games in this round.

    Tim     (1) - 8 Stefan (1) - 8 Brandon - 0
    Garrett     - 4 Matt       - 5 Randy   - 0
    Mike        - 3 Ray        - 3

Round 2
Game number two timed out at the big boys' table, but Mike got a fast win at table 2 with Randy as whupping boy. Brandon and Ray both had one site burned, so without the third tie-breaker in effect, they split the points for second and third. Same thing at table 1 - Matt and Garrett each had four sites with two burned, so they split for first and second, and Tim edged me out for third since he had 2 burned vs. my 1.

    Matt    (0.5) - 11.5 Mike (1) - 12
    Garrett (0.5) - 10.5 Ray      -  8.5
    Tim     (1)   - 12   Brandon  -  5.5
    Stefan  (1)   - 11   Randy    -  1

Round 3
So Garrett swaps places with Mike, and it's still anybody's game, with everyone having a shot to move up unless Randy wins at table 2. And so, you can guess that Randy did indeed win :) Table 1 timed out again, leaving Matt and Tim each with 4 sites (3 burned) and me 1 site ahead of Mike.

    Tim    (1.5) - 18.5 Randy   (1)   - 10
    Matt   (1)   - 18   Brandon       - 12.5
    Stefan (1)   - 15   Garrett (0.5) - 14.5
    Mike   (1)   - 14   Ray           - 11.5

Final
And we see the effect of traffic on the game - if Randy or Brandon had gotten just a couple of points in the first round, we would have needed a semi-final (or they would have edged Garrett or me out of the final). So the top four scorers went on to a final, leaving Mike out by a mere 0.5 points...
Final started slowly for everyone, but I managed to get going faster and built to a winning position relatively early. Unfortunately, that of course made me the whupping boy and everyone else built up at my expense. With three of my sites suddenly in other folks' burned for victory piles, I didn't look so bad any more, and we slowly built up again until we were all one site away from victory. That lasted for about 3 turns with everyone trying to get the edge but not being able to get past the remaining characters on the table (with no Architects in the final, the only way to get rid of characters was to slug it out - except of course for Tim Larcenous Misting my Mights of the Elephant :). The board was finally cleared on Matt's turn, but all I could whip out was a bunch of weenie pledgies on my turn, so Tim's Queen had the choice of sites for the win on his turn. Whoever he took a site from would fall to last place (since everyone was at 4 sites, in some combination of burned and on the table) so we called it a 3-way tie for second and divided the prize 25/10/10/10.
Congratulations to Tim!
Based on this game, we will be using this prize division from now on - so if you make it to the final, you're guaranteed something, and everyone has the same incentive to play to win.

Last modified: March 11, 1998.
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