# Gencon 1997 Final Brawl - Report

by Andrew Davidson
September 16, 1997

After the Sealed Deck tournament on Day 1 and the Theme deck tournament on Day 2, the action stepped up with a Final Brawl tournament on Day 3. It was my honour to be running this event and the first task was to shepherd all the players to the area for the event - you needed the program book's errata sheet to find the right location - just like a game. Still, despite this, we had a good turnout of 28 players - the biggest Shadowfist tournament I've ever attended.
This event was the final qualifier for the Nationals and so it was important to have a good ranking system for the players. After some thought, I used a swiss-style system which has worked well at all-day events back in the UK. Each game was worth 1 point per player plus 1 point for a win inside the distance. This meant that a standard 4-player win was worth 5 points to the winner and the losers got nothing. If the game was timed-out, then the points would be split between the leader(s) as assessed by the formula: feng shui sites + (2 * burnt for victory). E.g. a game might be scored:

              Feng shui BFV Tie-break points Tourney points
    Andrew    3         1   5                1
    Bruce     4         4   0                0
    Charlotte 3         1   5                1
    David     1         2   5                1

Note that fractional points are dropped - 4 into 3 gives 1 point each. The benefits of this system are:

- it is a reasonable assessment of players' winning chances
- the premium for BFV rewards aggressive play
- a tie-break win is not as good as a proper win
- one gets a good spread of points which helps to separate the players

I allowed a time-limit of about 75 minutes per game and when time was up, play stopped immediately - no final showers of killing rain or orbital lasers. This time limit seemed about right - 20 out of 25 games finished inside the distance.
The overall winner was the person with the most points. I wanted to avoid repeat match-ups and so winners were separated until the final round when the scoreless players were out of contention. The four rounds went as follows. The number at the start of each line is the points scored by the winning player.

Round 1
2,2: Lance Guth & Blair Lafferty beat Michael Nickoloff, Jim Ericson
5: Damon Schereck beat Robert Roberts, Kirk O'Brien, Charlotte Henkle
5: Joseph Livotte beat Ray Brown, Kevin Masterson, Stefan Vincent
5: Ken Kurpiel beat Janifer Cheng, Dan Deerwester, David Deerwester
5: Matt Widmann beat Brian Carty, Brett King, Jeff Williamson
4: Robert McNulty beat Matt Miller, John Rogers
5: Yuit Vong beat Michael Jackson, Danny Cruz, Jason Rownd

Round 2
5: Damon Schereck beat Danny Cruz, Michael Nickoloff, Brett King
5: Jeff Williams beat Blair Lafferty, Charlotte Henkle, Jason Rownd
5: John Rogers beat Dan Deerwester, Yuit Vong, Stefan Vincent
5: Joseph Livote beat Michael Jackson, Robert Roberts, Brian Carty
5: Lance Guth beat Janifer Cheng, Kevin Masterson, Robert McNulty
5: Matt Miller beat Ray Brown, Kirk O'Brien, Ken Kurpiel
5: Matt Widmann beat David Deerwester, Jim Ericson, David Mitchell

Round 3
5: Brett King beat Dan Deerwester, Robert Roberts, Matt Miller
5: Stefan Vincent beat Jeff Williams, Lance Guth, Michael Jackson
2,2: Ray Brown & Yuit Vong beat Janifer Cheng, Jim Ericson
4: Jason Rownd beat David Deerwester, Robert McNulty,Damon Schereck
4: Brian Carty beat Ken Kurpiel, Michael Nickoloff
5: Matt Widmann beat John Rogers, Kevin Masterson, Charlotte Henkle
5: Joseph Livote beat Kirk O'Brien, Danny Cruz, Blair Lafferty

Round 4
4: Joseph Livotte beat Matt Widmann, Damon Scheckel
5: Robert McNulty beat Brett King, Jeff Williams, John Rogers
4: Ken Kurpiel beat Yuit Vong, Lance Guth, Ray Brown
4: Brian Carty beat Matt Miller, Jason Rownd, Stefan Vincent

It's a shame that two of the games in the final round went to the time limit and so were decided by the tie-break. I did allow 80 minutes for this round but I think the players were especially cautious at this stage.
The top table was a three player game. Two of the players were undefeated - Joseph Livotte and Matt Widmann. I have full details of both of their decks and they are published in accompanying articles. Unfortunately, I didn't get a close look at Damon Schereck's deck but it appeared to be a very tight DE deck - to my London eye it seemed to have hardly any cards in it. I didn't see much of the action - the game seemed to be over fairly quickly and so must have been a straightforward, brutal affair. The only detail I recall was some banter about Joseph's use of Bzzzt! This is not often seen and Matt didn't realise until too late that he could Hack this card. I'm not sure that this was significant though - perhaps one of the participants can tell us more.
The overall standard of play seemed to be quite high - there were very few questions about the rules. There were a couple of inexperienced players who exclaimed that they had learnt a lot about the game and they seemed fairly happy with the experience.
At the end I was mainly concerned to get details of all the players and their decks and the results are presented in this final scoreboard (use fixed pitch to view this). The Dragons were easily the most popular faction. They and the Architects nearly monopolised the qualifying decks. Various players took note of this for the following day...

    Scoreboard & decks  Scores Total Faction Theme/Name

    Joseph Livotte      5 5 5 4 = 19 ..F.... Trinity
    Matt Widmann        5 5 5 0 = 15 .D..... Smack Back, Yak Attack
    Damon Schereck      5 5 0 0 = 10 ..F.... Dangerous Experiment
    Ken Kurpiel         5 0 0 4 = 9  .D..... Independence
    Robert McNulty      4 0 0 5 = 9  .D...J.
    Brian Carty         0 0 4 4 = 8  .DF.... Godzilla + ITT degree
    Lance Guth          2 5 0 0 = 7  .DF....
    Yuit Sum Vong       5 0 2 0 = 7  .DF.... Butch

    - - - - qualifying threshold - - - -

    Brett King          0 0 5 0 = 5  .D.H... Drunken Style
    Jeff Williamson     0 5 0 0 = 5  ADFHLJM XY Gambit
    John Rogers         0 5 0 0 = 5  .D....M
    Matt Miller         0 5 0 0 = 5  ADFHLJM Feast of Souls
    Stefan Vincent      0 0 5 0 = 5  ...H..M Displaced Chicks
    Jason Rownd         0 0 4 0 = 4  ..F...M
    Blair Lafferty      2 0 0 - = 2  ..FH... Chi
    Ray Brown           0 0 2 0 = 2  ADFHLJM Supercomputer
    Michael Nickoloff   0 0 0 - = 0  .D..L.. Bronze Sentinel
    Charlotte Henkle    0 0 0 - = 0  AD.....
    Danny Cruz          0 0 0 - = 0  A..H...
    Dan Deerwester      0 0 0 - = 0  .D..... Comrade in Arms
    David Deerwester    0 0 0 - = 0  ...H...
    David Mitchell      0 0 - - = 0  ..F....
    Janifer Cheng       0 0 0 - = 0  .DFHLJM Melting Pot
    Jim Ericson         0 0 0 - = 0  .D..... Guns
    Kevin Masterson     0 0 0 - = 0  .D..L..
    Kirkpatrick O'Brien 0 0 0 - = 0  .D.H... Drunken Stance
    Michael Jackson     0 0 0 - = 0  ....L.. Assassins
    Robert T. Roberts   0 0 0 - = 0  .D..... John Woo's a Wuss!

Faction popularity
14 Dragon
8 Architects of the Flesh
6 Guiding Hand
4 Peacock (all factions)
3 Four Monarchs
2 Ascended
2 Eaters of Lotus
1 Jammers
So, congratulations to Joseph and the other high ranking players. Thanks to Daedalus for their support - Joseph was particularly pleased to get a Ting Ting miniature as a trophy. And thanks too to all the other players for supporting the event - better luck next year. So, at this stage, the tourney score was one each to London, LA and NYC - which city would triumph on the final day ...?

Last modified: March 13, 1998.
Please send comments to nickolof@scf.usc.edu.
Send server comments to durrell@innocence.com.