GM Jim Burnett with the last two standing in his gauntlet.
One of the bedrocks of the WBC schedule has always been Thursday’s Up Front marathon. This game has had a loyal following since the inception of the con and those players continue to return year after year to vie for the title of best of the best. The 29 player field for this year included six former champions representing ten shields. Notable by his absence was defending champion John Emery and his seven shields. Could it be that the godfather of UPF has abandoned us for lesser pursuits? To keep the field fresh and add players to the group, we had four new attendees and two returnees off hiatus in the field.
The initial five rounds of Swiss gaming featured quite a few “upsets”. The term is used in quotes because of the overall quality of the field. While some are naturally considered better than others, the old saying that anyone beat anyone else on a given day is truly applicable here.
After the casualties had been removed, the only man still standing with a perfect 5-0 record was 2012 champ Richard Irving. Richard repeated his 2014 feat of navigating the Swiss rounds undefeated. Joining Richard in the elimination rounds with one loss were regulars Ken Whitesell, Ed Kendrick, Andy Maly, Bruce and George Young. The eight-man field was completed by the two strongest 3-2 players, Jeremy Billones and Ray Stakenas, who fared best among the five 3-2 records as measured by a strength of schedule tiebreaker.
These eight were seeded by record and the elimination rounds began. The quarter-finals awarded wins to both higher and lower seeds with Irving’s American Defenders recording their sixth win of the day vs Stakenas’ Japanese in Scenario “L”; Billones’ German Defenders beating Maly’s Americans in “L”; Kendrick as the American Attacker over Whitesell’s Germans, also in ”L”; and, in the battle of the Youngs, Bruce with the Russians taking George’s Germans in “E”.
The semifinals had Irving choosing Russian Defenders to best Young’s German Attackers once again in Scenario “L”, Outpost Line. The game was easily the best played of this year’s tournament. The game was on the line until the last card with Richard running out the deck before Bruce could land a riposte. In the other bracket, Ed’s Germans broke Jeremy’s British in Scenario “A”.
This set the stage for a classic matchup between former champions for the 2015 title. The players chose Scenario “E”, with Ed’s German Attackers taking on Richard’s Russians. Ed was definitely the fresher of the two players, with his half of the bracket finishing a half hour earlier. Richard started a Russian eight-man fire group C of M3s and 4s in a Wood and quickly entrenched at R0, while his five toughest men in group B entrenched in the open. Ed’s MMG halftrack loosed some long-range fire and got a couple of lucky hits over three turns to kill the SL and one of the M5s. He moved both the halftrack and the six-man infantry group to R1 and Richard closed the range by moving group C forward, hoping he could out-shoot the MG at RR2. Ed put the infantry behind a Wall and the halftrack in the open while Richard occupied a Hill, posing a real threat with some 11FP at +1.
At this point, Ed had a Stream, Wire and two Movement cards plus a Flank card, so he decided on a risky maneuver and made both the halftrack and the infantry shift groups to their right. He was afraid of devastating fire from the big group on the Hill so dropped the Wire on it, also reckoning that if Richard had a Movement card he would use it to remove the Wire. It turned out he had none, and discarded most of his hand while Ed put the halftrack at group D, then found Brush for the infantry at group C and played the Flank on the halftrack. Getting rid of another Movement card on his weak group A, Ed drew a second high Fire card, and with Richard still frantically looking for Movement, he was able to use most of the 20FP to pin the group. Although Richard rallied several of them, Ed pinned them again and there ensued a tense few turns of searching for Rally or Fire cards by both sides. Unluckily for Richard, Ed won the race and hid overwhelming FP destroyed the rest of Richard’s group to break him early in the second deck.
Ed had played well to earn his third UPF shield to carry back across the pond and Richard showed why he is considered one of the best by falling just short in his only loss of the tournament. Seven straight wins is not enough when running the WBC UPF gauntlet.