As Weasels, we take a certain pride in knocking the hell out of our defending champions. The club has five titles — Weasel of the Year, CODCon champion, Alpha Weasel (Weasel Moot champion), Bull Weasel (Weasel Royale champion), and Brawl Star (Bar Room Brawl champion). The last and only person to successfully defend one of them was CODCon champion Mike French in 2008.
That is, he was the last person to successfully defend one until Wednesday night when Chris Kelly won his second straight Brawl Star title. The championship game ended by time limit after the Fall 1906 turn in the following center counts:
Austria (Brandon Fogel): 6; 12.245 points.
England (Matt Sundstrom): 0; 0.000 points.
France (Christian Kline): 6; 12.245 points.
Germany (Ali Adib): 10; 34.014 points.
Italy (Chris Kelly): 11; 41.156 points.
Russia (David St. John): 0; 0.000 points.
Turkey (Jim O’Kelley): 1; 0.340 points.
The supply center chart is here.
Kelly actually struggled during the bar series. He played in three games, never finished higher than third, and was the fourth alternate for the game. His luck changed, though, when he moved all the way up to the sixth seed, and once in the championship game, he took advantage of the opportunity.
The game itself was exciting from the start. The hard stop for a bar game made it more likely that the selection order tie-breaker would actually come into play. Consequently, there was a lot of jockeying at the top. Alternates David St. John, Chris Kelly and Brandon Fogel held serve in the fifth through seventh spots, respectively, but the top four shuffled up. Top seed Ali Adib dropped to the fourth spot, and second seed Matt Sundstrom elected to pick third, after third seed Christian Kline and fourth seed Jim O’Kelley.
Adib took command of the game with a three-build Germany in 1901 and held the lead through 1904. But Kelly jumped ahead of him, 10-9, the following year, setting up a wild finish in 1906. It was a good time.
Finally, traveler Brian Shelden dropped by to hang out and watch the games. He was in town from Austin to interview for a job. We’re hoping it works out. We’ve been exporting players since Greg Duenow moved away. It’s about time someone moved here.
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Whoops! How could I forget? Beefy Cockerill posted back-to-back Weasel of the Year titles in 2013 and 2014. Still, title defenses are rare around here. Not Stanley Cup rare, but pretty effing uncommon.
Oh, and again, Shelden would be the second established player to join the Weasels. The first was Beefy.
But compare that short list with the list of players who learned or honed the face-to-face trade with us but are now toiling under other banners: Greg Duenow, Christian MacDonald, Peter Yeargin, Adam Berey, Aash Anand, Ted McClelland, Nate Cockerill (canceling himself out). That there would be a pretty fun board.
Just to finish that thought, we [i]have[/i] had players with existing World Diplomacy Database ([url]http://www.world-diplomacy-database.com/php/commun/index.php[/url])records join our ranks. Chris Kelly is one of those. Mike Whitty and Fred Townsend, two more. But they all played in the long ago prior to finding us.
Fortunately, no one seemed determined to knock me out as the defending champion. But fear of strong players in strategically advantageous countries drove several decisions — France going after Matt S. in England from the start (okay, that may have just been Christian’s inherent malevolence), my Italy choosing to take down Jim in Turkey rather than Austria after getting into the Aegean, and Ali in Germany choosing to attack France when it became clear England was falling.