Well, I am home, and I am absolutely beat from my usual brutal weekend of SWMs non-stop fun! We had a great Gencon for SWMs, and a pretty darn good turn out for most every event. It was great to meet a lot of first timers, and longtime board/vassal friends for the first time.
The Championship had 55 players (which is pretty great considering everything that's happened this year).
Final Standings
1. Daniel Stephens
2. Brandon Pyle
3. Phillip Carlyle
4. Wes Morgan
5. Trevor Payton
6. Aaron Bruekman
7. Graham Bingham
8. Jason Keirnan
(Sorry if I misspelled your name)
Just missing the top 8 by less than 5 percentage points (2 opponent wins, and 3 for these two was the difference) were.
9. Dean Miller
10. Deri Morgan
I will pull up the full standings after swiss later (its buried in my bag at the moment).
Well over 50% of the games in the entire tournament were fully completed, and each of the 4-2s who made the top 8 completed every win for 12 points. The major rules revamp we did last year made a tremendous difference. We had all 5 major factions make an appearance in the top 8, and any of the squads was capable of winning it all.
Most popular factions were Republic, Rebels, NR, and Seps. However, we did have one Vong squad, a Mando squad, and a NR Vong squad (which went 3-3 and won the most creative squad award by Laura Keinan). So there was a lot of variety overall for a championship event.
The most notable thing from this year's event was that the old gaurd of SWMs competitive players have to make room for the younglings
In this year's top 8 we had 4 players under 25, including a 15 year old playing in the finals!
The old gaurd still performed well, with Aaron becoming the only 4 time finalist, and Trevor making his second top 8. Dean and Deri narrowly missed the top 8, and so did several other names like TimmerB, Matt Hansen, Matt Peterson, Lou, James, and others. Jason Kiernan made his first top 8, but he's been right there every year as well.
We had players from three different countries, Canada, USA and Germany.
All in all, it was a great tournament, and as I have time I will add details from this event, and from other Gencon stuff. Congrats to everyone, and thanks to Dean for all his hardwork, and all the guys who gave up their time to help - especially Brad Phillips who basically judged all weekend, including helping me with the Champs. And Congrats again to Echo on his Championship win!