SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR: The third leg in the BPA triple crown of special awards has been won by Steve Okonski of Fulton, MD who led 26 nominees in the annual voting. Andrew Maly and Jeff Paull finished tied for the runner-up slot. Check out the details at http://www.boardgamers.org/wbc/sportman.htm.
WINTER ACTIVATION MEETING: The next BPA mini-con is WAM III for the fans of card driven wargames Barbarossa to Berlin, Wilderness War, For The People, Paths of Glory, Hannibal and We The People. CDW devotees will get to see no less than three demonstrations of new card driven wargame designs: Ed Beach's Reformation game, Mark Herman's WWII in the Pacific and Dave Dockter's Russian Civil War design. WAM is January 28th-30th in Hunt Valley, MD. WAM special Room rates of $84 have been extended to all pre-registrations booked by January 21st. For details, see http://www.boardgamers.org/specific/wam05ann.htm.
EVENTS SURVEY: BPA's Annual Membership Drive has concluded with a 9% increase in membership and a far greater increase in voter participation in the Annual WBC Events Survey. This year's vote took on added significance as eligibility for both the last ten Century slots and the 25 Continuing Trials events were decided by membership vote for the first time. This resulted in record voting totals which admitted three new events to WBC 2005: St Petersburg and Sword of Rome as Century events and Pirate's Cove as a Trial event. The remaining 32 slots were filled by returning events. See http://www.boardgamers.org/wbc/results.htm for more details.
BPA PBeM NEWS
THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN: The 6th BPA TRC PBeM Tournament is scheduled to begin Feb 7th as a Single Elimination event with three-month rounds. The event will feature exclusive use of the 4th edition rules and map and use random seeding and byes in the opening round. Check out the details at www.russiancampaign.com/BPATourneyVI.htm.
WE THE PEOPLE: Paul Gaberson has defeated Caesar himself proving that james Pei can be beaten and winning the WTP PBeM title in the process. His Brits were able to capture Washington on the first card play of '77 with a Major Campaign.
VICTORY IN THE PACIFIC: Rob Flowers USN defeated the highest remaining seed (#7), Tim Tow in the semi-finals while Michael Ussery bucked tournament omens to win as the high seed as the IJN over Darren Kilfara by 5 POC in eight turns. In the consolation match, Darren claimed third as the USN in a close game (winning by just 1.5 POC after the bid) over Tim Tow. Larry Meyers took fifth place laurels while Alan Applebaum took 6th. In the championship match, Rob Flowers (originally the 14th seed) took command of the IJN and locked up the northeast corner and ran the score up high enough that, after seven turns, the USN, under Michael Ussery (seeded 11th), had no hope (despite a bid of 4). Congratulations to Admiral Flowers who wins the BPA plaque and an automatic invitation to the next Top 10 Invitational. Read all the details at http://www.gameaholics.com/vitp_bpa/vitp_bpa_single_elim_03.htm. Get ready for the next tournament -- starting September 15th!
PANZERBLITZ: Eduardo De Nucci, Fred Schwarz, Peter Bertram, John Sharp, Wayne, Arenz, Joe Avinger, Jim Pyle and randy MacInnis have all moved on to the Quarter-Finals of the first PBZ PBeM tournament. See http://www.panzerblitz.org/?form=tournament_1 for details.
SQUAD LEADER: The Wargame Academy is gearing up for another PBeM tournament to start Feb 15th. Details can be found at http://www.wargameacademy.org/SQLA/BpaSqlPbem2004.html
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© Copyright 2005 by George Phillies.
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