Still Representing the Home Team

Song of the Day: “Wisemen” by James Blunt

For the past four years, the illustrious Nathan Barnes has invited me to come out to his tournament WACon. Held in Seattle on the third weekend every January, I have been told repeatedly by trusted sources that this tournament is one not to miss. Unfortunately for me, this particular weekend is also always been the first weekend of the spring semester. Therefore I have never made it out there, but I have told Nathan every time that I will make it out eventually.

This year, the Nathan and his fellow directors decided to scale back on the tournament. Thus I did not receive an invitation. The crew there were not actively lobbying people to show up because they wanted a smaller tournament so they could save up money for the coming years. Because I did not receive an invitation, naturally I completely forgot about it. That was until about two weeks ago when Jim O’Kelley, one of my favorite drinking buddies and partners in crime, sent me a text message saying that he just booked a flight to WACon and that I should try to make it out. The reason? We would be playing in a bar.

So of course I had to go. The opportunity to see all of my friends in the hobby, get to play Diplomacy, and having to never actually travel anywhere to get alcohol is just too tempting for me. Carnage on the Lake is one of my favorite tournaments. Why? Because we play in a bar. Another deciding factor for me finally making the trip out is because I don’t have class on Thursdays or Fridays, so I could easily fly out Thursday afternoon and be fresh for Friday night’s round.

So Eric Mead picks me up from the airport, and we go straight to a bar. Unfortunately, the people we were meeting there had already left, so we had to go back across town to a different bar. Flying across the country with a lay over in between can make a guy a little antsy. Considering the fact that I had been primed and ready to drink my face off and play some games for the week, I was in dire need of just that. So Eric and I had a “practice” drink before heading to meet up with everyone else. The practice drink is definitely something I will be employing in the future, it’s priceless.

Needless to say everyone got very drunk and we had a great time. John Saul and I were crashing in Andy Bartalone’s hotel room that first night, and he ended up getting tanked and heading back early. So John and I arrive to his room later that night to a most peculiar sight. It appeared that Andy had gotten into a fight with a bag of Chex Mix and a bag of popcorn, and lost. It was quite funny except for the fact that I was sleeping on the floor that night; not so funny.

Instead of boring you with the details, I will summarize by saying that I had an awesome time at the tournament. I’m sure if you’re reading this, you know me well enough to know that I don’t really travel to tournaments for the Diplomacy. The game is just a bonus. I travel to these tournaments to see all the friends I’ve made over the years traveling. Really I wouldn’t get to see these people if I didn’t travel to the tournaments, and I always have a blast hanging out with them.

So the Friday night round the game went late (about 2:30 AM I believe) and, of course, I was drinking the entire time. So towards the mid to late game, I was pretty tanked and ended up screwing my position pretty badly. I was still 3rd place on the board besides my bad play, but I most assuredly would have had a better score if I had not been so drunk. Saturday morning’s round is really fuzzy to me for some reason. I placed second on the board, not too shabby but definitely room for improvement.

The Saturday night round was absolutely brutal. I was placed on a board with Andy Bartalone, Andrew Neumann, Jake Mannix, Eric Mead, and Jim O’Kelley. With this collection of some of the best players in the hobby, this board was easily the most stacked of the tournament. Amazingly enough, I topped the board. I was in Germany with Mead as France and someone at his first tournament in England. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that the Eastern powers were not able to consolidate fast enough for someone in the West to jump to the lead. That person just happened to be me. I feel like I played a pretty damn good game, but considering the caliber of players arrayed against me, I’ll chalk most of it up to luck.

After the third round, it turned out that I was in third place in the tournament. But I was scheduled to fly out Sunday at 10 AM. If I left I would have no chance of winning the tournament (the winner of the top board wins the tournament, regardless of score). Therefore at 2 Am (quite drunk at this point, shocking I know) I called up Southwest and had them change my flight to Monday for no charge, sweet! So I got to play in the last round on Sunday and I failed to top the board. I did manage to come in second the board, which netted me these two babies:

So despite the fact that I was drunk for three of the four rounds in the tournament (and hung over in the fourth), I managed to bring home some hardware. Go me! Though I did find it a bit irksome that I was just squeaked out of third place by Brian Shelden. Shelden was on my first board, and my poor play caused him to gain a few more points after the game should have ended. If I had not foolishly decided to keep playing, I could be third. Damn you Brian Shelden! On top of that, I was just barely beaten for Best Germany by Andrew Neumann, the tournament winner. We both had 12 centers as Germany on top of the board, but the differential between him and the next highest player was greater than mine, so he got a tiny bit higher score.

Oh well, I really shouldn’t complain, and I’m not. I got to bring home two pieces of hardware and I think that’s pretty sweet. I’ve already ran out of places to put my trophies on my wall, so I have to expand to new real estate to make it all fit.

So why am I still representing the home team? Well, back in the early days of my Diplomacy career my father, my brother, and I would travel to a lot of tournaments together. This was when my brother and I were still in high school, so we had the flexibility in our schedules to be able to travel a lot. So whenever we would go to a tournament with a team round, we would be Team Woodring. We only won one team tournament (solely because of my brother), but it was still a fun addition to all of us getting to travel together. But these days, I’m the only one traveling to the majority of tournaments. My brother is off in Turkey and my father tries to accompany me, but work often gets in the way.

So it’s just me, representing Team Woodring; the home team. Considering my current string of tournament placements, I think I’m doing an OK job. I would much prefer to have my family with me, but I guess that’s just going to keep getting more and more difficult. So I guess I’ll just have to keep playing and get better so I can do right by my family name. A funny story actually, the World Diplomacy Championship was held in Vancouver, BC this past year. The only reason I decided to travel there was because my brother was home from Turkey and was going, and my father was going because he was. So instead of attending a nation-wide event through my fraternity, I decided to travel to Canada with my family. Well, both my brother and father ended up bailing on me for various reasons. So the only reason I had for going failed me, bummer. I don’t hold that against them though, it was just a little irksome, but that’s OK. I didn’t place well (barely made top 50% I think) but there are a bunch of great stories that came out of that tournament. Just read Jim O’Kelley’s account of the weekend in Diplomacy World #99, great stuff.

In conclusion, I’d like to reflect on the irony that the first time I wasn’t invited to WACon, I showed up. On top of that, I brought home some trophies, some very cool trophies. All in all, a great weekend.

Back in Action

Song of the Day: “Better Together” by Jack Johnson

That’s right people, I’m back. It’s been quite a month and a lot of stuff has happened, far too much to confine to one posting. Even if I did want to do that, it would take far too long and I would probably lose interest a quarter of the way through. That being said, over the next week I will be posting pieces of my break in chronological order (as best as I can remember). I would start this week, but tomorrow I am leaving for Seattle until Sunday. So come Monday expect to see the first excerpt from my month-long vacation.

Even now I am thinking back on all the stuff that is happened, and wow. It’s going to take a while. Well, at least I hope it will. It might turn out to be really boring and I’ll leave off writing about it. But I doubt that. This whole blogging thing has become one more therapeutic activity in my life. Though at the moment there really isn’t much stressful going on, I should make a conscious effort to maintain the things that help me through the hard times, right?

Anyway, look forward to Monday’s update. For now, check out the link below where I posted my pictures from my 10 day trip in Turkey.

Turkey ‘08