4th Annual Singles Tournament - July 29, 2018

For the second year in a row, thirty-two pillars of the Epic Dueling community came together in a demonstration of civility and camaraderie to extol on the virtues of fellowship and sportsmanship oh who the heck am I kidding - they came TO DO BATTLE!!!

Thirty-two duelers, 128 entries...and only one winner!  So who achieved the impossible, who stood on the massive pile of crushed dreams and light sabers...?

BRANNON WON!!!  In a shocking evolution in the singles tournament, three of the final four spots were captured by dark side characters, including two places for Darth Maul, whom Brannon used to vanquish every foe in his path.  Congrats to Brannon!!!  Maul becomes the first dark side character to win the singles tournament.

It was a crazy and well-balanced Duel as there were eight unique Duelers in the elite eight, also a first in tournament history.  It was also the first time since the first singles tournament that the same character played against itself, happening three or four times on the day.

Congrats to the final four as well!  Joel, playing in his first tourney, took Count Dooku all the way through the Emperor's Throne Room to win that region before getting quickly destroyed by Brannon's Maul.  JD appeared in his third straight final four, also using Darth Maul to lock down the Kamino Platform region.  He faced Rob and Yoda out of the Geonosis Arena, but sadly, he was denied a spot in the final match for the third straight year when Yoda outlasted Maul the first time before falling to Brannon in a classic back and forth match.  Here are the results, as well as a whole batch of pictures from the day.  Enjoy!

Winners:  Best Dressed Duelers

Riley and JD taking Joel and Alex R to school

Two previous winners doing battle in the first round!?!

A bumper crop of Duelers.  So beautiful.

Oodles of Odles, two of which made the Elite 8!

Delacy and Grant, radiating intensity.

Good Sportsmanship Award:  Riley

The Committee to Convince Jasmine to Play Epic Duels,
led by Chairwoman Jocelyn

Marital Strife!  (Courtney won!)

It was a rough day for Alex, but we wish him
well on his adventures overseas and hope
to Duel with him again in the future...

No words necessary.

This one was over before it started - ouch!

...and then there were two!

The oldest and youngest duelers...proud father
of a fantastic padawan.

Preview: The 4th Annual Singles Tournament - July 29, 2018

It's late July so that can only mean one thing...the Singles Tournament!  Unlike our normal 12-way Duels, this is a simple, head to head battle until only one Dueler is left standing.  And did we mention there are THIRTY-TWO Duelers with four entries each, meaning 128 Dueler/character combinations will start the tournament, but only one will be declared the victor!?!  INTENSE!

THE DRAFT

Each of the 32 Duelers got to submit their list of preferred characters, knowing we cap the number of times each character can be picked.  Nobody wants to see 64 Obi-Wans do battle against 64 Yodas...though come to think of it, that could be cool too...  Anyhoo, I digress.  Each of the 32 Duelers knew they would get one entry for each region of the tournament bracket (regions=the four playing boards that come with the game), and would each get two light side characters and two dark.  Here's the order of popularity for the characters this year, based on how quickly their available slots were chosen:

1.  Yoda
2.  Obi-Wan Kenobi
3.  Count Dooku
4.  Anakin Skywalker
5.  Mace Windu
6.  Darth Vader
7.  Emperor Palpatine
8.  Darth Maul
9.  Luke Skywalker
10.  Boba Fett
11.  Jango Fett
12.  Han Solo

THE BRACKETS

The 128 characters available for drafting were pre-slotted into our brackets.  Once the snake draft was over the corresponding Duelers were placed into the brackets by a randomly generated list.  Here are the results!

KEY MATCH-UPS

Each region features multiple intriguing battles in the first round of action, but here are four that are of particular interest...one for each board!

Emperor's Throne Room - In what is easily the biggest clash of the first round, previous Singles Tournament champions Chris K. (2015) battles with top dark side character Count Dooku versus Jonathan (2017) and his favorite, Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Jonathan won last year with Yoda but, given the choice, drafted Obi-Wan first this year.  You'll want to grab a seat and watch this one!

Carbon Freezing Chamber - Co-workers, office mates, and good friends Curtis and Ryan do battle against each other in the Freezing Chamber, with Darth Maul and Obi-Wan respectively.  Water cooler bragging rights are on the line!

Kamino Platfrom - Everyone knows Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine start next to each other in the cramped corner behind Jango's ship on this board.  Lo and behold, this bracket features a battle between the two Sith big-bads.  Ian's Emperor will desperately hope to avoid an early "All Too Easy" from Courtney's Darth Vader.  Can you imagine that in the first seconds of play!?!?

Geonosis Arena  - Everyone's heard of sibling rivalry, but this is ridiculous!  Two of Curtis's children, Miriam and Caleb, are playing this year...and they're pitted against each other in the Geonosis Arena!  Miriam will hope her Darth Vader can out maneuver Caleb's Boba Fett.  Family infighting between kids...this is what the Singles Tournament has devolved to!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thirty-two Duelers...128 entries...and only one victor.  (Almost) nobody is getting out alive.  We'll see you at 1PM in the North Village Community Center!

Who Won the Toughest Duel...Ever?!?

Have you ever wondered what the "toughest Duel ever" was? 

Have you ever wondered who won it?

I have!  That's why I experimented with a formula to determine the Duel that, across four seasons of play, is unequivocally the hardest, nastiest, fiercest battle ever.  Theoretically, that should be a Championship match...right?  The best Duelers from each season of play? 

METHODOLOGY:

So how do we determine which Duel was the toughest?  The same 12 characters play each game, so the answer must lie with the Duelers involved.  And the best Duelers are those who have done some combination of win Duels and reach professional status.  The first thing I did was rank the professional and retired professionals who had won a Duel before, using their Dueler ranking after the May the 4th Duel (that's 56 total Duels - the Twin Suns Slam matches weren't included).  That resulted in fifteen Duelers with Rob ranked #1 (meaning every Duel he played in contributes one point to a specific Duel's total), Grant ranked #2 (meaning every Duel he played in contributes two points to a specific Duel's total), and so on, all the way to #15 (Ethan).  Next, I ranked the professionals and retired professionals who never won a Duel, starting with #16 Kristin all the way to #30 (Toby). 

At this point I had an outlier.  D. Coy won a Duel back in the first season of play but never reached professional status.  I decided to give him a numerical value of 15, the same as Ethan, the lowest ranked professional to win a Duel.  From there we needed to assign a point value to the amateurs.  I decided amateurs with an average below six would receive a point value of 35, and everyone else would get a 40.  This is somewhat arbitrary, but it is what it is.  So, a Duel with four amateurs above a career 6 average would result in 160 points being added to that Duel's total.  The Duel with the lowest point total becomes the toughest ever.

TOP FIVE TOUGHEST DUELS EVER:

I'll count down in reverse order to build the suspense!

#5 - Valentines Duel, 2017
133 total points - 11.08 avg Dueler
Winner - Ian and Darth Maul
Last Place - Joel and Obi-Wan Kenobi
Kamino Platform

This match featured only one amateur (Hailey) as Dalton stayed loyal to Ian to the very end, leaving Ryan in third place.

#4 - Birthday Surprise #2, 2017
131 total points - 10.92 avg Dueler
Winner - Kaleb and Boba Fett
Last Place - Rob and Emperor Palpatine
Carbon Freezing Chamber

This is the infamous second Duel of the night for surprised birthday boy Curtis.  He had a rough finish in the first game and was hoping to do better in game #2.  But Ryan ruthlessly threw him under the bus for an eleventh place finish...on his birthday!!!  Kaleb's Greedo slaughtered half the board for the win.  Luke C. was the only amateur at the game.

#3 - Duel of the Fates, 2016
130 total points - 10.83 avg Dueler
Winner - Alex R. and Count Dooku
Last Place - JD and Yoda
Carbon Freezing Chamber

The only amateur at this Duel, Blake, nearly won.  He placed second and nearly toppled Alex.  That's the best finish ever for an amateur Dueler.  This was the game where the light side was outnumbered but Grant did that really cool double-Whirlwind that wiped out most of the dark side minor characters.

#2 - 2017 Championship
114 total points - 9.5 avg Dueler
Winner - Austin and Obi-Wan Kenobi
Last Place - Jonathan and Luke Skywalker
Carbon Freezing Chamber

If you read the recap you'll be reminded of how bonkers this match was.  Austin didn't originally have a seat at the table but parlayed his opportunity into his first (and only) career victory.  He did it in back-breaking fashion, betraying almost everybody on the board at one point or another.  There were no amateurs in this game.

And now...the toughest Duel ever...

#1 - 2015 Championship
106 total points - 8.83 avg Dueler
Winner - Nathan and Count Dooku
Last Place - Alex R. and Han Solo
Carbon Freezing Chamber

The 2015 Championship featured a "who's who" of the legends of the game:  Alex R., Ian, Stephen, Chris, JD, Rob, Sakina, Daniel, Grant, Ryan, Curtis...and Nathan.  Of particular note:  this was Nathan's second straight victory, which is a crazy amount of pressure and attention to have to navigate in the ultimate Duel of the year.  But his alliance with Curtis and Darth Maul carried the day.  It was the toughest Duel ever played!

CONCLUSION:

It's interesting to note that the four toughest Duels were in the Carbon Freezing Chamber.  Seems fitting!  The 2016 Championship was ranked sixth, meaning three of our four Championships were in the top six.  That reinforces its reputation as the "best of the best."

What were the easiest Duels in league history?  The bottom three were all from 2014, when the league just started.  And it was the first Duel every, CL Training, that ranks the easiest, with a whopping 284 points and 23.67 average Dueler. 

Of course, these rankings have already changed, as the Twin Sun Slam introduced a new professional (Alex C.) and new #1 ranked Dueler (Grant).  I'll try and update this list again next summer after we have another season of play under our belts.