Thanks for all of the kind words in this thread. I wanted to clarify a few things...the biggest reason that I have commented in the past about "overall not being worthwhile" was because it included Melee. And, Melee has always been a "spotty" event. I have no problem with Joust and Melee as individual titles. Even though I'm not a huge fan of the competitive Melee at Worlds/Gencon, I still played. I know a lot of people believe that skill is involved in winning Melee too. (Although, I think many will agree that having the right people at your table helps too.) A lot of Melee tourneys are won by rush and/or combo decks. What I tried to do with my Melee deck was build a control deck. I wanted a deck where I could truly control ALL THREE of my opponents when I needed too. My Melee deck (Targ KotHH with Summer) worked even better than I anticipated!

I really had a lot of fun playing Melee this year. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to defeat three people at once. I enjoyed being in control while looking like I wasn't, until it was too late. I can honestly say that I felt everyone played for himself. If not, how did I make it out of the Top 16 table with DC Dennis and Erick Butzlaff? This was probably the best time that I have ever had playing Melee and not because of the success that I had this year, but because the social interaction and the mind games were a blast!

As for the "kingmaking" in the finals, I truly tried to win. If I had let Kyle win that finals game, I would have been the Overall champ. I thought that I could do enough to win on my turn. Again, had I won Melee, I would've been Melee Champ and Overall. In the end, the only real person that got robbed was me, and that was because of a few miscalculations and a misreading of the "Wildling Bard" (which I thought that I had to trigger before MY challenges not anyone's first challenge! Doh! On the next turn, I believed that I burned down enough of Ryan's characters to limit his winning that turn. His Moqorro save was a surprise. But the extra strength for Intimidate was a surprise too. I tried to defend his final challenge because I supported the only other person he could attack. The reason that I burned down Chad's characters was that he had 10 power. He hadn't marshaled yet. If he had any tricks to go first (Knights of the Storm) or claim power, I wanted to make sure that I could stop him before he started and attacked a wide-open Kyle. The honest truth to the whole situation is that I am an old man, I make lots of mental mistakes and miss things all the time. My gameplay can often help me make up for those miscues, but the older I get, then weaker play I become.

Honestly, I respect this game too much to truly "throw" a game. I discussed the finals with Ryan before the tournament. I told him that we should play a clean, fair game because of the controversy from last year. As on of the oldest members of the community and one of the original, longtime players, I cannot condone tainting this great game, especially at a time when the game is flourishing. This is also why I try to avoid the boards as much as possible and try to not respond to negative posts. I don't want to add gas to the fire. Nothing good comes from it. Negative publicity (for those who start the negative threads) draws more attention to the negative posters. I would rather concentrate on what is GREAT about this AMAZING game that I love! I have made too many friends in this game and want this game to continue being around for a long time.

Anyways, congrats to Ryan Jones for winning Melee and Overall and to Chad, Steve and Kyle for their impressive showings. I do think this year that OVERALL can be a true reflection of gameplay for the weekend. Ryan had 71 points, Chad had 70 and I had 68. All three of us did well in Joust and Melee, and the right person ended up on top in the end!

I appreciate this post; I don't think you had any obligation to "defend" yourself - but I'm glad to see you voice your continued respect and support for the game and the community.

I want to re-iterate that I posted the last one to try and limit the outcry (there was some pretty heavy outrage in the twitch feed at the time), and that it seems to have worked - the other thread has stayed fairly sedate. I think you may disagree with my method - it's possible it would never have been brought up at all, but know that my intent too was to limit the traction of the negative posters.

Edit: And yeah, that was a crazy close overall. They even mis-called it on the Twitch feed as Chad before recounting and handing it to Ryan.

In defense of Istaril, he is a relatively objective poster and I doubt was interested in anything more than the intellectual conversation of "What constitutes collusion and would the most recent final have been considered having an ending with collusion?" for which the answer was established as "no."

So basically, WE HAD A LEGIT MELEE ENDING AND A LEGIT AMAZING OVERALL CHAMPION BREAKDOWN FOR WORLDS!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Thanks Bruno for posting your perspective. It all makes sense. Melee especially has a lot to account for and that makes it even easier to make mistakes. You must have been playing Lanni too much, since you weren't familiar with Wildling Bard and Maqorro!

Bruno is sexy. We have the same haircut.