  We examine the effects of preferential attachment on a model of competing
clusters. In the original model, cluster masses grow at the expense of their
neighbours; on a lattice, this is known to result in the asymptotic survival
and indefinite growth of clusters which are isolated from each other. The
presence of preferential attachment results in an inhomogeneous topology, where
hubs monopolize the connections, while most other nodes are sparsely connected.
Interestingly, this results in the protection of the less massive clusters from
annihilation, to which the hubs are doomed.
