WBC 2008 -> Day 5

Prelude
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap

Puerto Rico – 11am – I’m a big fan of sleep and didn’t have any pressing reason to wake up so I didn’t. Eventually I got up and showered and looked at the schedule and decided to run the 11am PR heat. Now, I’d played a lot of PR on BSW back in the day but since it got removed I’ve rarely played the game. (At one point someone asked me how many games I’d played in the last year to prep for the event and I think I said 1.)

At any rate, I end up randomly going first this game which isn’t a position I like. (I love to ship corn!) I don’t have any notes for this game but I know I first turn quarried (something I rarely do) but then audibled into a harbour/wharf shipping position and won.
Amazing Space Venture – demo – 12pm – My PR game ended pretty fast so I wandered by the demo area. This game is a Carcassonne variant with space ships and cards. (As an aside, were you aware that Carcassonne is in the Word spellchecker? It actually suggested it as a revision to Carcassone.) I didn’t play the game and it mostly just looked like it was making Carcassonne more complicated for the sake of making it more complicated and not to make it any better. I certainly wouldn’t buy the game after the demo but I would be willing to try it at some point.

Agricola – 1pm – This wasn’t an actual round, but Robb, Pounder and I decided we had nothing to do for a couple hours. Pounder wanted to play Agricola again after playing a heat and the demo looked interesting enough. I forgot how important people were and ended up spending all my wood on fences and therefore couldn’t expand my house. I lost by a good margin but decided I really liked the game. (It is one of three games I bought shortly after WBC, along with Race for the Galaxy and Twilight Struggle.)

Puerto Rico – quarterfinals – 6pm – There’s a large gap here so I’m assuming we went out for food after Agricola. I’d won my PR round so I figured I should go to the quarters and see if I’d advanced. It turns out 8 people won 2 games and advanced to the semi-finals while everyone who won a game got into the quarters. For the elimination rounds they switch to bidding points for position. I again don’t have any notes for this game so I’m not sure what specifically happened but in generalities I know I was playing against David Platnik (a Titan player who seemed to be pretty good at games in general) and two casual gamers. It very quickly became apparent to both David and I that one of us was going to win the game (he was to my right and was hardcore building while I was hardcore shipping) and it came down to the final turn. The player across from me was governor and had to pick a job. If he goes one way David wins, otherwise I win. He picked a job that made me win.

After the game I was talking to Robb about what happened and he questioned why I’d bid to sit behind David. I knew going in that he was going to be good, so I should try my best to sit on his right, not his left. (This way he can’t spite draft me and its likely random players won’t know when to spite draft. I do know David made a couple unobvious choices that hurt me that other players likely wouldn’t have.)

Notre Dame – 8pm – I get assigned to a table and it turns out three of the players are reasonably new (2 of them had to have rules clarifications to start the game) and the 4th guy seemed to really know what was going on. Sadly he was on my immediate right and if seating position matters in PR it really matters in ND. Righty got passed a C1 Notre Dame, for example, after playing a hardcore money strategy. The guy who passed it to him later lamented that he didn’t get to play a Notre Dame card in round C. Of course you didn’t, you passed it! Anyway, I ended up exactly tied with the guy on my right. We went to the GM and the decision was made that we’d both be treated as winners because it would make the numbers better for the semi-finals. (Pounder later pointed out that this is actually against WBC rules, but what are you going to do?)

Notre Dame – semi-finals – 10pm – It turns out there were exactly 8 games played over the two rounds. Pounder won games in both rounds and two of us won the same game in round 2, so there were 8 people to advance. The GM decided to go with 2 4-player games, with the top 2 advancing from each game. I ended up at a table with Robb, Brian Kowal (a Magic pro back when I sometimes was on tour), and some other dude. I don’t remember much about the game other than that it was very close. The other guy and I advanced in a very well played game.

Notre Dame – finals – 12pm – Pounder and David Platnik advanced from the other semi-final table. I ended up sitting to Pounder’s left which is very bad for me. (I wrote some analysis about the game which is in the archives here, and Pounder is probably the only person who has read it. I know he agreed with a lot of what I had to say and we have very similar strategies. Having him drafting before me puts me in a lot of trouble.)

Anyway, I end up making a very dangerous play. I play a Notre Dame card in round A and only pick up one dollar which results in my having no money going into B1. I have 4 cards in 9 that I can draw to give me a dollar, or Pounder can pass me one and I’m ok. I have an 82% chance of drawing a card I need, but fail to, and Pounder doesn’t pass me one. It turns out Pounder drafted a guesthouse instead of passing it to me and didn’t play it, blowing me out. I missed my bribe in B1 and then had to scramble to try to get back into a playable position. This forced me to pass extra VP-house cards to my left, which David gladly scooped up on his way to the victory.

Pounder ended up 3rd, I came 4th, and Robb came 5th. Go Waterloo!

I had a 9am PR semi-final to attend the next morning, so I bowed out of potential open gaming after our midnight final finished. I suspect we went to the Waffle House anyway, and then Robb went searching for a werewolf game while Pounder and I crashed. (Pounder had a long drive in the morning so he wanted to sleep too.)