WBC 2011 - Day 1

Monday featured the start of actual tournaments. I managed to play in rounds for San Juan, Stone Age, and Vegas Showdown.

San Juan started off with a bang. I won each of my first three games with the exact same start: Gold Mine into good cards. The first game it served up a library and then a silver in the first three turns. The second it gave me three cards in three turns. I didn't play any of them but they paid for my awesome cards in hand. The third it gave me a library right away. None of the three games were even close. Stupid gold mine.

I got a bye through round 4 and then seeded in the elimination events due to going 3-0. Pounder ended up going 2-2 and gave me his copy of the game telling me it was bad luck and would knock me out. I played with it anyway and my opening hand in my next game was smithy, indigo, indigo, tobacco, hero. No power cards at all. The makings of a zumft strategy if I start with the smithy but you're basically going all in if you start that way. I was first so I started with prospector into another tobacco. My opponent built a prefecture and I now can't mayor. I'm pretty much forced to produce on my action so I decide to go with the tobacco and at least keep pace. I discard all but the smithy. His next build is a silver and I still haven't drawn anything decent so I'm really behind the 8-ball. I decide to pitch all my cards, including my smithy, to bust out a silver of my own and at least keep a decent action available to me. He follows it up with a library and a second silver and I have no good plays anymore. My only advantage is my hand now contains both zumfts and a city hall. If I hold onto them through the discard and get the second city hall he might not have any way to actually score points. I go up to many cards in hand one turn and build one of the zumfts. I eventually draw a chapel and decide I should build it to hide the other 6s in my hand since it's really cramping my hand size to have to hold on to them. It turns out the reshuffle was 2 turns out though so I probably should have just sucked it up. I ended up putting 2 cards into it so it was 6 cards for 4 points. That's a terible ratio when I have a zumft in play. I ended up losing on tiebreakers by 1 card so I'm pretty sure if I'd just played an indigo instead of the chapel or some such that I could have pulled it out. (Also by using my own chapel I reminded him to use his own chapel which he had apparently forgotten the turn before. Not sure if I should have been reminding him or not.)

With that out of the way I went and played Stone Age. The format for Stone Age turns out to be terrible and not what is listed in the schedule. After you play a 2 hour game of Stone Age (in the schedule) they then make all the winners play again right afterwards (not in the schedule) and if you win both games you probably make it into the semis. I didn't actually have anything to do in the next 2 hours so I reluctantly played a second game after the first. I don't really like Stone Age enough to want to run it back though. I ended up losing the second game by 4 points, mostly thanks to the guy after me deciding he couldn't win with his dice rolls so he stopped trying to score points at all letting the person to his right essentially pick first on each of the last 2 turns of the game.

Went to eat at Red Robin, had a good burger and a decent milkshake.

Came back and played Vegas Showdown. I got paired at a table with Sceadeau, Lexi (the girl who beat me in San Juan last year), and a guy with a beer who forgot the pre-req charts existed in the game until after he failed to build his fancy slots. It was a fairly tight game with most of the scoring cards coming out early. I didn't really get many points off them at all due to running restaurant light, not connecting, and not stocking up on extra lounges but it was good that they came up early if they came up at all. Both of the buy points for money cards came up earlyish too, which was also great since my end game income was 10 compared to 14, 17, 18. I actually even bought 5 points on the second one since I had 10 on hand and other people didn't. Sceadeau and I took to lightning bolting each other by bidding the other one up on stuff we didn't really want because we knew the other would have to pay more.

The key to the game came when I ended up with exactly 42 dollars to Sceadeau's 39 dollars on the turn the theatre hit 33. He forced me to pay the full 42 but it was so worth it. I'd played Tetris such that I had an optimal place to put it. (Slot, fancy slot above it, fancy lounge in the corner, build more slots such that I can place theatre beside those.) My hotel section was filled in with a lounge, a night club, and a restaurant. My casino section got filled up barely by the end of the game and on the final turn I built a second fancy slots beside the theatre for 2 more triangle points. The card that came out just before the game ended? Score the triangles, so I got my 7 triangle points twice.

I ended up winning by a pretty reasonable chunk and had 77 points overall. I think a key part of my winning was the other three people were all competing for most income and most people while I ignored both!

Open gamed a bit with Robb and Pounder. Learned Albion and it was pretty good. Learned Space Alert and it was weird. Ate at Waffle House, got my hashbrowns with ham and didn't get Robb's onions! Winner!