WBC 2011 - Day 2

Most of Tuesday is taken up with a big game auction that I've never actually gone to since I don't have a ton of cash to spend, I don't really like used items, and I do like playing games and sleeping more than shopping. As such I slept in until 11am and then eventually went to the open gaming room when Robb and Pounder got back from eating.

We played Innovation which is a relatively quick card game where you build up tech and try to get achievements done in a variety of ways. I like card games, and I like teching up, and I like earning achievements! Sweet! Daniel ended up playing a team game of it with us and then we played a couple 3 player games on our own. I know I said I don't like shopping but I think I'm going to try to buy this game if I can find it somewhere.

We went to the Olive & Jasmine Asian Bistro for supper (my first meal of the day; I had a Dipps bar earlier) and I got pineapple fried rice with all the weird stuff like peas and carrots taken out. Yum!

Went to a Queen's Gambit heat, got matched up against a teenage boy. His mechanics were a little lacking (he often wouldn't bother moving palace guards, for example) but his dice rolling was superb. I believe I fired off at least 11 destroyer droid rounds into his red queen for a net result of 1 damage, for example. He barely won the jedi battle (I killed Obi-Wan and got Qui-Gon down to 2 before I stopped drawing Darth Maul cards. He eventually killed Darth Maul and then my next 4 cards were 3 Darth Maul's and a Darth Maul's Rage. Oh well.) I killed Qui-Gon with a battle droid but by that point I was pretty much out of robots and Anakin was on the last space. He cleared out the last of my droids giving me null actions for the rest of my cards and finally plowed through the last Anakin space for the win. He was down to 2 queens, Captain P, and 6 guards at the end of the game so it was pretty close. I am continuing my streak of being incapable of winning a single game of an event I've previously won.


After Queen's Gambit was Le Havre. The game started out with the wood/cattle space coming up and first player scooped up 3 wood. He did not buy a building with cash. My space added a wood and a fish so my viable options are:

cow + buy 4 cost hammer
3 fish
3 fish + buy 4 cost hammer
2 dollars + buy 4 cost hammer
2 dollars + buy 6 cost marketplace
1 clay + buy 4 cost hammer

None of these really appealed to me at the time. Pounder has made a pretty good case for taking the cow + buying the hammer under the assumption that the guy who picked up 3 wood builds the marketplace for you. Then you can grab your second cow before the first harvest along with 2 other goods (probably iron/clay or grain/coal). It has the downside that you eat your last dollar if he doesn't build it right away so you either table some fish/dollars or your plan goes bust. The way timing works out on the cow space you get cows 3 and 4 if no one ever takes a single cow so you aren't desperately in need of shaking up cow parity either.

I went with 2 dollars + buy the marketplace. It actually came back around to me empty so I got to go in on my next action to grab a clay and an iron. I used that to build the saw mill and later picked up a 6 dollar offer which combined with a dollar on hand and vendoring the sawmill to buy a very early boat. (Before round 4 feeding I think. I also picked up some fish on the way so I hadn't taken a loan by this point either.) Of course, when I did this I still had 0 wood and the guy on my right had in the neighbourhood of 14 so my way still wasn't awesome.

As the game progressed a lot of buildings I don't really see used much got used a lot. Many activations of the grocery store, hardware store, and marketplace over the whole game added lots of goods to the game. No one else seemed very interested in boats though, and all 3 other players racked up loans. I built two iron boats and a steel boat to go with my wooden boat and ended up paying only 5 upkeep over the whole game, I think. I eventually got 4 wood in an offer and spent it and a clay on the building firm which has a hammer on it. It was the only building I actually built (other than the quickly vendored sawmill) but I spent the game harvesting cows and grain and building up a large stack of coal. I was the first one into the coilery and squatted there for 3 rounds as I grabbed big grain, fish, and iron offers. I made 2 steel out of fish with my building firm and eventually made 4 more with the iron works + steel mill.

I ended up shipping 3 times, made baguettes once, and built a luxury liner. None of my opponents really had a plan it seemed (one ended the game with 8 loans) and I ended up winning by around 40ish points. I've now broken the streak of being unable to win a heat of my team game, woo!

It turns out our teammate Jason won his event, Through The Ages, and we therefore are well positioned to make a run at the team title this year. Pounder and I won our first heats in our games as well, so at the very least Robb now has to play his team game, Settlers. And I'm probably glad I didn't actually make Empire Builder my team game.

We hit the waffle house. I had Papa Joe's pork chops and though my hash browns were cold when they arrived they did have ham and very few of Robb's onions. I'm going to count that as a win.

Brass is a heat at 9am Wednesday morning which Pounder was thinking of playing in but he didn't know the game so Robb taught it to us after we got back. It took a while as he had to relearn the game himself and we didn't end up going to bed until after 4am. I want to play Race for the Galaxy at 9am, I wonder how that will turn out...