WBC 2011 - Day 4

I qualified for two important (to me) semi-finals on Thursday which were taking place at 6 and 9 in the evening. I decided that since I stayed up all night playing werewolf and that I wanted to be well rested for those games that I would just sleep in. As such, I ended up getting up around 3. I had a Dipps bar and was whisked off to play Hansa Teutonica in open gaming with Robb, Pounder, and Dan. I still don't understand when people are going to displace me and when they aren't and got pounded. People keep saying it's the best game (and maybe the expansion map makes it even better) but I'm still not sold on the game.

That wrapped up but with not enough time to really eat. I went back to the room, had some cookies and another Dipps bar and read a little Game of Thrones since the internet was down.

6 o'clock brought the Le Havre semi-finals. After waiting a bit to see if people would show it was determined that there were 10 people available and they needed to come up with a format. They should probably have one predetermined for each possible outcome but they ended up deciding that they really wanted a 4 player final so they ran a 4 player game, two 3 player games, and would advance the second place finisher who had the highest percentage of first place's score. Given the constraints of needing to use 10 people, needing to cut to 4, and refusing to play 5 player games this seemed like a pretty good format. Personally I probably would have excluded an alternate and played 3 games and a 3 player final but this would be my choice given the constraints and was certainly the one I lobbied for.

Seating was randomly determined and I ended up at a table with Dan and other Dan, two of last years 4 finalists. I made that final as well and the 4th guy didn't even play in the event so I was expecting a tough game and was really hoping for a close second place from our table.

The building piles were really weird with one pile containing, in order, hardware store/black market/colliery/wharf. So for 4 clay, 4 wood, and 2 dollars you could start off with a colliery in play which is really absurd. Other Dan ended up doing just that while Dan collected wood and dollars and built the marketplace. I bought the 4 cost building firm, used the marketplace, and collected some loans. I built a couple more buildings for a clay each and was trying to position myself to have 14 bucks so I could buy a boat. Dan made use of the first special building which lets you convert a fish into 2 dollars up to 7 times. He bought 2 boats with this building and a lot of fish, including a trip to my fishery. I ended up realizing that selling all my buildings for a boat was not going to be a good plan this game after I got a good wood offer. There was a wharf in play and since both Dan and other Dan had spent wood on buildings neither of them could build a wooden boat. Other Dan had the colliery which opened up a wharf for purchase so I just built it and then made 2 wooden boats the old fashioned way. I was the only one with any interest in the marketplace it seemed and I set up the second building to come out when I was going to go first. It was the building you can go to for a coal, a coke, and an iron. I vendored my wharf so that I could buy it and ended up using it exclusively for my coke needs all game. So despite the very early colliery, I didn't use it at all.

Eventually I grabbed a 3 iron offer and used my new building to buy an iron boat. This gave me 3 boats and a coke, so I went to the shipping line to get rid of some cows. (Dan was in the first 2 cow position of the game and let me have them by doing something else.) I had a lot of cows and sent 7 of them off for 21 points which I used to buy the steel mill. Other Dan had made a bunch of bricks and I think he was eyeing the steel mill and the cokery which were one on top of the other so my straight up buying one of them seemed to throw him off a little. I then grabbed another coke, baked some bread, and shipped it off for another 21 points and bought the cokery. Both of those buildings got used a fair amount over the course of the game. I think Dan made coke 3 times. I never actually made any coke myself, instead getting coke from my special building and using the coal from that to bake bread or build boats.

Ultimately I used my steel mill twice in order to build a steel ship and then the second luxury liner. The second time I made steel I think I really hurt other Dan. He was thinking about making steel and then decided to go get some more iron first. I went in immediately afterwards, spent 2 coke for 3 steel, and then proceeded to sit there and take a 20 wood offer. (I needed energy and being able to delay his plans certainly helped.) I was considering making that wood into charcoal but ended up just using it straight up to ship two more times, each with 11 cows/bread. (I took a late 8 grain offer and baked a second time.)

When all was said and done the scores were something like 259, 254, 239. I had the win, Dan was second, and other Dan was third. The other two games apparently weren't close so both Dan and I advance to the finals tomorrow morning at 9am. Maybe sleeping in until 3pm wasn't such a great idea after all...


Our game was a little slow but not so slow that it took more than 3 hours. My next event was in the same room: the Vegas Showdown semifinals. They ended up with 22 winners so they advanced three alternates and played a full five 5-player games. I'm not a huge fan of 5 player Vegas Showdown but it's better than Le Havre or Puerto Rico at least.

My table featured the GM Eric (who beat me in the Vegas Showdown finals 2 years ago and in the Tigris & Euphrates final last year), Carey (who kept coming second in the Notre Dame finals when they were an event), and 2 other guys who seemed pretty competent.

The first turn was interesting: no publicity allowed. I was in first seat and opened with a bid of 12 on slots. It followed with 12 on slots, Eric bids 15 on my slots, 12 on lounge, renovate, restaurant. I hate restaurants so much but I figured if I was paying 15 for something it might as well be the thing that actually costs 15. To make that play a little better the opening 4 buildings were buffet, fancy lounge, fancy restaurant, fancy slots. With everyone spending so much on normal slots (the high bidding continued in future turns) I figured having the only restaurant would mean I could get two of those relatively cheap. I ended up getting the buffet for 12 and was pretty happy with my money situation since I could get the fancy restaurant pretty cheap next turn too. And then the cards were sale and restaurant builders on strike. This knocked it off the board and meant I couldn't get it after all which made me sad.

The cards smiled on me after that, though. Lounges paid out points the turn after I bought a lounge. We got points for connections the turn after I connected. Points for dollars only came out once, and it came out when only one person was able to buy points.

The theatre was the first of the B big buildings to come out (and the second overall after the dragon room). Eric and other Eric had the only two fancy lounges that had come out thus far. They immediately started saving up money. I couldn't see how I could really win without getting it (Carey had bought the dragon room for 25 on me and it looked like the game was going to end before steakhouse was even an option) so I saved up too. When we could finally afford it I had 46, Eric had 50, and other Eric had less than Eric. I bid it up as high as I could and Eric overbid me and got it for 47. I settled for a lounge which connected me.

The next turn I picked up a fancy restaurant as 2 other buildings were purchased. Eric was up and the first card was pull strings. The pile sizes were 1 small, 4 medium, 2 big. I'm not sure his reasoning exactly but he did some math, figured he wasn't going to win if the game ended, and I think if it kept going, and grabbed a big one. The next card was also pull strings. He thought some more and grabbed the last big. The third card was a big and the game ended. A little unfortunate since I was positioned to buy and place the space age sports book soon (I had 39 bucks at the time) but it turned out to be very fortunate for me after all as I was in a tie for first and my 9 extra bucks won the tiebreaker against 5 extra bucks.

I was now qualified for finals occuring at 9am and 11pm the next day so I decided I should try to go to sleep early. A quick detour to the Waffle House gave me my first meal of the day and I went to bed at 1.