WBC: Monday Conflicts

The World Boardgaming Championships have not put out a consolidated schedule yet but they did put up the event previews which seem to have all the round times on them. (I may end up building my own consolidated sheet soon.) Andrew had been looking at some of the event previews and pointed out a potential issue for me: A Few Acres of Snow is running around the same time as San Juan. Knowing when events have been scheduled in the past led me to look at Through The Ages as well and there are issues there as well. To summarize:

A Few Acres of Snow: Mulligan round Sunday @ 9pm. First round Monday @ noon. Second round Monday @ 2pm, with a new round every 2 hours until it's over.
San Juan: First round Monday @ 10am. New rounds every hour until it's over.
Through The Ages: Three heats: Sunday @ 11am, Sunday @ 5pm, Monday @ 10am. Semifinal is Monday @ 5pm.

I haven't played in the TTA event yet at WBC but was planning on doing so this year. (The Sunday rounds are part of the precon which I hadn't paid for in the past. I have this year.) I also wasn't very good at the game at all. I've played over 50 games on the web since then and have learned a lot. I still don't think I'm good enough to count on winning it by any stretch but I think I could have fun and at least do a little damage. (And I want to threaten taking Jason out with a team kill!)

San Juan is one of my favourite WBC games. The event is short, I enjoy playing the game, and I'm pretty good at it. I've come 2nd and 4th in the past and feel like I could pull out a win. There is a fair amount of randomness so I don't know that I'd want to pick it for a team game, for example, but I still want to play it.

A Few Acres of Snow is making its debut at WBC this year. It's probably my second most played game in the last year (455 games of Roll Through The Ages, 213 games on A Few Acres of Snow on Yucata). My record in those games is 202-11 and I feel like I've learned a fair bit from those losses. I'll need to study their bidding mechanism in detail over the next three months but I feel strongly that this is my event to lose. As soon as I saw that it was voted in this year I'd planned on making it my team game.


The issue that's come up is that AFAoS conflicts heavily with the other two listed games. If I play in the mulligan round for AFAoS and win I'd get to skip the first round on Sunday but the second round is at the same time as the start of the San Juan elimination rounds. It really depends how fast San Juan goes but I doubt I'd even get to play the quarterfinals before having to drop to play AFAoS. I'd likely still sign up and play San Juan to inflate their numbers but I'd have no chance of winning. If this was the only conflict I'd have no problem making a decision...

Unfortunately A Few Acres of Snow has three conflicts with Through The Ages. The mulligan round likely overlaps the second heat of TTA. (It should be possible to play a three player game in under 4 hours but if I get paired up against slower opponents I'd have no chance.) Similarly, the second round of AFAoS conflicts with the third heat of TTA. (Again, a 4 hour gap.) I could play in just the first heat of TTA and hope a single win was enough to advance but I know it wasn't good enough last year so I doubt it would be this year either. Even if it somehow was, there's the third conflict to consider. The semifinals of TTA start halfway through round 4 of AFAoS. I imagine I'll play fast enough to finish my game in an hour but there's no way that'll be the last round of the event.

San Juan and Through The Ages conflict a little bit as well. The third round of TTA is right out as it takes places during the entire San Juan event. Theoretically the finals of San Juan are at the same time as the TTA semifinal as well but I could see SJ playing fast enough to get done in time. And conflicts with finals of events are ok... I'm fine with missing TTA if it means I've won a prize in SJ!