2014 WBC: Day 7

Friday morning brought the finals for my team game, Le Havre. I was up against Pounder and a 3rd guy I didn't recognize. Thanks to the format for the tournament I again got to start in first seat due to my 2 wins in the heats. Pounder was the next highest seed so he was in second chair and I would again be fed by a 3rd guy who didn't have a history of success in the event. The first tile again had a wood on it and I got to start with 3 wood and the 4 cost building firm into marketplace. Unfortunately this time I was playing with someone else who really wanted to vendor the sawmill for half a wooden boat so Pounder jumped right into the marketplace. I think he'd first picked cash to buy the 6 cost building firm too, so he even got 3 things. In retrospect I now think maybe it's right to not build the marketplace, especially if someone else buys the 6 cost building firm. Maybe I should be first picking clay so I can grab a single iron and build the sawmill the hard way?

Anyway, the colliery was pretty easy to access in this game (under both the clay mound and black market) and I set up to get it. Pounder build the building on top of them, righty bought the clay mound, and I was able to buy the black market and construction firm up the colliery and the local court. Which I vendor shortly thereafter for a wooden boat of my own! Pounder is all in on operation use the colliery, and so is the 3rd guy, actually to the exclusion of taking what had always seemed like a required grab of 2 iron. Twice during the mid-game I got to take 3 iron offers... Now this does mean I was also turning down at least 2 shots at 2 iron, so it's not like people were going crazy. But I definitely had a ton of iron. I'd also managed to pull off a couple of big black market grabs (2 iron, 2 cows and 2 iron, 2 wood, 2 francs) which may have made the other players leery about taking 2 iron and giving up another black market play?

At one point I'd made 6 bricks because I had a bunch of clay and there were some good buildings available and then I made a double build of cokery and steel mill. I'm not sure how right that was. They are worth 40 points combined which is a pretty good action, but it also meant I was going to be at the end of the line for converting coal to coke and then iron to steel. The coal totals were something like 21 for Pounder, 17 for me, and 9 for the 3rd guy? (One of the special buildings let you convert food to coal and charcoal and Pounder killed his cows in order to use that building while I did not.) The iron totals were more like 2 for Pounder, 3 for 3rd guy, 6 for me so I felt like even getting to make stuff 3rd it would probably still work out ok for me. Then the town built a special building (I never once used the marketplace so I didn't know what could be coming) and the steel works hit. 15 energy and one iron for two steel. Pounder now suddenly had a really good way to get the stuff for multiple steel ships. This felt like a real problem for me and I went into the tank. I ended up deciding I had no way to handle it and just bought it so I'd at least get some entry fee action back. Pounder went to it and was able to snag the first steel ship. Then he went back for 2 more and could get the second one. I ended up getting to make my coke and decided that rather than wait around for the 3rd steel ship I'd just ship a bunch of coke and buy the second one. I did later build the 4th one as well.

As the game wound down I ended up counting up my symbols and found I had almost all of the bank related symbols and was able to buy it for a profit. I don't think I mentioned it, but I did the same thing in the semifinals with the town hall. Rarely is it ever worthwhile to pay the hugely inflated prices for those buildings but I got to do it two games in a row. Woo!

I ended up breaking 300 for the 3rd game in a row. Pounder came in at around 276 and the 3rd guy was around 200. Victory!

Pounder and I then headed to the Agricola room to play in the noon heat. We arrived and most of the players were already seated even though we were about 5 minutes early. I guess the Agricola crowd is a lot of eager beavers. Unfortunately for us the GM had underestimated how many tables he'd need and we ended up standing around with Sceadeau and it looking like we would all have to play each other despite showing up on time for the heat. This is contrast to the previous heat where they'd started too many tables and I was going to get stuck at a 5 player game until Elaine stepped up for us. This heat ended up having a few more people straggle in and they were able to start 2 tables from those of us standing around. I get the desire for efficiency but it does feel like pre-pairing people before knowing how many games will need to happen is error prone. But I guess for most people it probably worked out great?

I ended up at a table with Pounder, Steve LeWinter, and a 4th I don't remember. I didn't get the guildmaster this game so I didn't know what to do. In fact, I don't remember a single thing about this game. Except that I came 3rd and Steve won.

I could have gone to play Spyrium or Stone Age but the right choice was definitely to eat. Pounder, Sceadeau, and I walked to Red Robin and Elaine met us there with their car. I tried out their salted caramel milkshake because I love salt on everything. Except, it turns out, in a milkshake. It was not very tasty and I didn't drink very much of it at all. The burger was delicious though!

I then could have gone to play Wits & Wagers but decided to chill in the room for a bit. That got boring and I eventually wandered down and found that Pounder, Robb, Sara, and Duncan were a team for Wits & Wagers and there was a spare chair right beside them... Ok, fine, Wits & Wagers it is! I got to the game in time to share my wisdom about fish. The fastest fish in the world definitely clocked in at a massive FOUR miles per hour! We ended up losing everything at the end but that's ok because the rules are made up and the points don't matter!

Following Wits & Wagers was potentially the Agricola semifinals. Would a 1st, a 2nd, and a 3rd be good enough to advance? Turns out the answer was yes! The semifinals were going to use the WM deck mixed in with the E, I, and K decks. This was going to be a problem for me since I've never seen WM cards. Daniel showed me a few of the better ones but then I got thrown into the deep end. I started off by taking a guy that lets you get an extra building resource each time you take building resources but you have to spread them out on the board to collect later. Turning reed+stone+food into reed+stone+stone+food felt good to me, so I decided to run it. I then got passed guildmaster (that guy's good with extra stone!) and then stonecutter! I now had a plan for my game. Collect some stone and try to buy all of the stone things. The minor were passed the other way and the guy passing to me (Rob, the GM) made a comment about how he was really hooking me up with one card in his pack. I looked through the 6 cards and couldn't see anything amazing. There was a baking tray that would combo very well with my stonecutter... But there was also a WM card that looked very confusing. It was a ram that ate food each harvest and cost a sheep to play but counted as a sheep for breeding and scoring. It also let you breed sheep 4 extra times during the game. A single stable would be enough to let the ram and a sheep breed up an extra sheep for 2 food over and over again. Assuming you had a fireplace anyway. I assumed that since it was the card I didn't recognize and that the pack had a 'bomb' in it that it must be that card and took it. It turns out that was a mistake. Maybe I was getting pranked? Rob later said baking tray was the bomb card though it ended up going 4th and went unplayed. I sure wish I'd had it though since it would have been awesome with my stonecutter. *sigh* I then took a card that lets you demolish a built wooden room for 7 fences. You have to build fences before you reno but if you pull that off it feels really good. I used that to get enough space to breed sheep normally and didn't really need the bonus from the ram. I eventually played him because I'm stubborn and it was a minor food bonus (and a point) but taking him over the baking tray probably cost me the game. I also ended up with the cabinetmaker (4 wood if guildmaster is already in play) and the village well. My game plan was pretty clear. Collect lots of resources and build as many majors as I could get my grubby little hands on.

It worked out pretty well, though I misplayed at one point. I had the resources to build the pottery and I wanted to play guildmaster. If I build pottery first and then play guildmaster I get 2 clay. If I do it the other way I get 4 clay. 4 is bigger than 2! Unfortunately I played guildmaster and then Rob snap bought the pottery. I actually needed the 2 food from the pottery to feed myself that round and ended up having to take 3 food off traveling players instead. Doing it the other way safeties the contract and might have been enough in and of itself to win me the game. Certainly if I had baking tray I feel like I'd have won the game. As it is I ended up coming a pretty close 3rd, and then probably only because no one else at the table had read one of the cards played by the guy on my right. It made a single cow into a 4 point play for him and other people could have taken it as a good point action for themselves and screwed him. Considering how close the game was that was probably the difference. The guy on my right (Eric) ended up winning by a point over Rob who was a couple points ahead of me. I do feel like with more practice (and having ever seen the WM deck) I probably win that game. Oh well. There's always next year?

This game finished in time for Liar's Dice so I ran off to play at a table with Robb, Sceadeau, Pounder, Elaine, and Andy Latto. Robb smoked us and then chose more Liar's Dice over Waffle House. Mistakes! Waffle House so good!

2014 WBC: Day 6

Thursday morning brought the second heat of my team game. I knew the format this year for Le Havre had changed to preferentially play 3 player games in all rounds and I wanted to do what I could to make sure the semis and finals got as close to exactly 9 people as I could. The first heat had 6 games, which meant 6 winners. Assuming the second heat had the same attendance that would make 12 winners which sure looks like 4 player games in the semis to me. So I decided that I wanted to play to knock someone else out to limit the winners to 11. I also really like the game and haven't played it enough so I wanted to play it again anyway. It also turns out that the listed format for the event included information on seeding for the semis and finals so winning a second game would keep me from having to play other people who won 2 games in the semis and would actually also guarantee I get 1st seat in the semis unless there were at least 4 double winners. So it was a really, really good idea to play a second heat.

I showed up close to 9 after once again stopping by the Coke machine for some morning caffeine. This time the Coke bottle said I should share a Coke with Nick. I took that to be a good sign! I wander into the room where Le Havre is setting up and Mike Kaltman accosts me for coming in to play. He has apparently already convinced Daniel Eppolito to skip this heat in order to play Ra Dice in the same room. (I wonder if as assistant GM he told Daniel about the seeding plan and how advantageous it would be to win a second heat? He sure didn't tell me.) Mike tries his best to dissuade me from playing which feels like a really bad thing for someone to do. I get why he did it (he lost his first heat and needed to win this one to advance and his odds of doing so go down if Daniel or I get placed at his table) but it really rubs me the wrong way. So when I get assigned a seat and it's at Mike's table I get a grin on my face.

It ends up being a 3 player game and I get 1st chair. I buy my 4 cost building firm and pick up wood. I build the marketplace. I go to the marketplace. I get the sawmill. I sell it with something else (probably wood at the joinery, maybe a franc offer) to get a wooden boat. Pretty standard stuff. I set it up so the first or second special building to drop is the farm. This building has a 1 franc entry fee and pays out 2 wood, 2 fish, 2 grain, 1 cow, and 1 hide. This was still early enough in the game that 3 wood is a near instant grab... Would you trade a wood for 5 things? I would! And did, a couple of different times. I didn't take a grain offer or a cow offer and got set up to harvest that stuff from the farm. No one else at my table was willing to do so. I don't really understand why. Getting 4 extra things to ship (the grain and cows) for an early action is pretty good and it's a way to get some of the extra wood people desperately crave in the early game. Sure, fish suck, but when they come as an add-on it's fine. (I will also note that in Mike's recap of the event he talks about how he thinks the game is stale and boring because everyone does the same things to win and the special buildings aren't important enough. But I thought this special building was important enough and I do think going to it gave me an early edge that eventually snowballed into a bunch of points.)

The early game is also about setting up to be the person who gets to build the colliery. I did some mental math and worked out that I wasn't going to be able to build the colliery until the town built a building to unlock it, and that Mike was going to get first crack at building after the town did so. He had the resources on hand to build it, so things were looking a little bleak for me. But then he took a build action and spent a bunch of his resources... Even worse for him, he built the building that was blocking the colliery. I was now the one in line to get the colliery, and super early too. I did, and I used it a ton while the other players often skipped their chances to use it.

From that point it was pretty much all over. I got all of the things and scored all of the points. I think it was my highest score ever, well over 300. The third player at the table commented on how her 186ish point total was also her highest score ever. I feel like that's what happens when the table essentially colludes to power the colliery out fast. The early colliery action combined with the early farm meant I really wasn't taking offers at the rate you'd normally expect in a game. This let all the offers build up more for everyone which means all the scores are going to go up. The more actions the table takes to earn resources without taking an offer the higher the scores should go. The game was also super fast and was done in under 2 hours. I don't know how much of that was the table giving up from my early lead and just going through the motions? Or how much of it was us all just being naturally fast players?

I considered going to play something like Galaxy Trucker at noon but decided I'd rather tool around a bit on the internet and then go eat. I ended up bumping into Sceadeau and Elaine and baby and we headed off to Red Robin. It was here while Sceadeau was talking to the waitress about sides that I discovered that even though the steamed carrots were taken off of the menu they still exist in the restaurant and I could totally get some instead of the random fruit salad. Hurray!

4 o'clock came around and it was time for two different semifinals. I could play Le Havre, my team game, or I could play Galaxy Trucker. Had to be my team game! I hope next year these games end up scheduled at times that don't conflict with each other so I can do both. It was now that I really figured out just how important it was that I played that second heat. They used a wonky formula to break ties and I'm not sure how relevant it was? It had something to do with percentage of points at the table or something but my numbers were pretty low. I feel like beating Nick Vayn in the first heat should have been worth more than crushing people who really didn't know what they were doing like Pounder did in his heat but his tiebreaker ended up way higher than mine. I'm not sure if there would have been a better way to do it? Randomly amongst people who didn't play a second heat maybe? Really encourage everyone to play twice... Anyway, I ended up being the only double winner so I was the #1 seed and would get to be starting player in every game. Unfortunately for me Daniel E ended up as the #6 seed because he didn't play (and win) a second heat. This meant that we were, once again, matched up in the semifinals. Along with the #7 seed who was not nearly as experienced with the game as we were. As another advantage of the seeding system it was mandated that we sat in order 1-6-7 which meant random guy would be playing immediately before me. Hurray!

I started by taking 3 wood and buying the 4 cost building firm. Daniel took dollars and didn't buy anything. (I figured he was probably saving up to buy a boat.) 3rd player took a wheat. I built the marketplace on my turn. Then the 3rd guy took 3 clay on Daniel's turn. Daniel cracked a sarcastic joke about how he was playing the game. 3rd guy responded by putting the 3 clay in front of Daniel instead of back on the board. This prompted another sarcastic remark about how Daniel might want to make his own moves and then he made a big show of going into the tank to consider all the possible options. Parsing the order of the buildings for colliery plays, that sort of thing. He eventually settled on taking the 3 clay. 3rd guy took some wood and then I went to the marketplace for clay, iron, coal. Daniel immediately remarked that he'd made a mistake by taking the clay and he'd thrown away the game due to rust. 3rd guy would have nothing of it, thinking my position was not very good and saying things about how he routinely crushes people who vendor the sawmill for a boat. This seemed like a ridiculously statement for him to make, especially since he'd commented when he sat down about how he only plays 4 player games and has never played with only 3. He'd asked us for the differences and we'd honestly told him the important stuff. I guess he decided we had to be wrong since I was making a play for the important stuff and he thought I was making a mistake.

To make a long story short... I was not making a mistake. I don't know that I was guaranteed to win after turn 2 or anything but I'd definitely put my odds much higher than those of the other players. And I did end up winning by a pretty significant margin, again scoring over 300 points and winning by 50 or 60 over Daniel and 150 over the 3rd guy.

The game wasn't terribly interesting after the opening. Daniel played very slowly which is a difference from previous years but I think he was trying to find a line of play to dig himself out of the early hole he was in from my early strength. I got the colliery when Daniel parsed out that I was guaranteed to get it and gave up on trying to block my build of it. He instead went to it once and squatted for a long time. He finally moved, told the 3rd guy it was his turn to go in and squat, and that's what the 3rd guy tried to do. Unfortunately for them the next special building was the harbour watch I'd carefully preserved on top of the deck. Daniel said he considered vendoring one of his buildings solely to go to my marketplace to check for a dangerous building because I'd checked to see who got first crack to buy this one. But it wasn't me who had first crack, and I would have first crack next time, so it was entirely possible I'd done it in order to bury something away from 3rd guy. And it would have been costly to give up on his other action and lose a building for a couple goods and some information. It was probably only right solely when the top building was precisely harbour watch. But it was, and it meant the plan of squat in the colliery was thrown out the window. Even worse, 3rd guy didn't understand how powerful the building was and failed to buy it. I did. Which meant I could use my own colliery for 1 franc any time I wasn't personally the one inside. Daniel also made use of the harbour watch to kick me out of the colliery every now and then. Third guy refused to do so. Either because he didn't want to give me stuff or more likely because he simply didn't understand what was going on. He also flat our refused to build a boat. He sat around making food in order to feed himself every round instead of getting a boat. It was baffling. I even reminded him at one point that I had a modernized wharf since he had a lot of iron in front of him but he didn't care. He'd rather pay Daniel a franc to smoke 6 more fish or to slaughter more cows. I actually thought during the game that he was flat out trying to kingmake Daniel because of how much he refused to take actions that were good for him if they would give me anything. Maybe to prove Daniel wrong with his early game assertion that I'd already won? But in retrospect he might just have been _really_ bad. I can't figure out any other reason to refuse to build boats. No boats means no shipping. What are you doing to score points if you never ship? Build stuff I guess, but he wasn't building a lot of things. He was spending all his time feeding himself!

We were really close to running out of time and played the last turns in a frenzy since we all had somewhere else to be. We barely finished in time and Daniel and I took off for the Agricola room. I was a little slower since I stuck around to haggle over moving the finals of Le Havre first. We decided not to move it since I wanted to play Agricola and the only time the other guy wanted was during it.

I showed up to Agricola, pulled a card, and was again assigned to a table with Bill Crenshaw. We were the only two people at said table. I think they'd overestimated how many people were going to show up for the round and ended up starting too many tables. They started consolidating tables on a whim and then decided to just break my table of 2 down and stick us into 5 player games. Bill was uninterested in playing a 5 player game and I was more concerned with the way the tables were being chosen for getting an extra person. Any table that had started fast was getting exempt, which seemed to be rewarding faster people or people who showed up extra early to the detriment of those who'd started later. While a small debate was breaking out over this between the GM and the assistant GM a 3rd guy showed up. I'd have thought that would mean we'd play a 3 player game but now they wanted to form up 3 games of 5. But they'd been convinced it should be random amongst all tables so they were going to force some games to restart with us added in unless a 4th for our table showed up right that instant. Elaine happened to be standing around and while she didn't really want to play she decided to run it in order to make people happy. Yay Elaine!

I opened this draft with guildmaster once again, but this time I was passed charcoal burner second. I'll say straight up I was pretty bad at Agricola until very recently, but one thing I knew back in the day was that charcoal burner was very good. He's guaranteed to be 4 wood and 4 food at the very least and can often be even more than that if people upgrade to cooking hearths. It turns out Sceadeau thinks he's in the top 3 non-banned cards so getting passed him either means righty opened a ridiculous pack or he's bad. I ended up also drafting a slaughterman so I was all set up to get free food from my other players all game long. My minors opened with a house goat which I've long thought to be the best minor. More completely free food and a point to boot on a card you can use to start player early. Run it! My opening pack had a two card combo (ladder and chicken coop I think) and I made a note to take one of those on the wheel if the other was gone to keep them out of the same person's hands. We'd drafted a bunch of cards when Bill stopped the draft to ask righty about what he was doing... Righty had already drafted 5 cards and was looking at a pack containing 3 more. In a draft where you're supposed to get 7 cards. We really didn't know what had happened. Did he take two cards from one pack? Did he somehow pick up multiple packs at once and combine them weirdly? Everyone's draft ended up screwed up and we didn't have a good solution. Rather than call the GM we tried a quick fix Bill suggested which didn't work and resulted in needing another quick fix. Eventually we all got 7 cards and since we were pretty sure the first few picks were fine we were probably good to go... Halfway through the game Bill played chicken coop after already playing ladder and alarm bells went off in my head. I hadn't seen either of those cards back! How did he get both of them? Maybe Bill had cheated? Far more likely righty had taken one of them and then put it back into a different pack somehow. The whole thing was screwed up. Whatever, it wasn't that good of a combo anyway, just keep running it.

Especially since as badly as righty had screwed up the draft... He'd screwed up the play even more. At one point he tried to take 3 clay when there was a 4 clay space on the board. We let him take that back. Later he tried to plow with plow and sow available. We let him take that back. Finally he set up to reno and fenced on turn 14. Then he renoed on 13 and took wood on 14, letting me fence. He couldn't reno anymore because he was stone and he couldn't fence because I took the space. We didn't let him take that one back since it wasn't a strictly wrong choice. Wrong in retrospect once he knows I'm taking fences but if he was getting to fence later he wanted the extra wood. I'm sure he made lots of other misplays along the way which set me up, too.

I ended up winning by a fair margin, but losing fences probably knocks me to second. Since his major screwup should have still let me build fences I didn't lose any sleep over it. He was guaranteed reno+fences so I was safe to snag fences in 14 regardless.

I could have played pro golf but I decided I didn't really want to learn it what with having a final for my team game at 9am the next morning. I tried to go to bed early but Pounder ruined it for me by making me count my calories from the day and telling me I was too hungry and had to go to Waffle House at 11. Him telling me that made me hungry so I had to get out of bed and go eat more pork chops. I'm pretty sure he did it because he was also in the Le Havre finals and was trying to sabotage my sleeping plans! And not at all because I actually needed to eat...

2014 WBC: Day 5

Wednesday marks the first real full day at WBC. Robb was GMing Innovation at 9am and Pounder chose it as his team game so they were both going to be there. Having now beaten two of my old team at their team games I had to come on down and try to take Pounder out at his. It was held in a particularly cold room and made me very sad. I almost went back to the hotel room to get my warm blanket. I'm strongly considering tracking down a Snuggie for next year! It's like the Host took our complaints about no AC too far and went way overboard to screw us. Or just to screw me? Other people were complaining about the cold but it didn't seem like anyone was as bothered as I was. I miss being warm.

Anyway, Innovation at 9am. I was matched up with a nice young woman who is working on her phd. My Coke bottle for the morning told me to share it with Jess and my opponent's name was Jessica. Close enough? Maybe if it was later in the day, but at 9am off of not much sleep that Coke was mine and mine alone. Take your sharing advice elsewhere, bottle of Coke! The game itself featured me drawing Mathematics early on and running it over and over. I never flipped up another blue card until I was all the way up to the 10s. I was behind in score so I couldn't just drain the 10s, but I activated Satellites over and over until I pulled something that put out more 10s that happened to be Self Service or something that said I won. Jessica was stuck back in the 4s. I didn't see any of her cards as being capable of stealing my stuff so I'm not sure what outs she might have had. I don't play much Innovation but I have played a fair number of times online and I generally found that a full Math ramp was just game winning and it sure seemed to be this game.

Round 2 had been blanked out of my mind. I assume I lost the brain cells storing that information due to frostbite. I don't remember how we got to the end game situation but I know I ended up with both Software and Robotics in play and had to draw, meld, and activate another 10. If it was AI then I was going to lose the same way Sceadeau lost in the mulligan round. Fortunately it was The Internet instead which instantly won me the game instead of instantly losing me the game. Hurray!

I won round 3 as well, but really don't remember it. At some point Pounder got a bye (as he should since he was last year's winner) but for round 4 we were down to 5 people and now Robb wanted to switch to using an eliminator instead of using byes. Eliminators instead of byes is preferred, but you're supposed to use them the whole time if you use them at all. I voiced this concern but seemed to be the only one with a problem so off we went. I believe every eliminator used ended up losing so it was a lot like awarding byes anyway? Assuming no one got a second one? I ended up losing in the round of 5 against another competitor so it didn't much matter to me!

I am very frustrated about that loss because I was in such a dominating position and had a play to win but missed it. I got out to 5 early achievements but then my opponent's better board finally took over and he was able to start scoring a bunch of special achievements and was about to score the 6 and put things really out of reach. I had a chance to win by running coal and flipping up a card of any of 3 colours. (I had 30+ points but needed a top card that was a 6 to achieve the 6 and win. I had 3 piles with exactly 2 cards in them and the 5 pile was empty so if I pull one of those colours I win. I didn't. I then had to just draw a 6 and hope to move on somehow. The 6 was industrialization which let me start splaying my limited number of cards. I then set up to get monument by tucking 6 cards in a turn but my opponent using lighting twice the turn before I could do it. He was up to 5 achievements and was easily going to get the 8 on his turn (he had a 8 in hand) and win. I was 3 clocks from an achievement and decided to try a random 'meld a card' action in the hopes of getting them. What I should have done is activated industrialization to tuck 3 cards and hope the 3 cards I tucked had clocks on them. This at least had a chance to work out, because I'd seen a bunch of the 8s and knew some clocks were left. My blue wasn't splayed but I had metric system in play and could have easily splayed it as my second action if I'd hit both blue 8s. It turned out they were both on top of the 8 pile and it would have been the win if I'd tried it. But because I tried the other thing first it didn't work and I lost. *sigh*

I hate losing on my own mistakes so I went back to the room to cool down. I think I stayed there until 3 when I left for Agricola. I've been playing a few games online recently with Sceadeau letting me know how I'm terrible so I've been getting better but I'm certainly not good at the game. I ended up at a table with Bill Crenshaw and a couple of people I didn't recognize. I opened the draft with guildmaster, got a second pick basketmaker (which Sceadeau later told me I likely could have wheeled 6th since he's awful for anyone without a guildmaster) and then a third pick social climber. This gave me a course of action to take since as long as I set up to renovate early and build majors I'd get 6 free stone, 4 free wood, 4 free clay, and 6 free reed from 3 occupations. Felt good! Bill ended up building the basketmaker's workshop on me but I got the other two guild buildings and all the renos fairly early. I built a lot of early fences (I think I used sawhorse to get 15 out for 10 wood) and ended up with a ludicrous number of animals. Milking stool and cowherd combined to let me get 8 cows for 4 bonus points. I thought I'd done really well.

It turns out the two guys I didn't recognize were doing the opposite of well and Bill was reaping the rewards better than I was? Or maybe equivalently to me. He also ended up with lots of animals and a stone house and all the things. He won by 2 points, and I had a completely wasted action in the middle where I built the punner after Bill had used his 2-shot plow once and then conspired to block him from using it a second time. Action and a wood for no game effect makes me sad. What really makes me sad is righty had taken start player that round for no discernible reason that I could see which kept me from playing the punner as an add-on action, and prevented me from playing it before Bill plowed. In retrospect I probably should have just plowed myself? That forces Bill to wait at least a turn on plowing and gives me more time to pun it up. Oh well.

At 6pm I played a heat of Ra Dice because it was in the same room as Agricola and why not? I came tied for second at a table where the winner spent the whole game ragging on how I was going to win by pointing at my monuments and making up ludicrous numbers for how many points they were going to be worth. It left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, but whatever. It was short at least!

At 8pm I decided to give Galaxy Trucker a spin. Sceadeau and Duncan were both talking about how great the first heat had been so I went to give it a shot. I was put into a 3 player game with a copy of the game that included the first expansion. I was up against last year's 2nd place finisher all the way from Russia (Ashley) and someone I didn't recognize. We decided to play with all the things even though I'd never used some of them before and had to have them explained to me. On top of a normal game we all got a hand of 4 extra events to seed into the event deck one per round. Also before each round (but after seeding an event) we flipped up an extra card that modified the rules of the game. It sure made for extra craziness which is a good thing for Galaxy Trucker. Crazy ho!

The first round had the extra card 'if a laser or meteor doesn't do damage reroll it up to twice' which I took to mean I'd really need to defend my ship well. But it was round 1, so how much defending can you really do? There isn't really space for shields... No open connectors was my primary goal. The event I'd seeded caused two large meteors to attack each ship but instead of rolling they'd hit the two outside ends of your ship. So I knew I had to build lasers on my outside columns. I ended building a pretty mediocre ship since it had nothing battery powered at all (no shields or anything) but I'd included a bunch of batteries on the ship. Also no red cargo space. On the plus side I had lots of guns which worked out pretty well. The random guy at my table was down to 5 pieces on his ship when my event went off... It killed 3 of those! He was eventually lost in open space. Ashley hadn't built guns on the outside ends of her ship so my card blew two of her things up (including some cargo). Woo! My guns were still intact at that point so I escaped unscathed. I ended up scoring fewer points for the round than Ashley did since she had cargo space and I didn't but it was fairly close. The other guy had taken the lawyer card so he didn't lose very much. In retrospect the lawyer had died so I'm pretty sure he shouldn't have been able to use it and should have lost a lot of money.

The second round had the extra card 'you can build engines pointing forwards and backwards and after resolving open space you need to rotate your ship 180 degrees'. I seeded an event that caused people to lose 7 flight days or run a gauntlet of meteors. Before flipping a single tile both Ashley and I looked at 75% of the cards in the round to scout for open space. There was one such card... Which meant we would be flipping at least once and if the remaining 25% had an open space in it we'd die if we didn't build some forward pointing engines. This meant our ships ended up being really awkward looking since we had to have guns and engines pointing both ways. Super awkward for me since I'd seeded an event with a big meteor from the side so I wanted guns on the sides of my ship too. In retrospect I should have put a big priority on getting aliens for my ship since they provide +2 to guns or engines regardless of which way the ship is pointing. I ended up with no aliens at all but lots of guns pointing all sorts of ways. I'd included a bunch of ways to spend batteries this time (some shields and a lot of those guns were double guns) but only 4 or 5 batteries total on the ship. Lots of the cards were attack cards and my batteries were quickly drained holding them off. I kept exactly tying the enemies power and not spending the battery to kill them to conserve batteries but it was for naught. I ended up running out of batteries and then getting into trouble because I couldn't power my guns. On the plus side pushing the enemies down the line ended up hurting both other players too, so that was nice. Someone had seeded a card stealing money for aliens. Clearly they'd thought ahead more than I had! Safe due to no aliens! I think I ended up making the most points this round because I picked up a fair amount of cargo and didn't take too much damage. At one point an event resolved that let the person in the back shoot the person ahead of them and then the person in second shoot the leader. But you could name a bribe to not take the damage... I was in the middle and feel like I played it wrong since I ended up paying to keep bits that later got blown off while Ashley didn't pay my bribe for her bits that later got blown off.

The third round was going to be for all the marbles and had the extra card 'pay a dollar for each crew member at the end of the run' which didn't feel like it was going to hurt all that much but really made me want to put a priority on aliens and luxury cabins for crew instead of regular crew. My event was a battery testing thing where you had to pay a battery for every 2 pieces of your ship that could use batteries or have them blow off your ship. I knew that meant I wanted to limit my battery usage and went with just 2 shields and a shield booster along with a fair number of shields. Not having any way to make large amounts of weapon power or battery power (by skipping all the battery stuff) meant I really, really wanted aliens. I ended up with all 3 aliens and took the manager blue alien to make my other aliens better. I screwed up building my ship (we were using the Enterprise and my first placement made it so I couldn't make a circle for the saucer section) but my ship ended up being really, really good. Some cargo space, some batteries, all the aliens, all the shields, a few engines, and a TON of weapons. The round started off brutally for Ashley as the first couple cards were combat zones where she lost two categories and the other guy lost one. Ashley lost a bunch of bits from laser fire and spent a bunch of batteries. Then some pirates or something came that were going to steal cargo. I was able to exactly tie them so I was fine, but the other two couldn't fight them off and had no cargo to steal so they lost batteries. Then we did something that set me back a day to collect a reward which put Ashley back out in front. More pirates, these ones with guns, and weak enough that I killed them for bucks after they shot her up. She was flat out of batteries by now... Which meant it was prime time for my seeded card to come up. She couldn't pay for any of her things that used batteries since she had none left so all those bits exploded. Since we were using the Enterprise ship and since she'd lost a fair number of pieces already this meant a lot of the load bearing pieces left on her ship were battery related... She lost something like 7 battery related pieces and probably 5 others. Not too long after a meteor swarm took her out for good. And the other guy too, for that matter. I got to play the last 4 or 5 cards by myself.

Final scores were 81-2-(-3). The guy took lawyer twice and used him after he died so I have a feeling the scores probably should have been 81-(-3)-(-40). I don't know that I played super well, and I certainly don't think I played that much better than Ashley did, but she got pummeled early in age 3 and couldn't recover. She also built a ship that lost to my event... But maybe that's by design? If I'm aggressively taking batteries and spurning pieces that don't use batteries then it feels like the pieces left for the other players are likely to cost batteries to use without having extra batteries to go around? So maybe the disaster in the last round was a result of good play after all?

At any rate, I had fun in this game and decided I really wanted to play it again at WBC if I could. But since the semis were at the same time as my team game's semis that wasn't actually going to happen. Maybe next year will be different? I'd like to play more with all the crazy cards...

11pm was Can't Stop (Looking Fabulous) so I put on my watermelon getup (green shirt, pink tie, black pants) and went to roll dice. Andrew had been talking all week about how he was going to prove that Can't Stop is a heavy skill game by winning it. I lost in the first round. So did he. He got one turn. Someone at his table capped the 6s, 7s, and 8s all in one turn thanks to some goading from Andrew. Whatever high skill game. Whatever.

I don't think I'd eaten all day so Waffle House featured Papa Joe's pork chops, meat lovers size. It's a little surprising but Waffle House actually makes a pretty good pork chop. 3 pork chops and some hash browns is a pretty good meal.

2012 WBC Day 3 Summary

Monday featured three events I really wanted to enter. San Juan started at 10 and would go for likely 6-7 hours. A Few Acres of Snow started at 12 and would likely go for 8-10 hours, but I could skip the first 2 hours because of the mulligan round Sunday night. Through The Ages was at 10 and was the third heat. I already had a first and an incredibly close second (lost by 1 point) so ideally I should have been in a good way to make it to the semis already. Unfortunately the posted tiebreakers cared about your third best result instead of how close your second was and they were treating a last place as being better than not playing at all. This meant I would lose to any first-second-showed up combo. I was musing about this last night with Sceadeau and Randy (the GM) and thought that maybe I should just show up and use the honourable withdrawl rule to concede on turn 1 and get a third place. Randy immediately said he'd just give me a third place in the scoring system if I showed up instead of having me screw over a game. I don't think I would have screwed over a game but the fact that I 'should' have done so is a bit of a problem and letting me just get a third is certainly a good solution. Randy said he's going to change the tiebreakers next year to fix this issue by only counting your top two finishes.

I decided I didn't want to risk a Through The Ages game going more than 4 hours and causing me to miss A Few Acres of Snow which looked to be mine for the taking so I ended up showing up at 10 and getting my third place. I ended up being by far the best 1-2-3 record but that was only good enough for 19th place with top 16 advancing. If I'd gotten up to 1-2-2 I would have been the best of those and finished something like 14th and made the semis. Oh well.

What I did end up doing was playing A Few Acres of Snow at 12. The GM let me know that I could play round 1, lose, and still advance because I won the mulligan round the night before. Great! Maybe I can play someone good for a stupidly high bid and figure out what a reasonable bid is going to be. Not to be. My opponent had played once before. He let me have the British for 3 and then proceeded to never use any of the free actions. I did my only British opener (buy rangers, make 6 and buy governor, governor away Pemaquid and St Mary's, make money and buy guns, attack, win) and blew him up.

Round 2 put me up against someone who didn't understand the bidding system and didn't know the game but had been told a rudimentary British strategy. He thought we were bidding victory points instead of bonus actions and was planning on winning by taking Quebec so points wouldn't matter. This is true and is why points aren't the bidding currency. At any rate I ended up accepting a bid of 7 to play the French. After I accepted the bid he let me know that he had another event in 2 hours so he was going to concede just before he won. I think that's sketchy and would rather he knock me out and then drop. The game went about as expected except he screwed up pretty badly by not realizing he could put his ships cards into the fight. Oddly enough he knew he could buy the ships card for 6 and put it into the fight but never realized he could put Norfolk and New Haven in. He did put Boston and New York in and then either had weak draws or misplayed and consistently made 2 or 3 dollars per turn instead of 6. This let me keep up in military power during our Port Royal fight while disking out most of my board. I screwed up by putting Montreal on the fight before settling Fort Frontenac so I couldn't end the game immediately upon termination of the fight in Port Royal. He wanted to concede because he couldn't see a way the fight would end until I pointed out to him that he could put Norfolk on the pile. He promptly won the fight. He also beiseged and won in Halifax (I raided Port Royal away to slow him down from attacking Louisbourg) and managed to settle and disk up Fort Frontenac and Oswego before he won in Halifax. I then conceded the fight in Halifax and won the game on points.

Round 3 had me face off against Alex Henning. I'd been watching her and her brother (other Nick) play in the first round and saw that they'd both played, and won, as the French by going a hardcore disking strategy against people who didn't go hardcore attacking. She let me have the British for 2 and let me know that she'd only played like 4 games total and only as the French but had been told a good strategy by her brother. This let me know what her plan was, but it didn't matter at all. I have a very specific British strategy that I use every game. I used it this game and it worked as expected but it was actually relatively close to her disking out in time to win. The key was that I managed to siege Port Royal and Halifax before she could disk them up which both gave her two dead cards and which forced her to settle an extra two locations in the west before she could use up all of her disks. A close game, but not one any different than the games on Yucata where I win every time as the British.

Round 4 was against Nick Henning's friend and apparently the only person he ever played against before WBC. They're pretty good at games in general and had worked out a strong French strategy but I don't know that they ever used the full hardcore British attack. People kept referring to the British attack plan as the 'Halifax Hammer' because everyone seems to think you should take Halifax first. I ignore Halifax and kill Port Royal and it works just fine, thanks! I believe he let me be the British for 5 this game. He opened the game with a very fast siege of Pemaquid on turn 2. I managed to keep that fit going while I worked to governor away my bad cards and starting buying stuff. I did this by buying my siege artillery early on and throwing it into the fight. After I'd stabilized he ended up buying his siege artillery and throwing it and coureurs de bois into the Pemaquid fight to put me down by 4. I couldn't stop the fight but I could attack Port Royal with my regular infantry and my rangers! He won Pemaquid, I won Port Royal. He couldn't settle since Quebec was in the fight. I could settle and now had Port Royal. I started a quick siege of Louisbourg but hadn't quite realized I was behind in military strength (I lost a regular when Pemaquid resolved but he lost nothing when Port Royal resolved) and ended up losing the fight in Louisbourg. I bought a couple more regulars and went right back in and won this time. From there it was an easy trek to Quebec.

Round 5, the finals, was against Nick Henning himself. He bid me up a little more than the other two did but not by much. I got the British for 6 and pretty much knew he was going to use the same strategy I'd just beaten the previous two rounds. He again sieged Pemaquid on turn 2 but I had a better hand setup to deal with it this time. I had both Norfolk and New Haven on hand! Right into the pile they went! Good-bye mediocre cards! I governored away the really terrible cards and went to work making money. Pemaquid was tied up with 4 strength apiece and I had a fresh regular in hand (my deck at this point being rangers, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and maybe a regular) and he thought I was going to put the regular into Pemaquid to win the fight. Nope! I attacked Port Royal with it instead. I really like this plan since it ties up some of my bad cards and some of his good cards for the rest of the game or until he withdraws from the fight. Every single turn from here on was some combination of make 6 dollars, buy a regular, or put a regular into the Port Royal fight. Nick was doing a good job of ambushing my regulars with his 4 ambush cards but I really don't care. I think it's actually a new positive for the British to lose a regular in an ambush as long as they have a rangers to block and can make 6 a turn. Eventually I won in Port Royal and moved on to Louisbourg. He got me into a tricky position where I was going to lose the fight in Louisbourg unless I put one of my 4 good cards into the fight. I chose to put New York in and bought a ships card instead of a regular which surprised Nick and all the spectators. I then proceeded to keep making 6 a turn using the ships instead of New York and eventually was able to start buying regulars to put into the fight. He'd been working on expanding a little to the west and was trying to use Quebec and intendant to get all his disks into play before I could hit Quebec. Ultimately I won in Louisbourg and reserved my ships card. I actually like buying a ships because a siege of Quebec is hard to set up while digging for Louisbourg but being able to reserver ships (and not locations) lowers the constraints on the specific hand you can build. Louisbourg ended up being the last card in my deck after the reshuffle which was really unfortunate and let Nick get all but 2 of his disks in play before I could start a siege. He'd pulled off a couple ambushes while I was waiting for Louisbourg and I didn't think I had the stuff to take Quebec just yet. Fortunately for me the one starting location he had yet to disk was Trois Rivieres. So I started a siege there instead! I won that fight in relatively short order and settled it. By this point I'd cycled back into the Louisbourg card and launched an attack on Tadoussac. Nick had run out of money ambushing by this point and tried to trader with a bunch of western furs. I pointed out that he couldn't actually use those cards anymore since they had no support from Quebec once he lost the fight in Trois Rivieres. He finished the turn, thought a bit more as I won the fight in Tadoussac, and conceded. I was up on points and he had 2 functional location cards left (Quebec itself and Gaspe) and no real way to actually take actions anymore. Victory!

I'd been worried that there was a degenerate French strategy with a medium bid value which involved cycling into newly bought military cards for a quick win in Boston. I don't think anyone had tested such a thing (i only thought of it in the shower before the event) and I don't feel anyone really used their free actions to the fullest extent (by cycling extra times to force a key reshuffle). The entire event I kept hearing people talking strategy and everyone seemed to think there was an appropriate counter to any strategy and the game was therefore well balanced and there isn't a British problem. I think they're all crazy and maybe after the event people will believe me more? Though I guess really all I proved was that I can beat new players and the Henning strategy so maybe there really is a counter to my plan out there. All I know is no one has ever used it against me.

After the event Pounder thought I should go eat so went to Olive and Jasmin's Asian Bistro. It turns out it shut down in the last year since the doors were locked and the tables removed. Frowns. I ended up wating at Fuddrucker's again. I had a burger this time and it was ok. The bun was terrible so I just ate it with a knife and fork.

After food Pounder and I played two games of Innovation. He won the first one by getting into age 6 while I was still in age 1 thanks to a good combo of cards. I won the second one because Pounder ramped into age 10 while I was still in age 7 but I was able to trade my lowest card in hand for his 2 highest cards (both 10s) and both of those cards had winning clauses which won the game for me. Woo!

The night brought either Ra or Vegas Showdown. I decided I really didn't want to play a thinking game after a day of A Few Acres of Snow so I went to play Ra. I ended up at a table with Alex Henning again. Fortunately for her I'm terrible at Ra so I wasn't going to manhandle her in Ra the way I did in A Few Acres of Snow. The game went like most Ra games do where I call Ra super-aggressively and then lose when I'm forced to buy bad things by people who want to punish me for being aggressive. Round 2 I had the sun combo of 1-2-8 and actually got the best buys I think since the age ended with most people still having suns to go. Ultimately the scores ended up 40-38-36-26-24 with me being the 36 after having lost 5 points for lowest suns. Grr! Alex was the 38 and Dominic from Quebec was the 40.

Open gaming featured a 5 player game of Agricola with Robb, Pounder, Daniel E, and Winton. We borrowed the pimpest of pimped Agricola sets I've ever seen with ludicrous clay meeple things for all the resourced and families. I played the green player whose families was entirely redheads. Woo! I rarely play Agricola and we drafted the cards and I feel like I didn't know what was good or not. I ended up drafting 3 different cards that scored bonus points for eating pigs so I went that route. I managed to get 12 wood onto the basin maker! I ended up coming last thanks to tiebreakers with Robb but since Daniel gave Robb 2 points on the last turn in order to spite Pounder from getting 1 food I'm going to take a moral 4th place.

Off to Waffle House where I had an All-Star. Then sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.

Agricola Tournament Results

I headed down to the Snakes & Lattes Agricola tournament yesterday after work. They ended up playing 4 player games, not 5 player games, which was both good and bad. It was good in that I prefer to play 4 player games, and that the tables they have are dimensioned well for 4 players, and the games are just faster. It was bad in that we had more first round winners and fewer spots in the final.

Yesterday I mentioned that ideally I'd want the games to go fast in order to squeeze an extra round it but it turned out that really wouldn't have been feasible. I'd forgot just how slow some people can be, especially in a more casual setting. My game was the first one finished and the estimation was that there'd be another hour before the slower table would finish up. (I used that time to get a burger from Hero Burger.) S&L runs these tournaments more as a way to have fun and encourage people to show up than they do to actually determine a champion and I completely understand the logic which is why I'm not surprised or disappointed that some games are just way slower than others. But an extension of that is cramming more rounds in can't work.

They ended up with 7 tables with a cut to top 4. The idea was just to advance the top 4 scores which ended up with an interesting dilemna... The first and third best scores came from the same table. Do you advance people with wins first (with total points as tiebreaker) or do you advance people with total points first (with wins as tiebreaker)? In general I think you should advance winners and in this format for Agricola in particular I think you have to advance winners. The order of the actions and the cards dealt to each player are a big deal in terms of total points available at the table.

To makes things more complicated the 4th and 5th best scores were a tie. So if you do include the guy who came 2nd at his table you then need to break that tie in some previously undefined way. (Flip a coin? Play a 5 player final?) They ended up excluding the guy who came 2nd at his table which I think made sense.

I ended up winning my table in a fairly low scoring game. (43-41-23-21) Family growth came up at the last available time and we ate a lot of animals. And by we I mostly mean me. I ended up building up to a size 5 house pretty quickly and got family growth on turns 8, 10, and 11. I ended up scoring a lot of animal points with 8 sheep, 3 boars, and 4 cattle.

43 was the highest winning score when my game ended as we were the first game done, but after 4 games were finished I was in 4th. 53-44-44-43. The last table was the aforementioned table with the best and third best scores so I got bumped out. Oh well. I probably could have squeezed another point out somehow but it would have been easier with a different board setup!

A bunch of people started up second games of Agricola afterwards just for fun but I didn't get a spot in any of those games. Instead I learned a new game with Sara and Duncan. Kingdom Builder from the designer of Dominion. It felt like a game with a low amount of strategy where you mostly just flip up a card and make the 'obvious' choice. Not a terrible game but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who likes to make relevant choices as they play a game. I suppose it might actually be a decent game for older children?

Agricola Tournament

Snakes & Lattes is holding another after work tournament later today and the game of choice is going to be Agricola. This is by far the longest and most complex game they've run a tournament for thus far. (Previous tournaments have been for Dominion, Settlers, Ticket To Ride, Carcassonne, Seven Wonders, King of Tokyo, and Puerto Rico.)

I really like Agricola and will use almost any excuse to play the game so I'm certainly going but I have reservations about the tournament format. Agricola is a long game and it's not going to start until after 6 so there's really not enough time to play 3 games. So there's going to be 2 games, and there's 27 people registered so far. The game plays at most 5 to a table... How do you determine a winner?

You could play two rounds of random pairings and hope to only have one person win two games, but that doesn't seem great. Agricola has a high skill threshold so I would imagine there would be multiple two game winners.

You could pair the winners up against each other in some manner but since there are going to be at least 6 winners how do you divide them up? 3 winners playing 3-player games with two people winning the tournament? 3 winners playing 5-player games with some spoilers with the hopes that exactly one table has a double winner?

Put 5 winners at one table and declare the winner of that game to be the overall winner? Has the advantage that you should get a 'good' final table and an undisputed champion. Has the disadvantage that someone who won their first game actually can't win the tournament.

How would you even pick the 5 who advance? Highest score? Largest margin of victory? Largest percentage of second place's score? Largest percentage of the points at your table? None of those options are very good in Agricola since the games play out very differently based on the cards dealt to each player.

Highest score in particular has problems since a game with a lot of food generating cards rates to eat fewer animals/vegetables and therefore should just have more points scored in it than a game where people get most of their food by eating points. It's the same sort of problem that Dominion has with comparing scores between games.

That said, I don't know what I'd do if I was making the decision. (And I don't currently know what decision has been made!) Ideally I'd want to have the games go really fast so there'd be time to play a third game for the 'top five' after two preliminary games with some non-perfect but reasonable way of breaking ties to determine the top five. Possibly you could fix the cards for each seat of the first game to try to deal with the variation from cards and then use largest percentage of points at your table to determine the finalists.

I wouldn't go with a plan that didn't result in a final table. One of the things I like about board game tournaments is the (generally) high quality play that exists at that final game. It's one of the reasons I think the World Boardgaming Championships is so awesome and why the Great Canadian Board Game Blitz is, while fun, not as awesome. I knew when I walked away with 3rd place in Le Havre that I'd gone up against the best and legitimately didn't deserve to win. This year when I came 3rd at the GCBGB (both the Toronto one and the Fan eXpo one) I didn't play a single game against the people ahead of me. Was I better that day than they were? I don't know! I didn't get the opportunity to find out.

At any rate I enjoy playing Agricola so I'm going to go and have fun building an awesome farm.

WBC 2010 Days 7, 8, and 9 Summaries

A little late, but I came down with something towards the end of the week and into my first week back in Toronto and wasn't really up to doing much of anything but lying around and sleeping or watching BSG. At any rate, brief summary time!

Friday

Le Havre Finals - You may note from my initial schedule plan that the Le Havre finals were Saturday morning and I was slated to play Stone Age in this slot. Well, it turned out that the schedule online and posted at the door to the room said Saturday but the schedule in the program said Friday. Thankfully I double checked with the GM after I noticed the discrepancy or I'd have shown up very confused Saturday morning.

The game itself was a 4-player game, featuring two Dans and two Nicks. I got off to what I felt was a pretty good early start, buying the marketplace and the cheap building firm. I made 12 bricks in the midgame and was able to use the first special building to convert bread + grain into a bunch of money to buy/build the coilery and the cokery. I also had the wharf (vendored at one point though to kick someone out so I could build a boat) and used the 12 brick to build a lot of good buildings. I decided to use my iron with the bricks to build the buildings instead of building iron ships with it like I normally do and it ended up costing me big time.

The special building came out that lets you turn 1 iron and 15 energy into 2 steel, which both Nick H and Dan E used to build the first two steel ships. I was too busy futzing around with buildings to get involved and it cost me. I only had a wooden ship so I needed a ton of food each turn, and I'd turned my bread and grain into bucks earlier. As such I had to slaughter my cows and eat them, which goes against my general game plan which is to ship them to Spain. I didn't have any boats though, so it wasn't like I had anything to ship them on anyway...

The game came to an unexpectedly quick end after that. I spent the last few turns robbing the local court and ended up with all my loans paid off and a lot of good buildings. I had the storehouse so I didn't need to throw stuff over the bridge or try to ship a lot on my useless wooden boat, though I think I did ship coke at some point.

I ended up finishing third after the two guys who built early steel ships. (Dan E won the only plaque as it was a trial event.) They also completely avoided loans, though I think my loan plan would have been good enough if I'd not wasted all my iron on buildings and instead had actually built ships. Taking loans is good because it lets you avoid feeling like you need to eat your cows, but you do need ships eventually so you don't eat your cows later on anyway.

In retrospect I think part of the problem I had was how fast the game progressed because it was a 4 player game. Both my heat and my semi-final were 3 player games and they play a lot differently. (For one thing, you get 43 actions in a 3 player game and 36 in a 4 player game.) I had played a 4 player game earlier in the week in open gaming with Dan E, Robb, and Pounder and got blown out of that one too. I think I need to play more 4ers going forward to try to get a handle on the game.

I was a little bummed out about losing, but I'd clearly screwed up and hadn't played nearly as much as my opponents so it wasn't much of a surprise. We were hoping to get done in 2 hours so people could go play Tikal but that didn't work out, so I had time to burn. I think we ended up going to eat at Applebee's. Afterwards Robb jumped out of the car to play Titan while we looked for a parking spot and took Pounder's badge with him. This resulted in Pounder and I spending the next hour looking for the badge by calling the restaurant and going to all the lost and founds and tearing the room apart. On our way out to the car to search it again we stopped by the Titan room and found Robb sitting there with two badges... If only we had cell phones that worked in the US.

Alhambra - This is a game that came out on BSW way back when we were trying to build a town and my friend Josh took a real liking to it. I couldn't explain why but I really disliked the game then. A few months ago Duncan brought it over to a games day at my place and we played it and I ended up winning and kinda enjoyed it. I played again at the GCBGB event last month and won again. I wouldn't say I really like the game but I don't dislike it anymore, I seem to be ok at the game, and I had nothing else to do. So, I went and played.

My plan in Alhambra is to aggressively buy the two cheap building colours because there are fewer of them. I gladly overpay by a lot to get them since I can lock in guaranteed points if I get just 3 of them and even with overpaying and skipping a money draw they're comparable to the 'best' building tiles cost-wise. Less payoff, but less competition. After buying those I can backfill walls or another colour that I think I can compete in. That's what I did in the heat and squeaked out a close win. I ended up drawing the money that ended ages 1 and 2 I think, which put the hurt on the guy on me left who didn't have a building during the first scoring turn. He almost beat me despite that, so he probably wins if I'm a little less lucky.

Winning put me into the Alhambra semis, which were going to conflict with Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings also conflicted with the Factory Manager semis, and the Agricola semis, and the Race for the Galaxy semis... So I decided to skip it and play Alhambra again.

My Alhambra semi had me at a table with 3 elder ladies and a young Asian guy. Early game I had the choice to buy the second purple building at a huge overpayment (15 for a 9 I think; with the lost money grab I'd be paying more than twice 'market' value for it) or I could pass on it. The guy had the first purple building and had picked up the right amount of money to buy it on his turn for exact cost. The thought went through my head that I should buy it because I was really in a 2 player game and it was worth overpaying by that much to keep it out of his hands. I decided not to, and it definitely turned out to be the wrong choice. He ended up winning by a large margin with me coming very solidly second. All three of the women ended up buying buildings they couldn't place and on a couple occasions bought buildings that were valueless. Not maliciously by any stretch, they were just buying things that they could buy even if it didn't contribute to their 'winning the gameness'.

The game certainly plays out a lot differently if I'd bought the second purple building so I can't say for sure that I'd have won if I'd bought it, but I can definitely say in retrospect that failing to do so did cost me the game. The guy who won played very well the whole game so it would have been tight I think.


I now had a decision to make. Factory Manager is scheduled to last 2 hours. The Agricola semi was 1 hour after the Factory Manager semi. The final was the next day, so winning wouldn't create a conflict. My heat game was done in under an hour, so it's certainly possible to play in that length of time, but my heat game was also the fastest one and every other game took longer than an hour. I'd only played Factory Manager twice and I thought I had a good handle on the strategy and could compete, but I decided not to risk that I'd end up in a slow game.

Just before Agricola started I popped into the Factory Manager room to check on the progress of the games. It turned out they only had 9 people and played 3 3-player games which should be faster than 4-player games. One of the games was almost done but the other two weren't even halfway done. So, probably a good idea to have skipped it, though in retrospect my odds of winning it were likely higher than Agricola.

Agricola semis - Pounder and I both had 2 wins so we were in the top 16. Robb had a win and a second place and found himself in 17th place. One person missing the semis and he was in. We ended up waiting around for a bit to give the people playing the Goa finals a chance to show up... Basically until all copies of the game were set up around the room. Agricola has a fair bit of set-up time, and everyone made it in just in time. I'm pretty sure with that extra little buffer I had a decent chance of getting a Factory Manager game in before it started... Oh well.

At any rate, I was at a table with Randy Buehler (of Magic fame) and two guys I didn't recognize who both seemed like solid players. This round used the K deck and was a draft. (Occupations then improvements both in clockwise order.) I've played K deck maybe twice ever and I've never drafted before. Randy, who was on my right, said he'd never drafted before either, but maybe he was just playing mind games? The guy on my left made a comment at some point about how he plays a lot online and had done tons of drafts.

Before the round the 'experts' at the game were complaining about how there are three 'banned' cards that are overpowered and removed from games with sensible players but were in the decks here. These cards are the lover - occupation that costs 4 extra food but gives you a family growth even without room, the wet nurse - occupation that lets you pay 1 food to get a free family growth when you build a room, and the reed hut - improvement that costs 4 reed that comes with a free family member that you can use immediately but isn't worth the 3 points. My table had all three, as I opened wet nurse, Randy got the reed hut and the guy across from me got the lover. Guy on my left didn't get any of them and whined all game about how he had to play against all the 'broken' cards.

Lefty was starting player and his first action was to play an occupation which allowed him to pay 3 food to play an occupation whenever anyone else did (2 food for the last 3). He picked up some food on his second action (I think) and then played another occupation on his first turn next round which let him play his occupations at random but he got 3 food before paying costs if he did. He then played a minor improvement which gave him 3 food before paying the costs of an occupation. He then proceeded to net 18 food and all 5 of his remaining occupations as the rest of us played out a couple occupations each. As soon as he got all 3 cards in play Randy and I rolled our eyes at his complaints about having to face the 'broken' cards since it was very clear to us that he'd already won the game.

A lot of occupations have the problem that they're just not worth the action and the food to get them into play. When they cost no actions and gain you 4 food they're pretty awesome. The three of us may have gotten one 'extra' guy early game but I'm not sure an extra guy on turn 5 is even worth 18 food total over the course of the game. (He gets to take 9 actions but costs you 10 food. Is 9 actions better than 28 food? (Also, all the 'broken' cards have pretty substantial costs. Wet nurse is the cheapest by far, but I still paid 3 food and an action to get the guy. Lover costs you 6 food and an action. Reed hut costs you half an action, a wood, and 4 reed, which is a big deal especially early game when 2 reed is a first pick.)

A further thing to consider with all these 'broken' cards in play is the demand for the family growth space goes way, way down. Lover boy used it to get his 3rd dude, so he couldn't take family growth until he'd built two more rooms. I never wanted it. Reed hut guy still wants it, but he blew his first 4 reed on the hut so he was going to be way behind on building rooms. As a result, the 4th player gets a huge advantage of basically uncontested family growths all game long.

At any rate, the first two actions my free dude from the wet nurse took were day labourer for 2 food each. Not great. Maybe I should have gone for a fireplace and tried to scoop sheep or something, but that likely delays my wet nursing for a couple turns anyway, and I had a long term food plan. I'd drafted the slaughterman, the house goat, the weaver, the loom, and the milking stool. So I got a food each harvest, a food each round, a food every time someone killed animals, plus food for keeping sheep and cows around. Pretty sweet, but it took a lot of wood to build enough fences to get it up and running and that cut back on abusing the wet nurse. Eventually I got a second use out of the wet nurse and got an early family growth without room to max my family.

All the free food in our game meant we ate a comparably lower number of animals and vegetables which meant our scores were pretty high. I scored 47 which was good for a solid second place, but lefty scored 60 which is a pretty absurd Agricola score.

At one point during the game we had a spectator watching our game and after lefty took a 3 wood square he asked him why he didn't take the 4 wood instead. The answer was that the 4 wood was in fact 4 clay, but I took exception to the question being asked at all. The Agricola semis are not a C class event and the spectator was not the GM, so he had no business giving strategy advice and I asked him not to do so again. A few turns later a different spectator popped by and pointed out that lefty had just bought the well but didn't pay the resources. Lefty paid and then made a comment about how I was going to yell about interfering with the game again.

I then had to stress that there's a difference between enforcing game state and offering strategy advice. In Magic what you'd do is go and get a judge when you thought you saw an inconsistent game state and have them check in just in case you were wrong and it was just an option they chose not to take and by asking about it you'd be giving strategy advice. (When you do X, draw a card VS when you do X, you may draw a card. In the first you have to draw the card and are cheating if you don't. In the second you're allowed to not draw a card and it's just fine if you don't. In both cases you probably should draw the card, but an outside force should prompt you in the first case and should not in the second.) WBC doesn't have nearly the judge manpower that large Magic events do so that's not really an option here. (Especially since the Agricola GM decided to leave the room to rest after Advanced Civ and therefore couldn't be called over for minor things.)

At any rate, he paid for his well and we moved along, and I think he had a better understanding of why I didn't like the first question. The game could have devolved into a tense affair at this point but it didn't and for the most part it felt like the game relaxed a bit. Maybe that was because it was clear the game was over though...


Randy took a bit of time to make a few decisions but despite that we finished the game rather quickly in just under 2 hours and were easily the first table done. Randy and I both had other events starting so we bid adieu to our opponents and ran to try to catch them. I felt a little bad about not helping to clean up fully after the game but it turned out they used that set for the finals immediately afterward anyway and I'm actually a little annoyed when people 'help' clean up my games. I'm a little obsessive compulsive and I have certain ways I like things put away, even if it's "throw everything in the box" like I do with Vegas Showdown. (As an aside, I got some really strange looks when I put Vegas Showdown away like that a couple years ago.)

Randy mentioned after the game that he recognized me from Magic, which surprised me. Woo!

Race for the Galaxy semis - I got to the room a little after the start time, but they were still milling around and I had plenty of time to get signed in. They ended up having 33 people show up, so they ran a quarterfinal round first. They ran 9 tables (6 4's and 3 3's) leading to 3 3 player semis and a 3 player final. I got randomly assigned to one of the 3 player games, with an opponent who was around 11. I proceeded to pick up 5 of the 6 goals and ran away with a large score to two small scores, which put me into the actual semis.

Once there I was paired up with someone I didn't recognize and David Platnick. Platnick is a good guy and an excellent game player who I've encountered several times at WBC over the years. (He beat me in the Notre Dame finals, I beat him in Agricola this year and a Puerto Rico quarterfinals that I can recall.) His first 4 cards were a blue world, a brown world, a green world, and diversified economy. He then started alternating between produce and consume-x2. I tried to end the game as soon as I could but he got to ship one too many times for me. I didn't end up with a single way to ship goods which was my downfall in this game I think. At one point early game I had the choice between settling a 2 cost blue world that drew me a card when it got a good on it and a 2 cost blue world that let me ship for 1 VP. There was a produce called that turn and I went for the immediate card (and Platnick didn't have diversified economy out yet so I didn't know the game was going to be constant producing) but didn't end up with a way to ship after that. The game was very close, I only lost by 4 or 5 points, which may have been enough with the one planet swap. (Though I do end up down a card in that case, so maybe I can't do the rest of what I did...)

At any rate, I can look back and find a mistake I made and Platnick played well so I can't complain about the outcome. Disappointing for sure, but understandable. I don't know how they did 4-6 seeding but since I got second in my game I hope I got one of those spots.

Playing two rounds of Race meant I missed the Wits & Wagers event. Pounder was in the Agricola semis and Robb was passed out so we didn't really have a team anyway. I think Rich Atwater was expecting us to go, which sucked that we abandoned him. 8(

Liar's Dice - I was 'supposed' to be playing the Vegas Showdown finals in this time slot but we all know how that worked out... So I got to take my swing at being the LIAR'S DICE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! I showed up fairly early and actually found a table before they started unlike previous years. This meant I got to sit around for 15 minutes in a room full of bored gamers, many of whom had been drinking, all of whom had a cup with 5 dice in it. To say there was a bit of a din would be a mild understatement. The room was pretty synchronized, keeping a pretty steady beat with cup shakes. It was a little freaky. Eventually we got ready to start, but first the GM embarrassed a nice lady by getting the whole room (240ish people?) to sing her happy birthday. Then we were off!

My table featured, clockwise from myself, a teenage boy, a crazy guy from Japan, a teenage girl, her boyfriend, and an older man who I believe had been drinking. I knew the crazy Japanese guy from Titan tournaments of years past. The game got into a pretty good rhythm... The man on my right would make some ludicrously low bid like 2-5s. I'd bump it up to around expected value given my roll and the outstanding dice, say 9-4s. The kid to my left would up my bid by one. Then the Japanese guy would slam the die down in a jump shift and stare at the teen to his left. TWELVE SIX! It was awesome! He understood how the game was played! (I may have earned the Nick 'Two-Dice' Page with a similar strategy.) He said it with a lot of confidence and I guess he really convinced the girl on his left because she'd raised his bid by 1. Her boyfriend would then look at her like she was crazy and challenge. The first time she lost 4 dice, the second time she got knocked out.

I eventually lost a die to an exacta bid elsewhere at the table, but managed to get it down to 4-1-1. I was the 4, with the Japanese guy and the teenage boyfriend still alive as the 1s. I then got flustered by a 2 star bid on my right. I had a star... Do I challenge? Raise to 3 stars? Or do I bid 4 of something I have? If you assume a completely random dice split, and that Japanese guy will challenge no matter what he has then I have the following outcomes (out of 36 options):

8 - lose 1 die regardless

2 - lose 1 die if I challenge or bid stars

1 - lose 1 die if I challenge

16 - lose 2 dice if I bid anything

8 - lose 2 dice if I bid stars, lose 1 die if I bid 4s

1 - lose 2 dice if I bid stars

Bidding stars is strictly worse than bidding 4s, so I should exclude that option, simplifying the table to:

8 - lose 1 die regardless

3 - lose 1 die if I challenge

16 - lose 2 dice if I bid

8 - lose 1 die if I bid

1 - win regardless

From a strictly random standpoint, I should challenge. I lose 11/36th of a die instead of 40/36th of a die. But it's not completely random. Japanese guy's die is random, but the guy who bid looked at his die before choosing to jump to 2 stars. So, either he has a star and made a reasonable bid or he doesn't and made a risky bid (but one that put me in a tough spot, to be fair). The tables for each possibility are:

HAS STAR (out of 6)

4 - lose 1 die regardless

2 - lose 1 die if I challenge

HAS NO STAR (out of 30)

4 - lose 1 die regardless

1 - lose 1 die if I challenge

16 - lose 2 dice if I bid

8 - lose 1 die if I bid

1 - win regardless

So if he has a star, I lose a die if I challenge and 2/3rds of a die if I bid. If he doesn't, I lose 1/6th of a die if I challenge and 22/15ths of a die if I bid. Assuming his odds of making that bid without a star is p, then I lose (1-p)+p/6 if I challenge and 2(1-p)/3 + 22p/15 if I bid. Simplifying:

1-5p/6 VS 2/3+4p/5, which has an equilibrium point at p = 10/49

So, if he makes the bid without a star more than 20% of the time, I should challenge. If he makes that bid without a star less than 20% of the time, I should bid on. This ignores the fact that Japanese guy might somehow overbid me. (If I bid 3-4s and he has a 6, he might bid 3-6s. Remember, I think there are 2 stars after all by not challenging, and I have most of the information, so it might be right.)

At any rate I didn't go through any of that in my head. To be honest, I wasn't really thinking at all. I woke up early with not a lot of sleep and played a quarterfinal, 3 semifinals and a final. And the room was very boisterous, so I just went with it. I had a feeling he had a star and bid on. I got challenged, and lost 2 dice. I then lost another die, and got down to 1-all, but then I turned it on. We somehow blew the Japanese guy away and ended up me against the teen, with his bid first. He opened with 1-star. I didn't have a star, and I now knew he was willing to make such a bid without one. He was capable of putting the pressure on me, so I challenged him... And he had a 2! Woo!

Liar's Dice semifinal - They had 30ish winners who wanted to play on, so they had 6 semifinal tables with between 5 and 6 people at each. I was at a 5 player table, and was very quickly the first one eliminated from the semis. The first bid around had the guy on my right make a big bid of something I had a lot of. I raised him one, showed 3, and rerolled. I got challenged and it turned out the guy to my right had a 3 and 4 4s but bid a ton of 5s. I lost 4 dice I think. The next time around he had 5 of the thing he bid and I challenged him. Oh well.

Robb had woken up by this point so I'm pretty sure we went to Waffle House where I had Papa Joe's pork chops. Then we went back and played Beep Beep! and Kingsburg in open gaming.

It turned out the cleaning staff managed to puncture my air mattress this day, as it was flat as a pancake when we got back. Partially my fault since I brought too big of a mattress by accident and had to really wedge it between the beds (which were bolted to the floor so we couldn't even move them). So, I got to sleep on the floor the last two nights. I guess it didn't much matter, since I slept 15 hours this night.

Saturday

I woke up around 6pm and didn't much feel like playing anything. I think I was starting to get sick. I ended up sleeping through Ra! The Dice Game which made me a little sad, but oh well. 8 o'clock featured the Tigris and Euphrates semis and I figured I should go see if I made it with a win. Turns out some seconds advanced I think just to get the field up to 12. We played 3 4-player games with all the winners and the best second advancing to the final. Best second here is defined by number of extra treasures second needs to be given to end up winning.

My game featured a former champion, a finalist from the previous year, myself, and a guy from Oakville. We chose starting position based on seeding, which resulted in my picking 3rd after seats 1 and 3 were taken. (At WBC they play where the first two players only get 1 action instead of 2 on their first turn to try to balance starting positions more.) I decided to go 4th to get 2 actions on my first turn.

We played nice to start, with everyone making their own little kingdom and collecting a treasure. Despite picking 4th I got an area of the board with 3 treasures on it, and scooped up a second one a turn after my first. This gave me a reasonable lead I think, and I just focused on grabbing my current lowest number by playing tiles. Someone built a monument and I ninjaed my way into it, and then suddenly the game ended. The guy from Oakville connected up and grabbed the third last treasure, ending the game. My score was 5-5-5-4, which seems like a really low score. But my opponents score a 3, a 2, and a 2. Low fighting, near negligible monuments, and a very fast end to the game meant very low scores all around I guess. The guy who ended the game came second, and was 3 treasures behind me.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the much higher scoring games were also closer scoring games. They both needed 2 treasures, so my opponent came 6th overall and didn't make the final table.

Seeding for the finals was the round robin standings with the guy who came second forced to pick last. (Mental note: Play both rounds next year!) Due to how things worked out this meant I got to pick second. First choice chose 3rd, which was what I wanted. Now, do I want to go first with 1 action or last with 2? I won both my games from the 4 spot... So I chose 1st.

I made my first placement in the same area I did in my semifinals, thinking I could try to scoop two fast treasures again. The guy who went third (multi-time past champion, won both his heats) placed on one of the nearby treasures and made a bee-line for the third. Due to getting 2 actions he was going to get there the turn before I was going to, basically blowing me out of the game. (Well, the other 3 were going to get treasures and I wasn't. Maybe not blown out, but certainly disadvantaged.) I didn't have any green tiles at all, so I couldn't even hope to defend a merge. As such, I decided my only hope was to thrash around and make him regret attacking me. I used a disaster tile on his most recently played tile, preventing him from getting the contested treasure the next turn. I also edged closer so I could get it myself on my next turn unless he fought back. On his turn he fought back, edging even closer. By this point I had 5 red tiles in my hand, so on my next turn I paratrooped into his kingdom, blew up his green dude, and collected a treasure. All the while both of our opponents were actually establishing their own positions quite well.

Now, before the game I'd commented on how I really wasn't very good at the game and had never won before WBC. This may have been a mistake, as I think it's what caused him to think he could be aggressive against me for free points. Now, I don't really know the right strategies to win, but I can definitely handle small scale tactics. I think I proved this to him, as on his next turn he connected up our small joint kingdom to the 4th players kingdom, giving me a treasure and several green points in the process. He said this was a peace offering, and that seemed just fine by me. Really, what it meant was out joint kingdom was going to devour 4th player and we were going to split the points doing so. At this point my mindset switched from defend myself to score points for myself. I'm sure he wanted me to switch to score points for our team, but I'm mean and don't see any reason to throw points to someone else if I can avoid it.

Speaking of points, the player not involved in any of the attacking had built up a pretty large kingdom of his own. He had a monument immediately adjacent to his leaders, who were in a nice interleave formation. His black leader had 4 temples beside it, and all of his other leaders had 3. If we were going to break in, we were going to have to spend multiple disasters to do so. None of the 3 of us were willing to go first, though, so we let him run around uncontested.

He wasn't fighting though, so he was 'just' picking up 4 cubes a turn. We needed to have big fights on our side of the board to outscore him, or build our own monuments. My nemesis was really into the fighting and the 4th guy built a monument of his own. Unfortunately for him he messed up and wanted to build the same monument that was already on the board. As such, he had to build a monument missing a colour leader in the kingdom. I went next and dropped that leader in. I also dropped the other colour in because I had 5 red tiles in hand again, allowing me to grab monument points for a turn. No one hit me for a round, so I got them a second time as well. We were down to 3 treasures on board and a near empty bag, when the 4th guy made his move, attacking into my monument and blowing all my stuff off the board. In doing so he disconnected himself from the monument so he didn't get those points. He also connected up treasures, giving my nemesis a bonus treasure and ending the game before my turn, with an empty bag. If he doesn't make that play I should get 1 more turn and score my monument again. Also, my nemesis doesn't get an extra treasure.

Final scores? The guy left alone (Eric Freeman, he who beat me in the Vegas Showdown finals last year) - 7-7-9-10. Me? 7-7-7-8. My nemesis was 3rd but a fair ways back, and the 4th guy was last. One more cube of any colour and I win... So close!

In retrospect my opening move didn't have enough flexibility, allowing early aggression on my green leader when I had no green tiles to defend him. Maybe I should have gone 4th too, so I could see what everyone else wanted to do before I went. Tigris & Euphrates was a legacy event this year, which meant it gets multiple plaques despite not having the attendance to justify being more than a trial last year. In this case, plaques to the top 2, so I didn't come home empty handed this year. It joins my ever growing collection of second places, and this time in a game I don't claim to know a thing about.

The game went long, so I didn't get to play Slapshot. Robb, Pounder and I went back to Waffle House for an end of week celebration. Also, I had eaten Poptarts at 7pm as my only food for the day, so I needed calories. I went for the chocolate chip waffle drenched in strawberry campote. It's as bad as it sounds... But yet somehow good too. (Not like the omelette which was just bad.)

Afterwards we returned to the open gaming room and played a game of World of Warcraft: the Adventure Game. Much shorter than World of Warcraft: the Board Game, but not quite as good I don't think. Pounder then went to bed saying something about having to drive 8 hours the next day. Robb and I had no such things holding us back... One of us needed to stay awake to keep Pounder up but there were two of us this year so we could alternate naps!

Robb started playing a game of Hansa Teutonica while I went back to the room to check email and do some preliminary packing. I came down and watched the game finish, acting as gamemaster since the players were a little out of it. (Counting actions, tracking who's turn it was, praying for chicken dinner, etc...)

That game ended, but Robb and I still didn't want to sleep, so we went to the open gaming room and finally got in a game of TOBOGGANS OF DOOOOOOOOOOOM! Robb ran into a snowman and got stopped and I jumped the SHARK ATTACK! so the game did everything I wanted it to.

Around 6 we stumbled back to the room to sleep. I crashed on the floor again and was quickly sound asleep. I had a nightmare of some kind and woke with a start... I looked at the clock and saw it was almost 11am, which is checkout time. Robb and I assumed Pounder had set the alarm and I guess he hadn't...We quickly started a whirlwind tour of showering and packing and checking out. We managed to get packed and out only a little after 11, which was good enough for the hotel. Pounder had wanted to leave earlier so he wasn't going to drive as late, but it wasn't to be. Probably it was a good thing since he got a couple extra hours sleep in the bargain and he still got home around midnight I think.

WBC 2010 Day 5 Summary

Woke up 'early', played Vegas Showdown at 11, came 3rd. Scores were 50-49-49 and a lot of things conspired against me to cause the loss, though a lot of things went well too.

Ate at Applebees.

Played the Factory Manager heat and got a pretty solid win in. May try to make the semifinals, but it conflicts with Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation so I'm not sure.

Played an Agricola heat. Won a game featuring David Platnick and a couple other people. Platnick ended the game with 7 stone rooms and a half-timbered house but he had a lot of negative points due to not having any fields, grain, vegetables, sheep, or cows. I ended up winning by 5, including a full 4 points for cows of my own. Unfortunately there were 17 games played in this heat alone and top 16 overall advance, so I need to find a way to play another round if I want to make the semis it would seem.

Played Facts in Five. Lost pretty badly but had fun. Managed to get points for randomly guessing that there has been a Pope Steve and a Pope Theodore.

Ate at Cracker Barrel, which ended up being rather amusing. They seated us and it took them 5 minutes to notice we didn't have a server. I think the girl who ended up serving us (Joy) wasn't supposed to and just took pity on us. We ordered and 15 minutes later she came back and told Pounder and I that they were out of our orders and we needed to pick something else. When the new stuff eventually arrived Robb was missing bacon and cheese and dumplings, Pounder was missing apples and coleslaw, and I had extra weird balls. Pounder's iced tea got refilled as water. It was a real comedy of errors. Joy ended up giving us free dessert to go to try to make up for all the issues but I think we were more amused than bothered and it definitely helped that she seemed to care that we were getting randomly screwed. Contrast to the day before at Waffle House where we were randomly screwed and no one noticed or cared.

Played Can't Stop. I got the 12 but got no further. I went last and 2nd player had good turns so I felt I couldn't win unless I went all out. I fell. The table beside mine decided to literally play Can't Stop, only stopping if they'd locked out a column. One guy took it to the very illogical extreme and kept rolling after he'd locked out a column. He had gone from nothing to full 6 and full 8 and was two rolls away from full 7. Probably close to 50 people were gathered around cheering him on. He fell. 8(

Open gamed a game of Beep Beep! and a game of Kingsburg.