I went through my drafted posts list today and found this from last November. I guess I never found a conclusion but I found it interesting upon rereading it so I'm going to try to finish it off... For reference it's talking about a day of board games that took place at Duncan's right after his kitten got spayed.
An interesting situation came up in a game of Puerto Rico on the weekend that I wanted to talk about to go over decision making in general and my dislike for Puerto Rico as a game in particular but the more I thought over the ideas in my head (I have a hard time falling asleep...) the more I decided the whole situation was just a symptom of an entirely different issue worth discussing. I turned to Google to do some background research but couldn't find anyone saying anything about it. I'm thinking it's likely I just don't know what to search for but maybe there's a void here.
What am I talking about? The term I've heard used to describe it is 'Popeing', but Google's definition of that term is not what I'm talking about. (While intriguing it is not the sort of thing I want to see happen with the Puerto Rico players...) It's the act of saying things while playing a game in an attempt to convince your opponents that someone else is winning. The goal is to convince the other players to take actions to restrict that opponent instead of actions to restrict you thereby increasing the odds you'll win the game.
The primary example, to me, is Settlers of Catan.Watch a game of Settlers and wait for someone to roll a 7. If you play with people who are anything like the people I play games with you should immediately hear three people point out the 'obvious' hex on which to place the robber. You'll also notice that none of those three people pointed to a hex adjacent to their own settlements. (And, as a result, the three 'obvious' hexes are at least two and sometimes three distinct hexes.) If you're playing with really aggressive people here they'll even bribe you to take their suggestion. "I'll give you a sheep if you don't hit me." "I won't use my soldier to put it back on your land if you hit Sky." etc...
Why did people pick the hexes they did?
Well, some people just want to increase their own position in an absolute sense and therefore just want you to hit anybody that isn't them. Maybe they're trying to protect the only brick card in their hand and bribing you with extra sheep will further their position. Maybe they desperately need wheat and don't want the robber on their wheat square. Maybe they just don't like getting attacked.
Others will try to work out who's currently leading and want you to hit them to bring them back to the pack. Deny them a card from hand and a good production square and maybe there's time for the rest of you to catch up.
Some will try to figure who's their biggest competition and campaign to hurt them. This is similar to above in terms of the actual pitch but the reasoning behind them is different and it can be hard to distinguish between the two at the table. (Do I want you to hit Sky because if you don't he's going to win or do I want you to hit Sky because if you do I will win... My pitch is the same either way but in the first case you actually may want to hit Sky and in the second you actually probably should hit me.)
Some just bring outside grudges into the game. (Sky drank the last Coke so I want to punish him.)
Maybe someone in your group just wins a lot so you want to hit them so they don't win this time. (Robb is winning! Let's get him!)
Sometimes people even try to look at things objectively from your point of view. Yeah, I'm winning, you really should hit me. More likely if we're preparing for a tournament of some kind but sometimes just the beauty of a perfectly played game is more important than winning by any means.
Personally I like to talk a fair bit during games because I like to learn how to play games better and part of that is finding out why other people are doing what they're doing. If I make a suggestion that I think is right and it gets justifiably shot down then I can use that information to potentially revise what I think is right in the future. I want to win too, and mostly I want to win against optimal opponent play and not because they threw me the game, but I do get sucked into Popeing for the sake of winning sometimes. (Which, admittedly, can make it hard for people to work out my motivations at any given time.) When I make helpful suggestions I do try to point out if it's also very good for me to do it, though with destructive suggestions that's less likely. (For example, at the start of our Le Havre game I mentioned a plan I saw used at WBC that seemed to work ok, but I mentioned it after I had already set up to take advantage of it myself if someone did it. Aidan took that plan but I did point out it was good for me too if he did it, as I got to build the marketplace with wood since he took bucks and didn't buy it.)
The important thing to consider though is what does Popeing actually accomplish? If you're playing with new or impressionable players then often a game will come down to who Popes more. Stay silent in a game of Settlers with 2 new players and a shark and you'll lose practically every time. They'll get lopsided trades and you won't since they'll butt in with helpful advice to torpedo your scams but will succeed in their own scams if you're silent. The robber will live on your land. They'll build to the hexes you want. You'll need some pretty good dice to overcome those sorts of handicaps.
If you're playing a game with experts then it mostly just adds noise and length to the game. Assuming everyone is Popeing non-stop then chances are the optimal move will get iterated over and you just need to find brain time to spend on finding it and filtering out the other comments.
But if you're playing a game with experts and some people Pope and some don't the Popers still get an advantage. Now on your turn you have as options to consider all moves you thought up yourself and all moves that hurt Sky. If Sky isn't Popeing back then sometimes you'll fail to consider the move that hurts me but you'll never fail to consider the move that hurts Sky. This has to put Sky at a disadvantage compared to me unless you're perfect at iterating all your possible moves or vindictively attack the Poper. (And if your goal is winning you're not likely to do that!)
Now, I don't remember all the details of the games last year but I distinctly remember we played a 4 player game of Puerto Rico. Sky and I both got off to an early lead (maybe we bought the harbors?) and immediately started pointing fingers at each other. Duncan looked like he had a decent building strategy going on and Pounder was saying he'd already lost. His position certainly looked pretty bad. But then as the game progressed we stopped considering how our moves would affect Pounder. One particular example involved the trading house having 3 goods in it. Either Sky or myself could have solo-sold something cheap but doing so wasn't going to hurt the other one. So Pounder got to solo-sell coffee. Needless to say, Pounder ended up winning the game handily.
Which is why I don't like playing Puerto Rico very much. The game is all about benefiting from the actions other people take. When Popeing plays a major role in the game everything changes. It turns into a game of convincing the other players to vote you the winner.
Three years ago I won the WBC Puerto Rico tournament. There wasn't any Popeing in any of the games except for the final. All of my elimination games were very close and all came down to one of the players choosing who was going to win on the final turn. My opponents in the quarterfinals and semifinals didn't try to sway the play in their favour, and neither did I. In both cases I remember looking at the opponent and shrugging as we waited for another player to pick the winner. The finals was a little different. There was one instance of Popeing, and it was actually from a player directed at himself. He managed to convince himself that I was winning and that he should take a move that was really bad for himself in order to hurt me. It turns out if he just takes his best play he wins the game! But denying me my best move (and letting me take my second best move) was enough for me to make up the gap.
Two years ago I also played in the PR tournament and came (tied for) last in all my games. I don't think I played particularly worse in those games but the opponents sat down with the advance knowledge that I'd won the year before. I really dislike Popeing with strangers so I once again didn't take part but the other players were all over making sure I couldn't do anything. One game I started off well with an early coffee and the other players conspired to give another player the money to build coffee, called settler so he could get a coffee plantation, mayored to turn it on, and crafted a second time so he could have coffee to sell before I could.
I liked the game when it was about finding the best action to take for your self. I liked it when it was about setting up to take advantage of other people's best actions. I hate it when it's all about convincing other people to do what you want with words.
Showing posts with label Puerto Rico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Puerto Rico. Show all posts
Monday, November 28, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Puerto Rico Results
Yesterday I played 3 games of Puerto Rico in the Snakes and Lattes tournament. At one point I was talking with the guy who came second and he asked a question about if PR just wasn't my type of game. (I didn't win any of the rounds.) I told him I found it a bit too random and he disagreed saying even with people taking completely random actions he found it fun to try to figure out what they'd do anyway and position himself to take advantage.
I can recall thinking similar things about the game a while ago. When I first played PR I hated it because it seemed too random. (And I played exclusively 5 player games which didn't help matters.) Then I started really liking it and eventually felt like I could make the game flow the way I wanted. And then I started thinking it was too random again. So did I learn something or did I just get worse? It's hard to say. I certainly haven't played much recently and was very surprised at some of the moves people made yesterday. Some of which I'm pretty sure were just terrible but others might have been smart and I just missed how.
I certainly lost one game just by not paying enough attention. The guy to my right wasn't announcing what he was doing. He was just reaching across the table to grab things and such, and I completely missed that he'd picked up a coffee plantation. He was constantly leaning over his board and I couldn't see what he had unless I asked him to move. So when he called settler and I had the money to build coffee I grabbed a coffee plantation and immediately built coffee. If I build tobacco instead I may well have won. Instead he spent the rest of the game trying to screw me. (Because he wanted to sell coffee himself, see, even though it was another 3 rounds before he even had a roaster.) If I was playing tighter I'd have known what he had or would have forced him to announce his moves like everyone else. But I guess I didn't really care and the result showed.
On the plus side I got to play two games of Factory Fun afterwards. I love that game. I think I may go on an adventure to see if I can find a copy...
I can recall thinking similar things about the game a while ago. When I first played PR I hated it because it seemed too random. (And I played exclusively 5 player games which didn't help matters.) Then I started really liking it and eventually felt like I could make the game flow the way I wanted. And then I started thinking it was too random again. So did I learn something or did I just get worse? It's hard to say. I certainly haven't played much recently and was very surprised at some of the moves people made yesterday. Some of which I'm pretty sure were just terrible but others might have been smart and I just missed how.
I certainly lost one game just by not paying enough attention. The guy to my right wasn't announcing what he was doing. He was just reaching across the table to grab things and such, and I completely missed that he'd picked up a coffee plantation. He was constantly leaning over his board and I couldn't see what he had unless I asked him to move. So when he called settler and I had the money to build coffee I grabbed a coffee plantation and immediately built coffee. If I build tobacco instead I may well have won. Instead he spent the rest of the game trying to screw me. (Because he wanted to sell coffee himself, see, even though it was another 3 rounds before he even had a roaster.) If I was playing tighter I'd have known what he had or would have forced him to announce his moves like everyone else. But I guess I didn't really care and the result showed.
On the plus side I got to play two games of Factory Fun afterwards. I love that game. I think I may go on an adventure to see if I can find a copy...
BMI: 22.01 (0)
Wii Fit Age: 28 (-3)
Monday, May 16, 2011
Puerto Rico Tournament
Snakes & Lattes has taken to holding various board game tournaments every month or so. To date the games have been on the easier end of the spectrum with Dominion, Settlers, and 7 Wonders. Today they're running a Puerto Rico event which is certainly wading into the deep end of complexity. (Boardgamegeek gives it a 3.3 on the 'game weight' scale. Dominion is 2.4, Settlers is 2.4, 7 Wonders is 2.2. So, a pretty significant bump if you believe the bgg ratings.)
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this game. It has my second least favourite game mechanic (public-private information) and I often find you play the game for a while and then someone chooses who wins. Because people rarely accurately track the 'hidden' victory points the result can seem pretty random. (And if they are properly tracking points, well, it just becomes king-making entirely.) Also, during the game, the actions people take can drastically impact who does well. I wish I had some numbers in terms of winner's position relative to where craftsman in particular gets called.
On the positive hand it's relatively short, every decision matters, has many feasible strategies, and is pretty fun. Even with it being removed from BSW for years it's still my 4th most played game. (And really it should be 3rd. It counts each hand of Tichu as a full game in the stats.) Only Can't Stop and Backgammon are ahead of it and they're realistically both 2 player games so Puerto Rico is my most played multi-player game by far.
I like to play it and feel I have a decent grasp on how to win. I just get frustrated when I lose for reasons outside my control. Or at least, for what seem to be outside my control. Maybe I need to re-examine how I'm playing after I lose to see if I could have done something better...
At any rate, I'm heading there right after work and could well be there until tomorrow so I'm probably going to miss my weigh-in today. Oh well!
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this game. It has my second least favourite game mechanic (public-private information) and I often find you play the game for a while and then someone chooses who wins. Because people rarely accurately track the 'hidden' victory points the result can seem pretty random. (And if they are properly tracking points, well, it just becomes king-making entirely.) Also, during the game, the actions people take can drastically impact who does well. I wish I had some numbers in terms of winner's position relative to where craftsman in particular gets called.
On the positive hand it's relatively short, every decision matters, has many feasible strategies, and is pretty fun. Even with it being removed from BSW for years it's still my 4th most played game. (And really it should be 3rd. It counts each hand of Tichu as a full game in the stats.) Only Can't Stop and Backgammon are ahead of it and they're realistically both 2 player games so Puerto Rico is my most played multi-player game by far.
I like to play it and feel I have a decent grasp on how to win. I just get frustrated when I lose for reasons outside my control. Or at least, for what seem to be outside my control. Maybe I need to re-examine how I'm playing after I lose to see if I could have done something better...
At any rate, I'm heading there right after work and could well be there until tomorrow so I'm probably going to miss my weigh-in today. Oh well!
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Great Canadian Board Game Blitz Recap
Last weekend was Fan eXpo and with it came the Great Canadian Board Game Blitz which I made a brief post about last week. A lot of that post centered on the format and how getting a lucky seed in the first round was very powerful. It turns out the format had changed between the event I won in July and the one last weekend to try to fix that problem.
What they did was they randomly seeded everyone for round 1, and then they reversed that seeding for round 2. So if you had one of the very good spots in round 1 you'd end up with a very bad spot in round 2 and vice-versa. Or if you're picking in the middle you're never in a great way or a bad way. You won't get to start a game in either round but it's pretty likely most if not all of the games which were chosen will still have spots left. If everyone always picked their best game, were comparably skilled at their best games, and had similar drop-offs as they progressed down their list in order this seems pretty balanced. People at one extreme rate to win a game and come last in a game and people in the middle rate to get a second and a third. Under the scoring system those are worth the same amount and if you outperform your expected value you'll place highly going into the game selection in future rounds.
Of course, those assumptions aren't likely to hold, but this format still seems pretty fair. I'd be tempted to extend this format across the whole event, and just rotate selections every round instead of reseeding by record. Then everyone would progress through each of the potential spots and have the same chances of getting 'screwed' or not. (Maybe keep the last round seeded to open up interesting game choices as people try to gang on the leader?)
The event itself had 23 people play in it, though not everyone played in every round. They'd prepared the game list to accommodate many more people than that by having 9 games available for each round. 5 games were played of those 9 each round so not getting to start a game had the potential to be pretty bad here. Your top 4 games in a given round might not even get started... Oh well!
I end up getting dealt the 9 of diamonds, with game choices going A-2-...-K in clubs then in diamonds. Not every card was dealt and I believe that put me picking 3rd last in round 1 and 3rd in round 2. (Woo, new format!)
Round 1 Game Choices - Bohnanza, Citadels, Dominion, Ingenious, Modern Art, Roll Through the Ages, Saint Petersburg, San Juan, Three Dragon Ante
Picking so late in this round was potentially disasterous for me as it has a lot of games I haven't played or actively dislike playing. Bohnanza, Citadels, Ingenious, Modern Art, Roll Through the Ages, and Three Dragon Ante all fall into this category. Note that only leaves Dominion, Saint Petersburg, and San Juan as games I want to play. Fortunately all 3 were picked, and even more fortunately when it was my choice there was a seat of San Juan open. (Along with 2 seats of Citadels.) So, I went to play San Juan which was by far my best game of this lot.
I was at a table with my friend Duncan (the only other person playing who I knew) and two people he was teaching the game to. I believe one had played the game once and the other was completely new to the game. I was seated in third chair and the first round started with builder (aqueduct, tobacco, tobacco, prefecture), craftsman, prospector (me), and mayor (Duncan). I think prefecture is the best building in the game in a 4 player game so I was immediately worried that Duncan was in a strong position. I was in a good seating position though, as the guy to my right was a big believer in crafting and selling. The first two turns he crafted and sold and I prospected. (Note: selling indigo + tobacco = 2.8 cards, selling tobacco + 2 prospectors = 3.8 cards...)
My second building was the library, which I think is the best building in the game in a 2 player game. (It's only really good when you pick prospector or builder which you're guaranteed to do in a 2 player game. In a 4 player game you're often forced to call something else which devalues it a little.) As it turned out I actually got to builder or prospector every turn but 1 over the course of the whole game, so it was very strong.
Eventually both myself and another player build prefectures of our own, which hurt Duncan's position. He also wasn't truly abusing prefecture the way I like to, which is to not call mayor. Count on someone else to mayor for you, giving you 2 cards on their action, and just call prospector or builder yourself. Sometimes they won't but often they will and I think you really want to give them rope to hang themselves. If they steadfastly refuse to mayor the whole game then maybe you need to call it yourself but probably then I'd just try to build silver and piggyback on all the crafting and selling that has to be going on. (To be fair, I value the extra card selection at almost nothing and tend to just look at things from a strict card advantge standpoint.)
My buildings ended up being Indigo, Tobacco, Library, Quarry, Poor House, Prefecture, Statue, Archive, City Hall, Palace, Hero, Guild Hall. I built the archive to proc Por House but it actualy ended up coming home in a big way. The turn after I build the archive I was forced to call something that wasn't prospector or builder. I called mayor and looked at 8 cards thanks to the library. I kept hero, city hall, and guild hall from what I looked at, to go with the palace that was already in my hand.
Duncan had a chapel early on and put a lot of cards under it (9 I think, maybe only 7?) but he didn't build a single big building. He was 12 points behind me so he would have needed 2 good big buildings to hope to catch up but it was a little unfortunate for him as the guy who kept mayoring to never build a big building. (I don't know if he drew some early on and discarded them though. I help my palace for most of the game which made my poor house pretty terrible but did let me build it eventually.)
Final scores ended up 42-32-30-22, with me being the 42.
Round 2 Game Choices - Alhambra, Blue Moon City, Carcassonne (with river), Medici, Ra, Race for the Galaxy, Thurn and Taxis, Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride: Europe
I got to start a game this round due to the reverse draft order (though with a win in round 1 I would have gotten to anyway). I started Race For The Galaxy, which is seriously the only game from this list I both like to play and know how to play. I'd be willing to play Alhambra but everything else gets a big thumbs down from me. Good thing I got to start a game!
I sit down at the table and it's a guy who knows how to play teaching 2 other people how to play. I don't think either of them had played before. The guy that knew how to play suggested using alternate starting rules for just the two new players, giving them the 'default' hands for their start world and having us draw the real way. This is both against the rules of the tournament (no house rules) and just not fair. I could see setting it up so we all used the default hands or so none of us did but having just some people do it rubs me the wrong way. As such, I kiboshed the suggestion. The other guys didn't seem to mind too much. He also wanted to remove the Gambling World from the deck because he thinks it sucks and is confusing. I made him keep it in. As Pounder says, when you're learning Race and find a card confusing, just discard it to build something else!
I don't remember much about the game, except that I ended up actually building the Gambling World because I needed a way to ship a good for a VP. The gambling portion actually came home (I named 6, of course) and gave me the alien 6-cost building when I already had a couple alien planets in play.
Final scores ended up 39-32-29-9, with me being the 39.
Round 3 Game Choices - Carcassonne (with River, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders), Galaxy Trucker, Hansa Teutonica, In the Year of the Dragon, Notre Dame, Power Grid: Factory Manager, Settlers of Catan, Stone Age, Vegas Showdown
I was the only person with 2 wins, so I got to start the first game this round. Now that we're into a round that's longer than an hour I like many of these games. I'd feel pretty confident playing any of Hansa Teuetonica, Notre Dame, Factory Manager, Settlers, Stone Age, or Vegas Showdown. Notre Dame was removed from WBC this year so I haven't had a chance to play it in a while and I really like it, so I picked it.
It ended up being a 5 player game where none of the other 4 players had ever played before, so I taught them the rules. One of the players was obviously a hardcore gamer (he missed the first two rounds and hence picked last in this round and had to play the only open game) but the other three were more casual which made teaching the game a little tricky. He picked everything up immediately but I like to expound on certain things to drive important things home to the other new players. He got a little antsy at that and I'm a little worried the explanation ended up a bit rushed but like most games Notre Dame is something you need to play a few turns of to really understand the flow.
All three of the more casual players missed at least one bribe and 2 of them got plagued by rats. Not terribly unexpected, really, since Notre Dame is all about juggling many limited resources and you need to play a bit to get a feel for what you can afford to skimp on. The hardcore guy was sitting to my left and drove his car around a lot. (I don't like driving my car very much, so he got a lot of car cards and scooped up all the 4 pointers I think.) I minstrelled 3 dudes into the park from the cube house and played 3 in there of my own by midway through age B, so while I had almost no VPs at that point I was scoring 3 extra on every action for the rest of the game. It ended up being a lot closer than I would have liked but the park came home.
Final scores ended up 75-70-41-29-23, with me being the 75.
Round 4 Game Choices - Acquire, Amun-Re, Container, Endeavor, Kingsburg, Nexus Ops, Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, SmallWorld
With 3 wins I got to pick first again. This round had a number of games I'd like to learn or play again because I've only played once (Amun-Re, Container, Endeavor, Nexus Ops) but no games I both really want to play and am good at. I was in good position to finish highly in the event so I opted to play something I'm good at but don't like a lot... Puerto Rico.
I end up in a 4 player game of Puerto Rico with 3 people who have either never played before or have only played once so I am again teaching the rules of the game to all of my opponents. The lady who ended up going first asked what she should do which put me at a bit of a quandry. I know what the generally accepted default action is (settle for quarry) but I rarely if ever do it. I like building a small market or settling for corn but I'm not sure if I should offer strategy advice I don't believe or if I should teach people to play games the warped way I do. I end up telling her the common opening is to settle for quarry but that people sometimes do other things like buying a small market. She settled for a quarry (a strong general action for sure, I just hate to give up on early plantations) and I took a corn. Then I built the small market.
As the game progressed I built the first coffee and got to sell it. This bought me a harbor, and I ultimately bought a wharf as well. I skipped crafting one turn to sell coffee to build a large building, which ended up being a pretty pathetic Guild Hall. (Only 4 bonus points.)
The game dragged on for a long time with none of the end conditions rapidly approaching. The second harbor didn't get purchased so VPs were slow to move. No one bought a bunch of extra production buildings with lots of holes (typical of a building Guild Hall strategy) so guys weren't threatening to run out. And buildings in general were slow to get built (the lady with all the quarries frequently had no bucks during builders and couldn't build anything). Eventually we ran out of shipping points. I had 51 of them, which is more than half of the starting number.
Final scores ended up 72-53-51-39, with me being the 72.
Round 5 Game Choices - Agricola, At the Gates of Loyang, Caylus, El Grande, Pillars of the Earth, Power Grid, Steam, Tigris & Euphrates, Tikal
With 4 wins I again got to pick first. It turned out a lot of people dropped out before this round (it conflicted with the masquerade at Fan eXpo which is really impressive; I would have dropped out to go to it if I wasn't in contention). We ended up with 15 people which split into 5 games of 3. At the time I made my choice I didn't know this was going to be the split. I'd have assumed with 15 people we'd do 3 4s and a 3. Certainly at the event I played in in July the last round lost people and they actually played a 4, a 5, and a 6 with 15 people. As such I made my choice pretty much solely based on maximum number of players and went with Tigris & Euphrates. It's actually not great without 4 people so I'd have gone with Agricola if I knew it was going to be a 3er.
Overall scores going into this round (amongst people who could catch me) were 25-22.5-21.5-21.5-18-17.5. A win or a second place in this game and I win the event for sure. 3rd place only gives me 4 points, so the next 3 people could pass me if they won. A 4th place is worth 2, so all 5 could pass me with a win. Now, it turns out both 21.5s and the 18 dropped out and we only played 3 player games so only the guy in 2nd could pass me. He opted to start Caylus instead of sitting down at my table so his destiny was not in his own hands.
Ultimately I end up in a game with a gentleman who had played once before and one who had never played before so I was once again teaching the rules of a game to all of my opponents. Tigris & Euphrates is a game I don't even really understand how to win and had absolutely no clue until I'd played like 5 or 6 times which makes it hard to teach other people what they need to do to win. I explained the rules and went over how to score points a couple times but I feel like I didn't do the greatest job. Both opponents formed an early monument (good for scoring points) but built them with only one matching leader in the kingdom. I was able to drop in uncontested on both monuments to score up extra points.
A third monument got built in similar fashion (I already had a leader of the second colour in the kingdom) and I used a disaster to kill off the other leader and move in on my own. For a couple turns I scored a monument point of every colour. We ended up building 5 monuments over the course of the game and on the last turn I got 3 green points from monuments. (All 3 green monuments were in 1 kingdom!) The game ended on treasures and I had 5 of the 8 which were taken.
Final scores ended up 12-9-6, with me being the 12.
So, overall I came first with a win in every round but it honestly doesn't feel very satisfying. I had 15 opponents across 5 games (some duplicated) and only played against 2 people who knew the rules of the game going in. I didn't play a single game against the people who finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th overall. I think the problem there is that my approach to the event differed from other people's.
For example, I played the same guy in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Tigris & Euphrates and he said afterwards that he was picking games to learn them and was glad he kept playing me because he got to pick up some tricks for each game. The people I played Notre Dame with gained a big appreciation for the park because of my plan there. A lot of my opponents were just there to have fun and learn some games and they seemed to have a great time.
I was there to win a big tournament. I guess I did, but I want to win by being the best of the best, not by having no competition. That isn't meant as an insult, but I don't think someone that just learned the rules to Tigris & Euphrates, Puerto Rico, or Notre Dame has a very big chance of winning. If Duncan had played in every game I'd picked and I'd still won the tournament I'd have felt like I really did something since he knows the rules and is pretty good at all of those games.
There were good players there. They had 5 winners of smaller events show up, so clearly people who can win games were in attendance. They finished 1, 4, 5, 7, 11 but other than Duncan in round 1 I didn't play against any of them. I don't know if they intentionally avoided me, or if I just picked games they didn't want to play, or if wearing a Waluigi costume kept them away. Ultimately I ended up missing the Q&A with Spike and the masquerade event at the con (along with a bunch of other stuff) and didn't really come away feeling satisfied. I don't know that there's any way to fix this either, since I doubt they'd get a big enough turnout of just hardcore gamers. (And even then, if I'm not picking a game every round I could easily end up as someone who is playing games for the first time and then hardcore or not I'm not going to be a challenge.)
I'll definitely be on the lookout for other events run stand-alone like the one in July but I'm not convinced I'd play again at Fan eXpo.
What they did was they randomly seeded everyone for round 1, and then they reversed that seeding for round 2. So if you had one of the very good spots in round 1 you'd end up with a very bad spot in round 2 and vice-versa. Or if you're picking in the middle you're never in a great way or a bad way. You won't get to start a game in either round but it's pretty likely most if not all of the games which were chosen will still have spots left. If everyone always picked their best game, were comparably skilled at their best games, and had similar drop-offs as they progressed down their list in order this seems pretty balanced. People at one extreme rate to win a game and come last in a game and people in the middle rate to get a second and a third. Under the scoring system those are worth the same amount and if you outperform your expected value you'll place highly going into the game selection in future rounds.
Of course, those assumptions aren't likely to hold, but this format still seems pretty fair. I'd be tempted to extend this format across the whole event, and just rotate selections every round instead of reseeding by record. Then everyone would progress through each of the potential spots and have the same chances of getting 'screwed' or not. (Maybe keep the last round seeded to open up interesting game choices as people try to gang on the leader?)
The event itself had 23 people play in it, though not everyone played in every round. They'd prepared the game list to accommodate many more people than that by having 9 games available for each round. 5 games were played of those 9 each round so not getting to start a game had the potential to be pretty bad here. Your top 4 games in a given round might not even get started... Oh well!
I end up getting dealt the 9 of diamonds, with game choices going A-2-...-K in clubs then in diamonds. Not every card was dealt and I believe that put me picking 3rd last in round 1 and 3rd in round 2. (Woo, new format!)
Round 1 Game Choices - Bohnanza, Citadels, Dominion, Ingenious, Modern Art, Roll Through the Ages, Saint Petersburg, San Juan, Three Dragon Ante
Picking so late in this round was potentially disasterous for me as it has a lot of games I haven't played or actively dislike playing. Bohnanza, Citadels, Ingenious, Modern Art, Roll Through the Ages, and Three Dragon Ante all fall into this category. Note that only leaves Dominion, Saint Petersburg, and San Juan as games I want to play. Fortunately all 3 were picked, and even more fortunately when it was my choice there was a seat of San Juan open. (Along with 2 seats of Citadels.) So, I went to play San Juan which was by far my best game of this lot.
I was at a table with my friend Duncan (the only other person playing who I knew) and two people he was teaching the game to. I believe one had played the game once and the other was completely new to the game. I was seated in third chair and the first round started with builder (aqueduct, tobacco, tobacco, prefecture), craftsman, prospector (me), and mayor (Duncan). I think prefecture is the best building in the game in a 4 player game so I was immediately worried that Duncan was in a strong position. I was in a good seating position though, as the guy to my right was a big believer in crafting and selling. The first two turns he crafted and sold and I prospected. (Note: selling indigo + tobacco = 2.8 cards, selling tobacco + 2 prospectors = 3.8 cards...)
My second building was the library, which I think is the best building in the game in a 2 player game. (It's only really good when you pick prospector or builder which you're guaranteed to do in a 2 player game. In a 4 player game you're often forced to call something else which devalues it a little.) As it turned out I actually got to builder or prospector every turn but 1 over the course of the whole game, so it was very strong.
Eventually both myself and another player build prefectures of our own, which hurt Duncan's position. He also wasn't truly abusing prefecture the way I like to, which is to not call mayor. Count on someone else to mayor for you, giving you 2 cards on their action, and just call prospector or builder yourself. Sometimes they won't but often they will and I think you really want to give them rope to hang themselves. If they steadfastly refuse to mayor the whole game then maybe you need to call it yourself but probably then I'd just try to build silver and piggyback on all the crafting and selling that has to be going on. (To be fair, I value the extra card selection at almost nothing and tend to just look at things from a strict card advantge standpoint.)
My buildings ended up being Indigo, Tobacco, Library, Quarry, Poor House, Prefecture, Statue, Archive, City Hall, Palace, Hero, Guild Hall. I built the archive to proc Por House but it actualy ended up coming home in a big way. The turn after I build the archive I was forced to call something that wasn't prospector or builder. I called mayor and looked at 8 cards thanks to the library. I kept hero, city hall, and guild hall from what I looked at, to go with the palace that was already in my hand.
Duncan had a chapel early on and put a lot of cards under it (9 I think, maybe only 7?) but he didn't build a single big building. He was 12 points behind me so he would have needed 2 good big buildings to hope to catch up but it was a little unfortunate for him as the guy who kept mayoring to never build a big building. (I don't know if he drew some early on and discarded them though. I help my palace for most of the game which made my poor house pretty terrible but did let me build it eventually.)
Final scores ended up 42-32-30-22, with me being the 42.
Round 2 Game Choices - Alhambra, Blue Moon City, Carcassonne (with river), Medici, Ra, Race for the Galaxy, Thurn and Taxis, Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride: Europe
I got to start a game this round due to the reverse draft order (though with a win in round 1 I would have gotten to anyway). I started Race For The Galaxy, which is seriously the only game from this list I both like to play and know how to play. I'd be willing to play Alhambra but everything else gets a big thumbs down from me. Good thing I got to start a game!
I sit down at the table and it's a guy who knows how to play teaching 2 other people how to play. I don't think either of them had played before. The guy that knew how to play suggested using alternate starting rules for just the two new players, giving them the 'default' hands for their start world and having us draw the real way. This is both against the rules of the tournament (no house rules) and just not fair. I could see setting it up so we all used the default hands or so none of us did but having just some people do it rubs me the wrong way. As such, I kiboshed the suggestion. The other guys didn't seem to mind too much. He also wanted to remove the Gambling World from the deck because he thinks it sucks and is confusing. I made him keep it in. As Pounder says, when you're learning Race and find a card confusing, just discard it to build something else!
I don't remember much about the game, except that I ended up actually building the Gambling World because I needed a way to ship a good for a VP. The gambling portion actually came home (I named 6, of course) and gave me the alien 6-cost building when I already had a couple alien planets in play.
Final scores ended up 39-32-29-9, with me being the 39.
Round 3 Game Choices - Carcassonne (with River, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders), Galaxy Trucker, Hansa Teutonica, In the Year of the Dragon, Notre Dame, Power Grid: Factory Manager, Settlers of Catan, Stone Age, Vegas Showdown
I was the only person with 2 wins, so I got to start the first game this round. Now that we're into a round that's longer than an hour I like many of these games. I'd feel pretty confident playing any of Hansa Teuetonica, Notre Dame, Factory Manager, Settlers, Stone Age, or Vegas Showdown. Notre Dame was removed from WBC this year so I haven't had a chance to play it in a while and I really like it, so I picked it.
It ended up being a 5 player game where none of the other 4 players had ever played before, so I taught them the rules. One of the players was obviously a hardcore gamer (he missed the first two rounds and hence picked last in this round and had to play the only open game) but the other three were more casual which made teaching the game a little tricky. He picked everything up immediately but I like to expound on certain things to drive important things home to the other new players. He got a little antsy at that and I'm a little worried the explanation ended up a bit rushed but like most games Notre Dame is something you need to play a few turns of to really understand the flow.
All three of the more casual players missed at least one bribe and 2 of them got plagued by rats. Not terribly unexpected, really, since Notre Dame is all about juggling many limited resources and you need to play a bit to get a feel for what you can afford to skimp on. The hardcore guy was sitting to my left and drove his car around a lot. (I don't like driving my car very much, so he got a lot of car cards and scooped up all the 4 pointers I think.) I minstrelled 3 dudes into the park from the cube house and played 3 in there of my own by midway through age B, so while I had almost no VPs at that point I was scoring 3 extra on every action for the rest of the game. It ended up being a lot closer than I would have liked but the park came home.
Final scores ended up 75-70-41-29-23, with me being the 75.
Round 4 Game Choices - Acquire, Amun-Re, Container, Endeavor, Kingsburg, Nexus Ops, Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, SmallWorld
With 3 wins I got to pick first again. This round had a number of games I'd like to learn or play again because I've only played once (Amun-Re, Container, Endeavor, Nexus Ops) but no games I both really want to play and am good at. I was in good position to finish highly in the event so I opted to play something I'm good at but don't like a lot... Puerto Rico.
I end up in a 4 player game of Puerto Rico with 3 people who have either never played before or have only played once so I am again teaching the rules of the game to all of my opponents. The lady who ended up going first asked what she should do which put me at a bit of a quandry. I know what the generally accepted default action is (settle for quarry) but I rarely if ever do it. I like building a small market or settling for corn but I'm not sure if I should offer strategy advice I don't believe or if I should teach people to play games the warped way I do. I end up telling her the common opening is to settle for quarry but that people sometimes do other things like buying a small market. She settled for a quarry (a strong general action for sure, I just hate to give up on early plantations) and I took a corn. Then I built the small market.
As the game progressed I built the first coffee and got to sell it. This bought me a harbor, and I ultimately bought a wharf as well. I skipped crafting one turn to sell coffee to build a large building, which ended up being a pretty pathetic Guild Hall. (Only 4 bonus points.)
The game dragged on for a long time with none of the end conditions rapidly approaching. The second harbor didn't get purchased so VPs were slow to move. No one bought a bunch of extra production buildings with lots of holes (typical of a building Guild Hall strategy) so guys weren't threatening to run out. And buildings in general were slow to get built (the lady with all the quarries frequently had no bucks during builders and couldn't build anything). Eventually we ran out of shipping points. I had 51 of them, which is more than half of the starting number.
Final scores ended up 72-53-51-39, with me being the 72.
Round 5 Game Choices - Agricola, At the Gates of Loyang, Caylus, El Grande, Pillars of the Earth, Power Grid, Steam, Tigris & Euphrates, Tikal
With 4 wins I again got to pick first. It turned out a lot of people dropped out before this round (it conflicted with the masquerade at Fan eXpo which is really impressive; I would have dropped out to go to it if I wasn't in contention). We ended up with 15 people which split into 5 games of 3. At the time I made my choice I didn't know this was going to be the split. I'd have assumed with 15 people we'd do 3 4s and a 3. Certainly at the event I played in in July the last round lost people and they actually played a 4, a 5, and a 6 with 15 people. As such I made my choice pretty much solely based on maximum number of players and went with Tigris & Euphrates. It's actually not great without 4 people so I'd have gone with Agricola if I knew it was going to be a 3er.
Overall scores going into this round (amongst people who could catch me) were 25-22.5-21.5-21.5-18-17.5. A win or a second place in this game and I win the event for sure. 3rd place only gives me 4 points, so the next 3 people could pass me if they won. A 4th place is worth 2, so all 5 could pass me with a win. Now, it turns out both 21.5s and the 18 dropped out and we only played 3 player games so only the guy in 2nd could pass me. He opted to start Caylus instead of sitting down at my table so his destiny was not in his own hands.
Ultimately I end up in a game with a gentleman who had played once before and one who had never played before so I was once again teaching the rules of a game to all of my opponents. Tigris & Euphrates is a game I don't even really understand how to win and had absolutely no clue until I'd played like 5 or 6 times which makes it hard to teach other people what they need to do to win. I explained the rules and went over how to score points a couple times but I feel like I didn't do the greatest job. Both opponents formed an early monument (good for scoring points) but built them with only one matching leader in the kingdom. I was able to drop in uncontested on both monuments to score up extra points.
A third monument got built in similar fashion (I already had a leader of the second colour in the kingdom) and I used a disaster to kill off the other leader and move in on my own. For a couple turns I scored a monument point of every colour. We ended up building 5 monuments over the course of the game and on the last turn I got 3 green points from monuments. (All 3 green monuments were in 1 kingdom!) The game ended on treasures and I had 5 of the 8 which were taken.
Final scores ended up 12-9-6, with me being the 12.
So, overall I came first with a win in every round but it honestly doesn't feel very satisfying. I had 15 opponents across 5 games (some duplicated) and only played against 2 people who knew the rules of the game going in. I didn't play a single game against the people who finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th overall. I think the problem there is that my approach to the event differed from other people's.
For example, I played the same guy in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Tigris & Euphrates and he said afterwards that he was picking games to learn them and was glad he kept playing me because he got to pick up some tricks for each game. The people I played Notre Dame with gained a big appreciation for the park because of my plan there. A lot of my opponents were just there to have fun and learn some games and they seemed to have a great time.
I was there to win a big tournament. I guess I did, but I want to win by being the best of the best, not by having no competition. That isn't meant as an insult, but I don't think someone that just learned the rules to Tigris & Euphrates, Puerto Rico, or Notre Dame has a very big chance of winning. If Duncan had played in every game I'd picked and I'd still won the tournament I'd have felt like I really did something since he knows the rules and is pretty good at all of those games.
There were good players there. They had 5 winners of smaller events show up, so clearly people who can win games were in attendance. They finished 1, 4, 5, 7, 11 but other than Duncan in round 1 I didn't play against any of them. I don't know if they intentionally avoided me, or if I just picked games they didn't want to play, or if wearing a Waluigi costume kept them away. Ultimately I ended up missing the Q&A with Spike and the masquerade event at the con (along with a bunch of other stuff) and didn't really come away feeling satisfied. I don't know that there's any way to fix this either, since I doubt they'd get a big enough turnout of just hardcore gamers. (And even then, if I'm not picking a game every round I could easily end up as someone who is playing games for the first time and then hardcore or not I'm not going to be a challenge.)
I'll definitely be on the lookout for other events run stand-alone like the one in July but I'm not convinced I'd play again at Fan eXpo.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
WBC 2008 -> Puerto Rico Finals Recap
Prelude
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap
Hopefully the formatting works out here, stuff in italics will be from the log I was sent, stuff in normal font will be my comments.
Matt bids .5 for seat 3, Chris bids .5 for seat 4
As mentioned in the earlier recaps, Robb had convinced me the best plan was to try to sit to the right of the ‘best’ player. I didn’t recognize any of the people in the finals (well, I knew John as the GM for PR and Vegas, but I didn’t know anything about PR skill) but there was a former champion in the field. I decided to try to sit to Chris’ right if I could, but not to veer too far from my standard strategy of trying to get the best seat for the right cost. I decided to bid 1 for seat 3. (Optimal as if no other bidding happens I sit to Chris’ right and have the best seat cheap.)
John bids 1.5 for seat 3, Matt bids 0 for seat 1
I think seat 3 is better than seat 4, but I don’t think it’s a full point better. I certainly couldn’t risk that John would take seat 2 leaving me paying a point and a half more than Chris was for corn. I bid 1 on seat 4.
Chris bids 1.5 for seat 4
Well, that’s that then. I can now abort to indigo or jump to 2 for either corn seat. I hate indigo, and as a bonus it’s very unlikely anyone is outbidding Chris so I bid 2 on seat 3.
John bids .5 for seat 1, Matt bids 0 for seat 2
Initial plantation draw: corn, sugar, sugar, tobacco, coffee
TURN ONE. John is Governor.
1. John selects Builder. John builds a Construction Hut for 1. Matt builds a Small Market for 1. Nick builds a Small Market for 1. Chris builds a Small Sugar Mill for 2..
2. Matt selects Setter. Matt selects a quarry. Nick selects a corn. Chris selects a sugar. John selects a coffee. Discards: 1 sugar, 1 tobacco.
New plantation draw: 1 corn, 1 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 tobacco, 1 coffee.
3. Nick selects Mayor. Distribution is 2/1/1/1. Nick places colonists on both corn. Chris places on corn. John places on Construction Hut. Matti places on quarry. 4 colonists on Ship.
4. Chris selects Craftsman. Chris produces 1 corn. Nick produces 2 corn. Chris produces 1 corn (extra).
I sent the raw replay file to Sky as soon as I got it and his comment was something along the lines of disbelief at turn 1 chut. I’ve spent some time thinking about it and it seems like it works out only if player 2 mayors for you. I guess he was happy with any of the settler draws but it still seems like it’s setting yourself back to do so. I built the obvious small market on the builder phase because it’s a 1->1 buck to point conversion and tends to return back much more than you spend on it. On the settler I took corn because I think it’s just the best thing for anything but a hardcore selling/building plan. Mayoring on my turn was also obvious, I had 3 good things to turn on so I need guys and it seemed to be worth more than just 1 from prospector. My experience has always had people spite the early trader so I manned both corn. Chris ended up crafting on turn 1 which was great for me, we both ended up with 2 corn but I would get to pick a job first.
END OF TURN ONE: Doubloons on Prospector, Captain, Trader.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 1 1 $2
Matt 0 1 1 $2
Nick 0 1 1 $2 2 C
Chris 0 1 1 $1 2 C
Trading House: Empty
Boats: All empty
TURN TWO. Matt is Governor.
1. Matt selects Prospector (1).
2. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 2 corn on 7 ship for 3 VPs. Chris ships 2 corn for 2 VPs.
3. Chris selects Mayor. Distribution is 2/1/1/1. Chris places on sugar and Small Sugar Mill, all circles covered. John places on indigo. Matt places on Small Market. Nick places on Small Market, all circles covered. 4 colonists on ship.
4. John selects Builder. John builds a Small Indigo for 0. Matt builds a Small Indigo for 0. Nick builds a Small Sugar for 2. Chris passes.
After Matt takes his 2 bucks I’m left with the choice of selling a corn with my market unmanned for a total of 2 dollars and 1 point or shipping for 1 dollar and 3 points. I’ll trade 1 buck for 2 VPs any day, so I captained. If I’d known the picks were going to go craft->prospect I may well have manned my market last turn, but then I may have gotten spited anyway and this was a great outcome. Chris then mayored to turn on his sugar so I manned my market. I’m not sure why I built the sugar mill here. The flop was full rainbow so I had a shot at sugar but it was by no means guaranteed. I was sitting before the only sugar player and had only 3 bucks so I had no other good builds and I will eventually want a sugar anyway.
END OF TURN TWO: Doubloons on Craftsman, Settler, Trader (1).
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 2 2 $2
Matt 0 2 2 $4
Nick 3 2 5 $1
Chris 2 1 3 $1
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 4 corn on 7 ship.
TURN THREE. Nick is Governor.
1. Nick selects Trader (2). No one can trade..
2. Chris selects Craftsman (1). Chris produces one corn and one sugar. Nick produces 2 corn. Chris produces an extra corn.
3. John selects Prospector.
4. Matt selects Settler (1). Matt takes a tobacco. Nick takes a sugar. Chris takes a corn. John takes a quarry. Discards: one tobacco, one coffee.
New draw: 1 corn, 1 indigo, 2 tobacco, 1 coffee.
I can’t turn down 2 free bucks. Matt settled for tobacco which seems a little out of place but it did get him to 5 bucks so he could buy tobacco next turn and the fact it was the only one in the flop does mean he was going to be solo-bacco for a while. I scooped up the very sugar I was looking for and Chris grabbed corn putting us in very similar board positions but with me being up 2 points and a buck to his sugar.
END OF TURN THREE: Doubloons on Builder, Captain, Mayor.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 2 2 $3
Matt 0 2 2 $5
Nick 3 2 5 $3 2 C
Chris 2 1 3 $2 2 C, 1 S
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 4 corn on 7 ship.
TURN FOUR. Chris is Governor.
1. Chris selects Captain (1). Chris ships 2 corn for 3 VP. Nick ships 1 corn for 1 VP (corn boat full). Chris ships 1 sugar on 6 ship for 1 VP. Corn boat clears. Raphael passes.
2. John selects Mayor (1). Distribution is 2/1/1/1. John places colonists on Small Indigo and quarry. Matt places on Small Indigo and indigo, takes off quarry. Nick places on sugar and Small Sugar, takes off corn. Chris places on corn, all circles covered. 4 colonists on ship.
3. Matt selects Builder (1). Matt builds Tobacco Storage for 4. Nick passes. Chris passes. John builds Tobacco Storage for 4.
4. Nick selects Craftsman. Nick produces one corn and one sugar. Chris produces 2 corn and one sugar. John produces one indigo. Matt produces one indigo. Nick selects a sugar (extra). .
I expected Chris to sell sugar here for 3, but he decided to give up 2 bucks for 2 points which is certainly reasonable. Manning my sugar for my corn is a no-brainer. I still only have 3 dollars so I pass the build phase. (I could build indigo I guess, but I can do that later and I might hit harbour money soon.) My choice is to sell corn for 2 or to craft with a guaranteed sugar sell next turn unless someone spite-captains, in which case I still score a bunch of points. Getting the craft in before the tobacco gets manned also seems important, so I went that route.
END OF TURN FOUR: Doubloons on Settler, Trader, Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 5 5 $0 1 I
Matt 0 5 5 $2 1 I
Nick 4 2 6 $3 2 C, 2 S
Chris 6 1 7 $3 2 C, 1 S
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 1 sugar on 6 ship.
TURN FIVE. John is Governor.
1. John selects Trader (1). John trades indigo for 2. Matt cannot trade. Nick trades sugar for 3. Chris passes.
2. Matt selects Settler. Matt selects a quarry. Nick selects a corn. Chris selects a coffee. John selects a tobacco. Discardsa; Indigo, tobacco.
New draw: 2 sugar, 2 tobacco, 1 coffee.
3. Nick selects Prospector (1).
4. Chris selects Craftsman. Chris produces 2 corn and 1 sugar. John produces 1 indigo. Matt produces 1 indigo. Nick produces 1 corn and 1 sugar. Chris produces 1 sugar (extra).
John sells so I scoop up 3 bucks on not my turn which is pretty hot. I was looking like a hardcore shipping strategy at this point so I drafted another corn instead of grabbing a coffee for future bucks. I prospected to get up to the magical 8 for a harbour, and Chris crafted. I really didn’t expect this, I figured he would ship, but he made 4 goods to my 2 so it was pretty ok I think. (Also, tobacco still wasn’t manned!)
END OF TURN FIVE: Doubloons on Builder, Captain and Mayor.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 5 5 $3 1 I
Matt 0 5 5 $3 2 I
Nick 4 2 6 $9 3 C, 2 S
Chris 6 1 7 $3 4 C, 3 S
Trading House: 1 sugar, 1 indigo.
Boats: 1 sugar on 6 ship.
TURN SIX. Matt is Governor.
1. Matt selects Mayor (1). Distribution is 2/1/1/1. Matt places on tobacco and Tobacco Storage, moves from Small Market to quarry. Nick places on corn. Chris places on coffee (all circles covered). John moves from Construction Hut, places on tobacco and Tobacco storage. 6 coloncists on ship.
2. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 3 corn on 5 ship for 4 VP. Chris ships 3 sugar for 3 VP. John ships 1 indigo on 7 ship for 1 VP. Matt ships 2 indigop for 1 VP. Nick ships 2 sugar for 2 VP (filling ship). Chris ships 2 corn for 2 VP (filling ship). Warehousing: Chris loses 1 corn. Corn and sugar ships clear..
3. Chris selects Settler. Chris takes a quarry. John takes a sugar. Matt takes a coffee. Nick takes a tobacco. Discards: 1 sugar, 1 tobacco.
New draw: 1corn, 2 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 coffee.
4. John selects Builder (1). John builds Coffee Roaster for 4. Matt builds Office for 4. Nick builds Harbor for 8. Chris builds Small Warehouse for 3.
Matt finally turns on his tobacco. I grab the captain to scoop up the buck on it and extra points. (Chris would ship if I didn’t, so I wasn’t going to get a manned harbour going yet.) I also forced Chris to rot a corn, making him pay for crafting last turn. Chris later said he called the settler this turn because I was mimicking him to his right. I was going to dominate him with the same strategy so he figured he had to switch gears and hope that would work. I took tobacco over a redundant sugar. I considered building tobacco here, but harbour is just that good. (Also, righty has tobacco so it’s not really a money good for me.)
END OF TURN SIX: Doubloons on Craftsman, Trader and Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 1 8 9 $0
Matt 2 7 9 $0
Nick 10 5 15 $2
Chris 11 2 13 $0 1 C
Trading House: 1 sugar, 1 indigo.
Boats: 3 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN SEVEN. Nick is Governor.
1. Nick selects Prospector (1).
2. Chris selects Settler. Chris takes a quarry. John takes a corn. Matt takes a sugar. Nick takes an indigo. Discards: indigo, coffee.
New draw: 1 corn, 1 indigo, 1 sugar, 2 coffee..
3. John selects Mayor. Distribution is 3/2/1/1. John places colonists on coffee, Coffee Roaster, Construction Hut. Matt places on Small Market, Office. Nick places on Harbor, moves from Small Market to corn. Chris places on quarry, moves from coffee to quarry. 7 colonists on ship.
4. Matt selects Trader (1). Chris passes. No one else can trade.
More free bucks. I couldn’t see myself buying coffee and tobacco but I could well slip in an indigo hut so I snagged an indigo. I man my harbour and dance a little jig.
END OF TURN SEVEN: Doubloons on Craftsman (1), Captain and Builder.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 1 8 9 $0
Matt 2 7 9 $1
Nick 10 5 15 $4
Chris 11 2 13 $0 1 C
Trading House: 1 sugar, 1 indigo.
Boats: 3 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN EIGHT. Chris is Governor.
1. Chris selects Builder (1). Chris builds Large Indigo Plant for 0. John passes. Matt builds Small Sugar Mill for 1. Nick builds Small Indigo Plant for 1.
2. John selects Craftsman (2). John produces 1 indigo, 1 tobacco, 1 coffee. Matt produces 1 indigo, 1 tobacco. Nick produces 3 corn, 1 sugar. Chris produces 2 corn and 1 sugar. John produces 1 indigo (extra).
3. Matt selects Trader. Matt sells tobacco for 5. Nick and Chris pass. John sells coffee for 4. Trading House clears.
4. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 3 corn on 5 ship for 5 VP. Chris ships 2 corn for 2 VP, filling corn boat. John ships 1 tobacco on 6 ship for 1 VP. Matt ships 1 indigo for 1 VP. John ships 2 indigo for 2 VP. Warehousing: Chris discards 1 corn..
I only have 4 bucks but I have use for an indigo hut so I buy one. The captain with a buck on it seems pretty obvious on my turn, I score up 5 vips, and force Chris to rot more goods. I get to keep a sugar for potential selling.
END OF TURN EIGHT: Doubloons on Mayor (1), Settler and Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 4 8 12 $6
Matt 3 8 11 $5
Nick 15 6 21 $4 1 S
Chris 13 4 17 $1 1 S
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 1 tobacco on 6 ship. 6 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN NINE. John is Governor.
1. John selects Builder. John builds Factory for 5. Matt builds Coffee Roaster for 5. Nick builds Small Warehouse for 3. Chris builds Small Indigo Plant for 0.
2. Matt selects Prospector (1).
3. Nick selects Mayor (1). Distribution is 3/2/2/1. Nick places colonists on Small Indigo Plant, indigo and Small Market, moves off corn onto Small Warehouse. Chris places on Small Warehouse and coffee. John places on Factory and corn. Matt places on quarry, moves off indigo and Small Indigo to coffee and Coffee Roaster. 12 colonists on ship.
4. Chris selects Trader. Chris sells sugar for 3. No one else can trade.
I still have only 4 bucks, and made a questionable buy of a warehouse. I foresaw Chris eventually jamming me on shipping and wanted to protect against that with a warehouse instead of saving up for a wharf, which may have been a mistake. I turn on indigo and the warehouse instead of selling sugar, which may also have been a mistake. If I don’t buy and do sell then I end up at 7 bucks and am in a decent position to wharf it up. Oh well.
END OF TURN NINE: Doubloons on Settler (1), Craftsman and Captain..
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 4 11 15 $1
Matt 3 11 14 $2
Nick 15 7 22 $2 1 S
Chris 13 5 18 $4
Trading House: 1 sugar.
Boats: 1 tobacco on 6 ship. 6 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN TEN. Matt is Governor.
1. Matt selects Settler (2). Matt takes a quarry. Nick takes a corn. Chris takes an indigo. John takes a quarry. Discards: 1 sugar, 2 coffee.
New draw: 1 corn, 2 indigo, 2 sugar.
2. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 1 sugar on 5 ship for 3 VP.
3. Chris selects Builder. Chris builds Office for 2. John builds Small Sugar Mill for 1. Matt builds Large Market for 3. Nick passes.
4. John selects Mayor. 4/3/3/3 dristribution. John places colonists on quarry, sugar, Small Sugar Mill and second spot on Coffee Roaster. Matt places on tobacco and Tobacco Storage, moves off indigo Small Market, places on Large Market and quarry. Nick places on corn, corn and tobacco (all circles full). Chris places on indigo, Small Indigo Plant and office. 10 colonists on ship.
I snag another corn on the settler and ship my one good for 3 VPs. It’s important to point out that I made it so there wouldn’t be a corn boat which is pretty questionable, but at least I am making sugar and indigo and have a warehouse should a boat ever clear. I pass the build with my 3 bucks, and fill up my board with the mayor.
END OF TURN TEN: Doubloons on Craftsman (1), Trader and Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 4 12 16 $0
Matt 3 13 16 $1
Nick 18 7 25 $3
Chris 13 7 20 $2
Trading House: 1 sugar.
Boats: 1 sugar on 5 ship. 1 tobacco on 6 ship. 6 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN 11. Nick is Governor.
1. Nick selects Prospector (1).
2. Chris selects Builder. Chris builds Large Market for 2. John passes. Matt builds Large Indigo Plant for 1. Nick passes..
3. John selects Craftsman (2). John produces 1 corn, 1 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 tobacco, 1 coffee and receives 5 in Factory income. Matt produces 1 sugar, 1 tobacco and 1 coffee. Nick produces 4 corn, 1 indigo and 1 sugar. Chris produces 2 corn, 1 indigo and 1 sugar. John produces 1 tobacco (extra).
4. Matt selects Trader (1). Matt sells coffee for 7. Nick sells indigo for 2. Chris sells sugar for 2. Trading House is full.
I’m not sure why I passed the build here with 5 bucks, a tobacco seems like a pretty decent build. I’m pretty sure I was trying to build a wharf so I would be able to ship all my potentially warehoused corn. I sold an indigo, throwing away 2 points to pick up 2 bucks, getting closer to a wharf.
END OF TURN 11: Doubloons on Captain, Mayor and Settler..
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 4 12 16 $7 1 C, 1 I, 1 S, 2 T, 1 K
Matt 3 15 18 $8 1 S, 1T
Nick 18 7 25 $7 4 C, 1 I
Chris 13 9 22 $2 2 C, 1 I
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 1 sugar on 5 ship. 1 tobacco on 6 ship. 6 indigo on 7 ship..
TURN 12. Chris is Governor.
1. Chris selects Settler (1). Chris takes a quarry. John takes a corn (no quarries left). Matt takes an indigo. Nick takes an indigo. Discards: 2 sugar.
New draw: 1 corn, 2 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 tobacco.
2. John selects Builder. John builds Guild Hall for 7. Matt builds City Hall for 7. Nick passes. Chris passes.
3. Matt selects Mayor (1). Distribution is 4/3/2/2. Matt places colonists on indigo, City Hall, Small Market and Small Indigo Plant. Nick places on indigo, has 2 colonists in San Juan. Chris places quarry and Large Market. John places on corn and Guild Hall. 11 colonists on ship.
4. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 1 sugar for 3 VP. Chris ships 1 indigo for 1 VP (filling boat). John ships 2 tobacco for 2 VP. Matt ships 1 tobacco for 1 VP. John ships 1 sugar for 1 VP. Matt ships 1 sugar for 1 VP. Warehousing: John discards 1 corn and 1 indigo.
I have 7 bucks and pass the builder, intending on getting a wharf or a customs house. I ship for the 3 VPs, clearing only one boat and setting up with a lot of corn.
END OF TURN 12: Doubloons on Craftsman, Trader and Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Bonus Total Cash Goods
John 7 16 6 (GH) 23 (29) $0 1 K
Matt 5 19 4 (CH) 24 (28) $2
Nick 21 7 28 $8 4 C
Chris 14 9 23 $3 2 C
Trading house: Empty.
Boats: 4 sugar on 5 ship. 4 tobacco on 6 ship.
TURN 13. John is Governor.
1. John selects Captain. John ships 1 coffee on 7 ship for 2 VP..
2. Matt selects Prospector (1).
3. Nick selects Trader. Nick sells corn for 2. Chris sells corn for 2.
4. Chris selects Builder. Chris builds Tobacco Storage for 1. John passes. Matt builds Factory for 4. Nick builds Customs House for 10.
John now has a choice, with 1 empty boat. He can ship his coffee, screwing me out of a bunch of corn points or he can sell his coffee for huge bucks. (Note he has no money and captain has no bucks on it, so he can’t ramp up his guild hall if he doesn’t sell.) He decided I would win if I got to captain and chose to screw himself to screw me. As a result I got to sell my corn, getting me up to 10 bucks. The game was going to end next turn, so on Chris’ build I went with the customs house over a wharf.
END OF TURN 13: Doubloons on Craftsman (1), Mayor and Settler.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Bonus Total Cash Goods
John 9 16 6 (GH) 25 (31) $0
Matt 5 22 5 (CH) 32 $0
Nick 21 11 5 (Cust.) 32 (37) $0 3 C
Chris 14 12 26 $4 2 C
Trading house: 2 corn.
Boats: 4 sugar on 5 ship. 4 tobacco on 6 ship. 1 coffee on 7 ship.
TURN 14. Matt is Governor.
1. Matt selects Builder. Matt builds Hacienda for 0. Nick passes. Chris builds Coffee Roaster for 3. John passes. (NOTE: As Matt has filled all his building spaces, this triggers the end of the game.)
2. Nick selects Mayor (1). 4/3/3/2 distribution. All large buildings are covered. [NOTE: Re-Check for Final replay, not needed for tiebreaks or Fort, however.]
3. Chris selects Trader. Chris sells 1 corn for 3. No one else can trade.
4. John selects Craftsman (2). John produces corn, 1 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 tobacco, 2 coffee and 5 doubloons (Factory). Other players produce. John produces a bonus good (irrelevant which one).
Matt builds to end the game. Notice how John was forced to pass the build last turn and the one this turn because he screwed me. Also note how I got a manned large building out of being ‘screwed’. I mayor to turn on my customs house. (Note if I’d built a wharf I wouldn’t get to ship this turn.)
END OF TURN 14: FINAL SCORING:
Ship VP Bldg. VP Bonus Total Cash Goods
John 9 16 6 (GH) 31 $7
Matt 5 23 6 (CH) 34 $0
Nick 21 11 5 (Cust.) 37 $1
Chris 14 15 29 $4
Trading house: 3 corn.
Boats: 4 sugar on 5 ship. 4 tobacco on 6 ship. 1 coffee on 7 ship.
FINAL POSITIONS (taking into account bids for seat position):
1. Nick Page 35 (37 - 2 VP bid)
2. Matt Peterson 34
3. John Weber 30.5 (31 - 0.5 VP bid)
4. Chris Moffa 27.5 (29 - 1.5 VP bid)
Note that I had 8 bucks, so if I get to ship on turn 13 I gain 6 points from shipping and likely build 2 2-point buildings with my 8 bucks for a total of 10 points. The customs house was worth 9. On the flip side John gained 2 points by shipping and lost what I believe is 8 points by not being able to build 2 more production buildings. (He was missing Large Indigo and Large Sugar which cost a total of 3 with his 2 quarries.) So he cost himself 6 points to cost me 1 point, and to hurt Chris. Unless my math is wrong here it looks like I would have come second, except I got ‘screwed’ and therefore won. Overall a pretty low scoring and very close game!
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap
Hopefully the formatting works out here, stuff in italics will be from the log I was sent, stuff in normal font will be my comments.
Matt bids .5 for seat 3, Chris bids .5 for seat 4
As mentioned in the earlier recaps, Robb had convinced me the best plan was to try to sit to the right of the ‘best’ player. I didn’t recognize any of the people in the finals (well, I knew John as the GM for PR and Vegas, but I didn’t know anything about PR skill) but there was a former champion in the field. I decided to try to sit to Chris’ right if I could, but not to veer too far from my standard strategy of trying to get the best seat for the right cost. I decided to bid 1 for seat 3. (Optimal as if no other bidding happens I sit to Chris’ right and have the best seat cheap.)
John bids 1.5 for seat 3, Matt bids 0 for seat 1
I think seat 3 is better than seat 4, but I don’t think it’s a full point better. I certainly couldn’t risk that John would take seat 2 leaving me paying a point and a half more than Chris was for corn. I bid 1 on seat 4.
Chris bids 1.5 for seat 4
Well, that’s that then. I can now abort to indigo or jump to 2 for either corn seat. I hate indigo, and as a bonus it’s very unlikely anyone is outbidding Chris so I bid 2 on seat 3.
John bids .5 for seat 1, Matt bids 0 for seat 2
Initial plantation draw: corn, sugar, sugar, tobacco, coffee
TURN ONE. John is Governor.
1. John selects Builder. John builds a Construction Hut for 1. Matt builds a Small Market for 1. Nick builds a Small Market for 1. Chris builds a Small Sugar Mill for 2..
2. Matt selects Setter. Matt selects a quarry. Nick selects a corn. Chris selects a sugar. John selects a coffee. Discards: 1 sugar, 1 tobacco.
New plantation draw: 1 corn, 1 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 tobacco, 1 coffee.
3. Nick selects Mayor. Distribution is 2/1/1/1. Nick places colonists on both corn. Chris places on corn. John places on Construction Hut. Matti places on quarry. 4 colonists on Ship.
4. Chris selects Craftsman. Chris produces 1 corn. Nick produces 2 corn. Chris produces 1 corn (extra).
I sent the raw replay file to Sky as soon as I got it and his comment was something along the lines of disbelief at turn 1 chut. I’ve spent some time thinking about it and it seems like it works out only if player 2 mayors for you. I guess he was happy with any of the settler draws but it still seems like it’s setting yourself back to do so. I built the obvious small market on the builder phase because it’s a 1->1 buck to point conversion and tends to return back much more than you spend on it. On the settler I took corn because I think it’s just the best thing for anything but a hardcore selling/building plan. Mayoring on my turn was also obvious, I had 3 good things to turn on so I need guys and it seemed to be worth more than just 1 from prospector. My experience has always had people spite the early trader so I manned both corn. Chris ended up crafting on turn 1 which was great for me, we both ended up with 2 corn but I would get to pick a job first.
END OF TURN ONE: Doubloons on Prospector, Captain, Trader.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 1 1 $2
Matt 0 1 1 $2
Nick 0 1 1 $2 2 C
Chris 0 1 1 $1 2 C
Trading House: Empty
Boats: All empty
TURN TWO. Matt is Governor.
1. Matt selects Prospector (1).
2. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 2 corn on 7 ship for 3 VPs. Chris ships 2 corn for 2 VPs.
3. Chris selects Mayor. Distribution is 2/1/1/1. Chris places on sugar and Small Sugar Mill, all circles covered. John places on indigo. Matt places on Small Market. Nick places on Small Market, all circles covered. 4 colonists on ship.
4. John selects Builder. John builds a Small Indigo for 0. Matt builds a Small Indigo for 0. Nick builds a Small Sugar for 2. Chris passes.
After Matt takes his 2 bucks I’m left with the choice of selling a corn with my market unmanned for a total of 2 dollars and 1 point or shipping for 1 dollar and 3 points. I’ll trade 1 buck for 2 VPs any day, so I captained. If I’d known the picks were going to go craft->prospect I may well have manned my market last turn, but then I may have gotten spited anyway and this was a great outcome. Chris then mayored to turn on his sugar so I manned my market. I’m not sure why I built the sugar mill here. The flop was full rainbow so I had a shot at sugar but it was by no means guaranteed. I was sitting before the only sugar player and had only 3 bucks so I had no other good builds and I will eventually want a sugar anyway.
END OF TURN TWO: Doubloons on Craftsman, Settler, Trader (1).
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 2 2 $2
Matt 0 2 2 $4
Nick 3 2 5 $1
Chris 2 1 3 $1
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 4 corn on 7 ship.
TURN THREE. Nick is Governor.
1. Nick selects Trader (2). No one can trade..
2. Chris selects Craftsman (1). Chris produces one corn and one sugar. Nick produces 2 corn. Chris produces an extra corn.
3. John selects Prospector.
4. Matt selects Settler (1). Matt takes a tobacco. Nick takes a sugar. Chris takes a corn. John takes a quarry. Discards: one tobacco, one coffee.
New draw: 1 corn, 1 indigo, 2 tobacco, 1 coffee.
I can’t turn down 2 free bucks. Matt settled for tobacco which seems a little out of place but it did get him to 5 bucks so he could buy tobacco next turn and the fact it was the only one in the flop does mean he was going to be solo-bacco for a while. I scooped up the very sugar I was looking for and Chris grabbed corn putting us in very similar board positions but with me being up 2 points and a buck to his sugar.
END OF TURN THREE: Doubloons on Builder, Captain, Mayor.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 2 2 $3
Matt 0 2 2 $5
Nick 3 2 5 $3 2 C
Chris 2 1 3 $2 2 C, 1 S
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 4 corn on 7 ship.
TURN FOUR. Chris is Governor.
1. Chris selects Captain (1). Chris ships 2 corn for 3 VP. Nick ships 1 corn for 1 VP (corn boat full). Chris ships 1 sugar on 6 ship for 1 VP. Corn boat clears. Raphael passes.
2. John selects Mayor (1). Distribution is 2/1/1/1. John places colonists on Small Indigo and quarry. Matt places on Small Indigo and indigo, takes off quarry. Nick places on sugar and Small Sugar, takes off corn. Chris places on corn, all circles covered. 4 colonists on ship.
3. Matt selects Builder (1). Matt builds Tobacco Storage for 4. Nick passes. Chris passes. John builds Tobacco Storage for 4.
4. Nick selects Craftsman. Nick produces one corn and one sugar. Chris produces 2 corn and one sugar. John produces one indigo. Matt produces one indigo. Nick selects a sugar (extra). .
I expected Chris to sell sugar here for 3, but he decided to give up 2 bucks for 2 points which is certainly reasonable. Manning my sugar for my corn is a no-brainer. I still only have 3 dollars so I pass the build phase. (I could build indigo I guess, but I can do that later and I might hit harbour money soon.) My choice is to sell corn for 2 or to craft with a guaranteed sugar sell next turn unless someone spite-captains, in which case I still score a bunch of points. Getting the craft in before the tobacco gets manned also seems important, so I went that route.
END OF TURN FOUR: Doubloons on Settler, Trader, Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 5 5 $0 1 I
Matt 0 5 5 $2 1 I
Nick 4 2 6 $3 2 C, 2 S
Chris 6 1 7 $3 2 C, 1 S
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 1 sugar on 6 ship.
TURN FIVE. John is Governor.
1. John selects Trader (1). John trades indigo for 2. Matt cannot trade. Nick trades sugar for 3. Chris passes.
2. Matt selects Settler. Matt selects a quarry. Nick selects a corn. Chris selects a coffee. John selects a tobacco. Discardsa; Indigo, tobacco.
New draw: 2 sugar, 2 tobacco, 1 coffee.
3. Nick selects Prospector (1).
4. Chris selects Craftsman. Chris produces 2 corn and 1 sugar. John produces 1 indigo. Matt produces 1 indigo. Nick produces 1 corn and 1 sugar. Chris produces 1 sugar (extra).
John sells so I scoop up 3 bucks on not my turn which is pretty hot. I was looking like a hardcore shipping strategy at this point so I drafted another corn instead of grabbing a coffee for future bucks. I prospected to get up to the magical 8 for a harbour, and Chris crafted. I really didn’t expect this, I figured he would ship, but he made 4 goods to my 2 so it was pretty ok I think. (Also, tobacco still wasn’t manned!)
END OF TURN FIVE: Doubloons on Builder, Captain and Mayor.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 0 5 5 $3 1 I
Matt 0 5 5 $3 2 I
Nick 4 2 6 $9 3 C, 2 S
Chris 6 1 7 $3 4 C, 3 S
Trading House: 1 sugar, 1 indigo.
Boats: 1 sugar on 6 ship.
TURN SIX. Matt is Governor.
1. Matt selects Mayor (1). Distribution is 2/1/1/1. Matt places on tobacco and Tobacco Storage, moves from Small Market to quarry. Nick places on corn. Chris places on coffee (all circles covered). John moves from Construction Hut, places on tobacco and Tobacco storage. 6 coloncists on ship.
2. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 3 corn on 5 ship for 4 VP. Chris ships 3 sugar for 3 VP. John ships 1 indigo on 7 ship for 1 VP. Matt ships 2 indigop for 1 VP. Nick ships 2 sugar for 2 VP (filling ship). Chris ships 2 corn for 2 VP (filling ship). Warehousing: Chris loses 1 corn. Corn and sugar ships clear..
3. Chris selects Settler. Chris takes a quarry. John takes a sugar. Matt takes a coffee. Nick takes a tobacco. Discards: 1 sugar, 1 tobacco.
New draw: 1corn, 2 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 coffee.
4. John selects Builder (1). John builds Coffee Roaster for 4. Matt builds Office for 4. Nick builds Harbor for 8. Chris builds Small Warehouse for 3.
Matt finally turns on his tobacco. I grab the captain to scoop up the buck on it and extra points. (Chris would ship if I didn’t, so I wasn’t going to get a manned harbour going yet.) I also forced Chris to rot a corn, making him pay for crafting last turn. Chris later said he called the settler this turn because I was mimicking him to his right. I was going to dominate him with the same strategy so he figured he had to switch gears and hope that would work. I took tobacco over a redundant sugar. I considered building tobacco here, but harbour is just that good. (Also, righty has tobacco so it’s not really a money good for me.)
END OF TURN SIX: Doubloons on Craftsman, Trader and Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 1 8 9 $0
Matt 2 7 9 $0
Nick 10 5 15 $2
Chris 11 2 13 $0 1 C
Trading House: 1 sugar, 1 indigo.
Boats: 3 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN SEVEN. Nick is Governor.
1. Nick selects Prospector (1).
2. Chris selects Settler. Chris takes a quarry. John takes a corn. Matt takes a sugar. Nick takes an indigo. Discards: indigo, coffee.
New draw: 1 corn, 1 indigo, 1 sugar, 2 coffee..
3. John selects Mayor. Distribution is 3/2/1/1. John places colonists on coffee, Coffee Roaster, Construction Hut. Matt places on Small Market, Office. Nick places on Harbor, moves from Small Market to corn. Chris places on quarry, moves from coffee to quarry. 7 colonists on ship.
4. Matt selects Trader (1). Chris passes. No one else can trade.
More free bucks. I couldn’t see myself buying coffee and tobacco but I could well slip in an indigo hut so I snagged an indigo. I man my harbour and dance a little jig.
END OF TURN SEVEN: Doubloons on Craftsman (1), Captain and Builder.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 1 8 9 $0
Matt 2 7 9 $1
Nick 10 5 15 $4
Chris 11 2 13 $0 1 C
Trading House: 1 sugar, 1 indigo.
Boats: 3 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN EIGHT. Chris is Governor.
1. Chris selects Builder (1). Chris builds Large Indigo Plant for 0. John passes. Matt builds Small Sugar Mill for 1. Nick builds Small Indigo Plant for 1.
2. John selects Craftsman (2). John produces 1 indigo, 1 tobacco, 1 coffee. Matt produces 1 indigo, 1 tobacco. Nick produces 3 corn, 1 sugar. Chris produces 2 corn and 1 sugar. John produces 1 indigo (extra).
3. Matt selects Trader. Matt sells tobacco for 5. Nick and Chris pass. John sells coffee for 4. Trading House clears.
4. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 3 corn on 5 ship for 5 VP. Chris ships 2 corn for 2 VP, filling corn boat. John ships 1 tobacco on 6 ship for 1 VP. Matt ships 1 indigo for 1 VP. John ships 2 indigo for 2 VP. Warehousing: Chris discards 1 corn..
I only have 4 bucks but I have use for an indigo hut so I buy one. The captain with a buck on it seems pretty obvious on my turn, I score up 5 vips, and force Chris to rot more goods. I get to keep a sugar for potential selling.
END OF TURN EIGHT: Doubloons on Mayor (1), Settler and Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 4 8 12 $6
Matt 3 8 11 $5
Nick 15 6 21 $4 1 S
Chris 13 4 17 $1 1 S
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 1 tobacco on 6 ship. 6 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN NINE. John is Governor.
1. John selects Builder. John builds Factory for 5. Matt builds Coffee Roaster for 5. Nick builds Small Warehouse for 3. Chris builds Small Indigo Plant for 0.
2. Matt selects Prospector (1).
3. Nick selects Mayor (1). Distribution is 3/2/2/1. Nick places colonists on Small Indigo Plant, indigo and Small Market, moves off corn onto Small Warehouse. Chris places on Small Warehouse and coffee. John places on Factory and corn. Matt places on quarry, moves off indigo and Small Indigo to coffee and Coffee Roaster. 12 colonists on ship.
4. Chris selects Trader. Chris sells sugar for 3. No one else can trade.
I still have only 4 bucks, and made a questionable buy of a warehouse. I foresaw Chris eventually jamming me on shipping and wanted to protect against that with a warehouse instead of saving up for a wharf, which may have been a mistake. I turn on indigo and the warehouse instead of selling sugar, which may also have been a mistake. If I don’t buy and do sell then I end up at 7 bucks and am in a decent position to wharf it up. Oh well.
END OF TURN NINE: Doubloons on Settler (1), Craftsman and Captain..
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 4 11 15 $1
Matt 3 11 14 $2
Nick 15 7 22 $2 1 S
Chris 13 5 18 $4
Trading House: 1 sugar.
Boats: 1 tobacco on 6 ship. 6 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN TEN. Matt is Governor.
1. Matt selects Settler (2). Matt takes a quarry. Nick takes a corn. Chris takes an indigo. John takes a quarry. Discards: 1 sugar, 2 coffee.
New draw: 1 corn, 2 indigo, 2 sugar.
2. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 1 sugar on 5 ship for 3 VP.
3. Chris selects Builder. Chris builds Office for 2. John builds Small Sugar Mill for 1. Matt builds Large Market for 3. Nick passes.
4. John selects Mayor. 4/3/3/3 dristribution. John places colonists on quarry, sugar, Small Sugar Mill and second spot on Coffee Roaster. Matt places on tobacco and Tobacco Storage, moves off indigo Small Market, places on Large Market and quarry. Nick places on corn, corn and tobacco (all circles full). Chris places on indigo, Small Indigo Plant and office. 10 colonists on ship.
I snag another corn on the settler and ship my one good for 3 VPs. It’s important to point out that I made it so there wouldn’t be a corn boat which is pretty questionable, but at least I am making sugar and indigo and have a warehouse should a boat ever clear. I pass the build with my 3 bucks, and fill up my board with the mayor.
END OF TURN TEN: Doubloons on Craftsman (1), Trader and Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 4 12 16 $0
Matt 3 13 16 $1
Nick 18 7 25 $3
Chris 13 7 20 $2
Trading House: 1 sugar.
Boats: 1 sugar on 5 ship. 1 tobacco on 6 ship. 6 indigo on 7 ship.
TURN 11. Nick is Governor.
1. Nick selects Prospector (1).
2. Chris selects Builder. Chris builds Large Market for 2. John passes. Matt builds Large Indigo Plant for 1. Nick passes..
3. John selects Craftsman (2). John produces 1 corn, 1 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 tobacco, 1 coffee and receives 5 in Factory income. Matt produces 1 sugar, 1 tobacco and 1 coffee. Nick produces 4 corn, 1 indigo and 1 sugar. Chris produces 2 corn, 1 indigo and 1 sugar. John produces 1 tobacco (extra).
4. Matt selects Trader (1). Matt sells coffee for 7. Nick sells indigo for 2. Chris sells sugar for 2. Trading House is full.
I’m not sure why I passed the build here with 5 bucks, a tobacco seems like a pretty decent build. I’m pretty sure I was trying to build a wharf so I would be able to ship all my potentially warehoused corn. I sold an indigo, throwing away 2 points to pick up 2 bucks, getting closer to a wharf.
END OF TURN 11: Doubloons on Captain, Mayor and Settler..
Ship VP Bldg. VP Total Cash Goods
John 4 12 16 $7 1 C, 1 I, 1 S, 2 T, 1 K
Matt 3 15 18 $8 1 S, 1T
Nick 18 7 25 $7 4 C, 1 I
Chris 13 9 22 $2 2 C, 1 I
Trading House: Empty
Boats: 1 sugar on 5 ship. 1 tobacco on 6 ship. 6 indigo on 7 ship..
TURN 12. Chris is Governor.
1. Chris selects Settler (1). Chris takes a quarry. John takes a corn (no quarries left). Matt takes an indigo. Nick takes an indigo. Discards: 2 sugar.
New draw: 1 corn, 2 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 tobacco.
2. John selects Builder. John builds Guild Hall for 7. Matt builds City Hall for 7. Nick passes. Chris passes.
3. Matt selects Mayor (1). Distribution is 4/3/2/2. Matt places colonists on indigo, City Hall, Small Market and Small Indigo Plant. Nick places on indigo, has 2 colonists in San Juan. Chris places quarry and Large Market. John places on corn and Guild Hall. 11 colonists on ship.
4. Nick selects Captain (1). Nick ships 1 sugar for 3 VP. Chris ships 1 indigo for 1 VP (filling boat). John ships 2 tobacco for 2 VP. Matt ships 1 tobacco for 1 VP. John ships 1 sugar for 1 VP. Matt ships 1 sugar for 1 VP. Warehousing: John discards 1 corn and 1 indigo.
I have 7 bucks and pass the builder, intending on getting a wharf or a customs house. I ship for the 3 VPs, clearing only one boat and setting up with a lot of corn.
END OF TURN 12: Doubloons on Craftsman, Trader and Prospector.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Bonus Total Cash Goods
John 7 16 6 (GH) 23 (29) $0 1 K
Matt 5 19 4 (CH) 24 (28) $2
Nick 21 7 28 $8 4 C
Chris 14 9 23 $3 2 C
Trading house: Empty.
Boats: 4 sugar on 5 ship. 4 tobacco on 6 ship.
TURN 13. John is Governor.
1. John selects Captain. John ships 1 coffee on 7 ship for 2 VP..
2. Matt selects Prospector (1).
3. Nick selects Trader. Nick sells corn for 2. Chris sells corn for 2.
4. Chris selects Builder. Chris builds Tobacco Storage for 1. John passes. Matt builds Factory for 4. Nick builds Customs House for 10.
John now has a choice, with 1 empty boat. He can ship his coffee, screwing me out of a bunch of corn points or he can sell his coffee for huge bucks. (Note he has no money and captain has no bucks on it, so he can’t ramp up his guild hall if he doesn’t sell.) He decided I would win if I got to captain and chose to screw himself to screw me. As a result I got to sell my corn, getting me up to 10 bucks. The game was going to end next turn, so on Chris’ build I went with the customs house over a wharf.
END OF TURN 13: Doubloons on Craftsman (1), Mayor and Settler.
Ship VP Bldg. VP Bonus Total Cash Goods
John 9 16 6 (GH) 25 (31) $0
Matt 5 22 5 (CH) 32 $0
Nick 21 11 5 (Cust.) 32 (37) $0 3 C
Chris 14 12 26 $4 2 C
Trading house: 2 corn.
Boats: 4 sugar on 5 ship. 4 tobacco on 6 ship. 1 coffee on 7 ship.
TURN 14. Matt is Governor.
1. Matt selects Builder. Matt builds Hacienda for 0. Nick passes. Chris builds Coffee Roaster for 3. John passes. (NOTE: As Matt has filled all his building spaces, this triggers the end of the game.)
2. Nick selects Mayor (1). 4/3/3/2 distribution. All large buildings are covered. [NOTE: Re-Check for Final replay, not needed for tiebreaks or Fort, however.]
3. Chris selects Trader. Chris sells 1 corn for 3. No one else can trade.
4. John selects Craftsman (2). John produces corn, 1 indigo, 1 sugar, 1 tobacco, 2 coffee and 5 doubloons (Factory). Other players produce. John produces a bonus good (irrelevant which one).
Matt builds to end the game. Notice how John was forced to pass the build last turn and the one this turn because he screwed me. Also note how I got a manned large building out of being ‘screwed’. I mayor to turn on my customs house. (Note if I’d built a wharf I wouldn’t get to ship this turn.)
END OF TURN 14: FINAL SCORING:
Ship VP Bldg. VP Bonus Total Cash Goods
John 9 16 6 (GH) 31 $7
Matt 5 23 6 (CH) 34 $0
Nick 21 11 5 (Cust.) 37 $1
Chris 14 15 29 $4
Trading house: 3 corn.
Boats: 4 sugar on 5 ship. 4 tobacco on 6 ship. 1 coffee on 7 ship.
FINAL POSITIONS (taking into account bids for seat position):
1. Nick Page 35 (37 - 2 VP bid)
2. Matt Peterson 34
3. John Weber 30.5 (31 - 0.5 VP bid)
4. Chris Moffa 27.5 (29 - 1.5 VP bid)
Note that I had 8 bucks, so if I get to ship on turn 13 I gain 6 points from shipping and likely build 2 2-point buildings with my 8 bucks for a total of 10 points. The customs house was worth 9. On the flip side John gained 2 points by shipping and lost what I believe is 8 points by not being able to build 2 more production buildings. (He was missing Large Indigo and Large Sugar which cost a total of 3 with his 2 quarries.) So he cost himself 6 points to cost me 1 point, and to hurt Chris. Unless my math is wrong here it looks like I would have come second, except I got ‘screwed’ and therefore won. Overall a pretty low scoring and very close game!
WBC 2008 -> Day 6
Prelude
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap
Puerto Rico – semi-finals – 9am – I end up in a game with Brian Kowal and two people I didn’t recognize. I took Robb’s previous advice to heart and positioned myself to Brian’s right and it ended up paying off. I was able to take a couple of moves which hurt his position while the guy on my left failed to hurt me. I’m pretty sure I paid for 4th chair in this game after Brian and I bid one of the other players up to 2.5 on seat 3.
I ended up winning by a fairly large margin, and I remember at one point Brian looked at me and just shook his head after the guy on my right just kept taking jobs that were awesome for me.
Puerto Rico – finals – 11am – The time here is a bit of a misnomer as we actually had a large delay before the round started. The GM had made it to the finals so he was scrambling trying to find someone else to record the game move for move for posterity. Those of us playing didn’t seem to mind but Pounder was a little bitter as he had an 8 hour drive ahead of him and wanted to get started as soon as he could. Oh well!
The GM (John Weber) sent me the recap and it will be included in the next post along with my comments about the game. Sadly I entered in the comments this week instead of at the time so it’s not as detailed as it could have been but I did what I could given my procrastinationism.
Spoiler alert: I won, collected my plaque and headed home. We ran into a minor issue trying to find a bridge back into the country but eventually we stopped at a knick-knack shop and I used a placemat map to guess our way to the Rainbow Bridge.
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap
Puerto Rico – semi-finals – 9am – I end up in a game with Brian Kowal and two people I didn’t recognize. I took Robb’s previous advice to heart and positioned myself to Brian’s right and it ended up paying off. I was able to take a couple of moves which hurt his position while the guy on my left failed to hurt me. I’m pretty sure I paid for 4th chair in this game after Brian and I bid one of the other players up to 2.5 on seat 3.
I ended up winning by a fairly large margin, and I remember at one point Brian looked at me and just shook his head after the guy on my right just kept taking jobs that were awesome for me.
Puerto Rico – finals – 11am – The time here is a bit of a misnomer as we actually had a large delay before the round started. The GM had made it to the finals so he was scrambling trying to find someone else to record the game move for move for posterity. Those of us playing didn’t seem to mind but Pounder was a little bitter as he had an 8 hour drive ahead of him and wanted to get started as soon as he could. Oh well!
The GM (John Weber) sent me the recap and it will be included in the next post along with my comments about the game. Sadly I entered in the comments this week instead of at the time so it’s not as detailed as it could have been but I did what I could given my procrastinationism.
Spoiler alert: I won, collected my plaque and headed home. We ran into a minor issue trying to find a bridge back into the country but eventually we stopped at a knick-knack shop and I used a placemat map to guess our way to the Rainbow Bridge.
WBC 2008 -> Day 5
Prelude
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap
Puerto Rico – 11am – I’m a big fan of sleep and didn’t have any pressing reason to wake up so I didn’t. Eventually I got up and showered and looked at the schedule and decided to run the 11am PR heat. Now, I’d played a lot of PR on BSW back in the day but since it got removed I’ve rarely played the game. (At one point someone asked me how many games I’d played in the last year to prep for the event and I think I said 1.)
At any rate, I end up randomly going first this game which isn’t a position I like. (I love to ship corn!) I don’t have any notes for this game but I know I first turn quarried (something I rarely do) but then audibled into a harbour/wharf shipping position and won.
Amazing Space Venture – demo – 12pm – My PR game ended pretty fast so I wandered by the demo area. This game is a Carcassonne variant with space ships and cards. (As an aside, were you aware that Carcassonne is in the Word spellchecker? It actually suggested it as a revision to Carcassone.) I didn’t play the game and it mostly just looked like it was making Carcassonne more complicated for the sake of making it more complicated and not to make it any better. I certainly wouldn’t buy the game after the demo but I would be willing to try it at some point.
Agricola – 1pm – This wasn’t an actual round, but Robb, Pounder and I decided we had nothing to do for a couple hours. Pounder wanted to play Agricola again after playing a heat and the demo looked interesting enough. I forgot how important people were and ended up spending all my wood on fences and therefore couldn’t expand my house. I lost by a good margin but decided I really liked the game. (It is one of three games I bought shortly after WBC, along with Race for the Galaxy and Twilight Struggle.)
Puerto Rico – quarterfinals – 6pm – There’s a large gap here so I’m assuming we went out for food after Agricola. I’d won my PR round so I figured I should go to the quarters and see if I’d advanced. It turns out 8 people won 2 games and advanced to the semi-finals while everyone who won a game got into the quarters. For the elimination rounds they switch to bidding points for position. I again don’t have any notes for this game so I’m not sure what specifically happened but in generalities I know I was playing against David Platnik (a Titan player who seemed to be pretty good at games in general) and two casual gamers. It very quickly became apparent to both David and I that one of us was going to win the game (he was to my right and was hardcore building while I was hardcore shipping) and it came down to the final turn. The player across from me was governor and had to pick a job. If he goes one way David wins, otherwise I win. He picked a job that made me win.
After the game I was talking to Robb about what happened and he questioned why I’d bid to sit behind David. I knew going in that he was going to be good, so I should try my best to sit on his right, not his left. (This way he can’t spite draft me and its likely random players won’t know when to spite draft. I do know David made a couple unobvious choices that hurt me that other players likely wouldn’t have.)
Notre Dame – 8pm – I get assigned to a table and it turns out three of the players are reasonably new (2 of them had to have rules clarifications to start the game) and the 4th guy seemed to really know what was going on. Sadly he was on my immediate right and if seating position matters in PR it really matters in ND. Righty got passed a C1 Notre Dame, for example, after playing a hardcore money strategy. The guy who passed it to him later lamented that he didn’t get to play a Notre Dame card in round C. Of course you didn’t, you passed it! Anyway, I ended up exactly tied with the guy on my right. We went to the GM and the decision was made that we’d both be treated as winners because it would make the numbers better for the semi-finals. (Pounder later pointed out that this is actually against WBC rules, but what are you going to do?)
Notre Dame – semi-finals – 10pm – It turns out there were exactly 8 games played over the two rounds. Pounder won games in both rounds and two of us won the same game in round 2, so there were 8 people to advance. The GM decided to go with 2 4-player games, with the top 2 advancing from each game. I ended up at a table with Robb, Brian Kowal (a Magic pro back when I sometimes was on tour), and some other dude. I don’t remember much about the game other than that it was very close. The other guy and I advanced in a very well played game.
Notre Dame – finals – 12pm – Pounder and David Platnik advanced from the other semi-final table. I ended up sitting to Pounder’s left which is very bad for me. (I wrote some analysis about the game which is in the archives here, and Pounder is probably the only person who has read it. I know he agreed with a lot of what I had to say and we have very similar strategies. Having him drafting before me puts me in a lot of trouble.)
Anyway, I end up making a very dangerous play. I play a Notre Dame card in round A and only pick up one dollar which results in my having no money going into B1. I have 4 cards in 9 that I can draw to give me a dollar, or Pounder can pass me one and I’m ok. I have an 82% chance of drawing a card I need, but fail to, and Pounder doesn’t pass me one. It turns out Pounder drafted a guesthouse instead of passing it to me and didn’t play it, blowing me out. I missed my bribe in B1 and then had to scramble to try to get back into a playable position. This forced me to pass extra VP-house cards to my left, which David gladly scooped up on his way to the victory.
Pounder ended up 3rd, I came 4th, and Robb came 5th. Go Waterloo!
I had a 9am PR semi-final to attend the next morning, so I bowed out of potential open gaming after our midnight final finished. I suspect we went to the Waffle House anyway, and then Robb went searching for a werewolf game while Pounder and I crashed. (Pounder had a long drive in the morning so he wanted to sleep too.)
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap
Puerto Rico – 11am – I’m a big fan of sleep and didn’t have any pressing reason to wake up so I didn’t. Eventually I got up and showered and looked at the schedule and decided to run the 11am PR heat. Now, I’d played a lot of PR on BSW back in the day but since it got removed I’ve rarely played the game. (At one point someone asked me how many games I’d played in the last year to prep for the event and I think I said 1.)
At any rate, I end up randomly going first this game which isn’t a position I like. (I love to ship corn!) I don’t have any notes for this game but I know I first turn quarried (something I rarely do) but then audibled into a harbour/wharf shipping position and won.
Amazing Space Venture – demo – 12pm – My PR game ended pretty fast so I wandered by the demo area. This game is a Carcassonne variant with space ships and cards. (As an aside, were you aware that Carcassonne is in the Word spellchecker? It actually suggested it as a revision to Carcassone.) I didn’t play the game and it mostly just looked like it was making Carcassonne more complicated for the sake of making it more complicated and not to make it any better. I certainly wouldn’t buy the game after the demo but I would be willing to try it at some point.
Agricola – 1pm – This wasn’t an actual round, but Robb, Pounder and I decided we had nothing to do for a couple hours. Pounder wanted to play Agricola again after playing a heat and the demo looked interesting enough. I forgot how important people were and ended up spending all my wood on fences and therefore couldn’t expand my house. I lost by a good margin but decided I really liked the game. (It is one of three games I bought shortly after WBC, along with Race for the Galaxy and Twilight Struggle.)
Puerto Rico – quarterfinals – 6pm – There’s a large gap here so I’m assuming we went out for food after Agricola. I’d won my PR round so I figured I should go to the quarters and see if I’d advanced. It turns out 8 people won 2 games and advanced to the semi-finals while everyone who won a game got into the quarters. For the elimination rounds they switch to bidding points for position. I again don’t have any notes for this game so I’m not sure what specifically happened but in generalities I know I was playing against David Platnik (a Titan player who seemed to be pretty good at games in general) and two casual gamers. It very quickly became apparent to both David and I that one of us was going to win the game (he was to my right and was hardcore building while I was hardcore shipping) and it came down to the final turn. The player across from me was governor and had to pick a job. If he goes one way David wins, otherwise I win. He picked a job that made me win.
After the game I was talking to Robb about what happened and he questioned why I’d bid to sit behind David. I knew going in that he was going to be good, so I should try my best to sit on his right, not his left. (This way he can’t spite draft me and its likely random players won’t know when to spite draft. I do know David made a couple unobvious choices that hurt me that other players likely wouldn’t have.)
Notre Dame – 8pm – I get assigned to a table and it turns out three of the players are reasonably new (2 of them had to have rules clarifications to start the game) and the 4th guy seemed to really know what was going on. Sadly he was on my immediate right and if seating position matters in PR it really matters in ND. Righty got passed a C1 Notre Dame, for example, after playing a hardcore money strategy. The guy who passed it to him later lamented that he didn’t get to play a Notre Dame card in round C. Of course you didn’t, you passed it! Anyway, I ended up exactly tied with the guy on my right. We went to the GM and the decision was made that we’d both be treated as winners because it would make the numbers better for the semi-finals. (Pounder later pointed out that this is actually against WBC rules, but what are you going to do?)
Notre Dame – semi-finals – 10pm – It turns out there were exactly 8 games played over the two rounds. Pounder won games in both rounds and two of us won the same game in round 2, so there were 8 people to advance. The GM decided to go with 2 4-player games, with the top 2 advancing from each game. I ended up at a table with Robb, Brian Kowal (a Magic pro back when I sometimes was on tour), and some other dude. I don’t remember much about the game other than that it was very close. The other guy and I advanced in a very well played game.
Notre Dame – finals – 12pm – Pounder and David Platnik advanced from the other semi-final table. I ended up sitting to Pounder’s left which is very bad for me. (I wrote some analysis about the game which is in the archives here, and Pounder is probably the only person who has read it. I know he agreed with a lot of what I had to say and we have very similar strategies. Having him drafting before me puts me in a lot of trouble.)
Anyway, I end up making a very dangerous play. I play a Notre Dame card in round A and only pick up one dollar which results in my having no money going into B1. I have 4 cards in 9 that I can draw to give me a dollar, or Pounder can pass me one and I’m ok. I have an 82% chance of drawing a card I need, but fail to, and Pounder doesn’t pass me one. It turns out Pounder drafted a guesthouse instead of passing it to me and didn’t play it, blowing me out. I missed my bribe in B1 and then had to scramble to try to get back into a playable position. This forced me to pass extra VP-house cards to my left, which David gladly scooped up on his way to the victory.
Pounder ended up 3rd, I came 4th, and Robb came 5th. Go Waterloo!
I had a 9am PR semi-final to attend the next morning, so I bowed out of potential open gaming after our midnight final finished. I suspect we went to the Waffle House anyway, and then Robb went searching for a werewolf game while Pounder and I crashed. (Pounder had a long drive in the morning so he wanted to sleep too.)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Games Night in the Lounge
Last night was our first scheduled games night of the term. We played a 4 player game of Puerto Rico (I was 4th chair, got off to a good start but then misplayed my position in midgame, allowing the boats to end up indigo, tobacco, coffee with me holding 7 corn. I ended up last with 51 points.)
Then we played a 6 player game of Apples to Apples, which is a silly fun game. Not a good game. We had some laughs though, so it's all good. After a quick trip to the local all-day breakfast diner we returned to play a 6 player game of ZOMBIES!!! It's a fun concept but it takes too long, in no small part due to the vast number of cards designed solely to hinder the progress of other players. 4 people were running for the helipad leaving Byung and myself each trying to reach the 25 zombies goal. After several turns of being prevented from moving at all by other people's cards I got annoyed and tried to help Byung kill his zombies by using my destructive movement cards to move him where he wanted to go anyway. He ended up being killed by the 23rd zombie.
To pay back that deed he spawned 10 zombies in the streets around me, giving me an actual chance to get lucky and kill them all. (Note:Spawning 10 zombies around someone is almost always very destructive in this game. It tends to result in them getting killed by zombies.) But, a combination of 3 destructive cards meant I couldn't even ATTACK them for 3 full turns, which ended up being enough time for both Mike and Jeff to make it to the helipad for a joint victory. Also a fun game, not a great game.
I restarted playing Final Fantasy IX again, as I do not remember much about it from when I beat it shortly after its release. The graphics are distinctly underwhelming at this point in time though. Gameplay is still fun.
World of Warcraft is still taking up copious amounts of my time. I made plans with two of my roommates (Pounder and Andrew) and with Byung to make a group of 4 characters to play together in instances on a new server. It should be fun, especially since I get to be the shaman. Shaman being one of the classes I have not played with much at all.
Then we played a 6 player game of Apples to Apples, which is a silly fun game. Not a good game. We had some laughs though, so it's all good. After a quick trip to the local all-day breakfast diner we returned to play a 6 player game of ZOMBIES!!! It's a fun concept but it takes too long, in no small part due to the vast number of cards designed solely to hinder the progress of other players. 4 people were running for the helipad leaving Byung and myself each trying to reach the 25 zombies goal. After several turns of being prevented from moving at all by other people's cards I got annoyed and tried to help Byung kill his zombies by using my destructive movement cards to move him where he wanted to go anyway. He ended up being killed by the 23rd zombie.
To pay back that deed he spawned 10 zombies in the streets around me, giving me an actual chance to get lucky and kill them all. (Note:Spawning 10 zombies around someone is almost always very destructive in this game. It tends to result in them getting killed by zombies.) But, a combination of 3 destructive cards meant I couldn't even ATTACK them for 3 full turns, which ended up being enough time for both Mike and Jeff to make it to the helipad for a joint victory. Also a fun game, not a great game.
I restarted playing Final Fantasy IX again, as I do not remember much about it from when I beat it shortly after its release. The graphics are distinctly underwhelming at this point in time though. Gameplay is still fun.
World of Warcraft is still taking up copious amounts of my time. I made plans with two of my roommates (Pounder and Andrew) and with Byung to make a group of 4 characters to play together in instances on a new server. It should be fun, especially since I get to be the shaman. Shaman being one of the classes I have not played with much at all.
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