Monday featured three events I really wanted to enter. San Juan started at 10 and would go for likely 6-7 hours. A Few Acres of Snow started at 12 and would likely go for 8-10 hours, but I could skip the first 2 hours because of the mulligan round Sunday night. Through The Ages was at 10 and was the third heat. I already had a first and an incredibly close second (lost by 1 point) so ideally I should have been in a good way to make it to the semis already. Unfortunately the posted tiebreakers cared about your third best result instead of how close your second was and they were treating a last place as being better than not playing at all. This meant I would lose to any first-second-showed up combo. I was musing about this last night with Sceadeau and Randy (the GM) and thought that maybe I should just show up and use the honourable withdrawl rule to concede on turn 1 and get a third place. Randy immediately said he'd just give me a third place in the scoring system if I showed up instead of having me screw over a game. I don't think I would have screwed over a game but the fact that I 'should' have done so is a bit of a problem and letting me just get a third is certainly a good solution. Randy said he's going to change the tiebreakers next year to fix this issue by only counting your top two finishes.
I decided I didn't want to risk a Through The Ages game going more than 4 hours and causing me to miss A Few Acres of Snow which looked to be mine for the taking so I ended up showing up at 10 and getting my third place. I ended up being by far the best 1-2-3 record but that was only good enough for 19th place with top 16 advancing. If I'd gotten up to 1-2-2 I would have been the best of those and finished something like 14th and made the semis. Oh well.
What I did end up doing was playing A Few Acres of Snow at 12. The GM let me know that I could play round 1, lose, and still advance because I won the mulligan round the night before. Great! Maybe I can play someone good for a stupidly high bid and figure out what a reasonable bid is going to be. Not to be. My opponent had played once before. He let me have the British for 3 and then proceeded to never use any of the free actions. I did my only British opener (buy rangers, make 6 and buy governor, governor away Pemaquid and St Mary's, make money and buy guns, attack, win) and blew him up.
Round 2 put me up against someone who didn't understand the bidding system and didn't know the game but had been told a rudimentary British strategy. He thought we were bidding victory points instead of bonus actions and was planning on winning by taking Quebec so points wouldn't matter. This is true and is why points aren't the bidding currency. At any rate I ended up accepting a bid of 7 to play the French. After I accepted the bid he let me know that he had another event in 2 hours so he was going to concede just before he won. I think that's sketchy and would rather he knock me out and then drop. The game went about as expected except he screwed up pretty badly by not realizing he could put his ships cards into the fight. Oddly enough he knew he could buy the ships card for 6 and put it into the fight but never realized he could put Norfolk and New Haven in. He did put Boston and New York in and then either had weak draws or misplayed and consistently made 2 or 3 dollars per turn instead of 6. This let me keep up in military power during our Port Royal fight while disking out most of my board. I screwed up by putting Montreal on the fight before settling Fort Frontenac so I couldn't end the game immediately upon termination of the fight in Port Royal. He wanted to concede because he couldn't see a way the fight would end until I pointed out to him that he could put Norfolk on the pile. He promptly won the fight. He also beiseged and won in Halifax (I raided Port Royal away to slow him down from attacking Louisbourg) and managed to settle and disk up Fort Frontenac and Oswego before he won in Halifax. I then conceded the fight in Halifax and won the game on points.
Round 3 had me face off against Alex Henning. I'd been watching her and her brother (other Nick) play in the first round and saw that they'd both played, and won, as the French by going a hardcore disking strategy against people who didn't go hardcore attacking. She let me have the British for 2 and let me know that she'd only played like 4 games total and only as the French but had been told a good strategy by her brother. This let me know what her plan was, but it didn't matter at all. I have a very specific British strategy that I use every game. I used it this game and it worked as expected but it was actually relatively close to her disking out in time to win. The key was that I managed to siege Port Royal and Halifax before she could disk them up which both gave her two dead cards and which forced her to settle an extra two locations in the west before she could use up all of her disks. A close game, but not one any different than the games on Yucata where I win every time as the British.
Round 4 was against Nick Henning's friend and apparently the only person he ever played against before WBC. They're pretty good at games in general and had worked out a strong French strategy but I don't know that they ever used the full hardcore British attack. People kept referring to the British attack plan as the 'Halifax Hammer' because everyone seems to think you should take Halifax first. I ignore Halifax and kill Port Royal and it works just fine, thanks! I believe he let me be the British for 5 this game. He opened the game with a very fast siege of Pemaquid on turn 2. I managed to keep that fit going while I worked to governor away my bad cards and starting buying stuff. I did this by buying my siege artillery early on and throwing it into the fight. After I'd stabilized he ended up buying his siege artillery and throwing it and coureurs de bois into the Pemaquid fight to put me down by 4. I couldn't stop the fight but I could attack Port Royal with my regular infantry and my rangers! He won Pemaquid, I won Port Royal. He couldn't settle since Quebec was in the fight. I could settle and now had Port Royal. I started a quick siege of Louisbourg but hadn't quite realized I was behind in military strength (I lost a regular when Pemaquid resolved but he lost nothing when Port Royal resolved) and ended up losing the fight in Louisbourg. I bought a couple more regulars and went right back in and won this time. From there it was an easy trek to Quebec.
Round 5, the finals, was against Nick Henning himself. He bid me up a little more than the other two did but not by much. I got the British for 6 and pretty much knew he was going to use the same strategy I'd just beaten the previous two rounds. He again sieged Pemaquid on turn 2 but I had a better hand setup to deal with it this time. I had both Norfolk and New Haven on hand! Right into the pile they went! Good-bye mediocre cards! I governored away the really terrible cards and went to work making money. Pemaquid was tied up with 4 strength apiece and I had a fresh regular in hand (my deck at this point being rangers, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and maybe a regular) and he thought I was going to put the regular into Pemaquid to win the fight. Nope! I attacked Port Royal with it instead. I really like this plan since it ties up some of my bad cards and some of his good cards for the rest of the game or until he withdraws from the fight. Every single turn from here on was some combination of make 6 dollars, buy a regular, or put a regular into the Port Royal fight. Nick was doing a good job of ambushing my regulars with his 4 ambush cards but I really don't care. I think it's actually a new positive for the British to lose a regular in an ambush as long as they have a rangers to block and can make 6 a turn. Eventually I won in Port Royal and moved on to Louisbourg. He got me into a tricky position where I was going to lose the fight in Louisbourg unless I put one of my 4 good cards into the fight. I chose to put New York in and bought a ships card instead of a regular which surprised Nick and all the spectators. I then proceeded to keep making 6 a turn using the ships instead of New York and eventually was able to start buying regulars to put into the fight. He'd been working on expanding a little to the west and was trying to use Quebec and intendant to get all his disks into play before I could hit Quebec. Ultimately I won in Louisbourg and reserved my ships card. I actually like buying a ships because a siege of Quebec is hard to set up while digging for Louisbourg but being able to reserver ships (and not locations) lowers the constraints on the specific hand you can build. Louisbourg ended up being the last card in my deck after the reshuffle which was really unfortunate and let Nick get all but 2 of his disks in play before I could start a siege. He'd pulled off a couple ambushes while I was waiting for Louisbourg and I didn't think I had the stuff to take Quebec just yet. Fortunately for me the one starting location he had yet to disk was Trois Rivieres. So I started a siege there instead! I won that fight in relatively short order and settled it. By this point I'd cycled back into the Louisbourg card and launched an attack on Tadoussac. Nick had run out of money ambushing by this point and tried to trader with a bunch of western furs. I pointed out that he couldn't actually use those cards anymore since they had no support from Quebec once he lost the fight in Trois Rivieres. He finished the turn, thought a bit more as I won the fight in Tadoussac, and conceded. I was up on points and he had 2 functional location cards left (Quebec itself and Gaspe) and no real way to actually take actions anymore. Victory!
I'd been worried that there was a degenerate French strategy with a medium bid value which involved cycling into newly bought military cards for a quick win in Boston. I don't think anyone had tested such a thing (i only thought of it in the shower before the event) and I don't feel anyone really used their free actions to the fullest extent (by cycling extra times to force a key reshuffle). The entire event I kept hearing people talking strategy and everyone seemed to think there was an appropriate counter to any strategy and the game was therefore well balanced and there isn't a British problem. I think they're all crazy and maybe after the event people will believe me more? Though I guess really all I proved was that I can beat new players and the Henning strategy so maybe there really is a counter to my plan out there. All I know is no one has ever used it against me.
After the event Pounder thought I should go eat so went to Olive and Jasmin's Asian Bistro. It turns out it shut down in the last year since the doors were locked and the tables removed. Frowns. I ended up wating at Fuddrucker's again. I had a burger this time and it was ok. The bun was terrible so I just ate it with a knife and fork.
After food Pounder and I played two games of Innovation. He won the first one by getting into age 6 while I was still in age 1 thanks to a good combo of cards. I won the second one because Pounder ramped into age 10 while I was still in age 7 but I was able to trade my lowest card in hand for his 2 highest cards (both 10s) and both of those cards had winning clauses which won the game for me. Woo!
The night brought either Ra or Vegas Showdown. I decided I really didn't want to play a thinking game after a day of A Few Acres of Snow so I went to play Ra. I ended up at a table with Alex Henning again. Fortunately for her I'm terrible at Ra so I wasn't going to manhandle her in Ra the way I did in A Few Acres of Snow. The game went like most Ra games do where I call Ra super-aggressively and then lose when I'm forced to buy bad things by people who want to punish me for being aggressive. Round 2 I had the sun combo of 1-2-8 and actually got the best buys I think since the age ended with most people still having suns to go. Ultimately the scores ended up 40-38-36-26-24 with me being the 36 after having lost 5 points for lowest suns. Grr! Alex was the 38 and Dominic from Quebec was the 40.
Open gaming featured a 5 player game of Agricola with Robb, Pounder, Daniel E, and Winton. We borrowed the pimpest of pimped Agricola sets I've ever seen with ludicrous clay meeple things for all the resourced and families. I played the green player whose families was entirely redheads. Woo! I rarely play Agricola and we drafted the cards and I feel like I didn't know what was good or not. I ended up drafting 3 different cards that scored bonus points for eating pigs so I went that route. I managed to get 12 wood onto the basin maker! I ended up coming last thanks to tiebreakers with Robb but since Daniel gave Robb 2 points on the last turn in order to spite Pounder from getting 1 food I'm going to take a moral 4th place.
Off to Waffle House where I had an All-Star. Then sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.
Showing posts with label Ra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ra. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Thursday, July 16, 2009
WBC 2008 -> Day 3
Prelude
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap
Titan 2-player - 9 am - I spent a fair amount of time yesterday watching my opponent play in his 8 hour game. The reason it took so long is both players were timid about attacking and always fought when there was a fight instead of fleeing. I knew I could put those two facts to my advantage since I could likely score up big points by making many attacks as he was likely to fight them all.
As it turns out, I ended up killing every single unit he recruited in the game. My Titan stack had 3 warlocks and 2 angels in it, and just went around murdering everything. Woo!
My game took a little less than 3 hours and I went to ask about my next opponent. They were still playing and he said he had an event to play at 1 but would be ready to play me after that. I looked at the schedule and noticed there was a demo for his event starting very shortly and figured I'd go give it a go.
Race for the Galaxy demo - 12pm - I feel the GM did an excellent job with this demo. It turns out the game is very similar to San Juan so I didn't need as detailed a demo as he gave but it seemed to me like he had planned out what he wanted to say in advance and had really worked out a good order to introduce rules to make sure everyone knew what was going on.
Race for the Galaxy - 1pm - Hey, I really like San Juan so a redesign of the game was worth playing in my books. I misunderstood a rule to start the game and ended up building the wrong card entirely which probably sunk my game. It turns out we had a three way tie for first place and after tie breakers I ended up second. It was quite fun and I'm looking forward to really doing better next year now that I have some experience with the game.
Titan 2-player - 2:10pm - I opened this game by rolling a 5 in a tower that only gets one recruit on a 5. I mulliganed it and rolled another 5. My opponent rolled very well for his recruitment early (and I did not) so I made a very questionable attack. Questionable in the sense that it was likely to cause me to lose but I felt I already had lost and needed to do something risky to turn the game around. Certainly if the fight had worked out in my favour I was in a much better way than if I hadn't attacked. (I also didn't know if I was hitting his Titan stack or his Angel stack. If it was his Titan stack then it was a way to win immediately.) Turns out it was his Angel stack (expected, since it did move above me in the tundra) but it was still a good attack. I rolled below average on an attack and didn't kill a unit I needed to kill and thusly lost the game.
After the game my opponent said he thought my attack was too risky and I actually had better odds of winning the game if I'd just run away. I'm not convinced, my only way to win there is to hope I can reverse the massive recruiting disadvantage I was in which means I need to both roll better recruiting numbers than he did and I needed to do so in positions that wouldn't involve me getting attacked and killed by his better stacks. I needed to get a fight in with an angel summon ASAP and especially in a 2 player game if I take out one of his lords when I do that's great for me. It also has the upside that if it fails I lose immediately so I can go do something else!
This game was quite short (it also ended on the first fight, like my first round) so I went and joined a Ra game.
Ra - 3pm – I get assigned to a table with a fairly attractive young lady setting up a board. She mentions in passing to the guy sitting beside her that she’s looking forward to starting high school soon. Yikes! That would make her less than half my age which pretty much means I have no idea how old people are or I’m turning into a dirty old man. Note that that or is not exclusive.
Anyway, the actual game went as Ra normally does. I lost, horribly. I swear I have no idea how to play this game in the slightest.
Monsters Ravage America demo - 5pm - This is a game where you control a monster and a branch of the military and spend most of the game just gearing up your monster to try to win the final battle. I thought this game sounded awesome in the write-ups online so I really wanted to give it a try. This demo was pretty much the polar opposite of the Race demo. The GM didn't even know the rules for the game at this demo, which was a little sad. (Hasbro reprinted the game with an easier rule set. The GM knew the older rules but not exactly what had changed in the easier game.) I left the demo with a rough idea of how things would work but was sure I would screw up the game itself. But whatever, you get to be a giant monster and destroy cities in the US, so I went for it anyway.
Monsters Ravage America - 6pm - I managed to get into a game of the easier version (yay!) and my game had two women in it. The girl setting up the game was rather pretty, and it turns out she’s 17. Double yikes! The other girl was 23 and I’d swear she was the younger of the two, which pretty much just confirms that the previously mentioned or is not exclusive.
It turns out the game has a lot of spiteful strategy that can be employed with your military. (I was the air force, and could just surround monsters with planes preventing them from getting somewhere good to power up. This made my opponents very bitter, as I gather most people just try to defend the best squares instead of preventing you from getting to any squares.) Anyway, there are a couple of different ways to power up and one of the ways is one-shot attacks. You get tokens to burn for extra dice and when you use them they're gone. I ended up being the guy who ended the game which meant I had to kill all my opponents sequentially to win. I chose the girl with the most one-shot items to attack first (probably a mistake) and she ended up blowing her stack to kill me. (Unsurprisingly!) I believe she ended up winning the game.
MRA was definitely a fun game and I'd be willing to play again but it didn't really excite me as much as I was hoping. I think part of the problem is it felt mean to make optimal use of my military. Oh well.
Twilight Struggle demo - 8pm - Twilight Struggle is a 2 player card driven war-game simulating the Cold War which I'd seen played once and was intrigued by. I decided to go to the demo and see what it was actually about. This was the third demo I attended this day and I wasn't a big fan of the format of this one. My main issue was one of the people at the demo kept interrupting the demoer to go into more detail on specific rules. Now it could be that the GM was doing a terrible job or it could be that he had a plan to reveal more information later on in the demo but we never got a chance to find out because of the constant interruptions. I actually got up and left partway into the demo because of how annoying I found the interruptions to be. I explain new games to people around here a fair bit (because I like to buy and play new games) and I always get annoyed when other people 'help' teach. I 'help' as well, its human nature, but since this demo I've started to try to restrain myself until the end and point out oversights then. It's better than jumbling up someone's explanation that just isn't in the same order yours might have been!
Queen's Gambit - 9pm - This is a game I learned last year at WBC by reading the rules 5 minutes before the round started. It's actually a Star Wars miniature war-game simulating the end of Episode 1. I liked it so much I bought a copy on eBay despite it being rather pricy (it's been out of print for some time and is pretty rare). The WBC events actually uses 'owns the game' as the primary tiebreaker so I was happy to have brought my copy down. I was given a 'owns the game' index card to write my name on and set up my board while waiting for an opponent. (The game has more than a hundred miniatures that go into preset locations, so it takes some time to set up.)
The game itself was long and hard fought. I played the 'good' guys and eventually won with only 1 Gungan alive on the battlefield. I think my opponent probably focused too much on killing Gungans and not enough time actually winning the game and might have won if he'd focused entirely on Darth Maul. (Though to be fair, my Anakin had a lot of trouble and that was at least partially caused by his focus on the battlefield, so maybe I'm just way off base here.)
Vegas Showdown - semi-finals - 11pm - It turned out none of Pounder, Robb, or I won our Vegas Showdown games and none of us made the semi-finals. One guy didn't show up though, so they were letting one alternate advance. The alternate rankings? Pounder, then Robb, then myself. Pounder was off playing something else (Agricola maybe?) so Robb advanced. They were short a copy of the game so I went off to get mine. Robb suggested he'd bow out so I could advance since I'd brought a copy and had been talking about wanting to win that event but I wouldn't have any of that. If I deserved to make it to the semis than I would have and that's that!
I didn't have anything else to do so I played the part of the banker in Robb's game. Robb ended up with his income numbers in the wrong spot for a couple of turns (CHEATER!) and called the GM on himself. They decided to ding him the money he likely shouldn't have earned and no other penalty which made sense. I think the game _might_ have gone differently if his opponents had had an accurate count on his money for the couple turns this happened during but I suspect not. At any rate Robb ended up winning by a good margin anyway.
Race for the Galaxy - later - We likely went out to the Waffle House and then came back to play a game at some ungodly hour. Pounder wanted something reasonable short and I saw that the open gaming library had a copy of Race for the Galaxy, a game I'd played for the first time in an event earlier that day and wanted to play again. As we were setting up a random nice lady asked if she could join in and not being completely antisocial we said yes. Robb and I ended up tying for first, Pounder and Cally tied for 3rd. Pounder was a little sceptical heading in since he likes San Juan so much and thought this was just going to be a more random version of that. I think he's probably right, but it's still a lot of fun. So much so that Pounder and I both bought the game and the expansion, as did our friend Duncan. It's cheap, short, relatively easy to learn, and lots of fun. (Relatively easy for gamers to learn anyway...)
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap
Titan 2-player - 9 am - I spent a fair amount of time yesterday watching my opponent play in his 8 hour game. The reason it took so long is both players were timid about attacking and always fought when there was a fight instead of fleeing. I knew I could put those two facts to my advantage since I could likely score up big points by making many attacks as he was likely to fight them all.
As it turns out, I ended up killing every single unit he recruited in the game. My Titan stack had 3 warlocks and 2 angels in it, and just went around murdering everything. Woo!
My game took a little less than 3 hours and I went to ask about my next opponent. They were still playing and he said he had an event to play at 1 but would be ready to play me after that. I looked at the schedule and noticed there was a demo for his event starting very shortly and figured I'd go give it a go.
Race for the Galaxy demo - 12pm - I feel the GM did an excellent job with this demo. It turns out the game is very similar to San Juan so I didn't need as detailed a demo as he gave but it seemed to me like he had planned out what he wanted to say in advance and had really worked out a good order to introduce rules to make sure everyone knew what was going on.
Race for the Galaxy - 1pm - Hey, I really like San Juan so a redesign of the game was worth playing in my books. I misunderstood a rule to start the game and ended up building the wrong card entirely which probably sunk my game. It turns out we had a three way tie for first place and after tie breakers I ended up second. It was quite fun and I'm looking forward to really doing better next year now that I have some experience with the game.
Titan 2-player - 2:10pm - I opened this game by rolling a 5 in a tower that only gets one recruit on a 5. I mulliganed it and rolled another 5. My opponent rolled very well for his recruitment early (and I did not) so I made a very questionable attack. Questionable in the sense that it was likely to cause me to lose but I felt I already had lost and needed to do something risky to turn the game around. Certainly if the fight had worked out in my favour I was in a much better way than if I hadn't attacked. (I also didn't know if I was hitting his Titan stack or his Angel stack. If it was his Titan stack then it was a way to win immediately.) Turns out it was his Angel stack (expected, since it did move above me in the tundra) but it was still a good attack. I rolled below average on an attack and didn't kill a unit I needed to kill and thusly lost the game.
After the game my opponent said he thought my attack was too risky and I actually had better odds of winning the game if I'd just run away. I'm not convinced, my only way to win there is to hope I can reverse the massive recruiting disadvantage I was in which means I need to both roll better recruiting numbers than he did and I needed to do so in positions that wouldn't involve me getting attacked and killed by his better stacks. I needed to get a fight in with an angel summon ASAP and especially in a 2 player game if I take out one of his lords when I do that's great for me. It also has the upside that if it fails I lose immediately so I can go do something else!
This game was quite short (it also ended on the first fight, like my first round) so I went and joined a Ra game.
Ra - 3pm – I get assigned to a table with a fairly attractive young lady setting up a board. She mentions in passing to the guy sitting beside her that she’s looking forward to starting high school soon. Yikes! That would make her less than half my age which pretty much means I have no idea how old people are or I’m turning into a dirty old man. Note that that or is not exclusive.
Anyway, the actual game went as Ra normally does. I lost, horribly. I swear I have no idea how to play this game in the slightest.
Monsters Ravage America demo - 5pm - This is a game where you control a monster and a branch of the military and spend most of the game just gearing up your monster to try to win the final battle. I thought this game sounded awesome in the write-ups online so I really wanted to give it a try. This demo was pretty much the polar opposite of the Race demo. The GM didn't even know the rules for the game at this demo, which was a little sad. (Hasbro reprinted the game with an easier rule set. The GM knew the older rules but not exactly what had changed in the easier game.) I left the demo with a rough idea of how things would work but was sure I would screw up the game itself. But whatever, you get to be a giant monster and destroy cities in the US, so I went for it anyway.
Monsters Ravage America - 6pm - I managed to get into a game of the easier version (yay!) and my game had two women in it. The girl setting up the game was rather pretty, and it turns out she’s 17. Double yikes! The other girl was 23 and I’d swear she was the younger of the two, which pretty much just confirms that the previously mentioned or is not exclusive.
It turns out the game has a lot of spiteful strategy that can be employed with your military. (I was the air force, and could just surround monsters with planes preventing them from getting somewhere good to power up. This made my opponents very bitter, as I gather most people just try to defend the best squares instead of preventing you from getting to any squares.) Anyway, there are a couple of different ways to power up and one of the ways is one-shot attacks. You get tokens to burn for extra dice and when you use them they're gone. I ended up being the guy who ended the game which meant I had to kill all my opponents sequentially to win. I chose the girl with the most one-shot items to attack first (probably a mistake) and she ended up blowing her stack to kill me. (Unsurprisingly!) I believe she ended up winning the game.
MRA was definitely a fun game and I'd be willing to play again but it didn't really excite me as much as I was hoping. I think part of the problem is it felt mean to make optimal use of my military. Oh well.
Twilight Struggle demo - 8pm - Twilight Struggle is a 2 player card driven war-game simulating the Cold War which I'd seen played once and was intrigued by. I decided to go to the demo and see what it was actually about. This was the third demo I attended this day and I wasn't a big fan of the format of this one. My main issue was one of the people at the demo kept interrupting the demoer to go into more detail on specific rules. Now it could be that the GM was doing a terrible job or it could be that he had a plan to reveal more information later on in the demo but we never got a chance to find out because of the constant interruptions. I actually got up and left partway into the demo because of how annoying I found the interruptions to be. I explain new games to people around here a fair bit (because I like to buy and play new games) and I always get annoyed when other people 'help' teach. I 'help' as well, its human nature, but since this demo I've started to try to restrain myself until the end and point out oversights then. It's better than jumbling up someone's explanation that just isn't in the same order yours might have been!
Queen's Gambit - 9pm - This is a game I learned last year at WBC by reading the rules 5 minutes before the round started. It's actually a Star Wars miniature war-game simulating the end of Episode 1. I liked it so much I bought a copy on eBay despite it being rather pricy (it's been out of print for some time and is pretty rare). The WBC events actually uses 'owns the game' as the primary tiebreaker so I was happy to have brought my copy down. I was given a 'owns the game' index card to write my name on and set up my board while waiting for an opponent. (The game has more than a hundred miniatures that go into preset locations, so it takes some time to set up.)
The game itself was long and hard fought. I played the 'good' guys and eventually won with only 1 Gungan alive on the battlefield. I think my opponent probably focused too much on killing Gungans and not enough time actually winning the game and might have won if he'd focused entirely on Darth Maul. (Though to be fair, my Anakin had a lot of trouble and that was at least partially caused by his focus on the battlefield, so maybe I'm just way off base here.)
Vegas Showdown - semi-finals - 11pm - It turned out none of Pounder, Robb, or I won our Vegas Showdown games and none of us made the semi-finals. One guy didn't show up though, so they were letting one alternate advance. The alternate rankings? Pounder, then Robb, then myself. Pounder was off playing something else (Agricola maybe?) so Robb advanced. They were short a copy of the game so I went off to get mine. Robb suggested he'd bow out so I could advance since I'd brought a copy and had been talking about wanting to win that event but I wouldn't have any of that. If I deserved to make it to the semis than I would have and that's that!
I didn't have anything else to do so I played the part of the banker in Robb's game. Robb ended up with his income numbers in the wrong spot for a couple of turns (CHEATER!) and called the GM on himself. They decided to ding him the money he likely shouldn't have earned and no other penalty which made sense. I think the game _might_ have gone differently if his opponents had had an accurate count on his money for the couple turns this happened during but I suspect not. At any rate Robb ended up winning by a good margin anyway.
Race for the Galaxy - later - We likely went out to the Waffle House and then came back to play a game at some ungodly hour. Pounder wanted something reasonable short and I saw that the open gaming library had a copy of Race for the Galaxy, a game I'd played for the first time in an event earlier that day and wanted to play again. As we were setting up a random nice lady asked if she could join in and not being completely antisocial we said yes. Robb and I ended up tying for first, Pounder and Cally tied for 3rd. Pounder was a little sceptical heading in since he likes San Juan so much and thought this was just going to be a more random version of that. I think he's probably right, but it's still a lot of fun. So much so that Pounder and I both bought the game and the expansion, as did our friend Duncan. It's cheap, short, relatively easy to learn, and lots of fun. (Relatively easy for gamers to learn anyway...)
Sunday, January 06, 2008
WBC 'report', Part 1
This all happened five months ago and the only notes I have are little pencil marks in my guide book indicating what events I thought I wanted to go to so this won't be an incredibly detailed report. It should, however, serve to demonstrate just how much gaming there is to be had at WBC.
We drove down to Lancaster on Tuesday morning, stopping to pick Robb and Lin up in Cambridge and then at a diner in some small town in rural PA, but beyond that it was straight through. It took something like 8 hours all told, and we ended up in Lancaster around 4-5pm. Our hotel ended up directly across the street from the convention center which was convenient. However, it is a major highway so crossing it was exciting to say the least. We didn't bother to pack any games so we didn't have to cart anything across the street ever, just cut and run when the coast looked clear.
Once we'd finally crossed the street we had to go register. Robb and Pounder had been to WBC a couple years earlier so they didn't have to have their pictures taken, but Lin and I had to so we got to wait around for a bit while that happened.
(I look like a farmer in mine!)
5pm is the start of demos, but 6pm is the start of actual events. 22 different games had rounds start at 6pm, many of which I wanted to play but I didn't really know my way around and didn't particularly want to try something new for my first event. Robb and Pounder were going to play El Grande and I don't detest that game so I followed along and gave it a spin. I almost won my game, finishing a close second, but I believe both Robb and Pounder won their games. Robb ended up winning the entire event!
They only had 2 hour rounds for El Grande which is a little tight, and we ended up missing the 8pm start time for other events. 9pm didn't have any games we wanted to play but did have the Titan demo so we wandered over to that. We'd met quite a few of the main Titan players a couple years ago when we stormed US Nationals down in Maryland, which Robb also won. Every night at 11pm they have a less serious game which tends to have a large turnout due to nothing else going on, and these games often lend themselves to drinking. The 11pm game on Tuesday was Win, Place & Show which was a horse racing game that didn't sound very interesting so we played the 10pm Ra round instead. Now, Ra is a pretty fun game but I'm abysmally bad at it. I have this real problem with wanting to play "Can't Stop", getting all the other players out so I can pull tiles against the sun clock. I've had games where I didn't purchase a lot in the first 2 rounds! I think I scored positive at WBC but I could be wrong, I certainly know I came last in my game. It was fun though!
We'd gotten up pretty early to drive down (I think Pounder and I got up at 7am) and at the time I worked the graveyard shift so I was _really_ tired. So we went to the demo lounge and taught ourselves to play the Caylus spin-off they had set up. Yeah, we're smart guys alright...
Wednesday started off with a bang as the single elimination 2-player Titan event kicked off at 9am. With our 4 person hotel room we got 2 free breakfasts, and all three of Robb, Pounder, and myself were up in time to eat so we ended up having to buy an extra breakfast. This was the last day that would happen as people started sleeping in longer... Or staying up later? At any rate, off to the wargaming room which is where Titan was set up in the back. Most of a ginormous room was filled with wargames, many of which stayed set up overnight. One of the games had a 60 hour round! Two of the five games actually finished last year which I gather is a larger than normal number. (The game simulates WW2 on both the European and Pacific fronts.)
At any rate, TITAN! I honestly don't remember my 2 player game very well at all. I lost, and I remember being unsatisfied, but I don't know why. Oh well. With so many people having just lost 2 player Titan games they had a main Titan round kicking off an hour later. Titan-2 was single elimination but Titan-N is a Multiple Entry Swiss Elimination variant which basically means you can play as many rounds as you want but only your first 6 count for points or something. (I may be mixing up the rules from Titan nationals and WBC.) For scheduling they basically let you start a game whenever you have 4 people who want to play, with 'expected' starting times 3 times a day.
My game featured a young boy who was pretty new to the game but clearly having a blast and a couple of seasoned veterans. Eventually the kid got into a completely unwinnable position and was quite bored so he withdrew from the game rather than wait for elimination. Hopefully he doesn't get discouraged and keeps on gaming. I followed soon thereafter, though I went down kicking and screaming. I have a philosophical issue with withdrawing from a game of Titan when you're about to die. I think the person who hunted you should get the points for killing you!
At any rate, I hadn't really played Titan much in the previous year and was more interested in playing other games than more Titan. I added to the attendance figures for Titan (to try to ensure it stays an event) and had fun, but it was time to move on. 1pm was approaching, and I again had multiple choices. I could go play Empire Builder (a game I'd like to think I'm pretty good at), or I could play Power Grid (a game I'd like to think I can pronounce the German name for), or I could go to a demo for a 4 hour game I'd never heard of. There wasn't anything I really wanted to do for the next 5 hours, and I like to learn new games, so demo time!
Manifest Destiny is a Civ style game centered on North America dealing with the period of time from the colonization of the US until modern time. It has tech trees you research with money ala Advanced Civ, it has wonders you can try to build by rolling dice, it has city building on the map, attacking other players, cards you can play to make special events and payouts happen... Tons of cool, complicated things that all work together. The hour long demo restarted a couple times as stragglers showed up so really there was about 25 minutes of rules explanation and then we took off to the wargaming room to play. I didn't really know what was going on but I wanted to try and they didn't seem to mind that I didn't know what was going on, so away we went!
I ended up getting demolished (unsurprisingly) and lost by a very large margin. I picked up some strategies by watching the other players take their turns and decided it was at least an ok game. I basically butchered my position on the first turn when I didn't build enough settlers to do anything, so my income was about 60% of everyone else's for the entire game. I didn't really have a chance to win but I played to maximize my own score, which made for some sketchy plays later in the game in order to secure a wonder for bonus points. One of the other players seemed a little annoyed that I'd made that play but it was the only way I saw to score points from my position and it worked, woo!
The other players at my table were pretty fast, and I ended up playing quickly by virtue of having no money, so my game ended before the 4 hours were up giving me enough time to make it to a 6pm event if I wanted. Titan:The Arena was the only game I knew the rules to at 6pm but Robb convinced me I could learn how to play Queen's Gambit in the 10 minutes before the round started, so I signed up for that and borrowed a rule book to start reading. I gathered this was a pretty popular game amongst the Titan players in previous years and they said the Jedi battle was the only thing that mattered...
So, knowing kinda how the pieces moved and the ultimate goal of the game, it was time to play. Queen's Gambit is a game that simulates the final battle of Star Wars Episode One, and takes place on four fronts. You have Anakin flying through space trying to blow up the mother ship, you have the gungans getting killed en masse by droids, you have Amadala storming the palace, and you have Darth Maul fighting Obiwan and Quigon. The Naboo win if Anakin blows up the mother ship and you get a majority in the throne room at the top of the palace. Evil wins by killing all but 2 Naboo people in the palace.
With the strategy of 'play Jedi cards' I set out to play my first game. I was the Naboo, and my opponent told me a rule that it turns out doesn't exist that at the time really seemed like it screwed me. (You can jump up floors in the palace with the Naboo people on some cards, he said one droid on the middle floor could block jumping up to the top.) This prevented me from running guys to the top floor which was something I wanted to do. After all, I have cards that let me do it, so I should, right? Wrong! Having played the game a few times now I don't think you should go up to the top without a good reason to do so, and I really didn't when I tried to. Luckily, my opponent took actions with 'prevented' me from doing so, which were pretty much wastes of time. If I don't want to do something, and you take turns to stop me from doing it... I profit!
At any rate, by focusing on playing Jedi cards, and cards that dug me to more Jedi cards, I ended up winning the Jedi battle. From there I ended up winning the game, having learned to play not 10 minutes before the game. My opponent didn't seem too unhappy though. We did have fun, which is the main thing.
There wasn't anything we wanted to play for a couple hours which made it the perfect time to go get food. Next door to the convention center was an Amish diner that had pretty good food. The four of us went out and ate, with plans to come back for 9pm and another round of El Grande.
I wasn't really feeling up for El Grande, but there was another game being played in the same room at the same time, Ticket to Ride. Pounder convinced me over supper that it was easy to learn and promised to explain it to me before the round. He gave me a rough overview, and said the winning strategy was to ignore making your routes and just buy long stretches of track, but didn't explain specifics of the game.
I signed up, got assigned to a table, and during setup asked if I could read the rules. Ticket to Ride if a 'C' level event, so you don't need to know the game or attend a demo to play. (Supposedly they were supposed to teach me how to play during sign-ups but there were a TON of people and the GM was swamped.) So, I again asked to see the rules as the game was being set up. It turns out the game is really simple. You have two types of cards, routes and cars. A route lists two cities and at game end if you own track between those cities you get bonus points. If you don't you get negative bonus points. The further apart the cities are the more points you get or lose. The second type of card is train cars, which all have a colour.
You start the game with a few route cards and some cars. The board is set up with a bunch of cities (we played in the US) and track between cities. The tracks all have distinct colours and number of cars. (New York to Boston might have 2 pink cars, for example, and Los Angeles to Denver might have 6 black ones.) On your turn you either draw more route cards, or draw 2 cars, or build a section of track. To build track you play the number of cards that are on the segment from your hand, so I'd have to play 2 pink to build New York to Boston. Once I build it I put my cars on top of it and then no one else can build it.
Scoring is done with routes at end game, some bonus points for longest track and most routes done, and then points for building track. You get points via the triangle method, so a 1-length piece of track is worth 1 point, 2 is worth 3, 3 is worth 6 and so on. Note, it takes a full turn to build track if it's size 1 or size 6. Also, you only get 1 or 2 cards a turn. (When you draw cars there's a pool of face-up cards. You can draw a face-up, or from the deck. If you draw a wild-card face-up you only get the one card, otherwise you get two.) So at worst you could be turning 2 turns into 1 point (draw a wild and play it for a length 1 track) and at best you couls turn 4 turns into 21 points (draw 6 of a kind over 3 turns and build a size 6 track). It doesn't take a math degree to figure out that 5.25 points a turn is better than .5 points a turn... And yet many people were drawing wilds to build short pieces of track.
Now, depending on the routes you have this might seem like a good idea. I had one route that was worth 20 points, so the difference between building it or not is a 40 point swing. That's worth a couple mediocre building turns to pull off, to be sure. The trick, though, is that there's actually lots of ways to get from New York to Los Angeles. Someone might build the 2 pink from New York to Boston, but there's still a 2 orange from New York to Boston... Or I could go via Philadelphia or Portland instead of Boston...
In all it seemed like a pretty good game, you have to balance taking turns to score points with taking turns to secure your routes, and you have to know when you need to build the short routes that other people want. Ultimately though it seemed like the optimal strategy was to just draw 2 cards every turn building up a huge hand to give yourself the most options, only building when it looked like someone else wanted something. (Or when you could score 21 points with 6 of a kind.) It was actually pretty easy, having never played the game before, to work out what other people wanted. The other people in my game were picking up cards to build specific routes, sometimes from both ends, and building the tracks as soon as they could. So if someone build up to both ends of a given piece of track... They probably want the middle one and I should take it first if I wanted it. This is what I did, eventually connecting things up with smaller, less desired tracks to get my 20 point bonus at game end. I ended up with over 150 points with the next closest person being just under 100... Not bad for not knowing how to play before I sat down! (Ticket to Ride was the most attended game at WBC last year, it attracts a lot of people who aren't gamers.)
The 11pm silly game for Wednesday was... Can't Stop! WOO! This is a game you can play on Brettspielwelt and believe me, I have! Dave Nicholson and I used to play several times a day one month when he was trying to win a medal. All told I've played it 156 times on BSW, and I suspect I had the most experience in the game of anyone at WBC. That said, it is still a dice game and you do need to not get unlucky in order to win! I ended up finishing second overall, losing in the finals to someone who took a gamble and it paid off for him. I had closed out 2 numbers, and he had closed out 1. Chances are reasonable good if I get another turn I win, so when he completed a number he didn't stop. He had to go up a couple more on the other number with no leeway... And pulled it off. It was fun, but I did have one gripe... The GM said during the finals that the game is all luck and that he'd be surprised to ever see repeat winners in the event if he ran it for many years. That's hogwash I think! There's a fair amount of skill to the game and while it's certainly hard for someone to win a 100+ person event multiple times it won't be because there's no skill involved! If I have a single goal for this coming year it's to at least make the finals again to try to show him wrong! (Setting out to win Can't Stop of all games seems a little silly, but I'm going to do it!)
The finals didn't end until around 1-2ish, but Pounder and Robb were still around so we did the only thing you should do after playing games for 17 straight hours... We went to the open gaming area and taught ourselves to play Vikings! (A game which sadly didn't involve raping or pillaging. There were diplomat vikings, and canoerowing vikings... All in all, a pretty disappointing theme for such a great title. It was an ok game though.)
More to follow at a later date...
We drove down to Lancaster on Tuesday morning, stopping to pick Robb and Lin up in Cambridge and then at a diner in some small town in rural PA, but beyond that it was straight through. It took something like 8 hours all told, and we ended up in Lancaster around 4-5pm. Our hotel ended up directly across the street from the convention center which was convenient. However, it is a major highway so crossing it was exciting to say the least. We didn't bother to pack any games so we didn't have to cart anything across the street ever, just cut and run when the coast looked clear.
Once we'd finally crossed the street we had to go register. Robb and Pounder had been to WBC a couple years earlier so they didn't have to have their pictures taken, but Lin and I had to so we got to wait around for a bit while that happened.
(I look like a farmer in mine!)
5pm is the start of demos, but 6pm is the start of actual events. 22 different games had rounds start at 6pm, many of which I wanted to play but I didn't really know my way around and didn't particularly want to try something new for my first event. Robb and Pounder were going to play El Grande and I don't detest that game so I followed along and gave it a spin. I almost won my game, finishing a close second, but I believe both Robb and Pounder won their games. Robb ended up winning the entire event!
They only had 2 hour rounds for El Grande which is a little tight, and we ended up missing the 8pm start time for other events. 9pm didn't have any games we wanted to play but did have the Titan demo so we wandered over to that. We'd met quite a few of the main Titan players a couple years ago when we stormed US Nationals down in Maryland, which Robb also won. Every night at 11pm they have a less serious game which tends to have a large turnout due to nothing else going on, and these games often lend themselves to drinking. The 11pm game on Tuesday was Win, Place & Show which was a horse racing game that didn't sound very interesting so we played the 10pm Ra round instead. Now, Ra is a pretty fun game but I'm abysmally bad at it. I have this real problem with wanting to play "Can't Stop", getting all the other players out so I can pull tiles against the sun clock. I've had games where I didn't purchase a lot in the first 2 rounds! I think I scored positive at WBC but I could be wrong, I certainly know I came last in my game. It was fun though!
We'd gotten up pretty early to drive down (I think Pounder and I got up at 7am) and at the time I worked the graveyard shift so I was _really_ tired. So we went to the demo lounge and taught ourselves to play the Caylus spin-off they had set up. Yeah, we're smart guys alright...
Wednesday started off with a bang as the single elimination 2-player Titan event kicked off at 9am. With our 4 person hotel room we got 2 free breakfasts, and all three of Robb, Pounder, and myself were up in time to eat so we ended up having to buy an extra breakfast. This was the last day that would happen as people started sleeping in longer... Or staying up later? At any rate, off to the wargaming room which is where Titan was set up in the back. Most of a ginormous room was filled with wargames, many of which stayed set up overnight. One of the games had a 60 hour round! Two of the five games actually finished last year which I gather is a larger than normal number. (The game simulates WW2 on both the European and Pacific fronts.)
At any rate, TITAN! I honestly don't remember my 2 player game very well at all. I lost, and I remember being unsatisfied, but I don't know why. Oh well. With so many people having just lost 2 player Titan games they had a main Titan round kicking off an hour later. Titan-2 was single elimination but Titan-N is a Multiple Entry Swiss Elimination variant which basically means you can play as many rounds as you want but only your first 6 count for points or something. (I may be mixing up the rules from Titan nationals and WBC.) For scheduling they basically let you start a game whenever you have 4 people who want to play, with 'expected' starting times 3 times a day.
My game featured a young boy who was pretty new to the game but clearly having a blast and a couple of seasoned veterans. Eventually the kid got into a completely unwinnable position and was quite bored so he withdrew from the game rather than wait for elimination. Hopefully he doesn't get discouraged and keeps on gaming. I followed soon thereafter, though I went down kicking and screaming. I have a philosophical issue with withdrawing from a game of Titan when you're about to die. I think the person who hunted you should get the points for killing you!
At any rate, I hadn't really played Titan much in the previous year and was more interested in playing other games than more Titan. I added to the attendance figures for Titan (to try to ensure it stays an event) and had fun, but it was time to move on. 1pm was approaching, and I again had multiple choices. I could go play Empire Builder (a game I'd like to think I'm pretty good at), or I could play Power Grid (a game I'd like to think I can pronounce the German name for), or I could go to a demo for a 4 hour game I'd never heard of. There wasn't anything I really wanted to do for the next 5 hours, and I like to learn new games, so demo time!
Manifest Destiny is a Civ style game centered on North America dealing with the period of time from the colonization of the US until modern time. It has tech trees you research with money ala Advanced Civ, it has wonders you can try to build by rolling dice, it has city building on the map, attacking other players, cards you can play to make special events and payouts happen... Tons of cool, complicated things that all work together. The hour long demo restarted a couple times as stragglers showed up so really there was about 25 minutes of rules explanation and then we took off to the wargaming room to play. I didn't really know what was going on but I wanted to try and they didn't seem to mind that I didn't know what was going on, so away we went!
I ended up getting demolished (unsurprisingly) and lost by a very large margin. I picked up some strategies by watching the other players take their turns and decided it was at least an ok game. I basically butchered my position on the first turn when I didn't build enough settlers to do anything, so my income was about 60% of everyone else's for the entire game. I didn't really have a chance to win but I played to maximize my own score, which made for some sketchy plays later in the game in order to secure a wonder for bonus points. One of the other players seemed a little annoyed that I'd made that play but it was the only way I saw to score points from my position and it worked, woo!
The other players at my table were pretty fast, and I ended up playing quickly by virtue of having no money, so my game ended before the 4 hours were up giving me enough time to make it to a 6pm event if I wanted. Titan:The Arena was the only game I knew the rules to at 6pm but Robb convinced me I could learn how to play Queen's Gambit in the 10 minutes before the round started, so I signed up for that and borrowed a rule book to start reading. I gathered this was a pretty popular game amongst the Titan players in previous years and they said the Jedi battle was the only thing that mattered...
So, knowing kinda how the pieces moved and the ultimate goal of the game, it was time to play. Queen's Gambit is a game that simulates the final battle of Star Wars Episode One, and takes place on four fronts. You have Anakin flying through space trying to blow up the mother ship, you have the gungans getting killed en masse by droids, you have Amadala storming the palace, and you have Darth Maul fighting Obiwan and Quigon. The Naboo win if Anakin blows up the mother ship and you get a majority in the throne room at the top of the palace. Evil wins by killing all but 2 Naboo people in the palace.
With the strategy of 'play Jedi cards' I set out to play my first game. I was the Naboo, and my opponent told me a rule that it turns out doesn't exist that at the time really seemed like it screwed me. (You can jump up floors in the palace with the Naboo people on some cards, he said one droid on the middle floor could block jumping up to the top.) This prevented me from running guys to the top floor which was something I wanted to do. After all, I have cards that let me do it, so I should, right? Wrong! Having played the game a few times now I don't think you should go up to the top without a good reason to do so, and I really didn't when I tried to. Luckily, my opponent took actions with 'prevented' me from doing so, which were pretty much wastes of time. If I don't want to do something, and you take turns to stop me from doing it... I profit!
At any rate, by focusing on playing Jedi cards, and cards that dug me to more Jedi cards, I ended up winning the Jedi battle. From there I ended up winning the game, having learned to play not 10 minutes before the game. My opponent didn't seem too unhappy though. We did have fun, which is the main thing.
There wasn't anything we wanted to play for a couple hours which made it the perfect time to go get food. Next door to the convention center was an Amish diner that had pretty good food. The four of us went out and ate, with plans to come back for 9pm and another round of El Grande.
I wasn't really feeling up for El Grande, but there was another game being played in the same room at the same time, Ticket to Ride. Pounder convinced me over supper that it was easy to learn and promised to explain it to me before the round. He gave me a rough overview, and said the winning strategy was to ignore making your routes and just buy long stretches of track, but didn't explain specifics of the game.
I signed up, got assigned to a table, and during setup asked if I could read the rules. Ticket to Ride if a 'C' level event, so you don't need to know the game or attend a demo to play. (Supposedly they were supposed to teach me how to play during sign-ups but there were a TON of people and the GM was swamped.) So, I again asked to see the rules as the game was being set up. It turns out the game is really simple. You have two types of cards, routes and cars. A route lists two cities and at game end if you own track between those cities you get bonus points. If you don't you get negative bonus points. The further apart the cities are the more points you get or lose. The second type of card is train cars, which all have a colour.
You start the game with a few route cards and some cars. The board is set up with a bunch of cities (we played in the US) and track between cities. The tracks all have distinct colours and number of cars. (New York to Boston might have 2 pink cars, for example, and Los Angeles to Denver might have 6 black ones.) On your turn you either draw more route cards, or draw 2 cars, or build a section of track. To build track you play the number of cards that are on the segment from your hand, so I'd have to play 2 pink to build New York to Boston. Once I build it I put my cars on top of it and then no one else can build it.
Scoring is done with routes at end game, some bonus points for longest track and most routes done, and then points for building track. You get points via the triangle method, so a 1-length piece of track is worth 1 point, 2 is worth 3, 3 is worth 6 and so on. Note, it takes a full turn to build track if it's size 1 or size 6. Also, you only get 1 or 2 cards a turn. (When you draw cars there's a pool of face-up cards. You can draw a face-up, or from the deck. If you draw a wild-card face-up you only get the one card, otherwise you get two.) So at worst you could be turning 2 turns into 1 point (draw a wild and play it for a length 1 track) and at best you couls turn 4 turns into 21 points (draw 6 of a kind over 3 turns and build a size 6 track). It doesn't take a math degree to figure out that 5.25 points a turn is better than .5 points a turn... And yet many people were drawing wilds to build short pieces of track.
Now, depending on the routes you have this might seem like a good idea. I had one route that was worth 20 points, so the difference between building it or not is a 40 point swing. That's worth a couple mediocre building turns to pull off, to be sure. The trick, though, is that there's actually lots of ways to get from New York to Los Angeles. Someone might build the 2 pink from New York to Boston, but there's still a 2 orange from New York to Boston... Or I could go via Philadelphia or Portland instead of Boston...
In all it seemed like a pretty good game, you have to balance taking turns to score points with taking turns to secure your routes, and you have to know when you need to build the short routes that other people want. Ultimately though it seemed like the optimal strategy was to just draw 2 cards every turn building up a huge hand to give yourself the most options, only building when it looked like someone else wanted something. (Or when you could score 21 points with 6 of a kind.) It was actually pretty easy, having never played the game before, to work out what other people wanted. The other people in my game were picking up cards to build specific routes, sometimes from both ends, and building the tracks as soon as they could. So if someone build up to both ends of a given piece of track... They probably want the middle one and I should take it first if I wanted it. This is what I did, eventually connecting things up with smaller, less desired tracks to get my 20 point bonus at game end. I ended up with over 150 points with the next closest person being just under 100... Not bad for not knowing how to play before I sat down! (Ticket to Ride was the most attended game at WBC last year, it attracts a lot of people who aren't gamers.)
The 11pm silly game for Wednesday was... Can't Stop! WOO! This is a game you can play on Brettspielwelt and believe me, I have! Dave Nicholson and I used to play several times a day one month when he was trying to win a medal. All told I've played it 156 times on BSW, and I suspect I had the most experience in the game of anyone at WBC. That said, it is still a dice game and you do need to not get unlucky in order to win! I ended up finishing second overall, losing in the finals to someone who took a gamble and it paid off for him. I had closed out 2 numbers, and he had closed out 1. Chances are reasonable good if I get another turn I win, so when he completed a number he didn't stop. He had to go up a couple more on the other number with no leeway... And pulled it off. It was fun, but I did have one gripe... The GM said during the finals that the game is all luck and that he'd be surprised to ever see repeat winners in the event if he ran it for many years. That's hogwash I think! There's a fair amount of skill to the game and while it's certainly hard for someone to win a 100+ person event multiple times it won't be because there's no skill involved! If I have a single goal for this coming year it's to at least make the finals again to try to show him wrong! (Setting out to win Can't Stop of all games seems a little silly, but I'm going to do it!)
The finals didn't end until around 1-2ish, but Pounder and Robb were still around so we did the only thing you should do after playing games for 17 straight hours... We went to the open gaming area and taught ourselves to play Vikings! (A game which sadly didn't involve raping or pillaging. There were diplomat vikings, and canoerowing vikings... All in all, a pretty disappointing theme for such a great title. It was an ok game though.)
More to follow at a later date...
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