Friday morning brought the finals for my team game: Le Havre. Apparently all three of the other finalists had failed to win a heat and had all advanced as alternates. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's one thing to fill a semifinal field up with alternates to make for properly sized games... But the semifinal field has 12 people which includes those 3 alternates. We could have played 3 3-player games with a 3 player final instead. And I'm not just saying this because I prefer 3 player games in Le Havre. Vegas Showdown didn't advance any alternates because it hit 20 winners who showed up even though it meant different sized semifinals from finals and I think that makes sense. I didn't win a heat therefore I shouldn't feel like I deserve a semifinal slot. If it's a game like Tigris which can play as a 3er but really needs to be a 4er then I think it makes more sense. Oh well.
At any rate I ended up in first chair with a fish/wheat tile coming up. This means I don't have an awesome first choice (3 wood or maybe 2 clay) and ended up taking 2 wood. I also bought the 4 cost building firm. As the tiles came out it became clear that I had good iron tempo and good cow tempo. (I would get first choice of 2 iron every 4th time through the game unless someone took a single iron.) No one ever broke the iron tempo so myself and the guy across from me (Ken, the GM) got 2 iron every single time it came out. This denied both the other two players any iron for an awfully long time. Chris went for a marketplace plan which let him get some iron but the other guy pretty much ignored iron and got a poor score as a result. Oddly it seemed like only Ken and I wanted to go to the black market to scoop up the 2 iron from it as well.
One of the special buildings was the harbour watch which changed the game significantly. I took a buck offer and bought it as soon as it came out since I figured it would get used a lot by the other players. It didn't, which surprised me, though I did use it a lot myself. I got my game plan to function pretty well with a lot of shipping on 3 iron and a steel ship. Mostly bread and cows but some extra coke and steel as well. Unfortunately for me Ken was implementing almost the same plan. He got most of the other iron ships and a couple of the steel ones. He had both wharves and the colliery which meant he earned a lot of money from entry fees. (He pulled off the build wharf-buy black market-build colliery play.) It felt like I got my share of everything for my plan but someone else got way more than their share because the other players weren't going for it. He was one step ahead of me most of the way. He made coke first, and steel first, and got the higher valued boats. He also got a luxury liner. The end result had Ken way out in front with me a distant second and the other two a fair bit behind me. I continue my streak of finishing behind Daniel and one other guy in the finals. This time Daniel didn't make the finals so I got second. Maybe next year no one else will show up and I can win!
We finished in under 3 hours so I had time to go play another heat of Race for funsies. I already had 2 wins so I was going to advance anyway but I like the game. This round was played using the first expansion and goals. I forget exactly what I did but I ended up getting both of the big goals and a lot of other points for a large victory.
I didn't have anything I really wanted to do until 5pm and the Race semis. I went back to the room to screw around and ended up going to Red Robin for lunch with Robb and Pounder once they realized they had a bye through the first round of Innovation thanks to the mulligan round.
5pm was the Race semis which were actually quarters. They had 30 winners show up and decided to advance them all. They went with the somewhat odd plan of playing 8 games (6 4-player games and 2 3-player games) with the top 2 of each game advancing. They seeded the #1 and #2 seeds into the 3 player games (a pretty huge advantage since 2 of 3 would advance). With 3 heat wins I was the #1 seed and got into a 3 player game. We played with the first 2 expansions and my game got off to a pretty silly start. My home world was the one where I draw a card for each rebel planet during produce. The first three actions were develop, settle, produce. I developed space marines, settled a rebel planet, and drew 2 cards in produce. One of the other players kept calling produce for me (I don't know if he was trying to make me win with him second or if it was legitimately his best play but it sure hooked me up) and I ended up with 2 galactic federation cards in my hand. There's only supposed to be one in the game. We decided that since I had them both I should just throw one away and get a new card. So I ended up with a bunch of rebel worlds worth tons of points and tons of 6-cost developments worth tons of points for a really huge score. The third player ended up accidentally cheating by playing a military planet he couldn't conquer and no one noticed for a few turns. We didn't know how to deal with it but it was pretty obvious from the boards that he was going to be last anyway so we just played on. The game ended soon thereafter for a huge win for me.
The semifinals were all 4 player games with only 1 player advancing. I was in a game with the same dude from my Le Havre semi who did everything he could to throw that game to one of my opponents. He did the same thing in Race as well. One guy was set up for a huge produce/shipx2 cycle. Dude kept calling produce for him so the guy got to keep shipx2ing for huge points. I don't think it was intentional by any stretch of the imagination. I just think he plays games obliviously and it ended up really screwing me hard in this game. The winner was up by 20 something with me in second. Second wasn't worth anything in this game though! I think I ended up getting 6th but unfortunately Race is a 3 plaque event so no sand for me.
7pm had Battle Line starting in the Race room. My race game ended at 6:58. I figured I'd give it a spin. I got blown out of my first two games and ended up in an irrelevant third game against someone with 2 breakthrough wins. I did manage to beat him so I finished at a 1-2 record.
I considered playing Ingenious at 10pm but was actually watching the League of Legends arena (the internet worked enough to stream a low quality feed) and the Olympics in the room with Robb and Pounder and didn't feel like leaving.
11pm was Liar's Dice which we did go to. I played at a table with Robb and he prevented me from becoming the LIAR'S DICE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD for another year. I lost my first 2 or 3 dice on exactas on the other side of the table and then walked right into Robb having nothing of my bid to lose the rest of them.
Waffle House for a 3-egg + plain hashbrowns meal. Then bed.
Showing posts with label Race For The Galaxy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Race For The Galaxy. Show all posts
Monday, August 06, 2012
Thursday, August 02, 2012
2012 WBC Day 5 Summary
I went to bed relatively early with the hopes of waking up in time for Race For The Galaxy at 9am and I actually managed to barely get up in time. I had to skip showering and shaving but I figured I'd have plenty of time to do that afterwards. I got down to the room and for some reason someone had turned the heat on so the room was hotter than it was outside. I feel like we got pranked and I want to issue a permanent ban to the prankster. The game itself was played 4 player with no expansions. I was probably the worst starting world (the one that can make a blue good) and my first build was the building that knocks one off the cost of future buildings. I then proceeded to explore into the 6-cost building that knocks two off the cost of future buildings and scores big points for buildings. My next building let me draw a card after building a building. It's not hard to imagine how the rest of the game went for me but I pulled off a stupidly powerful combo near the end of the game. I had the card that lets you play military planets as normal planets. I had the card that lets you play normal non-alien planets for free if you sac it. So I got to play the 7 point for 7 military planet for free! Woo! I ended up winning the game pretty handily.
10am brought the next heat of Race For The Galaxy. I decided to skip Titan-2 this year after musing about being stuck playing against David this year. This time I got the best starting world (the one that starts with a brown good) and ended up building an early building that knocks 2 off the cost of future planets. I went into a settle-produce-sell cycle and finished off the last turn with a 2x ship for 8 points. This game was a little closer but I still won pretty handily. Woo!
11am was Vegas Showdown and I ended up at the same table as the GM Eric and another Eric. Both of them had been in my semi-final game last year and made quite a game of this one. GM Eric and I were both positioned to get the Theatre with a lot of money and a fancy lounge each. It unfortunately came out on bad tempo for me such that we'd both have the same amount of money and he'd get to bid first. I had to audible into the 5-star steak house which meant he got to wait another turn to buy the theatre and as a result had enough money to also get the space age sports book. The triangles from sticking them both together were enough to give him a 2 point victory. Boo!
I ate lunch in the hotel since both Robb and Pounder were still asleep. It was a pretty dry chicken breast on a bun. I threw the bun out and ate it with a knife, fork, and salt.
2pm had Ingenious which I may have played years ago on BSW but never in person. I got Sceadeau to teach me the game beforehand and gave it a spin. The guy to my left ended up winning which probably means I didn't do a good enough job blocking him but I did finish a very close 2nd (it came down to 2nd number).
I took some time off to play some Theatrhythm, took in an Automobile demo, and almost fell asleep in the lobby. Eventually Robb showed up and we headed to the 5pm heat of Lost Cities which had a stupidly large turnout. I got matched up with a nice teenage girl who commented on my lack of a Canadian accent. Eh? The game itself was a massacre mostly because I drew all the big numbers each round so she frequently got stuck with a negative score after starting an early expedition.
6pm was Titan the Arena in the same room as Lost Cities. I was stuck playing with a set that didn't have the right number of pieces for most of the players. On the plus side I happened to have my Queen's Gambit game with me so instead of colours most of us played with miniatures. I was the Gungans! It got quite a number of comments from people passing by our table and I think it made the game more fun to be using weird pieces. I managed to pull out not-last which is a bit of a miracle for me. I don't know how much seating order matters but the same guy got to keep making kill decisions (a little girl was to his right) and he ended up winning. Apparently I had no chance of winning because I'd put my bets on good monsters and people wanted to kill off their special abilities before I could use them. Doh.
7pm was Ra Dice. My first couple rolls had multiple monuments so I dove head-first into a monument strategy. At one point I screwed up trying to get an extra monument (the age was about to end and there was a pharaoh in my roll for the 5 point tie) and I ended up rolling a complete blank and wasted two dice. I ended up losing by 1 point so those extra 5 points would have been clutch. I actually lost this game to the same Dominic from Quebec who beat me at real Ra the other day. Small world!
8pm brought Queen's Gambit. I ended up paired against Evan who beat me out of the round of 16 way back in 2007. He was a punk teenager then and now is a pretty built University age man. My opening hand had 3 Anakin cards and my wheel of fortune card so I decided to try for an Anakin rush plan. I got all the way to the end and cleared out all his starfighter cards but couldn't quite get the last space done. By the time I got to that point it didn't really matter since Darth Maul was free and all my guards were dead. He just had to kill one of Purple Queen, Red Queen, or Captain P for the win. He did run out of Maul cards with Red Queen at 1 and had to finish her off with a droid so if I'd gotten one luckier with Anakin I might have been able to win. At any rate the game was fun because we didn't take it seriously at all. I haven't won a game of Queen's Gambit since I won the event but I still show up to play it because it's a blast. (Unlike, say, Puerto Rico...)
11pm has Can't Stop. I was 3rd with 1st and 2nd chair playing a stopping early strategy. Implementing the same plan as the people who get more turns that you is a bad idea so I went a different way... Better lucky than good! I ended up falling one space from the top of the 6 on a 6-7-8 rush. Next turn I had a 6-7-10 rush and capped the 7. I was four off the 6 and considered going for it but decided to stop. Of course the 6 was gone by the time it got back to me. As were the 3, 8, 11, and 12. 6 numbers closed out and I only had 1 of them. The two guys on my right again went slow which again meant I had to risk it all. I came close going up 2-4-10 but fell just shy of the 4. The 12 year old kid on my left ended up winning.
Off to Waffle House for Papa Joe's pork chops. Then a lot of sleep.
I took some time off to play some Theatrhythm, took in an Automobile demo, and almost fell asleep in the lobby. Eventually Robb showed up and we headed to the 5pm heat of Lost Cities which had a stupidly large turnout. I got matched up with a nice teenage girl who commented on my lack of a Canadian accent. Eh? The game itself was a massacre mostly because I drew all the big numbers each round so she frequently got stuck with a negative score after starting an early expedition.
6pm was Titan the Arena in the same room as Lost Cities. I was stuck playing with a set that didn't have the right number of pieces for most of the players. On the plus side I happened to have my Queen's Gambit game with me so instead of colours most of us played with miniatures. I was the Gungans! It got quite a number of comments from people passing by our table and I think it made the game more fun to be using weird pieces. I managed to pull out not-last which is a bit of a miracle for me. I don't know how much seating order matters but the same guy got to keep making kill decisions (a little girl was to his right) and he ended up winning. Apparently I had no chance of winning because I'd put my bets on good monsters and people wanted to kill off their special abilities before I could use them. Doh.
7pm was Ra Dice. My first couple rolls had multiple monuments so I dove head-first into a monument strategy. At one point I screwed up trying to get an extra monument (the age was about to end and there was a pharaoh in my roll for the 5 point tie) and I ended up rolling a complete blank and wasted two dice. I ended up losing by 1 point so those extra 5 points would have been clutch. I actually lost this game to the same Dominic from Quebec who beat me at real Ra the other day. Small world!
8pm brought Queen's Gambit. I ended up paired against Evan who beat me out of the round of 16 way back in 2007. He was a punk teenager then and now is a pretty built University age man. My opening hand had 3 Anakin cards and my wheel of fortune card so I decided to try for an Anakin rush plan. I got all the way to the end and cleared out all his starfighter cards but couldn't quite get the last space done. By the time I got to that point it didn't really matter since Darth Maul was free and all my guards were dead. He just had to kill one of Purple Queen, Red Queen, or Captain P for the win. He did run out of Maul cards with Red Queen at 1 and had to finish her off with a droid so if I'd gotten one luckier with Anakin I might have been able to win. At any rate the game was fun because we didn't take it seriously at all. I haven't won a game of Queen's Gambit since I won the event but I still show up to play it because it's a blast. (Unlike, say, Puerto Rico...)
11pm has Can't Stop. I was 3rd with 1st and 2nd chair playing a stopping early strategy. Implementing the same plan as the people who get more turns that you is a bad idea so I went a different way... Better lucky than good! I ended up falling one space from the top of the 6 on a 6-7-8 rush. Next turn I had a 6-7-10 rush and capped the 7. I was four off the 6 and considered going for it but decided to stop. Of course the 6 was gone by the time it got back to me. As were the 3, 8, 11, and 12. 6 numbers closed out and I only had 1 of them. The two guys on my right again went slow which again meant I had to risk it all. I came close going up 2-4-10 but fell just shy of the 4. The 12 year old kid on my left ended up winning.
Off to Waffle House for Papa Joe's pork chops. Then a lot of sleep.
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.
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...)
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