The last Sunday of WBC tends to be a fairly quiet day. There are only 3 games with open heats with 16 other games having their finals in the morning. Pounder and I don't take Monday off work so if we're going to get home at any reasonable hour to sleep for work we need to leave before they even take place. Or at least we should, anyway. Puerto Rico holds both the semis and finals on Sunday morning and for 2 of the last 3 years one of us made the finals. This has lead to a semi-joking ban from playing Puerto Rico since we probably don't get to leave until 2 in the afternoon if we do make it to the finals.
This year there was a new wrench in the works... No functioning car. Were we going to have to spend an extra night? Cab to Philly and fly home? Who knows! I briefly considered trying to wake up early to play Transamerica but that seemed a little mean to Pounder who had to wake up extra early to try to get the car fixed. Better to sleep in to make sure I could be awake on the ride home. And I'm terrible at Transamerica anyway.
We checked out of the room and gave our suitcases to the front desk for safe keeping while we waited for news on the car. Pounder kept calling to harass the garage about it. (They'd towed it fine but had no empty bays to work on it and the squeaky Canadian wheel hopefully gets the grease, eh?) We played a few hands of Bottle Imp in the lobby. Bottle Imp is an interesting little trick taking game with an ever shrinking trump suit. Scoring is quirky in that the person who takes the last trick with a trump scores negative points instead of positive points for the hand. (Their soul gets banished to hell.) Fun game.
We ate and then Robb had a nap on a coach in the hotel lobby while Pounder and I played a game of Innovation. By this point the garage had given us a rough estimate and it was looking like I'd get home around 1am with Pounder and Robb getting to Waterloo around 2. Our game was cut short when they called an hour early saying the car was ready to be picked up. Pounder headed out in a cab while I cleaned up the game and then read some more Game of Thrones.
The ride home was pretty uneventful (flash showers aside) though I discovered you can get pretzles as McDonalds in the states. It was pretty good! Ultimately I got home before midnight so the threat of lost work was gone. (And the hotel internet still wasn't fixed in the morning so I had no way to get in contact with anyone about maybe being absent. Very frustrating that they couldn't get the internet to work.)
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
WBC 2011 - Day 6
Saturday is a day at WBC that feels like it should be busy. A bunch of people can only come for the weekend so you'd think a lot of events would hold off until then to make sure they got those people. They do schedule a couple of the more mainstream events for Saturday but for the most part things have wound down by the weekend. Settlers of Catan is probably the widest known euro and it starts at 9am Saturday morning. At 5pm the Carcassonne event starts. There are a handful of heats for other games too but for the most part there's a bunch of semi-finals and finals plus Settlers and Carcassonne. I didn't make any semis or finals on Saturday and have no interest in playing Settlers or Carcassonne, so I slept in. I got like 12 hours sleep and then spent the next hour reading Game of Thrones in a warm bath.
Eventually Robb came back to the room having scrubbed out at Settlers and we headed to the open gaming room to play something with Dan and Pounder. We were hoping to find a copy of Lancaster but they didn't have one. Instead we settled on having Robb teach us Glen More. After playing for about half an hour we came to the realization that we weren't actually playing Glen More since we had the rules all wrong and gave up.
We went to eat, I think at Olive and Jasmine Asian Bistro, and then came back for party games. 7 oclock brought Wits & Wagers which we once again lost miserably. The normal Wits & Wagers guys weren't there so someone else filled in as GM but it wasn't the same. How much money did they just spend on pizza for us? The correct answer this year was $0.
Facts in Five was in the same room at 9 so we stuck around for that. We had 40 minutes to kill so we played most of a game of Innovation. Pretty sure we played most of a game before Wits & Wagers, too. At any rate Facts in Five was fun with some categories I simply had no chance at all of getting an answer. I did manage to prove that I am Canadian and got a clean sweep of the NHL team category.
Slapshot was up next but we decided we didn't really want to play it this year. Instead I went and got my D&D dice and we played a game of TOBOGGANS OF DOOOOOOOOOOOM! Robb didn't run into a snow man this year but I did manage to jump the SHARK ATTACK! and win so it was a good game.
Waffle House followed. I had a waffle and a side order of hash browns. Rocked out with the juke-box again, too. On the way back from Waffle House Pounder's car started acting weird. It was raining but the wipers were going very slowly. The lights on the panels were all flickering and the headlights were dim. We made it back to the hotel but halfway up the big hill into the driveway the car just turned off and wouldn't start. Robb and I got out and tried to push but we're weaklings and the car was on a steep hill.
Robb went into the hotel and came back shortly with a small army of people. And by people I mean teenagers who are weaker than I am. And one tall dude. Fortunately it turns out that when you get 7 weak people to push a car up a hill it actually works! We were trying to figure out a way to get the car into a parking spot when a random older man came out to put a board game in the back seat of his car. We asked him to move his car (he was beside an open spot so we'd get 2 spots to work with) and he obliged. Then we pushed/coasted the car down into the spots.
Robb dismissed his army (thanks guys!) and Pounder went in to call AAA. When the AAA guy came he paged us to the front desk and there was no question who he was when we walked up as there was a guy in a florescent yellow shirt standing there. He used a jump box thing to start the car and after hitting things with his crowbar a bunch declared it was probably the alternator that was dead and not the battery. He told us about a nearby garage that was open on Sunday and pointed out we'd probably be leaving for Canada on Monday. When Pounder and I have to work. Bah.
Pounder then checked with the hotel to see if we could extend the room a night but it turns out all of the 2 beds + balcony + no smoking rooms were somehow sold out for the next day. We went back to the room to look stuff up on the internet but the internet wasn't working. Annoying when I just wanted to play Galaxy Legion but pretty terrible when we're trying to find a way to get a car fixed so we can leave on the right day. We ended up using the phone book to call the recommended place to find out their hours and Pounder set the alarm to get up in time to call them when they opened to see what they could do.
Eventually Robb came back to the room having scrubbed out at Settlers and we headed to the open gaming room to play something with Dan and Pounder. We were hoping to find a copy of Lancaster but they didn't have one. Instead we settled on having Robb teach us Glen More. After playing for about half an hour we came to the realization that we weren't actually playing Glen More since we had the rules all wrong and gave up.
We went to eat, I think at Olive and Jasmine Asian Bistro, and then came back for party games. 7 oclock brought Wits & Wagers which we once again lost miserably. The normal Wits & Wagers guys weren't there so someone else filled in as GM but it wasn't the same. How much money did they just spend on pizza for us? The correct answer this year was $0.
Facts in Five was in the same room at 9 so we stuck around for that. We had 40 minutes to kill so we played most of a game of Innovation. Pretty sure we played most of a game before Wits & Wagers, too. At any rate Facts in Five was fun with some categories I simply had no chance at all of getting an answer. I did manage to prove that I am Canadian and got a clean sweep of the NHL team category.
Slapshot was up next but we decided we didn't really want to play it this year. Instead I went and got my D&D dice and we played a game of TOBOGGANS OF DOOOOOOOOOOOM! Robb didn't run into a snow man this year but I did manage to jump the SHARK ATTACK! and win so it was a good game.
Waffle House followed. I had a waffle and a side order of hash browns. Rocked out with the juke-box again, too. On the way back from Waffle House Pounder's car started acting weird. It was raining but the wipers were going very slowly. The lights on the panels were all flickering and the headlights were dim. We made it back to the hotel but halfway up the big hill into the driveway the car just turned off and wouldn't start. Robb and I got out and tried to push but we're weaklings and the car was on a steep hill.
Robb went into the hotel and came back shortly with a small army of people. And by people I mean teenagers who are weaker than I am. And one tall dude. Fortunately it turns out that when you get 7 weak people to push a car up a hill it actually works! We were trying to figure out a way to get the car into a parking spot when a random older man came out to put a board game in the back seat of his car. We asked him to move his car (he was beside an open spot so we'd get 2 spots to work with) and he obliged. Then we pushed/coasted the car down into the spots.
Robb dismissed his army (thanks guys!) and Pounder went in to call AAA. When the AAA guy came he paged us to the front desk and there was no question who he was when we walked up as there was a guy in a florescent yellow shirt standing there. He used a jump box thing to start the car and after hitting things with his crowbar a bunch declared it was probably the alternator that was dead and not the battery. He told us about a nearby garage that was open on Sunday and pointed out we'd probably be leaving for Canada on Monday. When Pounder and I have to work. Bah.
Pounder then checked with the hotel to see if we could extend the room a night but it turns out all of the 2 beds + balcony + no smoking rooms were somehow sold out for the next day. We went back to the room to look stuff up on the internet but the internet wasn't working. Annoying when I just wanted to play Galaxy Legion but pretty terrible when we're trying to find a way to get a car fixed so we can leave on the right day. We ended up using the phone book to call the recommended place to find out their hours and Pounder set the alarm to get up in time to call them when they opened to see what they could do.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
WBC 2011 - Day 5
I had finals at both 9am and 11pm on Friday so I tried to go to bed 'early'. I ended up lying in the dark not sleeping for a couple hours and kept waking up to check my watch since I was afraid the alarm wouldn't be set properly again. Sleeping through Race for the Galaxy was unfortunate but not disastrous. Sleeping through the finals of my team game would have been just about the worst thing that could happen at a board game tournament. (So not actually that bad in the grand scheme of things but I still didn't want it to happen.) I ended up sleeping for around 6 hours, getting up and showering in plenty of time, and was able to grab a blueberry muffin and a can of Coke for breakfast.
I ended up getting 3rd seat in the 4 player Le Havre final. Dan was first and grabbed 2 wood. I don't even remember what I got but I did buy the 4 cost building firm and got into the loan business. Dan built the marketplace and I got into it first and set up the tavern as the card to drop. I later left and Dan went in himself and made noise about denying the card on top. (He didn't have any grain so it seemed likely he'd want to bury it.) I ended up going back to the marketplace and flipping them back again before it dropped and I believe I then used the tavern to turn wood and grain into a boat, then again for the shipping line, a colliery, and a steel mill. (One of those may have been from shipping.)
I ended up in a bad tempo position when it came to getting the steel boats. I didn't have the steel on the start of turn 15 when I was going first and by the time I did have my steel together players 1 and 2 built their steel ships the moment they hit the board. I've never really looked into the timing of these before and I think I definitely will need to borrow a set from someone and really look into things like this. If the summary card I found online is correct it looks like there are 4 steel ships and the first people to get cracks at them are the people in seats 1, then 3, then 1 again, then 2.
Not getting a steel ship meant I ended up needing to eat some food on the last few turns and wasn't able to ship as many things as I normally would.
I also badly misplayed one action. I set up to build the dock (I needed to get a second brick) by going to the hardware store. (I also needed a 3rd iron so I could make steel for a luxury liner.) Then the town immediately built it on me with nothing weird going on in between. I just totally missed that it was going to get built. Typically we'd been pointing out what was going to get built soon and move it a little ahead of the rest of the buildings but it didn't happen with the dock. It's no excuse since I should have been paying attention to it myself but unfortunate that I let myself get lulled into a false sense of security. If I'd not gone to the hardware store I could have gone to the iron building instead which would have both gotten me more steel to ship for points and would have blocked the building from Dan who went there right afterwards.
The game ended up being both very close and not close at all. Dan won by 40 points but the other 3 of us were within 6 of each other. Something like 191-151-148-145. I was the 148 and surely would have had 2nd place if I hadn't messed up the one turn with the dock. I did manage to win my 4 player heat but the bottom line is I'm just not good enough at 4 player games in general to beat Dan. At least I can take some satisfaction from winning our 3 player semi and will need to study up on the 4 player game for next year.
At 12 I had nothing really to do so I wandered by the Samarkand demo which had just started. It seems like a simple and fast game with some strategy involved so I'd like to give it a try at some point.
The third heat of Agricola was at 1 but Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation was at 2. I skipped LotR for Agricola last year so I figured I should do the opposite this year. Especially since last year 1 win wasn't even enough to advance to the semis. They changed the format this year with a new GM and switched to 5 player games meaning both that there were fewer winners in each heat and more spots (25 vs 16) in the semis. I hung out around the sign up booth anyway since I knew some people who were going to play and tried to help organize a picket line. A bunch of people had 1 win, see, and there were currently 18 unique winners thus far. If you get 7 or fewer tables in the 3rd heat they all advance for sure to the semis. More tables and (assuming unique new winners) you get some old winners getting knocked out. So if you had a win you could either play and hope to not lose or you could sit out and create fewer tables. (At first the GM said a first and a last was better than just a first so Sceadeau wanted to sign up and then not really play and just accumulate negative points with scripted actions so the GM made first and last the same as first.) The picket line ended up falling through and everyone standing around played anyway.
I wandered off to the vendor booth, bought a copy of Innovation, and went to the room. The internet was down again so I read some Game of Thrones and then went to Lord of the Rings.
The format for Lord of the Rings was 4 rounds of swiss with a cut to top 8. We had 30ish people so 3-1 was almost certainly going to advance. The way each round worked was you played 2 games against the same person. Once as evil, once as good. If the same person wins both games they win the round. If you split then the tiebreaker is number of characters you had alive when you won. If you're still tied then you draw the round. This is an interesting format but it seemed to often turn the second game of a match into a race to slaughter people if you won the first game. It also added some silly situations like attacking with Frodo and playing noble sacrifice guaranteeing that you lose the game but possibly killing one extra unit!
One thing I noticed is how young the room was. Most of the players were teenagers and many were girls. I don't think I was the oldest one there but I was definitely way up there. (A similar thing happens in Queen's Gambit too, but mostly it's teenage boys there.)
My first round was against a teenage boy who didn't really seem to have a grasp on strategy. I lost a couple coin flips (possibly by out-thinking myself) and ended up winning as dark with only 2 units left. This meant I had to either win as light side or kill 8 of his dudes in a loss. It ended up really not mattering since he threw out his big numbers willy-nilly and lost his orcs early. Gandalf was then able to obliterate pretty much all of his units. I got to a point where I had a guaranteed win against anyone I play against and almost went into auto-pilot but then I realized he didn't have to have the warg back in Mordor. It might have been the witch king who could attack sideways which would have ended me. I played it slowly and it turned out the warg was way out in the middle of nowhere and I would have lost with my reckless play.
Round two was against another teenage boy who liked to talk about how bad he was and how I was going to beat him for sure. Complimenting my plays and such. Not sure if he was just nervous or if I'm somehow intimidating or if he was playing mindgames with me. He certainly thought I was playing mindgames with him. Whenever he'd reveal a piece I'd say hello to it (because I'm weird, it's just what I do) "Hi Pippin!" and it seemed to bother him somehow. At one point I had a coin flip (eye for his noble sacrifice vs bigger number) in a fight of 'the Gimster' vs Shelob and I wanted to make sure he knew I knew it was a coinflip so I made a comment asking if the Gimster was ready to blow himself up. It caused him to go into this weird double-think feedback loop as he tried to figure out why I said that. We both ended up playing numbers. He then decided that letting me talk before he made a play was a bad idea because clearly I was in his head so he started just playing a card immediately as soon as the pieces were revealed.
At one point we both played our magic cards and I had eye of sauron in my used pile. I said I was magicking for eye to counter his magic and he said that didn't work. I found in the rules where it said evil picks first and he said that just meant my card was worse and that he gets to pick a number after I choose eye. This is totally not how we play it and I said I was pretty sure it worked my way but we could ask the GM if he wanted. He decided not to press the issue and let me counter his magic. I ended up winning this match.
Round 3 I was playing against an older guy. (It seemed like the undefeated people tended to be the older ones.) I started as the good side and lost a couple coin-flips. I kept assuming he was going to try to eye my noble sacrifice so I kept playing numbers and losing. It became pretty clear that I wasn't going to win so I switched to murder mode with the intention of just killing as many of his guys as I could. I used all my guys and then attacked with Frodo with the intention of noble sacrificing him. I again thought he'd eye it though, so I played a number and so did he. In retrospect he probably didn't even think I would do that (maybe I should have made a comment!) and was just guaranteeing the win by killing Frodo with a big number. I ended up running Saruman down one side killing off both Merry and Legolas which pretty much meant I was going to win with more dudes than he did if I won at all. I managed to kill Gandalf with the orcs after losing only 1 dude (several retreats to set it up though) and the rest was smooth sailing.
Round 4 I was up against Rob Flowers and the games weren't even close. He won as the good guys with a pretty robust number (5 maybe?) so I knew I had my work cut out for me. I made a couple risky plays trying to kill units without losing any (not using Boromir up front, playing a 5 in the pippin vs shelob fight, etc...) and they all backfired. He ended up winning with a 7 in the second game.
It turned out they had 2 people at 4-0 and 7 at 3-1. The tiebreaker was strength of schedule and I was a little worried since every single one of my opponents lost all of their games after they played me. On the plus side I did start 3-0 so I had played one of the 4-0s. I ended up 5th overall and was matched against another teenage boy. He seemed to have a decent grasp of strategy but had already conceded victory in the event. I guess Nick Henning is a god among elves, at least according to my opponent, and he was just hoping to lose to him in the finals. (Other Nick brought a hand-made game with him, Lord of the Rings: Shotfrontation, where all the pieces are shot glasses and you drink when you kill a unit.)
At any rate, the actual game. I started as evil and got into a guaranteed win situation. I had Frodo contained and had set up my discard to have my 6 and my eye. I still had my magic card so I was guaranteed to win any given fight and I had one with Frodo coming up. I made the attack, we both played magic, and he said I couldn't eye his magic. This time he did appeal to the GM and somehow the GM ruled in his favour. I had to pick my card first but if I picked eye he could just pick a number and beat me. (I looked up the FAQ on BGG today and they agree with the way we play, for the record. I wonder if I should find the GM's email address and ask about it again?) I shrugged and picked my 6 instead. I still had Frodo contained and would win without losing any other pieces. Unless he picked noble sacrifice here, which he should have, to get the extra tiebreaker point. He took retreat and died a few moves later.
Coming back the other way I ended up in trade-off mode and got down to 2 pieces left on my side: Frodo and Legolas. They were both one space out of the mountains. My opponent had 4 pieces left but most were on my side of the river. If I could get Frodo through I would probably win. But he still had the flying nazgul so it was going to be a guess. I decided I probably couldn't come up with a right solution and maybe he could read me so I did it completely random. He guessed right and jumped Frodo.
So we were tied. In the swiss that would have just been a draw. In the finals we would have played another two games. In the quarters? Coin-flip to advance. He called heads and heads it was.
I tried to get the internet to work for a while, failed, and went to find Robb and/or Pounder. Robb had just lost in the Agricola semis and Pounder was in the process of losing in the Race semis. We went for food (Red Robin I think) and then had an hour to burn before I had to play in the Vegas Showdown finals. We went to Jay's Cafe to try out Lancaster which I had read the rules for the night before.
Lancaster was an interesting and short game. Guaranteed to play over exactly 5 turns and with a few different paths to score points. We cheated in two major ways so what we played wasn't really the actual game but all 3 of us had different plans and came within a couple points of each other so maybe it is a good game. We meant to play it again later but they packed it up before we got around to it.
The Vegas Showdown was a 5 player game with Rob Flowers and some other guys I didn't really recognize. One of them commented at the start about how he didn't really know how to play and didn't know how he possibly beat Randy Buehler (last year's champion) in his semi-final match. He seemed more concerned about not getting to play the colour red than actually playing the game. He kept trying to give red points each time he scored. At one point he put a big bid on a high roller's room and someone pointed out to him that he couldn't place it without a table games. He then undid the bid, but two turns later got into a huge bidding war with Rob Flowers that ended with the other guy paying a lot for a building he couldn't place. He tried to place it and had to be reminded again that he needed a table games.
As far as how my game went I saw that early on both restaurant cards had come out and decided to not build any of them. I started with a slot machine and then a fancy lounge for 21. A few turns later I got a second fancy lounge for 12. I built a normal lounge and then the next turn publicity was banned so I renovated to put my fancy lounges in play. At this point I was up to 3 slot machines (1 from a slot surplus) and had to figure out how I was going to put them on the board. I ended up going to 3 slots along the wall in yellow, lounge from blue door, fancy lounge from lounge, fancy lounge from fancy lounge. I bought a second lounge to fill some yellow space and come closer to connecting. And then I got a 3rd fancy lounge for 18. This let me connect, get 5 triangle points, come a sportsbook/theatre from filling yellow, and have low competition for the theatre. Unfortunately the other fancy lounge was owned by righty so I was going to have to position myself to outbid him. I didn't spend a single dollar for the rest of the game to make sure that would happen. He actually had the lead in cash for a while but kept trying to buy other things. (On one frustrating turn he actually bid 15 on a lounge only to have the 'not-red' guy bust in with 18. I think it connected him so it wasn't actually bad but it was frustrating for my theatre plan.)
Meanwhile the guy across from me was set up to buy the 5-star steakhouse. Instead he did some math and bought a nightclub for 33. (I was actually going to use that and a renovate as a backup plan to fill my yellow but the 33 was out of nowhere.) Then everyone else spent money and he was able to get the steakhouse for like 21. And the dragon room for 25.
Tile after tile was flipped and still no theatre. Not-red guy got to pull strings once and picked pretty much at a random. He didn't pick big but also didn't pick the lowest pile either. I got to pull strings once and got a big one with no theatre. We were down to no flats, no smalls, and 2 biggies. People bought exactly 2 buildings so we were possibly going to get another turn...
First card? Score diamonds and add a biggy. Diamonds were split 5-4-0-0-0. The tile was the space age sportsbook. Next card? Slot builders on strike and game end.
Lounges did pay out points near the end of the game (I got 10 points) but never paid cash. I went through the draw pile afterwards and 5 of the 8 cards were biggies. So I had a 5/14 chance to build the theatre on the last turn. Doing so would have been worth 12 for the theatre itself, 5 for filling yellow, and 2 more triangle points. I'd lose 5 points worth of money for a net gain of 14. The guy with all the good stuff wouldn't have had a good play and I think would have had to publicity for 1 point. We both would have earned a point in money from an extra turn of income, I think. End result? He beat me by 12. So getting an extra turn would have probably been the win. Having the theatre actually come out early certainly would have been.
Sometimes the tiles just conspire against you I guess. Having the lounges eventually pay off points was good enough for second place though.
It looked like I'd missed Werewolf Prom while playing the finals. Pounder and Robb were already asleep when I got back to the room (Settlers in the morning!) so even if I thought sneaking in late was a good idea I couldn't have really found my suit in the dark anyway. Oh well, maybe next year there'll actually be a solid date listed for it so I can plan ahead.
I ended up getting 3rd seat in the 4 player Le Havre final. Dan was first and grabbed 2 wood. I don't even remember what I got but I did buy the 4 cost building firm and got into the loan business. Dan built the marketplace and I got into it first and set up the tavern as the card to drop. I later left and Dan went in himself and made noise about denying the card on top. (He didn't have any grain so it seemed likely he'd want to bury it.) I ended up going back to the marketplace and flipping them back again before it dropped and I believe I then used the tavern to turn wood and grain into a boat, then again for the shipping line, a colliery, and a steel mill. (One of those may have been from shipping.)
I ended up in a bad tempo position when it came to getting the steel boats. I didn't have the steel on the start of turn 15 when I was going first and by the time I did have my steel together players 1 and 2 built their steel ships the moment they hit the board. I've never really looked into the timing of these before and I think I definitely will need to borrow a set from someone and really look into things like this. If the summary card I found online is correct it looks like there are 4 steel ships and the first people to get cracks at them are the people in seats 1, then 3, then 1 again, then 2.
Not getting a steel ship meant I ended up needing to eat some food on the last few turns and wasn't able to ship as many things as I normally would.
I also badly misplayed one action. I set up to build the dock (I needed to get a second brick) by going to the hardware store. (I also needed a 3rd iron so I could make steel for a luxury liner.) Then the town immediately built it on me with nothing weird going on in between. I just totally missed that it was going to get built. Typically we'd been pointing out what was going to get built soon and move it a little ahead of the rest of the buildings but it didn't happen with the dock. It's no excuse since I should have been paying attention to it myself but unfortunate that I let myself get lulled into a false sense of security. If I'd not gone to the hardware store I could have gone to the iron building instead which would have both gotten me more steel to ship for points and would have blocked the building from Dan who went there right afterwards.
The game ended up being both very close and not close at all. Dan won by 40 points but the other 3 of us were within 6 of each other. Something like 191-151-148-145. I was the 148 and surely would have had 2nd place if I hadn't messed up the one turn with the dock. I did manage to win my 4 player heat but the bottom line is I'm just not good enough at 4 player games in general to beat Dan. At least I can take some satisfaction from winning our 3 player semi and will need to study up on the 4 player game for next year.
At 12 I had nothing really to do so I wandered by the Samarkand demo which had just started. It seems like a simple and fast game with some strategy involved so I'd like to give it a try at some point.
The third heat of Agricola was at 1 but Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation was at 2. I skipped LotR for Agricola last year so I figured I should do the opposite this year. Especially since last year 1 win wasn't even enough to advance to the semis. They changed the format this year with a new GM and switched to 5 player games meaning both that there were fewer winners in each heat and more spots (25 vs 16) in the semis. I hung out around the sign up booth anyway since I knew some people who were going to play and tried to help organize a picket line. A bunch of people had 1 win, see, and there were currently 18 unique winners thus far. If you get 7 or fewer tables in the 3rd heat they all advance for sure to the semis. More tables and (assuming unique new winners) you get some old winners getting knocked out. So if you had a win you could either play and hope to not lose or you could sit out and create fewer tables. (At first the GM said a first and a last was better than just a first so Sceadeau wanted to sign up and then not really play and just accumulate negative points with scripted actions so the GM made first and last the same as first.) The picket line ended up falling through and everyone standing around played anyway.
I wandered off to the vendor booth, bought a copy of Innovation, and went to the room. The internet was down again so I read some Game of Thrones and then went to Lord of the Rings.
The format for Lord of the Rings was 4 rounds of swiss with a cut to top 8. We had 30ish people so 3-1 was almost certainly going to advance. The way each round worked was you played 2 games against the same person. Once as evil, once as good. If the same person wins both games they win the round. If you split then the tiebreaker is number of characters you had alive when you won. If you're still tied then you draw the round. This is an interesting format but it seemed to often turn the second game of a match into a race to slaughter people if you won the first game. It also added some silly situations like attacking with Frodo and playing noble sacrifice guaranteeing that you lose the game but possibly killing one extra unit!
One thing I noticed is how young the room was. Most of the players were teenagers and many were girls. I don't think I was the oldest one there but I was definitely way up there. (A similar thing happens in Queen's Gambit too, but mostly it's teenage boys there.)
My first round was against a teenage boy who didn't really seem to have a grasp on strategy. I lost a couple coin flips (possibly by out-thinking myself) and ended up winning as dark with only 2 units left. This meant I had to either win as light side or kill 8 of his dudes in a loss. It ended up really not mattering since he threw out his big numbers willy-nilly and lost his orcs early. Gandalf was then able to obliterate pretty much all of his units. I got to a point where I had a guaranteed win against anyone I play against and almost went into auto-pilot but then I realized he didn't have to have the warg back in Mordor. It might have been the witch king who could attack sideways which would have ended me. I played it slowly and it turned out the warg was way out in the middle of nowhere and I would have lost with my reckless play.
Round two was against another teenage boy who liked to talk about how bad he was and how I was going to beat him for sure. Complimenting my plays and such. Not sure if he was just nervous or if I'm somehow intimidating or if he was playing mindgames with me. He certainly thought I was playing mindgames with him. Whenever he'd reveal a piece I'd say hello to it (because I'm weird, it's just what I do) "Hi Pippin!" and it seemed to bother him somehow. At one point I had a coin flip (eye for his noble sacrifice vs bigger number) in a fight of 'the Gimster' vs Shelob and I wanted to make sure he knew I knew it was a coinflip so I made a comment asking if the Gimster was ready to blow himself up. It caused him to go into this weird double-think feedback loop as he tried to figure out why I said that. We both ended up playing numbers. He then decided that letting me talk before he made a play was a bad idea because clearly I was in his head so he started just playing a card immediately as soon as the pieces were revealed.
At one point we both played our magic cards and I had eye of sauron in my used pile. I said I was magicking for eye to counter his magic and he said that didn't work. I found in the rules where it said evil picks first and he said that just meant my card was worse and that he gets to pick a number after I choose eye. This is totally not how we play it and I said I was pretty sure it worked my way but we could ask the GM if he wanted. He decided not to press the issue and let me counter his magic. I ended up winning this match.
Round 3 I was playing against an older guy. (It seemed like the undefeated people tended to be the older ones.) I started as the good side and lost a couple coin-flips. I kept assuming he was going to try to eye my noble sacrifice so I kept playing numbers and losing. It became pretty clear that I wasn't going to win so I switched to murder mode with the intention of just killing as many of his guys as I could. I used all my guys and then attacked with Frodo with the intention of noble sacrificing him. I again thought he'd eye it though, so I played a number and so did he. In retrospect he probably didn't even think I would do that (maybe I should have made a comment!) and was just guaranteeing the win by killing Frodo with a big number. I ended up running Saruman down one side killing off both Merry and Legolas which pretty much meant I was going to win with more dudes than he did if I won at all. I managed to kill Gandalf with the orcs after losing only 1 dude (several retreats to set it up though) and the rest was smooth sailing.
Round 4 I was up against Rob Flowers and the games weren't even close. He won as the good guys with a pretty robust number (5 maybe?) so I knew I had my work cut out for me. I made a couple risky plays trying to kill units without losing any (not using Boromir up front, playing a 5 in the pippin vs shelob fight, etc...) and they all backfired. He ended up winning with a 7 in the second game.
It turned out they had 2 people at 4-0 and 7 at 3-1. The tiebreaker was strength of schedule and I was a little worried since every single one of my opponents lost all of their games after they played me. On the plus side I did start 3-0 so I had played one of the 4-0s. I ended up 5th overall and was matched against another teenage boy. He seemed to have a decent grasp of strategy but had already conceded victory in the event. I guess Nick Henning is a god among elves, at least according to my opponent, and he was just hoping to lose to him in the finals. (Other Nick brought a hand-made game with him, Lord of the Rings: Shotfrontation, where all the pieces are shot glasses and you drink when you kill a unit.)
At any rate, the actual game. I started as evil and got into a guaranteed win situation. I had Frodo contained and had set up my discard to have my 6 and my eye. I still had my magic card so I was guaranteed to win any given fight and I had one with Frodo coming up. I made the attack, we both played magic, and he said I couldn't eye his magic. This time he did appeal to the GM and somehow the GM ruled in his favour. I had to pick my card first but if I picked eye he could just pick a number and beat me. (I looked up the FAQ on BGG today and they agree with the way we play, for the record. I wonder if I should find the GM's email address and ask about it again?) I shrugged and picked my 6 instead. I still had Frodo contained and would win without losing any other pieces. Unless he picked noble sacrifice here, which he should have, to get the extra tiebreaker point. He took retreat and died a few moves later.
Coming back the other way I ended up in trade-off mode and got down to 2 pieces left on my side: Frodo and Legolas. They were both one space out of the mountains. My opponent had 4 pieces left but most were on my side of the river. If I could get Frodo through I would probably win. But he still had the flying nazgul so it was going to be a guess. I decided I probably couldn't come up with a right solution and maybe he could read me so I did it completely random. He guessed right and jumped Frodo.
So we were tied. In the swiss that would have just been a draw. In the finals we would have played another two games. In the quarters? Coin-flip to advance. He called heads and heads it was.
I tried to get the internet to work for a while, failed, and went to find Robb and/or Pounder. Robb had just lost in the Agricola semis and Pounder was in the process of losing in the Race semis. We went for food (Red Robin I think) and then had an hour to burn before I had to play in the Vegas Showdown finals. We went to Jay's Cafe to try out Lancaster which I had read the rules for the night before.
Lancaster was an interesting and short game. Guaranteed to play over exactly 5 turns and with a few different paths to score points. We cheated in two major ways so what we played wasn't really the actual game but all 3 of us had different plans and came within a couple points of each other so maybe it is a good game. We meant to play it again later but they packed it up before we got around to it.
The Vegas Showdown was a 5 player game with Rob Flowers and some other guys I didn't really recognize. One of them commented at the start about how he didn't really know how to play and didn't know how he possibly beat Randy Buehler (last year's champion) in his semi-final match. He seemed more concerned about not getting to play the colour red than actually playing the game. He kept trying to give red points each time he scored. At one point he put a big bid on a high roller's room and someone pointed out to him that he couldn't place it without a table games. He then undid the bid, but two turns later got into a huge bidding war with Rob Flowers that ended with the other guy paying a lot for a building he couldn't place. He tried to place it and had to be reminded again that he needed a table games.
As far as how my game went I saw that early on both restaurant cards had come out and decided to not build any of them. I started with a slot machine and then a fancy lounge for 21. A few turns later I got a second fancy lounge for 12. I built a normal lounge and then the next turn publicity was banned so I renovated to put my fancy lounges in play. At this point I was up to 3 slot machines (1 from a slot surplus) and had to figure out how I was going to put them on the board. I ended up going to 3 slots along the wall in yellow, lounge from blue door, fancy lounge from lounge, fancy lounge from fancy lounge. I bought a second lounge to fill some yellow space and come closer to connecting. And then I got a 3rd fancy lounge for 18. This let me connect, get 5 triangle points, come a sportsbook/theatre from filling yellow, and have low competition for the theatre. Unfortunately the other fancy lounge was owned by righty so I was going to have to position myself to outbid him. I didn't spend a single dollar for the rest of the game to make sure that would happen. He actually had the lead in cash for a while but kept trying to buy other things. (On one frustrating turn he actually bid 15 on a lounge only to have the 'not-red' guy bust in with 18. I think it connected him so it wasn't actually bad but it was frustrating for my theatre plan.)
Meanwhile the guy across from me was set up to buy the 5-star steakhouse. Instead he did some math and bought a nightclub for 33. (I was actually going to use that and a renovate as a backup plan to fill my yellow but the 33 was out of nowhere.) Then everyone else spent money and he was able to get the steakhouse for like 21. And the dragon room for 25.
Tile after tile was flipped and still no theatre. Not-red guy got to pull strings once and picked pretty much at a random. He didn't pick big but also didn't pick the lowest pile either. I got to pull strings once and got a big one with no theatre. We were down to no flats, no smalls, and 2 biggies. People bought exactly 2 buildings so we were possibly going to get another turn...
First card? Score diamonds and add a biggy. Diamonds were split 5-4-0-0-0. The tile was the space age sportsbook. Next card? Slot builders on strike and game end.
Lounges did pay out points near the end of the game (I got 10 points) but never paid cash. I went through the draw pile afterwards and 5 of the 8 cards were biggies. So I had a 5/14 chance to build the theatre on the last turn. Doing so would have been worth 12 for the theatre itself, 5 for filling yellow, and 2 more triangle points. I'd lose 5 points worth of money for a net gain of 14. The guy with all the good stuff wouldn't have had a good play and I think would have had to publicity for 1 point. We both would have earned a point in money from an extra turn of income, I think. End result? He beat me by 12. So getting an extra turn would have probably been the win. Having the theatre actually come out early certainly would have been.
Sometimes the tiles just conspire against you I guess. Having the lounges eventually pay off points was good enough for second place though.
It looked like I'd missed Werewolf Prom while playing the finals. Pounder and Robb were already asleep when I got back to the room (Settlers in the morning!) so even if I thought sneaking in late was a good idea I couldn't have really found my suit in the dark anyway. Oh well, maybe next year there'll actually be a solid date listed for it so I can plan ahead.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Magic 2012 Draft 1
I'm back from WBC and Magic Nationals is in less than 2 weeks. While I was gone M12 was released on Magic Online which means it's time to get cracking in terms of getting ready for the draft portion of the event. I played 2 rounds in a prerelease for M12 a few weeks ago and learned more about how much I hate being crammed into a hot, humid room with a bunch of sweaty gamers than I did about the new set. You can sum up pretty much everything I know about drafting M12 in 3 sentences:
- Planeswalkers are awesome
- Green is terrible
- It's a core set so just taking the best card is a good plan
Now, I typically love to draft green even in formats where it is 'terrible' so I'm not going to deliberately avoid green in my testing but it is something I'm keeping in mind.
I apologize that I haven't come up with a better format to display the cards. I've been meaning to write a slideshow style control that would really clean up the draft summary but when it comes right down to it I'd rather play games than do so. Certainly at this point just getting drafts done and thinking about drafts is way more valuable than screwing around with web code.
Hopefully this works!
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Home... Barely!
I thought I wasn't going to get anything posted today. It turns out that when you out 1644 gamers under one roof that you can overload a bad wireless network and keep any of them from connecting.
On top of that there was a bit of a crisis getting on the road today. Pounder's car had a bit of a mishap at 1am and we had to recruit a small army to push it up a hill and into a parking spot. It was then towed away and had to have the battery and alternator replaced...
Clearly it did manage to get me home and hopefully can get Robb and Pounder to Waterloo too.
More details from the last couple days to follow.
On top of that there was a bit of a crisis getting on the road today. Pounder's car had a bit of a mishap at 1am and we had to recruit a small army to push it up a hill and into a parking spot. It was then towed away and had to have the battery and alternator replaced...
Clearly it did manage to get me home and hopefully can get Robb and Pounder to Waterloo too.
More details from the last couple days to follow.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
WBC 2011 - Day 5 Summary
Since I know people who want to know ASAP and I'm probably heading off to play games all day:
3rd in Le Have
Top 8 in Lord of the Rings the Confrontation
2nd in Vegas Showdown
3rd in Le Have
Top 8 in Lord of the Rings the Confrontation
2nd in Vegas Showdown
Friday, August 05, 2011
WBC 2011 - Day 4
I qualified for two important (to me) semi-finals on Thursday which were taking place at 6 and 9 in the evening. I decided that since I stayed up all night playing werewolf and that I wanted to be well rested for those games that I would just sleep in. As such, I ended up getting up around 3. I had a Dipps bar and was whisked off to play Hansa Teutonica in open gaming with Robb, Pounder, and Dan. I still don't understand when people are going to displace me and when they aren't and got pounded. People keep saying it's the best game (and maybe the expansion map makes it even better) but I'm still not sold on the game.
That wrapped up but with not enough time to really eat. I went back to the room, had some cookies and another Dipps bar and read a little Game of Thrones since the internet was down.
6 o'clock brought the Le Havre semi-finals. After waiting a bit to see if people would show it was determined that there were 10 people available and they needed to come up with a format. They should probably have one predetermined for each possible outcome but they ended up deciding that they really wanted a 4 player final so they ran a 4 player game, two 3 player games, and would advance the second place finisher who had the highest percentage of first place's score. Given the constraints of needing to use 10 people, needing to cut to 4, and refusing to play 5 player games this seemed like a pretty good format. Personally I probably would have excluded an alternate and played 3 games and a 3 player final but this would be my choice given the constraints and was certainly the one I lobbied for.
Seating was randomly determined and I ended up at a table with Dan and other Dan, two of last years 4 finalists. I made that final as well and the 4th guy didn't even play in the event so I was expecting a tough game and was really hoping for a close second place from our table.
The building piles were really weird with one pile containing, in order, hardware store/black market/colliery/wharf. So for 4 clay, 4 wood, and 2 dollars you could start off with a colliery in play which is really absurd. Other Dan ended up doing just that while Dan collected wood and dollars and built the marketplace. I bought the 4 cost building firm, used the marketplace, and collected some loans. I built a couple more buildings for a clay each and was trying to position myself to have 14 bucks so I could buy a boat. Dan made use of the first special building which lets you convert a fish into 2 dollars up to 7 times. He bought 2 boats with this building and a lot of fish, including a trip to my fishery. I ended up realizing that selling all my buildings for a boat was not going to be a good plan this game after I got a good wood offer. There was a wharf in play and since both Dan and other Dan had spent wood on buildings neither of them could build a wooden boat. Other Dan had the colliery which opened up a wharf for purchase so I just built it and then made 2 wooden boats the old fashioned way. I was the only one with any interest in the marketplace it seemed and I set up the second building to come out when I was going to go first. It was the building you can go to for a coal, a coke, and an iron. I vendored my wharf so that I could buy it and ended up using it exclusively for my coke needs all game. So despite the very early colliery, I didn't use it at all.
Eventually I grabbed a 3 iron offer and used my new building to buy an iron boat. This gave me 3 boats and a coke, so I went to the shipping line to get rid of some cows. (Dan was in the first 2 cow position of the game and let me have them by doing something else.) I had a lot of cows and sent 7 of them off for 21 points which I used to buy the steel mill. Other Dan had made a bunch of bricks and I think he was eyeing the steel mill and the cokery which were one on top of the other so my straight up buying one of them seemed to throw him off a little. I then grabbed another coke, baked some bread, and shipped it off for another 21 points and bought the cokery. Both of those buildings got used a fair amount over the course of the game. I think Dan made coke 3 times. I never actually made any coke myself, instead getting coke from my special building and using the coal from that to bake bread or build boats.
Ultimately I used my steel mill twice in order to build a steel ship and then the second luxury liner. The second time I made steel I think I really hurt other Dan. He was thinking about making steel and then decided to go get some more iron first. I went in immediately afterwards, spent 2 coke for 3 steel, and then proceeded to sit there and take a 20 wood offer. (I needed energy and being able to delay his plans certainly helped.) I was considering making that wood into charcoal but ended up just using it straight up to ship two more times, each with 11 cows/bread. (I took a late 8 grain offer and baked a second time.)
When all was said and done the scores were something like 259, 254, 239. I had the win, Dan was second, and other Dan was third. The other two games apparently weren't close so both Dan and I advance to the finals tomorrow morning at 9am. Maybe sleeping in until 3pm wasn't such a great idea after all...
Our game was a little slow but not so slow that it took more than 3 hours. My next event was in the same room: the Vegas Showdown semifinals. They ended up with 22 winners so they advanced three alternates and played a full five 5-player games. I'm not a huge fan of 5 player Vegas Showdown but it's better than Le Havre or Puerto Rico at least.
My table featured the GM Eric (who beat me in the Vegas Showdown finals 2 years ago and in the Tigris & Euphrates final last year), Carey (who kept coming second in the Notre Dame finals when they were an event), and 2 other guys who seemed pretty competent.
The first turn was interesting: no publicity allowed. I was in first seat and opened with a bid of 12 on slots. It followed with 12 on slots, Eric bids 15 on my slots, 12 on lounge, renovate, restaurant. I hate restaurants so much but I figured if I was paying 15 for something it might as well be the thing that actually costs 15. To make that play a little better the opening 4 buildings were buffet, fancy lounge, fancy restaurant, fancy slots. With everyone spending so much on normal slots (the high bidding continued in future turns) I figured having the only restaurant would mean I could get two of those relatively cheap. I ended up getting the buffet for 12 and was pretty happy with my money situation since I could get the fancy restaurant pretty cheap next turn too. And then the cards were sale and restaurant builders on strike. This knocked it off the board and meant I couldn't get it after all which made me sad.
The cards smiled on me after that, though. Lounges paid out points the turn after I bought a lounge. We got points for connections the turn after I connected. Points for dollars only came out once, and it came out when only one person was able to buy points.
The theatre was the first of the B big buildings to come out (and the second overall after the dragon room). Eric and other Eric had the only two fancy lounges that had come out thus far. They immediately started saving up money. I couldn't see how I could really win without getting it (Carey had bought the dragon room for 25 on me and it looked like the game was going to end before steakhouse was even an option) so I saved up too. When we could finally afford it I had 46, Eric had 50, and other Eric had less than Eric. I bid it up as high as I could and Eric overbid me and got it for 47. I settled for a lounge which connected me.
The next turn I picked up a fancy restaurant as 2 other buildings were purchased. Eric was up and the first card was pull strings. The pile sizes were 1 small, 4 medium, 2 big. I'm not sure his reasoning exactly but he did some math, figured he wasn't going to win if the game ended, and I think if it kept going, and grabbed a big one. The next card was also pull strings. He thought some more and grabbed the last big. The third card was a big and the game ended. A little unfortunate since I was positioned to buy and place the space age sports book soon (I had 39 bucks at the time) but it turned out to be very fortunate for me after all as I was in a tie for first and my 9 extra bucks won the tiebreaker against 5 extra bucks.
I was now qualified for finals occuring at 9am and 11pm the next day so I decided I should try to go to sleep early. A quick detour to the Waffle House gave me my first meal of the day and I went to bed at 1.
That wrapped up but with not enough time to really eat. I went back to the room, had some cookies and another Dipps bar and read a little Game of Thrones since the internet was down.
6 o'clock brought the Le Havre semi-finals. After waiting a bit to see if people would show it was determined that there were 10 people available and they needed to come up with a format. They should probably have one predetermined for each possible outcome but they ended up deciding that they really wanted a 4 player final so they ran a 4 player game, two 3 player games, and would advance the second place finisher who had the highest percentage of first place's score. Given the constraints of needing to use 10 people, needing to cut to 4, and refusing to play 5 player games this seemed like a pretty good format. Personally I probably would have excluded an alternate and played 3 games and a 3 player final but this would be my choice given the constraints and was certainly the one I lobbied for.
Seating was randomly determined and I ended up at a table with Dan and other Dan, two of last years 4 finalists. I made that final as well and the 4th guy didn't even play in the event so I was expecting a tough game and was really hoping for a close second place from our table.
The building piles were really weird with one pile containing, in order, hardware store/black market/colliery/wharf. So for 4 clay, 4 wood, and 2 dollars you could start off with a colliery in play which is really absurd. Other Dan ended up doing just that while Dan collected wood and dollars and built the marketplace. I bought the 4 cost building firm, used the marketplace, and collected some loans. I built a couple more buildings for a clay each and was trying to position myself to have 14 bucks so I could buy a boat. Dan made use of the first special building which lets you convert a fish into 2 dollars up to 7 times. He bought 2 boats with this building and a lot of fish, including a trip to my fishery. I ended up realizing that selling all my buildings for a boat was not going to be a good plan this game after I got a good wood offer. There was a wharf in play and since both Dan and other Dan had spent wood on buildings neither of them could build a wooden boat. Other Dan had the colliery which opened up a wharf for purchase so I just built it and then made 2 wooden boats the old fashioned way. I was the only one with any interest in the marketplace it seemed and I set up the second building to come out when I was going to go first. It was the building you can go to for a coal, a coke, and an iron. I vendored my wharf so that I could buy it and ended up using it exclusively for my coke needs all game. So despite the very early colliery, I didn't use it at all.
Eventually I grabbed a 3 iron offer and used my new building to buy an iron boat. This gave me 3 boats and a coke, so I went to the shipping line to get rid of some cows. (Dan was in the first 2 cow position of the game and let me have them by doing something else.) I had a lot of cows and sent 7 of them off for 21 points which I used to buy the steel mill. Other Dan had made a bunch of bricks and I think he was eyeing the steel mill and the cokery which were one on top of the other so my straight up buying one of them seemed to throw him off a little. I then grabbed another coke, baked some bread, and shipped it off for another 21 points and bought the cokery. Both of those buildings got used a fair amount over the course of the game. I think Dan made coke 3 times. I never actually made any coke myself, instead getting coke from my special building and using the coal from that to bake bread or build boats.
Ultimately I used my steel mill twice in order to build a steel ship and then the second luxury liner. The second time I made steel I think I really hurt other Dan. He was thinking about making steel and then decided to go get some more iron first. I went in immediately afterwards, spent 2 coke for 3 steel, and then proceeded to sit there and take a 20 wood offer. (I needed energy and being able to delay his plans certainly helped.) I was considering making that wood into charcoal but ended up just using it straight up to ship two more times, each with 11 cows/bread. (I took a late 8 grain offer and baked a second time.)
When all was said and done the scores were something like 259, 254, 239. I had the win, Dan was second, and other Dan was third. The other two games apparently weren't close so both Dan and I advance to the finals tomorrow morning at 9am. Maybe sleeping in until 3pm wasn't such a great idea after all...
Our game was a little slow but not so slow that it took more than 3 hours. My next event was in the same room: the Vegas Showdown semifinals. They ended up with 22 winners so they advanced three alternates and played a full five 5-player games. I'm not a huge fan of 5 player Vegas Showdown but it's better than Le Havre or Puerto Rico at least.
My table featured the GM Eric (who beat me in the Vegas Showdown finals 2 years ago and in the Tigris & Euphrates final last year), Carey (who kept coming second in the Notre Dame finals when they were an event), and 2 other guys who seemed pretty competent.
The first turn was interesting: no publicity allowed. I was in first seat and opened with a bid of 12 on slots. It followed with 12 on slots, Eric bids 15 on my slots, 12 on lounge, renovate, restaurant. I hate restaurants so much but I figured if I was paying 15 for something it might as well be the thing that actually costs 15. To make that play a little better the opening 4 buildings were buffet, fancy lounge, fancy restaurant, fancy slots. With everyone spending so much on normal slots (the high bidding continued in future turns) I figured having the only restaurant would mean I could get two of those relatively cheap. I ended up getting the buffet for 12 and was pretty happy with my money situation since I could get the fancy restaurant pretty cheap next turn too. And then the cards were sale and restaurant builders on strike. This knocked it off the board and meant I couldn't get it after all which made me sad.
The cards smiled on me after that, though. Lounges paid out points the turn after I bought a lounge. We got points for connections the turn after I connected. Points for dollars only came out once, and it came out when only one person was able to buy points.
The theatre was the first of the B big buildings to come out (and the second overall after the dragon room). Eric and other Eric had the only two fancy lounges that had come out thus far. They immediately started saving up money. I couldn't see how I could really win without getting it (Carey had bought the dragon room for 25 on me and it looked like the game was going to end before steakhouse was even an option) so I saved up too. When we could finally afford it I had 46, Eric had 50, and other Eric had less than Eric. I bid it up as high as I could and Eric overbid me and got it for 47. I settled for a lounge which connected me.
The next turn I picked up a fancy restaurant as 2 other buildings were purchased. Eric was up and the first card was pull strings. The pile sizes were 1 small, 4 medium, 2 big. I'm not sure his reasoning exactly but he did some math, figured he wasn't going to win if the game ended, and I think if it kept going, and grabbed a big one. The next card was also pull strings. He thought some more and grabbed the last big. The third card was a big and the game ended. A little unfortunate since I was positioned to buy and place the space age sports book soon (I had 39 bucks at the time) but it turned out to be very fortunate for me after all as I was in a tie for first and my 9 extra bucks won the tiebreaker against 5 extra bucks.
I was now qualified for finals occuring at 9am and 11pm the next day so I decided I should try to go to sleep early. A quick detour to the Waffle House gave me my first meal of the day and I went to bed at 1.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
WBC 2011 - Day 3
The plan was to wake up for Race for the Galaxy at 9am, so I asked Robb to set the alarm for 8:30 so I could get up and shower. The other two planned on sleeping in. The next thing I remember is Pounder telling me it's 9:15. I didn't hear an alarm at all or recall being told to go shower. So I went back to sleep. Pounder eventually came back and woke me up at 11:30 so I could go to the Paydirt demo at 12. Paydirt is a football strategy game where the two players pick a play and then you roll dice and look up the result on massive tables. There's a guy who builds the tables every year with the stats from the previous season. The game seemed interesting enough so Pounder and I signed up to play in the heat at 1.
The first thing that happens is you auction off the teams. Each team has a power rating which is the minimum bid and when you play a game the lower bid of the two competing teams gets free points equal to the difference in the bids. So you can play a bad team but still get spotted a bunch of points are have a reasonable chance of winning the game. I ended up getting the Tennessee Titans for their minimum bid. I was matched up against a San Diego Chargers team which had been bid up so I was spotted something like 11 points to start the game.
My game featured lots of crazy plays. At one point I turned the ball over deep in the enemy zone and immediately got a safety. He had to kick off from his 20 yard line after the safety and I got a great result on the return table getting a 111 yard return for a touch down. (The Chargers were terrible on special teams last year and have a +77 result they can roll.) Later he fumbled the ball, I recovered and immediately threw an interception, and his next play was a very long touchdown pass. (I had a lead and screwed up by both throwing the pass in the first place and then by playing a defense card that had touchdown as one of the options.)
He ended up scoring the go ahead touchdown with a minute and 40 seconds to play. I proceeded to then throw another interception and he got a first down to run out the clock. A fun game, and I may try to play in the NFC heat so I can smash some faces with Suh and the Lions.
Next up, a demo for the other football game at WBC: Football Strategy. This game removes pretty much all of the randomness from the previous game. Defense picks a formation. Offense picks a play. Look up the deterministic result. Repeat. It's pretty much a very glorified game of rock paper scissors. The GM even said in the demo that people often fake punt on fourth down (the only drawback is you score half yardage on your play) and I took that to heart. I spent the early part of my game trying to get into a pattern and trying to get my opponent to follow along. It worked reasonably well as he took a 13-7 lead into half time. I punted once in the first half.
In the second half I switched to an offense better at passing and never punted again. I got into 4th down situations a fair bit but managed to out-guess/out-think my opponent for huge gains each time. 4th and 14 from my own 30? Fake punt! I ended up taking the lead by 8. My opponent scored a touch down as time expired so he got to go for 2 for the tie. (At this point Robb and Pounder were both waiting for me to finish so we could go eat so overtime would have been a big loss.) I managed to stuff the play and won by 2. My opponent was minorly verbally abusive to me over the course of the game (calling me a prick when I got an interception result even though it was out of the end zone and therefore incomplete instead, insulting me when I 'guessed' right over and over even though really I think I'd just figured him out, etc...) and was very slow so it wasn't much fun.
The event is single elimination/continuous so I was supposed to play again right away. I really wanted to eat having eaten a Dipps bar and 3 cookies all day. Also the steakhouse was donating 10% of our bill to WBC on Wednesday so it seemed good to go in. So I felt bad but dropped without volunteering to concede and let my opponent advance because he gave me a bad gaming experience.
54 ounces of steak later we came back and open gamed Innovation again. Fun game.
Then came Can't Stop where I played with Robb, Pounder, and the first person to sit down with us. The highlight of the game was definitely that a cute little 11 year old girl was watching us and was able to add up Pounder's dice much faster than he could. A couple times she even pointed out a play he missed. And one time he started at the bottom when he was actually half way up and she had to help move it up to where it should be. Robb ended up winning solely due to turn order, I assert, as he went before me and scored his 3rd while I had 2 and was high on others.
Robb had to keep playing Can't Stop so Pounder and I played 2 more games of Innovation. Then Pounder went to bed and I went to find Robb at werewolf since I wasn't tired at all. I ended up watching a bit and then played a couple 5 player games and a 22 player game. I'm really out of practice and hence bad at the game. But it was fun.
The first thing that happens is you auction off the teams. Each team has a power rating which is the minimum bid and when you play a game the lower bid of the two competing teams gets free points equal to the difference in the bids. So you can play a bad team but still get spotted a bunch of points are have a reasonable chance of winning the game. I ended up getting the Tennessee Titans for their minimum bid. I was matched up against a San Diego Chargers team which had been bid up so I was spotted something like 11 points to start the game.
My game featured lots of crazy plays. At one point I turned the ball over deep in the enemy zone and immediately got a safety. He had to kick off from his 20 yard line after the safety and I got a great result on the return table getting a 111 yard return for a touch down. (The Chargers were terrible on special teams last year and have a +77 result they can roll.) Later he fumbled the ball, I recovered and immediately threw an interception, and his next play was a very long touchdown pass. (I had a lead and screwed up by both throwing the pass in the first place and then by playing a defense card that had touchdown as one of the options.)
He ended up scoring the go ahead touchdown with a minute and 40 seconds to play. I proceeded to then throw another interception and he got a first down to run out the clock. A fun game, and I may try to play in the NFC heat so I can smash some faces with Suh and the Lions.
Next up, a demo for the other football game at WBC: Football Strategy. This game removes pretty much all of the randomness from the previous game. Defense picks a formation. Offense picks a play. Look up the deterministic result. Repeat. It's pretty much a very glorified game of rock paper scissors. The GM even said in the demo that people often fake punt on fourth down (the only drawback is you score half yardage on your play) and I took that to heart. I spent the early part of my game trying to get into a pattern and trying to get my opponent to follow along. It worked reasonably well as he took a 13-7 lead into half time. I punted once in the first half.
In the second half I switched to an offense better at passing and never punted again. I got into 4th down situations a fair bit but managed to out-guess/out-think my opponent for huge gains each time. 4th and 14 from my own 30? Fake punt! I ended up taking the lead by 8. My opponent scored a touch down as time expired so he got to go for 2 for the tie. (At this point Robb and Pounder were both waiting for me to finish so we could go eat so overtime would have been a big loss.) I managed to stuff the play and won by 2. My opponent was minorly verbally abusive to me over the course of the game (calling me a prick when I got an interception result even though it was out of the end zone and therefore incomplete instead, insulting me when I 'guessed' right over and over even though really I think I'd just figured him out, etc...) and was very slow so it wasn't much fun.
The event is single elimination/continuous so I was supposed to play again right away. I really wanted to eat having eaten a Dipps bar and 3 cookies all day. Also the steakhouse was donating 10% of our bill to WBC on Wednesday so it seemed good to go in. So I felt bad but dropped without volunteering to concede and let my opponent advance because he gave me a bad gaming experience.
54 ounces of steak later we came back and open gamed Innovation again. Fun game.
Then came Can't Stop where I played with Robb, Pounder, and the first person to sit down with us. The highlight of the game was definitely that a cute little 11 year old girl was watching us and was able to add up Pounder's dice much faster than he could. A couple times she even pointed out a play he missed. And one time he started at the bottom when he was actually half way up and she had to help move it up to where it should be. Robb ended up winning solely due to turn order, I assert, as he went before me and scored his 3rd while I had 2 and was high on others.
Robb had to keep playing Can't Stop so Pounder and I played 2 more games of Innovation. Then Pounder went to bed and I went to find Robb at werewolf since I wasn't tired at all. I ended up watching a bit and then played a couple 5 player games and a 22 player game. I'm really out of practice and hence bad at the game. But it was fun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)