I had things I would have liked to do Thursday morning but decided to just get up when I woke up and not worry about an alarm or anything. The room is very cold at night so the difference for me is if I put on my super warm blanket or not. With blanket I can sleep forever. Without blanket I will wake up shivering every hour or so. Blanket on, sleep for me. I ended up waking up around noonish so I missed Vegas Showdown, Tigris & Euphrates, and food. In fact I didn't actually have anything to do until 3 so I screwed around a while on the internet.
3pm brought the second Le Havre heat. I already had a win so I didn't need to play in order to advance but I figured I would for practice and maybe to knock some people out? I ended up in a 3 player game with the GM Ken and with Daniel E. The three of us were the top 3 from last year so it was going to be a tight game. I ended up continuing my dominance of 3 player games with an 11 point win over Daniel with a big gap down to Ken in third. (Something like 292-281-205?)
6pm was the Le Havre semifinals. Our heat ran a little long so I ran back to the room to grab poptarts and granola bars. I ended up in a 4 player semifinal with Daniel, Chris Senhouse, and another dude who didn't really have a good grasp of strategy. He was a nice guy (and would sing lyrics from songs at a drop of a hat) and seemed to make reasonable decisions every now and then but clearly had no long term strategy. The following (approximate) conversion took place during the game:
Daniel - (after thinking for a few minues) If only I knew what you were going to do on your turn this would be easy.
Dude - I don't know what I'm going to do.
Daniel - I know!
Me - *nods knowingly*
Turn order was dude, Chris, Daniel, me. This is terrible for me since the dude would often make moves to set up Chris or Daniel and it was unlikely to make it through both of them and make it to me. Sitting to Daniel's left is also bad since we tend to do similar things and this means he'll probably get to do them all first. I ended up trying to differentiate myself by building a bunch of house buildings early and then hitting the marketplace for many goods. Dude ended up buying both wharves and skipped getting the colliery which let Chris scoop it up along with being the first to build boats. I honestly thought I was dead after the first few turns with how hooked up Chris was getting from the dude. I made one mistake early when I didn't notice Daniel was sitting on 5 fish and let the special building for smoked fish hit play. He quickly turned the fish into smoked fish and then sold them for 15 and bought a wooden boat which was a great start for him. I did have the smokehouse so I made a couple bucks off it when he did it a second time too. I did it once myself very late in the game as a reasonable late action. I did make use of the special building which turned wood+meat into 5 dollars and bought an iron boat with it.
Things took a turn for the better when Chris started making money in the mid-late game and started buying wooden boats instead of real things. When it came time to ship he only had 3 wooden boats which meant he could only ship 6 things compared to my shipping for 12 things. I think I may have even shipped one more time than he did. Daniel and I were both set up to build luxury liners but the dude took this opportunity to sit in the one modernized wharf while he picked up completely irrelevant offers. I ended up shipping my steel which is a fine result. Daniel took his final action in the wharf for the bad luxury liner.
Final scores were something like 170-168-161-142. I'd managed to win a 4er against Daniel. Chris was second. Once again the format involved the closest second advancing and once again they came from my table. The only difference is it wasn't Daniel this year.
I screwed around for an hour and then headed to play Ingenious at 10pm. It turns out they'd scheduled this heat in the wargamer room and I actually regret going to play. I don't know if it's a lack of air conditioning, a lack of hygiene amongst the wargamers, or a combination of the two but that room is a smelly, humid mess. I ended up in a 3 player game and came a pretty close third. Midgame I had 9 blue points and 3 lower colours so I worked on those while blue got completely closed out. With a little more experience I likely would have grabbed 5 more blue points when I could and moved on to working on the more open other colours afterwards. As it was I could only eek out one more blue point and it was my worst number by far at the end.
I almost played Pro Golf at 11pm. Vegas Showdown semis were at the same time and I was the second alternate with my close 2nd place finish. I needed either 21 of the 24 winners to show up, or 19 of them with no first alternate, or 18 and I was in. I let them convince me to skip Pro Golf and wait around. Turns out 20 winners and the first alternate all showed up so I didn't get to play either Pro Golf or Vegas Showdown.
Instead I went to Waffle House where I finally got the service I'd expect at Waffle House. I ordered sausage and got no meat. I ordered hash browns with just ham and also got cheese. The eggs were on the burnt side of cooked. It was pretty terrible. Perhaps worse is I checked out the jukebox and it didn't have Friday or Never Gonna Give You Up. How am I suppose to annoy Robb now?
Friday, August 03, 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.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
2012 WBC Day 4 Summary
Tuesday is the most important day of the week for many people at WBC. They hold a 7 hour long board game auction that fills to the brim every year. There's also an auction store you can wander through at the same time. WBC gets a piece of the action and I believe it's via the auction that they keep entry fees as low as they do.
I am not one of those people. I have never really even considered going to the auction or selling an item in auction. Someone told me today that Rail Baron went for $70 so maybe I'll try selling that next year? Probably I'll just be lazy. At any rate they don't schedule any events during the auction which makes Tuesday a day of opening gaming for many people. Personally I get to do one of my favourite things... Sleep!
Robb ended up waking me up at 3pm so I could go have steak for breakfast. WBC has a deal with the nearby Texas Roadhouse where any money spent by WBC members on Tuesday from 3pm to 10:30pm has 10% get funneled to support the WBC open library. We like steak at the worst of times so giving us an extra incentive to turn our meat eating into board games? We're all over that! I ended up eating an 18oz steak for breakfast and I don't regret a thing!
Actual events start at 6pm and I had an hour to kill so I wrote about A Few Acres of Snow. I had a few options for games to play at 6: El Grande, Robo Rally, or St Petersburgh. I don't really know how to play any of those games well and maybe should have just gone to Robo Rally but I decided to give St Petersburgh a spin. Pretty much all I really know about the game is the mistress of ceremonies card is broken on the first turn. In my game I got her on the first turn. I then proceeded to bumble my way through the rest of the turns (making several key mistakes) and ended up barely winning the game 84-82-81-75. At one point I built the upgrade that gives you one dollar off your aristocrats and then failed to use the discount for my next 4 aristocrats. Doing so meant I didn't have enough money to properly play out my admiral card on top of my duplicate aristocrat and rather than wait a turn I put it over a unique one on the assumption that I'd get another copy of it. I didn't (though I did have a 50% chance of doing so with my observatory) so I compounded my first mistake with another. I was at the table with the GM and he didn't offer to give me the missing money once I'd noticed I'd been anti-cheating. I wonder if he would have if I'd been at another table and called him over? Or if I had boobs and a cute face? I'm a little annoyed that no one else pointed out that I'd been anti-cheating but mostly I'm bitter at myself. I blame playing the game exclusively online.
9pm brought the first heat of my team game: Le Havre. This game featured two very new players (both sitting to my left) and one relatively experienced player to my right. I ended up going for a 'make all the coal here' strategy by acquiring the marketplace, colliery, cokery, iron min and coal seam, and smelter. I thought I was in a good way when suddenly it appeared like I wasn't going to get a steel ship at all due to wharf tempo. It looked like they were going to split 3-1-0-0 with me getting none at all! Then the guy to my right decided to get a 3rd steel to make a luxury liner instead of buying a third steel ship and the guy across from me decided to spend his steel on the bank. Only two of us even bothered to use the shipping line and one guy ended with a loan. I'd picked up 6 loans but paid them all off in one big shipping phase. (Well, I saved off a turn to use the local court as one of my last actions but I could have paid them off if I wanted to.) Ultimately getting the steel ship and using the shipping line twice let me pull a fair bit ahead. I won pretty comfortably with the scores something like 210-159-154-106.
After Le Havre came Waffle House where I ate 3 scrambled eggs and some hash browns with no onions. Specifically declaring no onions seems to be working as my hashbrowns have been relatively onion free all week thus far!
Then despite waking up at 3pm I went to bed right after Waffle House. I wanted to try to get up for Race For The Galaxy at 9am.
I am not one of those people. I have never really even considered going to the auction or selling an item in auction. Someone told me today that Rail Baron went for $70 so maybe I'll try selling that next year? Probably I'll just be lazy. At any rate they don't schedule any events during the auction which makes Tuesday a day of opening gaming for many people. Personally I get to do one of my favourite things... Sleep!
Robb ended up waking me up at 3pm so I could go have steak for breakfast. WBC has a deal with the nearby Texas Roadhouse where any money spent by WBC members on Tuesday from 3pm to 10:30pm has 10% get funneled to support the WBC open library. We like steak at the worst of times so giving us an extra incentive to turn our meat eating into board games? We're all over that! I ended up eating an 18oz steak for breakfast and I don't regret a thing!
Actual events start at 6pm and I had an hour to kill so I wrote about A Few Acres of Snow. I had a few options for games to play at 6: El Grande, Robo Rally, or St Petersburgh. I don't really know how to play any of those games well and maybe should have just gone to Robo Rally but I decided to give St Petersburgh a spin. Pretty much all I really know about the game is the mistress of ceremonies card is broken on the first turn. In my game I got her on the first turn. I then proceeded to bumble my way through the rest of the turns (making several key mistakes) and ended up barely winning the game 84-82-81-75. At one point I built the upgrade that gives you one dollar off your aristocrats and then failed to use the discount for my next 4 aristocrats. Doing so meant I didn't have enough money to properly play out my admiral card on top of my duplicate aristocrat and rather than wait a turn I put it over a unique one on the assumption that I'd get another copy of it. I didn't (though I did have a 50% chance of doing so with my observatory) so I compounded my first mistake with another. I was at the table with the GM and he didn't offer to give me the missing money once I'd noticed I'd been anti-cheating. I wonder if he would have if I'd been at another table and called him over? Or if I had boobs and a cute face? I'm a little annoyed that no one else pointed out that I'd been anti-cheating but mostly I'm bitter at myself. I blame playing the game exclusively online.
9pm brought the first heat of my team game: Le Havre. This game featured two very new players (both sitting to my left) and one relatively experienced player to my right. I ended up going for a 'make all the coal here' strategy by acquiring the marketplace, colliery, cokery, iron min and coal seam, and smelter. I thought I was in a good way when suddenly it appeared like I wasn't going to get a steel ship at all due to wharf tempo. It looked like they were going to split 3-1-0-0 with me getting none at all! Then the guy to my right decided to get a 3rd steel to make a luxury liner instead of buying a third steel ship and the guy across from me decided to spend his steel on the bank. Only two of us even bothered to use the shipping line and one guy ended with a loan. I'd picked up 6 loans but paid them all off in one big shipping phase. (Well, I saved off a turn to use the local court as one of my last actions but I could have paid them off if I wanted to.) Ultimately getting the steel ship and using the shipping line twice let me pull a fair bit ahead. I won pretty comfortably with the scores something like 210-159-154-106.
After Le Havre came Waffle House where I ate 3 scrambled eggs and some hash browns with no onions. Specifically declaring no onions seems to be working as my hashbrowns have been relatively onion free all week thus far!
Then despite waking up at 3pm I went to bed right after Waffle House. I wanted to try to get up for Race For The Galaxy at 9am.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
2012 WBC Day 3 Summary
Monday featured three events I really wanted to enter. San Juan started at 10 and would go for likely 6-7 hours. A Few Acres of Snow started at 12 and would likely go for 8-10 hours, but I could skip the first 2 hours because of the mulligan round Sunday night. Through The Ages was at 10 and was the third heat. I already had a first and an incredibly close second (lost by 1 point) so ideally I should have been in a good way to make it to the semis already. Unfortunately the posted tiebreakers cared about your third best result instead of how close your second was and they were treating a last place as being better than not playing at all. This meant I would lose to any first-second-showed up combo. I was musing about this last night with Sceadeau and Randy (the GM) and thought that maybe I should just show up and use the honourable withdrawl rule to concede on turn 1 and get a third place. Randy immediately said he'd just give me a third place in the scoring system if I showed up instead of having me screw over a game. I don't think I would have screwed over a game but the fact that I 'should' have done so is a bit of a problem and letting me just get a third is certainly a good solution. Randy said he's going to change the tiebreakers next year to fix this issue by only counting your top two finishes.
I decided I didn't want to risk a Through The Ages game going more than 4 hours and causing me to miss A Few Acres of Snow which looked to be mine for the taking so I ended up showing up at 10 and getting my third place. I ended up being by far the best 1-2-3 record but that was only good enough for 19th place with top 16 advancing. If I'd gotten up to 1-2-2 I would have been the best of those and finished something like 14th and made the semis. Oh well.
What I did end up doing was playing A Few Acres of Snow at 12. The GM let me know that I could play round 1, lose, and still advance because I won the mulligan round the night before. Great! Maybe I can play someone good for a stupidly high bid and figure out what a reasonable bid is going to be. Not to be. My opponent had played once before. He let me have the British for 3 and then proceeded to never use any of the free actions. I did my only British opener (buy rangers, make 6 and buy governor, governor away Pemaquid and St Mary's, make money and buy guns, attack, win) and blew him up.
Round 2 put me up against someone who didn't understand the bidding system and didn't know the game but had been told a rudimentary British strategy. He thought we were bidding victory points instead of bonus actions and was planning on winning by taking Quebec so points wouldn't matter. This is true and is why points aren't the bidding currency. At any rate I ended up accepting a bid of 7 to play the French. After I accepted the bid he let me know that he had another event in 2 hours so he was going to concede just before he won. I think that's sketchy and would rather he knock me out and then drop. The game went about as expected except he screwed up pretty badly by not realizing he could put his ships cards into the fight. Oddly enough he knew he could buy the ships card for 6 and put it into the fight but never realized he could put Norfolk and New Haven in. He did put Boston and New York in and then either had weak draws or misplayed and consistently made 2 or 3 dollars per turn instead of 6. This let me keep up in military power during our Port Royal fight while disking out most of my board. I screwed up by putting Montreal on the fight before settling Fort Frontenac so I couldn't end the game immediately upon termination of the fight in Port Royal. He wanted to concede because he couldn't see a way the fight would end until I pointed out to him that he could put Norfolk on the pile. He promptly won the fight. He also beiseged and won in Halifax (I raided Port Royal away to slow him down from attacking Louisbourg) and managed to settle and disk up Fort Frontenac and Oswego before he won in Halifax. I then conceded the fight in Halifax and won the game on points.
Round 3 had me face off against Alex Henning. I'd been watching her and her brother (other Nick) play in the first round and saw that they'd both played, and won, as the French by going a hardcore disking strategy against people who didn't go hardcore attacking. She let me have the British for 2 and let me know that she'd only played like 4 games total and only as the French but had been told a good strategy by her brother. This let me know what her plan was, but it didn't matter at all. I have a very specific British strategy that I use every game. I used it this game and it worked as expected but it was actually relatively close to her disking out in time to win. The key was that I managed to siege Port Royal and Halifax before she could disk them up which both gave her two dead cards and which forced her to settle an extra two locations in the west before she could use up all of her disks. A close game, but not one any different than the games on Yucata where I win every time as the British.
Round 4 was against Nick Henning's friend and apparently the only person he ever played against before WBC. They're pretty good at games in general and had worked out a strong French strategy but I don't know that they ever used the full hardcore British attack. People kept referring to the British attack plan as the 'Halifax Hammer' because everyone seems to think you should take Halifax first. I ignore Halifax and kill Port Royal and it works just fine, thanks! I believe he let me be the British for 5 this game. He opened the game with a very fast siege of Pemaquid on turn 2. I managed to keep that fit going while I worked to governor away my bad cards and starting buying stuff. I did this by buying my siege artillery early on and throwing it into the fight. After I'd stabilized he ended up buying his siege artillery and throwing it and coureurs de bois into the Pemaquid fight to put me down by 4. I couldn't stop the fight but I could attack Port Royal with my regular infantry and my rangers! He won Pemaquid, I won Port Royal. He couldn't settle since Quebec was in the fight. I could settle and now had Port Royal. I started a quick siege of Louisbourg but hadn't quite realized I was behind in military strength (I lost a regular when Pemaquid resolved but he lost nothing when Port Royal resolved) and ended up losing the fight in Louisbourg. I bought a couple more regulars and went right back in and won this time. From there it was an easy trek to Quebec.
Round 5, the finals, was against Nick Henning himself. He bid me up a little more than the other two did but not by much. I got the British for 6 and pretty much knew he was going to use the same strategy I'd just beaten the previous two rounds. He again sieged Pemaquid on turn 2 but I had a better hand setup to deal with it this time. I had both Norfolk and New Haven on hand! Right into the pile they went! Good-bye mediocre cards! I governored away the really terrible cards and went to work making money. Pemaquid was tied up with 4 strength apiece and I had a fresh regular in hand (my deck at this point being rangers, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and maybe a regular) and he thought I was going to put the regular into Pemaquid to win the fight. Nope! I attacked Port Royal with it instead. I really like this plan since it ties up some of my bad cards and some of his good cards for the rest of the game or until he withdraws from the fight. Every single turn from here on was some combination of make 6 dollars, buy a regular, or put a regular into the Port Royal fight. Nick was doing a good job of ambushing my regulars with his 4 ambush cards but I really don't care. I think it's actually a new positive for the British to lose a regular in an ambush as long as they have a rangers to block and can make 6 a turn. Eventually I won in Port Royal and moved on to Louisbourg. He got me into a tricky position where I was going to lose the fight in Louisbourg unless I put one of my 4 good cards into the fight. I chose to put New York in and bought a ships card instead of a regular which surprised Nick and all the spectators. I then proceeded to keep making 6 a turn using the ships instead of New York and eventually was able to start buying regulars to put into the fight. He'd been working on expanding a little to the west and was trying to use Quebec and intendant to get all his disks into play before I could hit Quebec. Ultimately I won in Louisbourg and reserved my ships card. I actually like buying a ships because a siege of Quebec is hard to set up while digging for Louisbourg but being able to reserver ships (and not locations) lowers the constraints on the specific hand you can build. Louisbourg ended up being the last card in my deck after the reshuffle which was really unfortunate and let Nick get all but 2 of his disks in play before I could start a siege. He'd pulled off a couple ambushes while I was waiting for Louisbourg and I didn't think I had the stuff to take Quebec just yet. Fortunately for me the one starting location he had yet to disk was Trois Rivieres. So I started a siege there instead! I won that fight in relatively short order and settled it. By this point I'd cycled back into the Louisbourg card and launched an attack on Tadoussac. Nick had run out of money ambushing by this point and tried to trader with a bunch of western furs. I pointed out that he couldn't actually use those cards anymore since they had no support from Quebec once he lost the fight in Trois Rivieres. He finished the turn, thought a bit more as I won the fight in Tadoussac, and conceded. I was up on points and he had 2 functional location cards left (Quebec itself and Gaspe) and no real way to actually take actions anymore. Victory!
I'd been worried that there was a degenerate French strategy with a medium bid value which involved cycling into newly bought military cards for a quick win in Boston. I don't think anyone had tested such a thing (i only thought of it in the shower before the event) and I don't feel anyone really used their free actions to the fullest extent (by cycling extra times to force a key reshuffle). The entire event I kept hearing people talking strategy and everyone seemed to think there was an appropriate counter to any strategy and the game was therefore well balanced and there isn't a British problem. I think they're all crazy and maybe after the event people will believe me more? Though I guess really all I proved was that I can beat new players and the Henning strategy so maybe there really is a counter to my plan out there. All I know is no one has ever used it against me.
After the event Pounder thought I should go eat so went to Olive and Jasmin's Asian Bistro. It turns out it shut down in the last year since the doors were locked and the tables removed. Frowns. I ended up wating at Fuddrucker's again. I had a burger this time and it was ok. The bun was terrible so I just ate it with a knife and fork.
After food Pounder and I played two games of Innovation. He won the first one by getting into age 6 while I was still in age 1 thanks to a good combo of cards. I won the second one because Pounder ramped into age 10 while I was still in age 7 but I was able to trade my lowest card in hand for his 2 highest cards (both 10s) and both of those cards had winning clauses which won the game for me. Woo!
The night brought either Ra or Vegas Showdown. I decided I really didn't want to play a thinking game after a day of A Few Acres of Snow so I went to play Ra. I ended up at a table with Alex Henning again. Fortunately for her I'm terrible at Ra so I wasn't going to manhandle her in Ra the way I did in A Few Acres of Snow. The game went like most Ra games do where I call Ra super-aggressively and then lose when I'm forced to buy bad things by people who want to punish me for being aggressive. Round 2 I had the sun combo of 1-2-8 and actually got the best buys I think since the age ended with most people still having suns to go. Ultimately the scores ended up 40-38-36-26-24 with me being the 36 after having lost 5 points for lowest suns. Grr! Alex was the 38 and Dominic from Quebec was the 40.
Open gaming featured a 5 player game of Agricola with Robb, Pounder, Daniel E, and Winton. We borrowed the pimpest of pimped Agricola sets I've ever seen with ludicrous clay meeple things for all the resourced and families. I played the green player whose families was entirely redheads. Woo! I rarely play Agricola and we drafted the cards and I feel like I didn't know what was good or not. I ended up drafting 3 different cards that scored bonus points for eating pigs so I went that route. I managed to get 12 wood onto the basin maker! I ended up coming last thanks to tiebreakers with Robb but since Daniel gave Robb 2 points on the last turn in order to spite Pounder from getting 1 food I'm going to take a moral 4th place.
Off to Waffle House where I had an All-Star. Then sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.
I decided I didn't want to risk a Through The Ages game going more than 4 hours and causing me to miss A Few Acres of Snow which looked to be mine for the taking so I ended up showing up at 10 and getting my third place. I ended up being by far the best 1-2-3 record but that was only good enough for 19th place with top 16 advancing. If I'd gotten up to 1-2-2 I would have been the best of those and finished something like 14th and made the semis. Oh well.
What I did end up doing was playing A Few Acres of Snow at 12. The GM let me know that I could play round 1, lose, and still advance because I won the mulligan round the night before. Great! Maybe I can play someone good for a stupidly high bid and figure out what a reasonable bid is going to be. Not to be. My opponent had played once before. He let me have the British for 3 and then proceeded to never use any of the free actions. I did my only British opener (buy rangers, make 6 and buy governor, governor away Pemaquid and St Mary's, make money and buy guns, attack, win) and blew him up.
Round 2 put me up against someone who didn't understand the bidding system and didn't know the game but had been told a rudimentary British strategy. He thought we were bidding victory points instead of bonus actions and was planning on winning by taking Quebec so points wouldn't matter. This is true and is why points aren't the bidding currency. At any rate I ended up accepting a bid of 7 to play the French. After I accepted the bid he let me know that he had another event in 2 hours so he was going to concede just before he won. I think that's sketchy and would rather he knock me out and then drop. The game went about as expected except he screwed up pretty badly by not realizing he could put his ships cards into the fight. Oddly enough he knew he could buy the ships card for 6 and put it into the fight but never realized he could put Norfolk and New Haven in. He did put Boston and New York in and then either had weak draws or misplayed and consistently made 2 or 3 dollars per turn instead of 6. This let me keep up in military power during our Port Royal fight while disking out most of my board. I screwed up by putting Montreal on the fight before settling Fort Frontenac so I couldn't end the game immediately upon termination of the fight in Port Royal. He wanted to concede because he couldn't see a way the fight would end until I pointed out to him that he could put Norfolk on the pile. He promptly won the fight. He also beiseged and won in Halifax (I raided Port Royal away to slow him down from attacking Louisbourg) and managed to settle and disk up Fort Frontenac and Oswego before he won in Halifax. I then conceded the fight in Halifax and won the game on points.
Round 3 had me face off against Alex Henning. I'd been watching her and her brother (other Nick) play in the first round and saw that they'd both played, and won, as the French by going a hardcore disking strategy against people who didn't go hardcore attacking. She let me have the British for 2 and let me know that she'd only played like 4 games total and only as the French but had been told a good strategy by her brother. This let me know what her plan was, but it didn't matter at all. I have a very specific British strategy that I use every game. I used it this game and it worked as expected but it was actually relatively close to her disking out in time to win. The key was that I managed to siege Port Royal and Halifax before she could disk them up which both gave her two dead cards and which forced her to settle an extra two locations in the west before she could use up all of her disks. A close game, but not one any different than the games on Yucata where I win every time as the British.
Round 4 was against Nick Henning's friend and apparently the only person he ever played against before WBC. They're pretty good at games in general and had worked out a strong French strategy but I don't know that they ever used the full hardcore British attack. People kept referring to the British attack plan as the 'Halifax Hammer' because everyone seems to think you should take Halifax first. I ignore Halifax and kill Port Royal and it works just fine, thanks! I believe he let me be the British for 5 this game. He opened the game with a very fast siege of Pemaquid on turn 2. I managed to keep that fit going while I worked to governor away my bad cards and starting buying stuff. I did this by buying my siege artillery early on and throwing it into the fight. After I'd stabilized he ended up buying his siege artillery and throwing it and coureurs de bois into the Pemaquid fight to put me down by 4. I couldn't stop the fight but I could attack Port Royal with my regular infantry and my rangers! He won Pemaquid, I won Port Royal. He couldn't settle since Quebec was in the fight. I could settle and now had Port Royal. I started a quick siege of Louisbourg but hadn't quite realized I was behind in military strength (I lost a regular when Pemaquid resolved but he lost nothing when Port Royal resolved) and ended up losing the fight in Louisbourg. I bought a couple more regulars and went right back in and won this time. From there it was an easy trek to Quebec.
Round 5, the finals, was against Nick Henning himself. He bid me up a little more than the other two did but not by much. I got the British for 6 and pretty much knew he was going to use the same strategy I'd just beaten the previous two rounds. He again sieged Pemaquid on turn 2 but I had a better hand setup to deal with it this time. I had both Norfolk and New Haven on hand! Right into the pile they went! Good-bye mediocre cards! I governored away the really terrible cards and went to work making money. Pemaquid was tied up with 4 strength apiece and I had a fresh regular in hand (my deck at this point being rangers, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and maybe a regular) and he thought I was going to put the regular into Pemaquid to win the fight. Nope! I attacked Port Royal with it instead. I really like this plan since it ties up some of my bad cards and some of his good cards for the rest of the game or until he withdraws from the fight. Every single turn from here on was some combination of make 6 dollars, buy a regular, or put a regular into the Port Royal fight. Nick was doing a good job of ambushing my regulars with his 4 ambush cards but I really don't care. I think it's actually a new positive for the British to lose a regular in an ambush as long as they have a rangers to block and can make 6 a turn. Eventually I won in Port Royal and moved on to Louisbourg. He got me into a tricky position where I was going to lose the fight in Louisbourg unless I put one of my 4 good cards into the fight. I chose to put New York in and bought a ships card instead of a regular which surprised Nick and all the spectators. I then proceeded to keep making 6 a turn using the ships instead of New York and eventually was able to start buying regulars to put into the fight. He'd been working on expanding a little to the west and was trying to use Quebec and intendant to get all his disks into play before I could hit Quebec. Ultimately I won in Louisbourg and reserved my ships card. I actually like buying a ships because a siege of Quebec is hard to set up while digging for Louisbourg but being able to reserver ships (and not locations) lowers the constraints on the specific hand you can build. Louisbourg ended up being the last card in my deck after the reshuffle which was really unfortunate and let Nick get all but 2 of his disks in play before I could start a siege. He'd pulled off a couple ambushes while I was waiting for Louisbourg and I didn't think I had the stuff to take Quebec just yet. Fortunately for me the one starting location he had yet to disk was Trois Rivieres. So I started a siege there instead! I won that fight in relatively short order and settled it. By this point I'd cycled back into the Louisbourg card and launched an attack on Tadoussac. Nick had run out of money ambushing by this point and tried to trader with a bunch of western furs. I pointed out that he couldn't actually use those cards anymore since they had no support from Quebec once he lost the fight in Trois Rivieres. He finished the turn, thought a bit more as I won the fight in Tadoussac, and conceded. I was up on points and he had 2 functional location cards left (Quebec itself and Gaspe) and no real way to actually take actions anymore. Victory!
I'd been worried that there was a degenerate French strategy with a medium bid value which involved cycling into newly bought military cards for a quick win in Boston. I don't think anyone had tested such a thing (i only thought of it in the shower before the event) and I don't feel anyone really used their free actions to the fullest extent (by cycling extra times to force a key reshuffle). The entire event I kept hearing people talking strategy and everyone seemed to think there was an appropriate counter to any strategy and the game was therefore well balanced and there isn't a British problem. I think they're all crazy and maybe after the event people will believe me more? Though I guess really all I proved was that I can beat new players and the Henning strategy so maybe there really is a counter to my plan out there. All I know is no one has ever used it against me.
After the event Pounder thought I should go eat so went to Olive and Jasmin's Asian Bistro. It turns out it shut down in the last year since the doors were locked and the tables removed. Frowns. I ended up wating at Fuddrucker's again. I had a burger this time and it was ok. The bun was terrible so I just ate it with a knife and fork.
After food Pounder and I played two games of Innovation. He won the first one by getting into age 6 while I was still in age 1 thanks to a good combo of cards. I won the second one because Pounder ramped into age 10 while I was still in age 7 but I was able to trade my lowest card in hand for his 2 highest cards (both 10s) and both of those cards had winning clauses which won the game for me. Woo!
The night brought either Ra or Vegas Showdown. I decided I really didn't want to play a thinking game after a day of A Few Acres of Snow so I went to play Ra. I ended up at a table with Alex Henning again. Fortunately for her I'm terrible at Ra so I wasn't going to manhandle her in Ra the way I did in A Few Acres of Snow. The game went like most Ra games do where I call Ra super-aggressively and then lose when I'm forced to buy bad things by people who want to punish me for being aggressive. Round 2 I had the sun combo of 1-2-8 and actually got the best buys I think since the age ended with most people still having suns to go. Ultimately the scores ended up 40-38-36-26-24 with me being the 36 after having lost 5 points for lowest suns. Grr! Alex was the 38 and Dominic from Quebec was the 40.
Open gaming featured a 5 player game of Agricola with Robb, Pounder, Daniel E, and Winton. We borrowed the pimpest of pimped Agricola sets I've ever seen with ludicrous clay meeple things for all the resourced and families. I played the green player whose families was entirely redheads. Woo! I rarely play Agricola and we drafted the cards and I feel like I didn't know what was good or not. I ended up drafting 3 different cards that scored bonus points for eating pigs so I went that route. I managed to get 12 wood onto the basin maker! I ended up coming last thanks to tiebreakers with Robb but since Daniel gave Robb 2 points on the last turn in order to spite Pounder from getting 1 food I'm going to take a moral 4th place.
Off to Waffle House where I had an All-Star. Then sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.
Monday, July 30, 2012
2012 WBC Days 1 and 2 Summary
Saturday started off with the long drive to Lancaster from Waterloo. I don't know if it was leaving earlier in the morning or that the civic holiday is next weekend instead of this one but the drive was pretty smooth. We ate at Cora's, Arby's, and Rita's which specializes in ice, custard, and happiness. I got a watermelon ice and was quite happy. We got in to Lancaster around 7:10 after a small detour where we couldn't remember the right road to take and went straight to the Texas Roadhouse. Robb even called ahead to reserve a table so we got to skip the long line. Woo! I wasn't famished so I just had a small steak but it was quite good. I was definitely happy I brought along Gas-X, though.
There were no events we wanted to play on Saturday so once we got in we played a 3er of Puerto Rico and then a 3er of Innovation+expansion. I should have won PR but made a terrible play by building a late wharf instead of the obvious guild hall I'd been setting up for. Innovation was fun and we had lots of people from WBC's past stop by while we played.
Sunday started off with a Through The Ages heat. People who brought a game get to play at their table and everyone else gets split up which has the minor issue that the good players tend to end up split up and not playing each other. I don't think there's a solution to this issue but it does exist. I don't have the game so I was off to play with a shark. Fortunately for me, I was not placed with a shark. The guy who owned the game I played with didn't even really know the rules and I had to correct him on multiple occasions. The third guy had never played before. I won by a mile.
Next up, food. We went to Fuddrucker's with Rich and Jason. I'd never been there before and didn't feel like a burger so I ordered the fish and chips in honour of the Olympics. Then I found out they didn't have vinegar. What! How you can have 15 barbeque sauces and no vinegar baffles me. It was passable and I'd consider eating it again though I'd want to smuggle in some vinegar.
Next up, heat 2 of Through The Ages. A Few Acres of Snow was 4 hours later which should be good enough and I decided to risk it. I was not at an easy table this time as I got to play with a game owner who knew what he was doing and Winton who I know is good at games in general. This game was very close and devolved a little into beating Winton like a pinata and scrambling to get the candy that came out. The game owner had Napolean and a modern army. I had an air forced conquistador. Winton had a transcontinental railroad and a warrior. Both other players spent the whole game commenting on how I had the game in the bag but I didn't see it. The problem was I was still a despot in age III and didn't have any food. I did have ocean liners and was the first to iron. I didn't draw a single good age III scoring event and the end result was the game owner won by a single point. All 4 final events scored him more points than me. 3 of them were seeded by Winton. Sigh.
The game was done in 3.5 hours which left plenty of time for A Few Acres of Snow. I tried to convince Sceadeau to learn it but he didn't like the sound of the game (I think it's auto-win for the British) and played Eclipse instead. They ended up with 16 people for AFAoS and I got paired up with an older gentleman who had played maybe twice before. He let me have the British for a bid of one. I promptly took Port Royal, Louisbourg, and Quebec. The game took an hour which was about 3 minutes my turn and 57 minutes his turn. My game was by far the first one done. I looked around and saw only one other game with a British player taking a military strategy, and he wasn't doing it well. No French players were going military. Maybe people were playing soft for the mulligan round. Maybe the sharks are all hiding for tomorrow. Or maybe this event is an auto-win for me. We'll have to wait for tomorrow to see. The GM told me that he figured the best way for him to find the ringers was to see who finished their games fastest so he pegs me as a ringer. I hope he's right!
There were no events we wanted to play on Saturday so once we got in we played a 3er of Puerto Rico and then a 3er of Innovation+expansion. I should have won PR but made a terrible play by building a late wharf instead of the obvious guild hall I'd been setting up for. Innovation was fun and we had lots of people from WBC's past stop by while we played.
Sunday started off with a Through The Ages heat. People who brought a game get to play at their table and everyone else gets split up which has the minor issue that the good players tend to end up split up and not playing each other. I don't think there's a solution to this issue but it does exist. I don't have the game so I was off to play with a shark. Fortunately for me, I was not placed with a shark. The guy who owned the game I played with didn't even really know the rules and I had to correct him on multiple occasions. The third guy had never played before. I won by a mile.
Next up, food. We went to Fuddrucker's with Rich and Jason. I'd never been there before and didn't feel like a burger so I ordered the fish and chips in honour of the Olympics. Then I found out they didn't have vinegar. What! How you can have 15 barbeque sauces and no vinegar baffles me. It was passable and I'd consider eating it again though I'd want to smuggle in some vinegar.
Next up, heat 2 of Through The Ages. A Few Acres of Snow was 4 hours later which should be good enough and I decided to risk it. I was not at an easy table this time as I got to play with a game owner who knew what he was doing and Winton who I know is good at games in general. This game was very close and devolved a little into beating Winton like a pinata and scrambling to get the candy that came out. The game owner had Napolean and a modern army. I had an air forced conquistador. Winton had a transcontinental railroad and a warrior. Both other players spent the whole game commenting on how I had the game in the bag but I didn't see it. The problem was I was still a despot in age III and didn't have any food. I did have ocean liners and was the first to iron. I didn't draw a single good age III scoring event and the end result was the game owner won by a single point. All 4 final events scored him more points than me. 3 of them were seeded by Winton. Sigh.
The game was done in 3.5 hours which left plenty of time for A Few Acres of Snow. I tried to convince Sceadeau to learn it but he didn't like the sound of the game (I think it's auto-win for the British) and played Eclipse instead. They ended up with 16 people for AFAoS and I got paired up with an older gentleman who had played maybe twice before. He let me have the British for a bid of one. I promptly took Port Royal, Louisbourg, and Quebec. The game took an hour which was about 3 minutes my turn and 57 minutes his turn. My game was by far the first one done. I looked around and saw only one other game with a British player taking a military strategy, and he wasn't doing it well. No French players were going military. Maybe people were playing soft for the mulligan round. Maybe the sharks are all hiding for tomorrow. Or maybe this event is an auto-win for me. We'll have to wait for tomorrow to see. The GM told me that he figured the best way for him to find the ringers was to see who finished their games fastest so he pegs me as a ringer. I hope he's right!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Departing For WBC
I will be leaving this evening on the first leg of my trip to the World Boardgaming Championships. In an attempt to avoid brutal traffic on the way from Waterloo to Lancaster we're going to be leaving earlier in the morning and we're going to cut the side-trip to Toronto out entirely. Pounder is going to pick me up tonight instead of on the way tomorrow morning and I'll be crashing in his basement. Then we'll leave bright and early in the morning and hopefully get in to Lancaster before midnight this year!
As far as blogging goes I have scheduled the SNES and Star Trek posts so they should go up automatically. The internet in the hotel last year was terrible and I imagine it's only going to be worse this year so I'm not confident about getting posts up here in a timely fashion. I'll do what I can with WBC summaries as the week goes on and will have a couple extra posts scheduled up just in case I happen to go a day without internet access. And if I end up dropping the ball I imagine it won't be the end of the world for anyone but me.
I'm leaning towards trying to fit in a game of Titan this year. Maybe I'll even give the 2 player event another spin to try to get it back into the century! I've been feeling pretty mediocre physically so maybe I'll just sleep in a bunch? I guess we'll see what ends up being sacrificed in the early morning slots.
As far as blogging goes I have scheduled the SNES and Star Trek posts so they should go up automatically. The internet in the hotel last year was terrible and I imagine it's only going to be worse this year so I'm not confident about getting posts up here in a timely fashion. I'll do what I can with WBC summaries as the week goes on and will have a couple extra posts scheduled up just in case I happen to go a day without internet access. And if I end up dropping the ball I imagine it won't be the end of the world for anyone but me.
I'm leaning towards trying to fit in a game of Titan this year. Maybe I'll even give the 2 player event another spin to try to get it back into the century! I've been feeling pretty mediocre physically so maybe I'll just sleep in a bunch? I guess we'll see what ends up being sacrificed in the early morning slots.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
ELOBUFF
I found out earlier today that there's a League of Legends related website which is really serious about tracking stats for the game. It's called ELOBUFF and it sounds like it does everything I'd want in a stat site. Avid readers with a good memory may remember my post about positional statistics from a few months ago where I looked at the lolstatistics site and lamented a lot of glitches in their data. It was counting my Akali games in my jungler stats. It wasn't counting my Graves games anywhere. I play Ezreal both AD and AP. In both 5s and 3s. I had no way to possibly glean relevant data from what it was giving me.
ELOBUFF sounds like it solves those problems. It doesn't just look at the end result of a game. It looks at the items you built and the summoner skills you used in an attempt to more accurately determine your role. It claims to have a bajillion filters. It tracks most games, not just your games, and can give actual statistical 'counter-picks' based on the results of hundreds of thousands of games. It stays on top of current trends to let you know how the metagame may be shifting in terms of roles, rules, and items. It sounds fantastic.
Unfortunately there is no free lunch. They're running a subscription model with a $6 per month fee. It doesn't seem to have any sort of free trial which seems a little odd. I'd think letting everyone check out their data once would make sense. It did let me look up the info for the games played at the last MLG. There were 88 games played and Janna was played in 53 of them!
I found out about ELOBUFF because they're running a promotion with MLG for the Summer Arena. Anyone who buys an HD pass to the arena gets a free month on ELOBUFF. That pass is $10 ($8 for gold members) so it's really not much more than the ELOBUFF fee itself. I was planning on buying an HD pass anyway... Except the summer arena for LoL is during WBC. The internet in the hotel was really terrible last year and I can't imagine watching an HD stream would be feasible.
On the other hand I want to support MLG and I really want them to think League of Legends is a game worth supporting. So maybe I'll buy a pass anyway and just watch the VODs on the civic holiday Monday after WBC?
ELOBUFF sounds like it solves those problems. It doesn't just look at the end result of a game. It looks at the items you built and the summoner skills you used in an attempt to more accurately determine your role. It claims to have a bajillion filters. It tracks most games, not just your games, and can give actual statistical 'counter-picks' based on the results of hundreds of thousands of games. It stays on top of current trends to let you know how the metagame may be shifting in terms of roles, rules, and items. It sounds fantastic.
Unfortunately there is no free lunch. They're running a subscription model with a $6 per month fee. It doesn't seem to have any sort of free trial which seems a little odd. I'd think letting everyone check out their data once would make sense. It did let me look up the info for the games played at the last MLG. There were 88 games played and Janna was played in 53 of them!
I found out about ELOBUFF because they're running a promotion with MLG for the Summer Arena. Anyone who buys an HD pass to the arena gets a free month on ELOBUFF. That pass is $10 ($8 for gold members) so it's really not much more than the ELOBUFF fee itself. I was planning on buying an HD pass anyway... Except the summer arena for LoL is during WBC. The internet in the hotel was really terrible last year and I can't imagine watching an HD stream would be feasible.
On the other hand I want to support MLG and I really want them to think League of Legends is a game worth supporting. So maybe I'll buy a pass anyway and just watch the VODs on the civic holiday Monday after WBC?
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
WBC Team Challenge
Each year at the World Boardgaming Championships they run a team tournament. You sign up with a group of 4 people and each of you picks a different game as your team game for the year. If you manage to finish in the top 6 in your chosen game your team earns some points. Top team gets immortalized for all time!
Tacked on to the team tournament is a 'pick the winners' sweepstakes. Pick the 10 teams from the list of 86 that you think will finish in the top 10. Entrant with the most correct teams wins free entry to the next year's WBC. Last year Bruno won the sweepstakes on the back of picking my team! We came 9th for him! Well, mostly Jason came 9th for him with a win in Through The Ages.
Last year we were the 31st rated team with 78-1 odds to win the whole thing. This year we've tumbled to 35th on the list but dropped out odds down to 73-1. I feel like we're horribly underrated! Jason won his event 2 of the 4 years it's existed and is top of the laurel list for it. I've come third in my event both years it's existed and am second on the laurel list. Sure, Robb and Pounder have switched games again (Robb to a game that debuted last year and Pounder to one that is new this year) but they're good at their new choices, honest! Of course I've always felt like we're underrated and it's not like we've won yet so maybe I'm just being crazy. I do have high hopes for cracking the top 10 again this year. Pick us (Tell Me The Odds) on your sweepstakes ballot, you won't be sorry!
Tacked on to the team tournament is a 'pick the winners' sweepstakes. Pick the 10 teams from the list of 86 that you think will finish in the top 10. Entrant with the most correct teams wins free entry to the next year's WBC. Last year Bruno won the sweepstakes on the back of picking my team! We came 9th for him! Well, mostly Jason came 9th for him with a win in Through The Ages.
Last year we were the 31st rated team with 78-1 odds to win the whole thing. This year we've tumbled to 35th on the list but dropped out odds down to 73-1. I feel like we're horribly underrated! Jason won his event 2 of the 4 years it's existed and is top of the laurel list for it. I've come third in my event both years it's existed and am second on the laurel list. Sure, Robb and Pounder have switched games again (Robb to a game that debuted last year and Pounder to one that is new this year) but they're good at their new choices, honest! Of course I've always felt like we're underrated and it's not like we've won yet so maybe I'm just being crazy. I do have high hopes for cracking the top 10 again this year. Pick us (Tell Me The Odds) on your sweepstakes ballot, you won't be sorry!
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