agricola   

Updated Nov. 23, 2013

2013 WBC Report  

   2014 Status: pending 2014 GM commitment

Ben Scholl, PA

2013 Champion

Event History
2008    Rob Kircher     48
2009    Tedd Mullally     98
2010    Cary Morris     97
2011    Jon Senn     89
2012    Eric Ho     94
2013    Ben Scholl     75

Euro Quest BPA Event History
2009    Sceadeau D'Tela     37
2010    Mike Turian     26
2011    Ben Scholl     41
2012    Eric Wrobel     26

 Laurels

Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  Mike Kaltman       PA    12     88
  2.  Sceadeau D'Tela    NC    13     83
  3.  Ben Scholl         PA    13     75
  4.  Tedd Mullally      NJ    10     70
  5.  Cary Morris        NC    13     66
  6.  Jon Senn           PA    11     62
  7.  Eric Ho            NY    13     58
  8.  Rob Kircher        RI    10     53
  9.  Bill Crenshaw      VA    11     49
 10.  Dan Eppolito       PA    12     41
 11.  Randy Buehler      WA    12     39
 12.  Haim Hochboim      il    13     34
 13.  Eric Wrobel        MD    12     30
 14.  Geoffrey Pounder   on    10     30
 15.  Mike Turian        WA    10     30
 16.  Richard J. Shay    MA    09     30
 17.  Winton Lemoine     CA    13     22
 18.  Joshua Cooper      MD    11     21
 19.  David Platnick     VA    08     18
 20.  Chris Senhouse     MA    12     15
 21.  Rod Bacigalupo     MD    08     12
 22.  Matthew Craig      NC    12     10
 23.  Dave Gerson        CA    10     10
 24.  Aran Warszawski    il    11      9
 25.  Jeff Mullet        OH    10      9
 26.  Richard M. Shay    MA    10      9
 27.  Alex Bove          PA    09      9
 28.  Jeff Bowers        UT    08      9
 29.  Benjamin Rosset    DC    11      6
 30.  John Downing       VA    10      6
 31.  Steve Koleszar     VA    09      5
 32.  John Corrado       VA    12      3
 33.  Mike Richey        VA    09      3

2013 Laurelists                                              Repeating Laurelists:

Sceadeau D'Tela, NC
2nd

Haim Hochboim, il
3rd

Winton Lemoine, NV
4th

Eric Ho, NY
5th

Cary Morris, NC
6th

Past Winners

Rob Kircher, RI
2008

Tedd Mullally, NJ
2009

Cary Morris, NC
2010

Jon Senn, PA
2011

Eric Ho, NY
2012

Patrick Shea, Alex Bell, Winton LeMoine and Chris Senhouse raising crops.

Nothing but farms as far as you can see in Pennsylvania Dutch country.

Special Deck

This year, the tournament changed format to accommodate the large field that we have been generating of late. Three qualifying heats would cut all but the top 20 players for four 5-player tables, which would then pass the four winners to the Final.

In addition, we introduced the "World Championship" deck, or the WM deck, to be played in the Final. Only Sceadeau D'Tela was familiar with the cards before hand, but everyone had a night to go back to their room and study the cards, or call contacts back home who had used the cards previously, to try to get a feel for what should be picked first during the draft.

When the players reconvened, heads filled with scouting reports to use when the packs were finally opened, there was a lot of time spent during the draft portion of the game, as each player read over the admittedly wordy WM cards to find the best line for creating a great farm.

The Final consisted of Haim Hochboim in the 1 seat, followed by Ben Scholl, Winton Lemoine and Sceadeau D'Tela respectively in the three remaining seats. The early game saw Haim trying to set up a food engine with Sceadeau directly on his right stealing away all of his animals with cards Haim wasn't quite expecting. Haim was looking for animals to fuel an occupation engine that let him play occupations without spending an action but at the cost of two food. He had to struggle to get that food the entire game.

This battling proved good for Ben, who was sitting to Haim's left and benefiting the most from Haim taking food actions in place of resource actions, allowing Ben to get a bigger pile than he would have otherwise. Contributing also to Ben's ultimate victory was playing a card that let him ignore that he was playing with a strange and unusual deck, the Village Fool. This card gave him points for NOT playing cards -- so he was able to just sit back and play a very straight forward game and get a ton of bonus points for doing so.

The downside of Ben's card (which basically kept him from taking start player) didn't hinder him too much, as Haim was start player for much of the game, always taking it back when he lost it, and not being challenged seriously for it.

Sceadeau's plan was to play the long game, setting up a solid food and point engine while setting up to eventually grow, using the fairly unorthodox play of not trying too hard for early growth, but setting up for the big late game by taking turns against the tide. It may have worked, except that this play, coupled with what Haim and Winton were doing, allowed Ben to take some really powerful actions, such as a family growth without room in round 12 going third!

The game was close for the top three spots with all of the players a couple of points apart, with Winton never really recovering from playing the early game as if the final table had been drafting EIK instead of WM.

Congratulations are in order for Ben, who had to take down his own teammate (Haim) in HIS TEAM GAME to claim the shield.

Marissa Bianco is surrounded by farmboys.

GM Josh Cooper with his finalists.
 GM      Joshua Cooper (3rd Year)  NA  
    Coopenator9@yahoo.com   443-904-3543

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