The newest hit from Rio Grande
...
Puerto Rico made a definite impact as a debut event
with over 100 participants in each of two preliminary heats to
be the largest event at WBC 2000. Because of the large turnout,
the format -- which guaranteed advancement for all preliminary
round winners -- was altered to allow for an unscheduled, additional
elimination round. This fit within the scheduled time frame because
most games finished in less than two hours
rather than the announced three hours. Sunday's elimination round
format featured ten four-player games with the top two in each
advancing
to five four-player semifinal matches, followed by a five-player
final. For 2002, Puerto Rico was classified as a Class
C "coached" event, and
one of the "coached" players, Jim Fry, actually won
an elimination round game against more experienced opponents.
Three players - Luke Koleszar, Gerald Lientz and Bill Duke
- won games in both preliminary heats, but only Luke survived
to the semifinal round, where he suffered a narrow one-point
defeat to eventual champ Arthur Field. Rachel McGinley advanced
to the finals having the
distinction of both the highest (65) and lowest (36) winning
score in any of the elimination round games. Most of the games
were won with a
balanced approach to gaining victory points by either shipping
or buildings, with the builders holding a slight edge. In one
game, the victor (Ilon Woll) had only one VP from shipping and
all the rest from buildings!
All five finalists had scored wins in at least two and, in
some cases, three earlier games and, prior to the finals, none
had finished worse than second. Two of the five finalists (Steve
Simmons and Rachel McGinley) earned points for their respective
teams. Steve won in the semis by five points over alternate Jim
McDonald in a game where only three of the eight quarries were
selected. Ted Mullally's semifinal win was by the closest possible
margin, on a tiebreak of having most doubloons, over Bill Murdock;
Bill was classified sixth for coming closest to making the finals.
Tom Browne reached the final with two wins in the elimination
rounds after filling one of the precious alternate berths by
virtue of a narrow loss in one of the preliminary games.
The final round game saw Rachel race to an early lead, shipping
corn and sugar as well as buying buildings for VPs. Tom focused
on corn
and tobacco production, earning lots of VPs from shipping but
also being forced to dump valuable tobacco because of lack of
a warehouse. Arhur was the first player to produce the highly-valued
coffee commodity, and he leveraged his coffee monopoly into a
strong position as the game progressed. Ted took advantage from
an early purchase of a hospice building that enabled him to colonize
his plantations more rapidly.
Arthur made repeated trips to the Trading House, and the revenue
earned from sales of coffee at the trading house enabled him
to purchase the
powerful harbor/wharf combination early enough in the game to
generate additional shipping victory points. This, and the failure
of other
players to challenge Arthur's coffee monopoly earlier in the
game, proved decisive. Late in the game, Arthur switched to a
VP-generating
strategy that enabled him to outpace Ted, who finished second.
Ted developed production capability for all five goods (corn,
indigo, sugar, tobacco and coffee) and bought a factory that
generated additional cash which, along with his three quarries,
enabled him to buy many of the higher-priced VP-generating buildings.
Steve was able to purchase the second harbor and garner enough
victory points to finish third, ahead of Rachel and Tom (Rachel
finishing fourth on a tiebreaker for having more goods plus doubloons).
Statistics
compiled from the tournament showed no distinct advantage for
any particular seat in the 4-player games, with scores for all
four positions averaging in the 40-to-41 point range. In 5-player
games, the results showed an edge for both the third and fifth
seats, with average scores in the 42-to-43 point range, compared
to average scores
in the 39-to-40 point range for the first two seats. Running
out of colonists was by far the most prevalent of the game-ending
conditions (occurring in about 50% of all games), but four of
the five semifinal games ended when one player filled San Juan
with buildings, while the final concluded with VP chits running
out. The most popular
non-production buildings found in game-winning displays were
(in order) the factory, small market, harbor, fortress and construction
hut. Over half (30 games) were decided by less than five points,
with nine games
being decided by a tiebreaker.
|