Carcassonne Adventures ...
This was my first year GMing Carcassonne. I took over
the duties from Michelle Goldstein who was unable to attend this
year. I knew I had some big shoes to fill as she always ran a
good tournament. I decided to run the basic game with no expansions,
just like previous years. The expansions can really add some
time to the game and I really wantied to keep it at one-hour
rounds.
I had never run an event with more than 60 players before,
so I was a little concerned since Carcassonne always draws
over 100 players. I decided to talk with GM of the Year, John
Coussis and adopt the "Coussis Method" (TM) for seating
players. In previous years, there were four heats, but I elected
to go with only three. I had a heat Tuesday night and one Thursday
morning. Neither one had a huge turnout and between the two,
I had less than 60 unique players. Since my Tuesday night heat
was at 11:00 pm, I was not too worried about my one hour time
limit. No games were starting at midnight, so I didn't push really
hard to get done quickly. And on my Thursday morning heat, there
were also no games starting the next hour, so there was really
no pressure to get finished quickly then either. But almost every
game was done within an hour in both heats anyway. I was a little
disappointed in the turnout and I was afraid that my decision
to drop to three heats had hurt the game's Century status.
My fears were unfounded as the Friday night heat drew over
80 players, many of them playing in their first heat. This is
where the "Coussis Method" really saved me. Many players
expressed their desire to play in something the next hour. I
won't go into how it works, but I was able to have everyone seated
and playing in barely over five minutes. I highly recommend talking
to John if you are GMing next year. It also helped having "Little"
Lisa Gutermuth helping out with the sign-up sheet. Everyone was
done within the hour and I once again had over a hundred different
competitors with one less heat.
Double winners included Jon Fox, David Nicholson and Sean
Vessey. The semifinals were rounded out with single game winners
Patrick Shea, Josh Cooper, Jennifer Drozd, Robbie Mitchell, Erica
Kirchner, John Quarto, Bob Menzel, Rob Drozd, Chris Greenfield,
Trevor Bender, Bob Stribula, Pete Stein, Tim Packwood, Cliff
Ackman, James Parauda, Tom McCorry, Mark Guttag, Rob Kircher,
Dave Bohnenberger, David Fox, Derek Landel, Olin Hentz, Chris
Terrell, Rebecca Hebner, Charlie Faella, Steve Koleszar, Kathrine
McCorry, Adam Dunn, Nick Evinger and Rob Flowers.
Olin Hentz, Andres Dunn, Sean Vessey, Tim Packwood and Jennifer
Drozd worked their Meeple magic and battled their way into the
Final; although Jennifer needed a tie-breaker.
If you blinked, you missed the Fnal. It was one of the fastest
games I'd ever seen. There was hardly any table talk and the
game was over in a mere 18 minutes! This for a game that originally
was schduled for two-hour rounds by the previous GM. Jennifer
came away with her first WBC championship. Afterward, she told
me her father and brothers, were giving her a hard time for picking
Carcassonne as her team game. They told her she had no
chance at team points because there were so many players every
year. As it was, Jennifer tripled the score of the rest of her
entire team!
Thanks to all who played and made the experience a good one
for me.
Carolyn
Strock proved to be the best of 21 little Carcassonne
players. The other finalists were:
2nd: Mary Beth Mitchell of VA
3rd: Pamela Gutermuth of FL
4th: Tim Keating of IL
5th: Thomas Strock of PA
6th: Conal Jaeger of VA
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