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Chris Trimmer, Jeff Mullet and Craig
Moffit vie in the Preliminaries. |
Gerald Lientz, Mavin Birnbaum and
Rex Lehman ponder their options. |
A New Class of Laurelists
40 "Goaites" showed up for this year's event which
was played using a mulligan round as a single elim event. When
the preliminary smoke had cleared 12 players advanced to the
semi-finals. Mike Kaltman's 55 points was the highest winning
score of the first round and Rich Moyer's 42 was the lowest.
Your GM had a 54 in winning his game but opted out of the semi
to play Crokinole Jr. with my daughter.
The four semis were as follows:
Alex Bove had a comfortable 49 points to defeat Mike Nickoloff
(42), Sam Athbaki (42) and Rich Moyer (38) to advance. Raphael
Lehrer had the highest score of the tournament with a 56 to defeat
Kevin Walsh (43), Stephen Fitchett (39) and Chris Moffa (38).
In the last semi-final, train game regular Jim McDonald showed
he can play the high strategy end Euros as well with a 44-point
win. Mike Kaltman's 42-point second place finish was good enough
to make the cut and advance based on highest % of the winner's
score. Daniel Eppolito was third with 37 and Michael Isgur had
34.
I now turn it over to our winner Alex Bove for his take on
the Final: "I started the game with the flag, which sold
for eight ducats, and I paid nine more for a double-clove plantation
(my only plantation of the game). In the first action round,
I advanced my colony track but was denied access to nutmeg by
the others, all of whom colonized with their first actions. I
chose the pepper/cinnamon plantation instead, and this was the
first major turning point of the game. While everyone else went
for the card track, I pursued the spice track, getting quickly
to the bottom (and earning extra expedition cards).
By mid-game, I began focusing on the card track and using
extra actions, mostly earned by winning the flag (Jim MacDonald
and I traded the flag for most of the game: Raphael earned it
once, and Mike never had it). Raphael reached the bottom of the
card track early but stalled a bit since he'd run out of boats
and was short on cash. Jim developed fairly evenly with a slight
emphasis on the card track until the late game, when he pushed
the boat track all the way to the bottom. Mike tried a card/spice
strategy but was short on money and actions throughout.
The last couple of rounds featured a few important moves that
I should note. In Round 6 I was able to use the "mixed harvest"
expedition card to produce eight boats, which helped me push
the card track to the bottom. On Round 7 I traded the "Swap"
tile for the "Espionage" tile and used Raphael's colony
level (level 5) to found my final colony (Calicut). Then I used
a couple of "advance with spices and no boats" to make
a late push of the colony track to level 4. In the final round,
I secured most cash by passing on the "3 Expedition Card"
tile in auction and letting Mike buy it for 24 ducats from Jim
(who was broke). Spreading out their cash made my total the highest,
and those three victory points were the difference in the game.
My final score broke down as follows:
Development tracks: boats (0), spices (10), taxes (0), cards
(10), colonies (6)
Colonies: all four (10)
Most cash (3)
Expedition cards (five cards for 7 VP)"
The final score was Alex 46, Raphael Lehrer 44, Jim McDonald
41 and Mike Kaltman 39 for a very close game!
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Bruce Reiff [1st Year]
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