Power Grid attendance continues to grow and with it - the travails of the GM. Players need to exercise more patience in dealing with the difficulties of a large field lest they find themselves without the convenience of heats or a willing GM in the future.	Splitting large fields into "fast" and normal play groups is an accomodation players should appreciate as it attempts to satisfy both those who want to play quickly and move on as well as those who appreciate a slower pace.

Heat 1 drew 71 players for 15 games (11 5-player and four 4-player) with a map choice of Germany or France. Nine chose Germany.

Heat 2 drew 61 players for 13 games (nine 5-player and four 4-player) with a map choice of USA or Central Europe. 11 chose USA.

Heat 3 drew 45 players playing nine games with a map choice of Italy or Benelux. Seven chose Benelux.

Player Comments (submitted on their respective game forms):

Heat 1:
"We all hit six cities and stalled for two turns; stage 2 lasted less than one round" "All coal and oil dried up before the end and garbage was down to two barrels at one point" "Came down to the third tie breaker".--Sounds like a nice tight game!

"In the last round, Craig needed a 7 plant to power 17 cities -- and lost all three of these to other players; but they were so focused on keeping the 7 plants from him that they paid too much giving him the win."--5-player game where one of these people who bought a 7 power plant came in second -- powering 16 along with Craig and short $9 of winning. Games come down to a few dollars and I am sure if Craig got one of these 7 power plants for the high dollar amount he likely would not have been able to build to 17 anyways as his final plants were 26/35/39 so the 39 was his buy the final round.

"Rodney was $1 short of winning the game one round earlier." --Rodney came in second, yet again proof that every single dollar counts

"1 hour and 20 minutes" --This was one of the games that I setup for advanced players who all agreed to play a faster paced game. I have seen games finish in an hour or less actually so they weren't rushing but definitely proves they weren't stalling / or having any "Analysis Paralysis" problems.

"Worst plant market ever" --5-player game so well umm /shrug. There is NO such thing as a bad plant market; the plant market is what makes every game distinct and unique. 5-player games have zero plants removed from the game so a studious player should be able to calculate the odds of what plant is going to come down as well if you have the plants memorized it is easy to determine the market fluctuations, when stage 3 is coming, etc.

"Vicious competition in the north between Eric, Bert, and Matt" "Weird game ­ big plants early and doldrums in the middle" "Stage 2 and 3 same turn" --Vicious competition in stage 1 eh? /chuckles. The second and third comments go hand in hand actually ­ If the big plants come out early it leaves lots of smaller plants in mid game. Obviously; the person filling out the form did not complete their own end game plants which makes it hard to analyze why people were sitting at stage 1 so long.

"Black socks with black shirt and shorts are not cool" "There were aliens at the table with maroon and purple attire." --Am sure is talking about yours truly and LMAO, sorry not going to buy ankle length socks as the only time I wear shorts is at the con TBH and black is well black and should be worn period. Sounds like this person should start a fashion column, not like I would listen to fashion sense anyways /black rules!

Heat 2:
"The 46 plant went for $200" --Umm holy cow, more than I have ever seen spent on a plant. The winner of this 4-player game powered all 17 of her cities, while the person that spent that $200 came in third with 11 cities powered. This game had an obvious stall where people had accumulated plenty of money, probably in stage 1, as the money the players were left with ranged from $86 (the person that spent $200 on the 46 and $167 -- the person that came in second)

"Eric jumped out to first in cities with a block, but he couldn't get good plants and fell behind in plant capacity. He was fortunate to get the number 38 plant at list price on he last turn" "Coal was continually short very early" --Sorry but I always laugh when "block" is mentioned, because there is no real such truism to it. It sounds like Eric passed on the last turn auction round and was lucky to get the 38, as three players finished with 17 cities powered in this 4-player game. Seeing that the 25 and 20 plants were final plants for two different players the coal market was bound to be tight (especially if both of them were bought in early/mid game)

"Jason got the number 20 plant on the second turn at cost. "game over" cried the other players." --Which means that coal was depleted early and getting that 20 plant meant paying more for coal resources time and time again; especially with the 25 and the 20 plants being plants two different players finished with. Also seeing that Jason finished the game with his start plant and also in second place, the cries of "game over" weren't well founded.

Heat 3:
Nothing written in the comment section of the event form by anyone for all nine games.

Semis:
"The good plants came out early, leaving a lot of useless plants in the mid-game" --Common occurrence, if good capacity plants come out early of course there is a lot of "junk" left.

"Chris built to 14 to trigger step 3 and move the plant market for Chris, Eric, and Pat" --Chris ended up in fourth place out of five players, maybe stage 3 got triggered in the build phase with the 14 being destroyed -- in which case Stage 3 would have happened in bureaucracy anyways /shrug not enough info.

The Final was played on Germany and lasted nine turns. Ex-champ Eric Brosius, Ian Miller, GM and two-time champ Jim Castonguay, Bill Murdock (alternate qualifier), and Barbara Flaxington (Co-GM and alternate qualifier) managed to win their Semi games and advance to the Final. Patrick Shea had the best game completion percentage of all second place finishers and thereby was awarded sixth place.

The number 4 plant went for 7 and the 7/8/9/10 went for cost. Jim got the northern region to himself on the first turn builds and all the players cried "game over". Turn 3 Eric bought the 18 plant for 21 over Jim and Jim paid 22 for the 22 plant which allowed Eric to have turn order for the auction market on Turn 5 -- earning him the 30 plant for cost on Turn 5. So many beginner mistakes were made by yours truly, it wasn't funny (the 18 should have gone for 23 minimum). Turn 5 Ian paid 29 for the 24 plant and Bill paid 29 for the 21 plant leaving Barbara, Jim, then Eric still in the auction round with the 28 being the top plant and the 30 sitting as plant number 5; Barbara passed so as not to have the 30 drop, Jim promptly scooped up the 28 to go along with his 22, and Eric took the 30. Turn 6 Jim overpaid for plant 31 -- paying $47 for it when he should have let Bill eat it. This same turn Barbara built to 7 causing stage 2; this left Jim out of the running to win especially with Ian/Bill/Barbara being able to pick up end game plants for cheap on Turn 7's auction round. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. Funnily, Ian kept overbuying coal (from Turn 2 on mind you) "to make it more expensive for everyone else", Given how much coal he needed compared to everyone else, he hurt himself BIG. In fact this whole line of thinking is such a fallacy unless you are going to go from last place turn order to first place turn order and have the money to double buy; or it is towards the end of the game to buy out the resources and this takes multiple people usually.

Totals for the Final were as follows:

GM Comments:
I missed out on several tournaments I wanted to play. I credit this to being the first year I have run Power Grid at WBC. It's not the first time I have run an event in my life, I have even run an event in previous WBC's. I believe I have plans for the event start well in hand now but definitely need to bring a computer for the qualifiers list next year and also have a dedicated Co-GM for signups.

I want to send a heartfelt thanks to Jason Wagner for being a Co-GM and doing the signups this year. Without his help I would have gone crazy. Thank you also Barbara Flaxington for being a co-GM.

Quite a few complained about the first heat where I set up tables of beginners with the GM and Co-GM Barbara Flaxington. I disqualified those games in the interest of fairness. In fact yours truly specifically played, and won, in Heat 2 on one of the advanced player tables that wanted a faster paced game. Due to this the GM and the aforementioned Co-GM had the second heat count as their "first heat entered". This is rated a beginner event and as such beginner's are welcome to play. I don't know if I want to change it to an "A" rated event; but with the first heat being before the demo I am at a loss as to how to compensate for this. I do know next year there will be no "beginner tables" except maybe the first heat.

There was an overwhelming good response to setting up advanced tables that wanted a fast-paced game. There is only one reason people that want to get the event done within two hours can't do such; not enough advanced tables being setup -- which we saw for heat 2. I can't force people to setup an "advanced table", this is done on preference by the board owner.

Allowing map choice between two different boards was complained about two-fold: 1) due to it not being fair every one played on the same board and 2) that there wouldn't be enough boards for Heat 3 as both boards were not on the boards that came with the game. Both of these complaints are going to be ignored: 1) A different map isn't going to change the way the game plays out between one board and another; different number of players does however. It may be this individual wants to Analysis Paralysis that heats board before playing in it -- if it was only one board allowed per heat; the Semi and the Final are static one board only allowed so get to the semi/Final and stop your whining. Also considering this player was one that setup his own game board ...Boggle. Also considering I separate the 3x5 cards by board type and allow players to pick whichever they want /shrug 2) Heat 3 historically draws less people than other heats and we had so many people with copies in their cars/rooms of these two boards that I will cross this bridge if it ever happens. I also scheduled the heats by board type --Heat 3 were the two faster playing boards; Heat 1 the more advanced/region separated by high connection cost; and Heat 2, the all around boards.

I want to personally thank Dvd for his staying after every heat to discuss things with me. Many of you put in great suggestions, which are greatly appreciated, sorry to not include everyone nor be able to use all your suggestions. The event form for each heat will be rewritten with numerous suggestions.

Several people asked about the alternate plant deck -- my apologies for not putting that in the preview, something I need to fix. I do not want to use the alternate plant deck as I don't believe it is something enough players have; might be able to use it for the Semi's and/or Final though as that would only require 5/1 of these; we shall see what next year brings.

PGD falls into a gray area for qualifiers; we have enough that play to have too many qualifiers and not enough to allow for a quarter-final. I also hate how the current qualifications are done, in that your first heat entered win is more important than a win in any other heat you enter after that. That said, those are the rules of the convention. Don't take it out on me. We only had 22 qualifiers and two alternates appear as it was so it worked out this year -- the two alternates had won their second and third heats entered.

PGD is rated a 6 prize level event; the Semi's should have five games so sixth place is determined by best overall percent of the table. I.e. you take that tables total number of cities powered and divide that into every second place finish number of cities powered -- the second place finisher with the best percent takes home sixth place. 4-player games get this multiplied by 0.8 of course.

Ex.: Semi game 1 was a 5-player game and had 64 cities powered at game end and second place had 15 cities powered. This gives that second place finisher a .234375 ratio. If they happen to have the best ratio out of all second place finishers than they place sixth overall.

Constructive comments are of course welcome.