egizia   

Updated Nov. 23, 2013

2013 WBC Report  

 2014 Status: pending 2014 GM commitment

Andrew Emerick, CT

2013 Champion

Event History
2011    Randy Buehler     49
2012    Sam Schell     59
2013    Andrew Emerick     58

Euro Quest BPA Event History
2012    Andrew Emerick     35

 Laurels

 Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
   1.  Andrew Emerick     CT    13     56
   2.  Randy Buehler      WA    12     50
   3.  Sceadeau D'Tela    NC    13     42
   4.  Sam Schell         NC    12     30
   5.  Robert Murray      NJ    13     18
   6.  Robert Kircher     RI    12     14
   7.  Richard Shay       MA    13     12
   8.  Alex Bove          PA    12     12
   9.  Eric Wrobel        MD    13      9
  10.  Elaine Pearson     NC    12      9
  11.  Redie Smith        NC    11      9
  12.  Steve LeWinter     NC    12      6
  13.  Kyle Smith         PA    11      6
  14.  Cary Morris        NC    12      4
  15.  Derek Glenn        KY    13      3
  16.  Rebecca Hebner     DC    12      3
  17.  Lars Astrom        NC    11      3

2013 Laurelists                                             Repeating Laurelists: 

Robert Murray, NJ
2nd

Richard Shay MA
3rd

Eric Wrobel, MD
4th

Sceadeau D'Tela
5th

Derek Glenn, KY
6th

Past Winners

Randy Buehler, WA
2011

Sam Schell, NC
2012

Andrew Emerick, CT
2013

Rebecca Hebner and Roni Breza

Perrianne Lurie and Winton Lemoine

David Platnick, Randy Buehler, Redie Smith and Chris Senhouse.

Kevin Breza, Doug Covell, Lauren Bohaczuk and Andrew Emerick

Fresh Blood ...

The Final consisted of four players who had never experienced the WBC Egizia last round before, demonstrating that the game still has plenty of life. Eric Wrobel, Andrew Emerick, and Richard Shay all made the semis with a single first-heat win, and Robert Murray squeaked in as the third alternate with a second place followed by a win. There were no double winners in the heats, as those who contested the second heat after skipping the first proved to be formidable competition, winning five of the seven tables in the second heat.

Eric took an early lead in the Final, after drawing the first seat. He cleaned up in the first trip down the Nile, snagging both a 3 and a 2 stone quarry, making the powerful strength boost each turn permanent, and even got into the Sphinx. Richard worked on improving his position on the stone and grain tracks, while Andrew decided to simply start laying bricks, building in all three sites.

Turn 2 proved a difficult puzzle for the players, as three very desirable cards showed up far downriver, between the second and third building sites. They were the +2 Sphinx card, and a pair of 3 stone quarries. Eric was first, and passed on jumping down for the goods, electing instead to build in the Sphinx. Robert also decided against going immediately down, instead picking up three green food positioned directly in front of the +2 Sphinx card. Richard likewise passed on the opportunity, going instead to the +1 stone +1 grain track, signalling his intention to slowboat his way down, picking up more things in exchange for not getting the best things. Andrew also didn't want to go down the river that far, deciding to take a 2 stone quarry further up the river, which allowed Eric to get the +2 Sphinx card to go with his Sphinx build that round. Eric and Robert ended up picking up the pair of 3 stone cards. At the end of the round, when it looked like Eric had two outs for his food troubles, Robert headed to Heliopolis, moving the water ring up and deactivating Eric's 6 red food, and Andrew jumped downriver to scoop up the field upgrade to eliminate his other option. Eric thus starved four people for eight points.

In the third round, Eric was forced to choose a field first to try and solve his food troubles, and in response, the rest of the table made their collective 3 moves in less than 10 seconds, with everyone choosing the Sphinx, shutting out Eric with his +2 Sphinx card. Andrew picked up a third quarry, bringing his stone production to a healthy 8, Richard continued to slowboat and build in the obelisk, and Robert also gained a third quarry and boosted his crew strength to make use of the green fields he acquired. The third round ended with Andrew in the lead with 27, Richard 23, Robert 19, and Eric 17. Those are reasonable gaps for the Turn Order advantage that Eric and Robert will derive from it, so the game was much closer than those scores imply.

In Round 4, Eric uses his Turn Order advantage to gain the very powerful move upriver card, which he used to enter the Sphinx that he skipped to get it. Richard continued to hammer the bottom of the stone and grain tracks, producing additional stones and points for his effort. Then an interesting play occurred when the time to build at the graves and obelisk arrived. Richard used his 3 and 4 temporary crew strength cards to build both the 6 and 7 steps of the obelisk, and Robert followed up by building the 8th level. It's extremely unusual to see so much building in the obelisk, as the graves provide a natural bonus, while the obelisk does not.

In the fifth and last round, Robert gained the build first in each site card, which allows a player to not worry about being shut out of any building site. Regardless, it was a standard fifth round, with all players racing down the river to build in as many sites as they could. Andrew headed to Heliopolis, moving the water ring to green and threatening to make Eric starve again, but Eric responds by moving upriver to shift it back down to yellow. Andrew had the final round come together extremely well. First, he was able to redraw a Sphinx card he threw back last round, the eighth level of the obelisk, which is worth nine points, and then he was able to just barely build both a 5 value grave tile, bringing his graves bonus to 5, and the ninth level of the obelisk, which is virtually unheard of, to make an additional seven points on the "4 blocks in the obelisk" card. Robert, who was holding the "9th level of the obelisk" card was thus freed from having to build it himself, and picked up additional grave tiles instead. Down at the Pyramids and the Columns, Eric fell one strength short of building the second column, which cost him the 10 points on that card.

Going into final scoring, it was an extremely tight game, with Andrew at 68, Robert 63, Eric 62, and Richard 61. Andrew was able to flip over the most impressive set of Sphinx cards though, with the high-scoring 2 bricks in each site (10), four stones in the obelisk (7), 8th level of the obelisk (9), bottom of the stone track (4), and joker strength (4), for a total of 102. Robert took second with 95, missing 4 bricks in the columns, but making blue crew strength (6), most brown fields (8), in addition to the biggest and hardest to achieve Sphinx card in the game, the 9th level of the obelisk (11). Richard took third with 88 on 5 bricks in the obelisk (9), and both cards for number of people in a track (5 and 5). Eric trailed with 81 after missing both most green fields and 2 columns, making only the 1 column card (6), black crew strength (9), and yellow crew strength (4).

Attendance was stable even with a full table of new finalists, so Egizia seems established as a solid Century event. It's a fun game and the worker placement restriction that requires you to always move downstream is a great mechanic. We look forward to seeing even more of you next year.

Matthew Craig and Eric Freeman

GM Andrew Emerick and his fellow finalists.
 GM      Andrew Emerick  [1st Year]   NA
   NA   425-765-1031

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