Lords of Water Deep

Updated Nov. 16, 2015

2015 WBC Report

2016 Status: pending 2016 GM commitment

Alistair Thach, TN

2015 Champion

Event History

2015 Alistair Thach 124

Laurels

 Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
   1.  Alistair Thach     TN    15     40
   2.  Peter Tu           NJ    15     24
   3.  Rick Kirchner      KY    15     16
   4.  Michael Vaz        on    15     12
   5.  Herbert Gratz      au    15      8
   6.  William Bleier     PA    15      4

2015 Laurelists

Peter Tu, NJ
2nd

Rick Kirchner, KY
3rd

Michael Vaz, on
4th

Herbert Gratz, au
5th

William Bleier, PA
6th


Jason Wagner, Peter Tu and Malinda Kyrkos

Jason Ley, Alexanda Henning and Peggy Ng

Rob Kircher and Michael Shea
ponder their options.

GM Robert St Pierre with his finalists.

The First Trip to the City of Splendors ....

The Lords of Waterdeep tournament debuted at WBC to great success—far more than anticipated. The 40 of us in the first heat overflowed Strasburg and four tables ended up across the hall in Marietta. Fortunately the later heats were in more spacious rooms as attendance basically doubled.

The 49 4-player games yielded winning scores ranging from 103 to 173 with an average of 133. The average margin of victory was 12 points with 11 games decided by two or less points, including two ties. There were three exceedingly close games where the difference between first and last was under ten points.

Speaking of ties, there were five other ties that determined positions other than the winner, two of which involved Hank Griffin. Hank won two ties to gain a pair of runners-up finishes. Both times his score was 104, and if that isn’t rare enough one of the times the second tiebreaker (most completed quests) had to be used, which was the only time in the tournament the second tiebreaker was used.

Often the advantage of certain turn order positions are discussed, which normally focuses on the first or last player. For Lords of Waterdeep, the initial player order is randomly determined, and for subsequent rounds the first player position can be taken; so one might think that the initial player order doesn’t matter much. However, for the 49 4-player games being analyzed here, the initial second player won 41% of the time, followed by the first player at 24%, third player at 20%, and finally the fourth player at 14%. It will be interesting to see if future results verify this as an actual trend or pure happenstance.

I was asked several times if the lord Larissa Neathal (the builder lord) would be allowed (which she is, as the only exceptions to the base game rules are random initial player order and additional tiebreakers), as there are those who believe she is overpowered. Looking at the 40 4-player games where the players provided the lord information and an additional three cases where I determined based upon lord points that Larissa had to be their lord, Larissa won 27% of the games she appeared in, which ranks her fifth in terms of win percentage following Mirt the Moneylender (36%), Sammereza Sulphontis (33%), Kyriani Agrivar (31%), and Durnan the Wanderer (29%). Brianne Byndraeth won 25% of the time, while the other lords except Khelben Arunsun won between 21% and 19% of the time. The magic certainly wasn’t with Khelben who won only 7% of his appearances. The story changes if one looks at the average finish, where Durnan came out on top with an average finish of 2.18 with Larissa right behind at 2.2. The average finish for the other lords ranged from 2.43 to 2.71, with Khelben again coming in last. From these statistics Larisa Neathal appears to be above average, but not overpowered.

As a final note before moving on to the Final, I would be remiss if I didn’t comment upon the remarkable tournament experience of the Tu family. They took four of the top 21 positions in the ranking after the last heat, with Peter taking top seed as the only triple winner (and ultimately second overall). With one of the other qualifiers failing to appear, there could have been three members of the family in the semifinals, although only Peter decided to advace.

The Final

The initial player order was Alistair, Michael, Rick, and Peter, who had the following lords respectively: Caladorn Cassalanter (Skullduggery / Warfare), Kyriani Agrivar (Arcana / Warfare), Brianne Byndraeth (Arcana / Skullduggery), and Durnan the Wanderer (Commerce / Warfare).

As is the nature of the game, the first three rounds were relatively uneventful with all players except Peter purchasing a single building and completing a single quest. As for the buildings, Alistair purchased Caravan Court in Round 1, Michael purchased Fetlock Court in Round 2 (which he used extensively), and finally Rick purchased New Olamn in Round 3. Round 3 finished with Rick in the lead with 12 points, followed by Michael (10), Alistair (5), and Peter (0).

Round 4 is when the game noticeably picked up with all players completing quests; Michael and Peter actually completing two. Three of these quests were plot quests, of which two are particularly noteworthy for their potentially game winning abilities: Recover the Magister’s Orb (completed by Alistair) and Recruit Lieutenant (completed by Michael). The fourth round ended with Rick maintaining his lead with 18 points, followed by Peter (15), Michael (14), and Alistair (11).

The fifth round started with Alistair building The Yawning Portal, which as one of the best buildings in the game somehow went unbuilt during Round 4. All players continued to complete quests, with Rick completing his second plot quest. I noticed that the players were stockpiling warriors with only seven left in the supply at one point during the round, and the supply of warriors generally remained low thereafter. The round finished with the players starting to stratify: Rick (34 points), Peter (33), Alistair (23), and Michael (22).

In Round 6 the players continued to complete quests with the item of note being that Peter was able to break away from the other players finishing the round with 61 points while everyone else had 42.

Round 7 saw another shift in the game where along with the typical quest completion, Mandatory Quests were handed out and other blocking moves were made. As one of Peter’s later actions in the round, he noticed that Michael was building up to a big finish and played a Mandatory Quest on him. Also when Rick took a quest and revealed the 25-point warfare quest (Bolster City Guard), Peter decided to take it (even though it was unlikely he could complete it) to block Alistair from picking it up and easily completing it thanks to the veritable army of warriors Alistair had gathered in his tavern. A second Mandatory quest came into play when Alistair handed one to Peter to rein him in. The round ended with Peter maintaining his lead with 78 points followed by Alistair (57), Michael (54), and Rick (50).

While not as “sharp elbowed” as Round 7, the last round was defined by an unintentional blocking action that ended the hopes of one player. Peter, deciding that completing another quest wasn’t possible (thanks to the Mandatory Quest placed on him), spent the round building The Golden Horn and House of the Moon (thanks to a Recall Agent intrigue card) for the points gathering on them. Alistair completed three quests to surpass Peter in points, while Rick completed two quests and in the process took the last spot in Waterdeep Harbor, which crushed Michael’s plans. Michael had the Change of Plans intrigue card that would have enabled him to discard the Mandatory Quest Peter had saddled him with, and once free of that could have completed a couple of quests vaulting him into contention. Round 8 ended with Alistair leading with 97 points followed by Peter (91), Rick (73), and Michael (56). Final scoring didn’t affect the player ordering, and Alistair finished with 128 points, Peter with 121, Rick with 114, and Michael with 87.

GM Robert St. Pierre [1st Year] NA
conanstp@aim.com NA

2015 Previews | View the Icon Key | Return to main BPA page