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Nicole Yuhase and Pierre Luc-Ramier |
Romain Jacques explores the seven
seas. |
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GM Anni Foasberg and
Gordon Rodgers
take on cargo. |
GM Anni Foasberg oversees her four
finalists. |
Still Navigating ...
The three heats filled 20 tables. The Preliminaries provided the following highlights:
- A very high score, by Patrick Shea in Heat 1: 147 points. Patrick amassed 14 factories and six churches, cruising to a lopsided win.
- Another game by Patrick, in which he picked up 11 navigation tokens (there are only 12 in the game!).
- An extremely exploration-heavy game in Heat 1, in which 12 buildings were left on the board at the end—but it was exceeded by a game in Heat 3, in which 14 buildings remained on the board!
- A game in which the winning player, Nicole Yuhase, got five of almost everything—colonies, factories, navigation tokens, and shipyards.
The three heats yielded 17 winners, including three double winners: Patrick, Nicole, and Romain Jacques. Three opted not to advance, however, allowing two alternates to advance to fill the four 4-player semifinal tables.
One table consisted of Sue Goodson, Randy Buehler, Rich Atwater, and Mike Kaltman. Both Mike and Sue pursued a colonization strategy; Sue had 12 colonies and three shipyards to Mike's 11 colonies and four shipyards. Mike's navigation tokens gave him an advantage, but he still lost by six points to Randy Buehler's factory/church strategy, which benefited strongly from the lack of competition for factories.
The next table was a much lower-scoring game manned by Patrick Shea, Chad Martin, Andrew Emerick, and Vien Bounma. Patrick and Chad focused on factories; Patrick went factory/church while Chad combined factories and colonies. Both finished behind Vien, who somehow managed to squeeze 94 points out of shipyards and churches, and Andrew, who dominated the colonies, also picking up some shipyards and navigation tokens. It didn't initially look like a great game for colonies, with a very long stall before Phase 2, but Andrew used it to build a large fleet. Ultimately, he won with 99 points.
Anthony Lainesse, Nicole Yuhase, Tim Horne, and Antero Kuusi met at Table 3. Only Anthony was interested in factories—he ended with 14 of them, while nobody else had more than four. Meanwhile, Antero and Tim fought it out over colonies, splitting shipyards as they did. Tim was the explorer of the group, picking up five exploration tokens, while Antero went after churches, ending with four of them. Antero finished ahead of even Anthony's uncontested factories!
The last table was home to Romain Jacques and three newcomers: David Borton, Micah McCormick, and Mikaela Kumlander. Micah and Romain competed over factories and churches, David went the pure exploration route, with navigation tokens and shipyards, and Mikaela focused on her economy with colonies and factories. Although it, like all the other semifinal games, ended on buildings, David still ran away with it, winning by a margin of over 30 points.
So, the four finalists were, in turn order:
David Borton
Randy Buehler
Andrew Emerick
Antero Kuusi
David and Randy opened by sailing, to sugar and gold regions, respectively. Andrew built a gold factory and Antero decided to start with workers. As David and Randy started to colonize, Andrew and Antero also arrived in their regions, Antero using Henry to do so, and also began to scoop up some of the colonies. All four players also bought factories. At the end of Phase 1, David and Andrew both had sugar colonies and gold factories, while Randy and Antero both had gold colonies and sugar factories. Randy was the first to go for privileges and chose the shipyard privilege, but Antero was the first to actually build a shipyard; Antero later took a church privilege, but did not build a church the first phase.
By the end of Phase 1, Andrew was ahead in the competition for factories; he had two sugar and one spice, plus the factory privilege. Antero had built his fleet of ships and looked ready to focus on sailing. Randy had a nice collection of workers and a strong economy. David was trying to build his economy as well, but a little more slowly.
It was Antero who ended the first phase, using the Navegador, who had traveled all the way around the table by this time.
Phase 2 was short, as Antero focused very heavily on sailing, and pushed his way through those four spaces quickly. Henry continued to move around the table quickly, perhaps making this feat a little easier. Randy started visiting the market both frequently and effectively, pulling in large amounts of money and spending it on all sorts of things—a church, two factories, some colonies and a shipyard. He also gained another shipyard privilege. Andrew started buying multiple factories at a time, as well as building his worker population. David focused on churches and church privileges in this phase, gaining two churches and both the privileges.
The beginning of Phase 3 was, of course, once again Antero's doing.
The privilege feeding frenzy of Phase 3 resulted in shipyard and exploration privileges for Antero, church and colony privileges for David, a colony privilege for Randy, and one church privilege for Andrew, who passed the privilege spot the first time around so that he could get back to the market to get enough money to buy three factories at the same time. While Antero continued sailing, and made it as far as Macao, all the other players descended on the building market and bought out, first the churches (David), then the shipyards (Randy) and finally the factories (Andrew) to end the game.
The final scores were:
David: 89 (54 from churches)
Randy: 100 (54 from shipyards)
Andrew: 97 (60 from factories)
Antero: 88 (49 from navigation tokens)
Thus, Randy Buehler won his first Navegador shield while claiming his 12th WBC title—but his only one for 2015 in a down year for the twice Caesar. |