Kevin Burns, Sean Vessay and Dennis Gomer man one of many tables in an overflowing heat as Splendor set new attendance records for a Trial event.	Andrew Drummond can always be counted on to dress the part of the event theme even when he isn't the GM or AGM. But this one proved especially apt.
April Alfieri, Tim Packwood and Heather Stutzman head another full row of games in the popular new event.	Canadian GM Duncan McGregor with his finalists and AGMs. Oh Canada did very well in 2015.

Splendor announced its arrival at WBC with a bang, as the lineup to register for the first heat went out the door of Marietta, down the hallway, up the stairs, and out into the lobby. Despite this, some people had already started playing when the official start time arrived, and once a player reached the front of the line, they were shaking hands and reaching for gems within a couple minutes. This wonder was achieved through a system called "flights."

Flights were the brainchild of AGM/Co-GM Sara VanderWal. Essentially, a small range of pre-numbered tables (we used five) were designated as a single flight. When a player registered, they drew a colored token from a bag that assigned them to one of those tables. When the bag was empty, all players at those tables had been seated. The bag was reset, and players started to be assigned to the next five tables. Make sure that each table gets someone with a copy of the game, and they can start playing as soon as they have all of their players. This has an obvious advantage that it almost completely eliminates the time between when you register and when you can actually begin playing. For disadvantages, you need several staff in order for this to work. We had one person registering, one assigning tables, and a third talking to players and dealing with whatever issues arose. There is also no single time when you have all players paying attention to you for announcements. It was a combination of these that likely caused all three of us to be named as Splendor GM at various times on social media!

Another issue that we encountered came as a result of a different GM decision—three-player games. In my experience, which BGG seems to corroborate, four-player games of Splendor just have too many gems. It is too easy in those games to skip the engine-building portion of the game, ignore your opponents, and simply buy point cards right out of the gates. While this strategy is still possible in three-player games, the relative scarcity of gems usually forces a more tactical and interactive game that I consider more skill-intensive. Whenever possible, then, I wanted to play three-player—including setting up our flights as three-player games. This was largely successful, as almost a third of the players brought games, and those were supplemented with GM and library copies, as well as offered loaners. We still usually had a couple tables waiting around for copies to be made available at the end of registration, but these were also generally people who arrived 15 minutes after the hour, and would likely have missed the event altogether had we used a more traditional seating process. Once games began finishing, we were able to reassign copies to the last tables, and due to Splendor's short duration, have those games still finish before our time slot expired.

Players had been asked to help in recording information about the winner's cards and nobles, which provided some interesting data. Winners were slightly more likely to have zero nobles (32%), with one (27.5%) and two (28.4%) close behind. One player—Colin Crook—managed the feat of acquiring all four nobles. He did so with 20 cards acquired, tying the most bought during the tournament. On the other end, Drew DuBoff managed to win a game with only five cards, buying two 4s, a 3 and two 2s. Between those, the most common numbers of cards to win with were 14 through 16, although players won with all numbers from seven up to 20—displaying a wide range of winning strategies. All of these strategies, though, aim to get their owner to 15 points, and more than half of the winners ended with exactly that number. The high-water mark for the tourney was set at 19 points in the first heat, with Austin Glassner and Mary Kerins taking top score. Unfortunately, neither repeated the feat for a second win to make it into the playoff rounds.

Of particular interest to me was the data on finish by Turn Order. When initially applying to run Splendor, I noted that Splendor's rules allowed for ties, if players had equal amounts of both points and cards bought. As a result, I would need to add a new WBC tiebreaker to ensure unique winners, and elected to say that the player furthest back in Turn Order would win any ties. My rationale was that they were less likely to be able to buy cheap cards right at the start of the game, as the players in front of them might aim for those cards, and that there was little corresponding advantage to be had at the end of the game. Due to the equal turns rule, it is hard to create a scenario where a player would have the opportunity to get their 15th point but would choose to delay. The finish data, though, instead shows that first and third in turn order are equal, and both are a tad better than second. Out of 154 relevant three-player games, 54 players won out of each of the first and third seats, and 46 out of the second. This seems to indicate that the ability to react to the opponent's initial moves counteracts first seat's chance at cheaper cards, while second seat can unfortunately get hurt in either way. The topic will require further study.

With so many players, and using 3-player games, we had a large number of winners, many of whom came back to repeat in the second and third heats. Luckily, our playoff rounds were scheduled for Sunday morning, which is the only reason that we were able to secure permission to convert our planned semifinals into quarterfinals. Despite the predictions of some, we also had a large percentage of qualified players actually appear on the ninth day of play.  29 of the 33 players with multiple wins were there at 9 am to play. Adding in the top one-win players gave us 4-player quarterfinals, then back to 3-player games for semifinals and Final. In the end, it came down to three survivors. Andrew Drummond was an AGM for the event, and had spent much of his time in the first two heats helping with registration, but still managed to rattle off two wins in the heats. Michael Wojke also got two wins, including a 17-16-16 win over James Crescenzi and Steve Scott that featured the highest third-place score observed in the event. The third finalist, Michael Holmquist, turned in 17-point performances in two heats, and while Marc Visocnik stole one of those wins away from him with 18, a win and a close second advanced him into the quarterfinals, and skill took over from there. In the Final, Wojke concentrated on two colors to snag a noble. Holmquist took a more balanced strategy, while Drummond built up one color, aiming at a couple of higher-level cards. Drummond delayed playing his most expensive card for a time, building up to ten points before calmly revealing a 5-point card from hand to claim victory.

Congratulations to Andrew Drummond for claiming the first WBC Splendor title.