Large Crowd Starts WBC with Civiliztion Building

There were over 300 tables in the open heats for this year's 7 Wonders tournament. Setting a new record for 7 Wonders although not by much.

This was the first year that you don't have to play Babylon, the statistically hardest city to win with. There were people who played Babylon in the open heats that qualified for the quarter finals. In fact, of the people that played Babylon, that city had the highest winning percentage in the open heats. Moral of the story: If you know how to play Babylon, feel free to play it in the open heats. Babylon didn't do as well in the quarterfinals though taking third all three times it was played. For next year, I'll keep the option to take another random city if the player who picks Babylon wants to.

The stand out county for this year was Alexandria. Not counting the few brave souls who played Babylon in the open heats, Alexandria had the highest winning percentage for open heats, the quarter finals, and the semi-finals. Rhodos and Olympia were solid performers, especially once you got past the open heats. Rhodos tending the skew towards the middle second or third and Olympia steering towards the 3rd. Gizah did the worst this year despite having the best performance 3 years ago.

Biggest city performance change from 2017 to 2018: Halikarnassos. While still a strong performance overall, it didn't have the same head-and-shoulders above the rest of the countries like it did last year. It moves from second-best to about as close to averages you can expect.

In reviewing all the scores and in light of the winning performance of Rhodos in the finals, I am starting to have an appreciation for the military points in 7 Wonders.

Congratulations to the finalists Andrew Emerick, Ben Parhel, James Denam, and Kyle Greenwood. It came down to a contest between Andrew playing Olympia and Gizah, Ben playing Alexandria and Ephesos, Kyle playing Ephesos and Rhodos, and James playing Halikarnassos and Olympia. Very few points were awarded during the finals for the gold category. Military points and science points were earned by almost everyone in both final games. Science points made up almost half of the final scores in some cases.

Next year I think I will come up with a bidding system for cities in the QF/SF/F. Possibly along the lines of Evo's bidding for mutations.

An administrative note: Some of the heat result index cards had the Wonder written on them instead of the city. Thankfully, Google knew which Wonder had the statue of Artemis. Also, please remember to bring your games next year!