McCandless wins newly named Boxcars!

Attendance for the tournament was slightly up this year, which indicates that moving the heats to the first weekend has proved good for attendance.

Twenty players entered the semifinals but the five to emerge victorious and advance to the finals were: Paul Bonday, Trella Bromley, Bart Pisarik, Mark McCandless and Eve Secunda.

There were several very interesting finishes in the semi-finals. At Paul Bonday’s table, Sam Packwood had about 270K and was heading to Richmond with his home city being Philadelphia. Paul rolls his home city of Atlanta and arrives with 194K. He then rolls New Orleans as his next destination and arrives on his first two dice, receiving 5K to bring him to 199K. Then he rolls Mobile which he reaches with his third die to get another 1.5K, bringing his total to 200.5K. On his next turn he is able to declare and make it to Atlanta, beating out Sam who still had a turn or two before he would be in Richmond.

At Trella’s table, she did not have a very good network given she had no major Western railroad and her Great Northern was not connected. However, she did get ridden quite a lot in the beginning and was the first to declare 150K. Then someone has to go to Miami and ride her while she is coming back from LA to Philadelphia with Chicago as her home. When she gets to Philly she has 184K. Fortunately, the player who had to go to Miami rolled a 3 on his bonus die and didn’t get off the SAL and so will have to give her 10K on his next turn. She rolls her destination and gets Northeast and picks North Central. She roles Cincinnati and rolls a 5 on two dice and then a 3 on the bonus die to get in on all three dice and gets 6.5K bringing her total to 200.5. On her next turn she declares for home and is able to role more than a 4 to win the game.

At Bart’s table, Maria and Bart are both declared for home. Bart was 12 away and went first, but only rolled a 4 on three dice. Maria needed a 9 but didn’t get it so Inger rovers her. Bart then needs 8 to get home but rolls another 4 on three dice. Maria rolled low and couldn’t get to Bart. Then Inger is also poised to be able to also hit Bart but rolls low and misses. Bart then rolls again gets yet another 4 but that was enough to get him home. It took Bart nine dice to go 12 pips.

On Wednesday morning, Bart bowed out to play in another tournament so only Paul, Trella, Mark and Eve played in the finals. Jeff Jackson was there as assistant GM to moderate the game, doing all the lookups and handling the money which helped to speed things along. The game finished in record time of 2 hours and 50 minutes with Mark McCandless being victorious.

Mark started with the NYC and soon added the UP and just kept adding deeds from there. Huge amounts of money went to Mark early and he stayed one step ahead of everyone through the midgame and final deeds purchases, amassing a network of 11 deeds and a Superchief. He pretty much ran away with the game from there.

Sue started fairly well with the B&O and ATSF combo. She was trying to keep up with Mark, but got a nasty hostile to Albany just as the prices went up and had to sell two railroads on the same turn, which set her back. But she still finished in a comfortable second place, far ahead of the other two.

Paul started slowly and got left out of the northeast railroads. Paul pronounced “desperate times” and purchased the ACL to go with his SAL, and was able to grab the SP, but then ran into trouble. Paul was the extremist on his die rolls, with several boxcars and a few snake eyes. But he didn’t get the boxcars when he could have really used them. In the end he chose not to buy a Superchief which proved wise as it kept him in third place.

Trella started well with the PA and L&N, but then had a run of bad luck. She gets the prize for most hostiles though, and for the worst timing on her bad dice rolls, to finish fourth. On their fifth and sixth destinations, Paul got the screw city of Portland, ME and Trella got the screw city of Las Vegas and both of them ended up having to pay Mark. They then rolled for their next destination and Trella got Portland, ME and Paul got Las Vegas giving Mark even more money. Both had to sell railroads and never really recovered to finish in third and fourth.

A total of five RRs were sold by three players. Paul sold the WP, Sue sold the NYNH&H and the IC (on the same turn), and Trella sold the GN to the bank early, then the TP later. Mark accumulated his $200 cash, then delivered to Washington with a home city of Pittsburgh. Trella was positioned to rover him but he wouldn’t even make that interesting by making it home on his first two dice.

Mark bought the following properties in this order: NYC, B&M, UP, NP, WP (from Paul), C&NW, SLSF, CRIP, C&O, RF&P

Throughout the tournament, many different railroad networks were assembled that were able to win. 23 of 26 games were 4 player games with the other 3 games being three player.

The average number of deeds the winner owned was 7.5 deeds (in the four player games). One person won with only 5 deeds while at the opposite end of the spectrum, one person had 11 deeds.

The winners in 25 of the 26 games (one game did not report) held the following deeds:

• Boston & Maine 12
• Chicago & Northwestern 12
• Atchinson, Topeka, & Sante Fe 10
• Louisville & Nashville 10
• Pennsylvania 10
• Atlantic Coast Line 9
• Illinois Central 9
• New York Central 9
• Union Pacific 9
• Chesapeake & Ohio 8
• Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy 8
• Norfolk & Western 8
• Northern Pacific 8
• Western Pacific 8
• New York, New Haven, & Hartford 7
• Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac 7
• St. Louis & San Francisco 7
• Great Northern 6
• Missouri Pacific 6
• Seaboard Air Line 6
• Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific 5
• Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific 5
• Denver & Rio Grande Western 5
• Gulf, Mobile, & Ohio 4
• Southern 4
• Southern Pacific 3
• Texas & Pacific 2
• Baltimore & Ohio 1