Seventy Show Up For First 6 NMMT! WBC Championship

This was the first year for 6 Nimmt! as a championship at the World Boardgame Championships. The primary questions heading into play were how many people would show up to play and how many copies of the game would be available. Late Monday night, with the full knowledge that another game was not scheduled until 6:00 pm on Tuesday, 70 brave gamers took on the game of 6 Nimmt!. Many first-timers took advantage of the numerous 2 minute 21 second tutorials that had popped up in anxious preparation. There were a large number of games available from those participating and so 14 tables of 5 players began the treacherous journey of avoiding the collection of bullheads.

6 Nimmt! is a very popular game on Board Game Arena, but unlike the BGA version which starts everyone at 66 and counts down, we started everyone at zero and ended play when one player reached the magic number of 66 bullheads collected. The standard game was used with no "professional" or other variant. The clear accolade of the first round went to Cyril Turcuit with his total game score of only 5. Craig Reece and Curt Collins both had very nice scores of 12 and 14 respectively. Four rounds of play are the "norm" in a 5-player game, but 5 of the 14 games went 5 rounds and 3 games went only 3 rounds.

Twenty-five winners and qualifying second place finishers made up the 5 semi-final tables. Craig Trader and Ray Wolff advanced with 3-round victories. Katie Gray and Jennifer Desrosiers advanced with 4-round victories. Todd Augenstein closed out the session with a very close 5-round victory to set up the final table.

The first round of the finals saw Katie start with a perfect zero followed by Ray with only 1 bullhead. Craig got into the action with a perfect zero in the second round but Katie's 7 and Ray's 13 kept him somewhat at bay. Round 3 was again good for Katie as she earned another perfect zero. Ray had only picked up 6 but found himself 12 behind at 19 bullheads. Todd was only 10 away from 66 so it looked like it was possible that the championship would be a 4-round game.

In that fourth round, Ray and Craig needed near perfect rounds to make it interesting but ended up collecting many more bullheads than they desired. Katie only took 7 increasing her lead and trusting that someone would break the threshold of 66. Todd was the first to hit 66 exactly followed a few plays later when Jennifer hit 67. Katie finished with a very good score of 14 to Ray's 33 and Craig's 50.

Congratulations to Katie Gray as the first 6 Nimmt! WBC champion.