Tournament Of Prior Champions!

Because El Grande is one of the older Euro games, having been contested at WBC every year since 1999, it seems many of those who were unable to attend WBC this year were El Grande players, while it hasn’t been picked up by too many of the new players, resulting in the lowest turnout in its history. It does have an online implementation which will hopefully help draw in new players for future years, which is where this year’s GM started playing it (he had only played El Grande online prior to playing at this year’s WBC).

With its long history, many of those who did show up to play had won or made final tables in prior years. For the heats, 5 player games were preferred, with a few 4 player games when necessary. Because of the low attendance and having 5 player games, all winners and second places advanced to the semifinals.

Of the 20 winners and second places, 14 showed up for the semi-final, resulting in two 5-player games and one 4-player game. The winners and best two seconds would advance to a 5-player final table with the remaining second getting sixth place laurels. Of the 14 semifinalists, only 3 had 0 laurels in El Grande, and for 2 of those players this was their first WBC. Six semifinalists had previously won at WBC, including the winners from 5 of the prior 6 WBCs, and 1 had won the PBEM tournament last year. The 3 remaining semifinalists had made prior final tables, 2 at WBC and 1 with the PBEM tournament.

At the “hardest” semifinal table, 4 prior winners and 1 new attendee had a very close game. Only 10 points separated 1st from 5th. Alex Bove and Curt Collins II tied for the win/second to both advance, with Tim Mossman only 1 point behind in a hard luck 3rd.

At the “easiest” semifinal table, there was 1 prior winner, 2 prior finalists, and 1 new attendee. The 2 prior finalists qualified for the final table again, with Ray Wolff winning and Richard Meyer getting 2nd 10 points behind.

At the remaining semifinal table there were 2 prior WBC winners, the PBEM winner, a PBEM finalist, and 1 player without prior final table experience. DJ Borton, the PBEM winner, won the table by 15 points, meaning Dominic Blais in 2nd place would get the 6th place laurels but not make the final table.

At the final table, DJ started the game by playing the 13 card and scoring his home region for 8 points to take the very early lead. In round 3 he also scored his home region, and seemingly had a big lead going into the first scoring. However, by taking 3 #2 cards, he had only played 6 caballeros onto the board and was far behind on board positioning, which he could never recover from the rest of the game. After the first scoring it was a close game, at 32-32-31-31-30.

In the second stage, DJ continued his strategy of taking immediate points over getting caballeros on the board, by scoring twice more but only placing 7 more caballeros out, for a total of 13 placed. Compounded by accidentally dialing in the wrong province for moving his units from the Castillo, he ended the 2nd scoring with only 47 points and falling out of competition. Alex took the lead after the 2nd scoring with 63 points. He had not taken a score card, but had placed out 20 caballeros in the first 6 turns, resulting in much better board positioning. Curt was close behind with 61 points, and had good board positioning with having placed 22 caballeros out. Ray and Rich were in the middle, with Ray having 51 points and 17 caballeros placed, and Rich having 49 points and 18 caballeros placed.

In the third stage, things continued as they had in the second stage, with only 1st and 2nd, and 3rd and 4th switching places. After a scoring card was played in the 9th and final turn, Alex and Curt were tied, leading to a tense final scoring. Curt was able to place more caballeros out than Alex in the 7th-9th turns though, and ended up with slightly better board positioning for the final scoring, giving him a 3 point win, 105-102. Rich was able to pass Ray for 3rd with 98, Ray had 90, and DJ learned his lesson that having caballeros on the board is more important than early scoring and finished last with 79.