Tabei Takes Championship Back To Japan!

The Space Base event this year maintained its popularity as the two Heats resulted in 18 winners who qualified for the Semifinal round. Of those 18, 15 arrived for the Semifinal, each of which resulted in dominant scores for each winner, including an impressive 54-point score for Paul Klayder (well ahead of Tricia Wolff’s 2nd place score of 29).

The Final was contested by Paul Klayder, Tom McCorry, Akisha Tabei, and Alex Schlosser. Since the event was using the Lightspeed Variant (allowing additional upgraded cards to be on player’s boards at the start), each player had some early engine building started.

The game got off to pretty standard start as players were building up their boards. Alex did move out to 5 VP’s early as he and Paul were both buying 7-slot cards hoping to play the bell curve. Tom was building up his 4-slot while Akisha was focused on the 8/9/10 slots. So much so that it didn’t take long for him to be gaining 3 VP’s and 6 coins whenever each of his opponents rolled either an 8, 9 or 10 (he had the <- / -> engine working very well in those slots). Paul had managed to build his 7-slot to the point where he would gain 7 coins and 1 VP on other player’s rolls of 7 (and saw several 7’s rolled by others during the mid-game).

Paul bought the first colony of the game (8 VP’s in Slot 6) and a couple of turns later added another (5 VP’s/Slot 3). Alex tried to follow suit by gaining the 6 and 7 VP colonies for himself. However, all of that colonizing just couldn’t match the incredible engine that Akisha built around those higher numbers (coupled with his opponent’s willingness to keep rolling the numbers he wanted). Akisha triggered the endgame by buying the 14 VP colony. He also added a couple more points on the last rolls of the game to bring his total to 47! Paul did his best to keep up, but only ended up with 36 points. Alex finished 3rd with 32 and Tom fourth at 26 VP’s.

Congratulations to Akisha for coming out on top this year. I’m sure this victory made the long trip from Japan more than worth it. Thanks to everyone who played and I’m excited to see everyone again in 2023!