Rematch!

Well, we did it. The Century status of Splendor has taken quite the roller coaster ride since the last time the event was run in 2019. The event lost its status when nobody submitted the forms to run the event in 2020, and then when the event was under consideration for 2021, all previous statuses from 2020 were set to carry over. But for 2022, the grace and pragmatism of the BPA Board of Directors was in full force when the slate was wiped clean and folks had a new opportunity to submit for the event. On the final day, a brave soul stepped forward to take on the somewhat daunting task of running the madhouse that is one of the convention’s largest events.

In order to help things run smoothly during check-in, seat assignment, and results reporting, the GM enlisted the help of IT virtuoso, François de Bellefeuille to implement some novel ideas to this year’s tournament. This GM would like to put forward a motion that an Assistant GM of the Year Award be created and named after François. The following ideas were put to action to run this event, with some borrowed from the previous GM team and others created fresh for 2022:

• Upon check-in, participants would be given an immediate seat assignment after badge confirmation. As soon as a table was filled, they were given the clearance to randomize the starting player and begin play.
• We went paperless! At the conclusion of the game, each table would scan a laminated QR code that brought them to a weblink to enter all vital results information.
• A separate QR code was available at the game kiosk to view the live standings to give players instant data on where they ranked in the event. And what’s more, by keeping the link open in a phone’s browser and simply hitting refresh, you could always know the live standings no matter where you were located at the convention.

There were minor kinks that were mostly the human error of the GM, but overall the system ran quite smoothly for a large event such as Splendor. Hopefully more events can adopt this method in the future and further modernize the convention.

Regarding the actual event, attendance was down a bit in 2022 compared to previous years. There were still a total of 206 unique participants, which is down by a percentage that is slightly larger than the overall convention attendance decline this year. The expectation is that within the next year or two we should see numbers closer to what has been observed in the past.

The tournament was run using four-player games across three Heats, filling in with three-player games when the magic multiple of four couldn’t be obtained. There were thirty-one players who chose to play in all three Heats. This event has a Quarterfinal, which also uses four-player games in order to advance a more reasonable amount of people for an event of this size. However, the Semifinal and Final are both run using the three-player format, so only nine people would qualify for the Semifinal. For those that are familiar with the game, the three-player game is a slightly better version of the game than the four-player version since it is more difficult to acquire a cluster of gems of one color, as the stacks are reduced from seven down to five.

There were no easy tables in the Semifinal. Two finalists from 2018 both won their Semifinal games. Michael Pustilnik defeated Marina Westfield and defending champ Chris Wildes, while Rob Murray defeated Rodney Bacigalupo on tiebreaker, as well as Donte Saccenti. The third finalist, who was also a returning laurelist from 2017, was Brandon Bernard. Brandon had to get through Dalton Versak and Norman Rule to advance.

In 2018, Rob got the best of Michael. This year, Michael was hopeful of teaching Rob that revenge is a dish best served cold. Brandon was making his second Final appearance and was hungry to earn the shield. The game started with Brandon first, who had a decision to make right out of the gate. He chose to reserve a card that cost seven green gems to complete. Michael took a card that required six red gems followed by Rob who took a card from the middle row that only needed five gems for two points. Brandon would struggle early because he could only get to six gems between greens and wilds and could not complete his card in the game’s opening third. Both Michael and Rob had an easier time with their cards, with Michael holding an advantage since his was more valuable. The players would discuss after the game whether or not Brandon’s early struggle had any impact on the flow of the rest of the game. It’s hard to know for sure, but Brandon found himself just a step behind the others for much of the late game. Michael played a strong game and was the first to at least fifteen points, completing a card that got him to sixteen points at game end. Rob would finish second with fourteen and Brandon came in third at eleven.

Congrats to Michael and thanks to everyone who participated this year. It was a fun event to be a part of, and thanks to technological advances it will hopefully become more painless to run in future years.