Veni, Vidi, Vendidi!

Overall:

Thank you everyone for playing this year. This year both heats were on Friday with 2 hours working well. Looking for input if players would like to see Venus as an option. Thank you for everyone who brough a copy.

Heat Comments:

Heat 1 had 51 players for 13 tables. Heat 1 was a great start. We did have to have people run to grab copies to get everyone seated. We had a Venus game to get the 13th table.

Heat 2 was solid with 11 tables with 42 players. Still had a few people have to run to grab their game. With so many tables in heat 1, people realize that just 1 win might not be enough to qualify.

Semifinal Comments:

We had 19 players with at least 1 win. When it came to close the field, we had 16 checked in. We had 5 double winners this year. Table one Chris Bizzell grabbed the brick, wheat Minervas and raced as fast as possible to win. Table 2 Sam Wolff collected a full set of Mars cards for the win. Table 3 had Michael Swinson hit 10 of the 11 provinces to make the Saturn’s work. At table 4 Ryan Feathers had 15 cards in his deck to win. Rob Kircher and Andrew Emerick had the closest 2nds by percentage of winner’s score to land 5th and 6th, respectively.

Final Comments:

The Final were agreed to be played by the finalist late Saturday night. Ryan Feathers provided the commentary for the Final. The Concordia finalists gathered late Saturday night to play the Final. Chris Bizzell and Sam Wolff were returning, hoping to improve on their 4th and 2nd place finishes in 2022. Michael Swinson was coming off consecutive 2nd, 2nd, 1st places in the online Concordia events but it was his first Final table at WBC. Ryan Feathers was the lone player who hadn't recorded Concordia laurels previously. The table was set up to the Italia map, and seating order was randomly determined to be Ryan, Michael, Chris, and Sam. There was some slight kvetching from Sam and Ryan as they complained about being last and first seat, both stated they had hoped to be a different seat.

The game started fairly typically with Ryan playing an Architect and the other three players using a Diplomat to copy his Architect. Ryan built a Wine + Brick in Campania, Michael built a lovely Cloth + Brick in Umbria, Chris built a food and brick in Etruria, and Sam built a Cloth in Corsica and joined Michael’s brick city in Umbria. Chris immediately stated he missed that option and wished he had taken it.

The next few rounds saw players using Prefects to produce in the provinces they had built in and using Mercators to swap around goods to prepare for their coming needs. At the start of round 4 this put Ryan into a deep think. Everyone else was preparing to use their Architects to build again, but Ryan didn't have his in hand anymore. This is precisely the reason he was concerned about being 1st seat and wasn't at all sure what to do here. He ultimately decided to purchase some cards and forgo being able to build cities when it would next be his turn and he could use his Diplomat on the others' Architects.

The rest did build and then produced some goods and began purchasing cards. Michael was thrilled to pick up an early Mason on the card row that Ryan had left. In post-game discussion it was agreed this was likely a mistake. Chris and Sam acquired some useful cards. Ryan decided his advantage was having a card lead and used his opening cycle Diplomat to acquire more cards.

The mid game led to a very tense point. The Farmer card began sliding down the row. All were aware how powerful the combination of Mason and Farmer could be. Michael had to be denied the Farmer....but who was to do it? Ryan's economy was in shambles from the early purchases and he desperately needed to invest his resources in cities. Sam had begun acquiring Colonist cards and desired to keep using his food for that strategy. Chris was out of position on Michael due to turn order and couldn't afford to overpay for it. Michael made sure to be prepared for it and snapped up the Farmer once it had slid down to an affordable price. While none of the players openly stated it, it was fairly clear the race for 2nd place was likely on.

The last part of the game saw Ryan trying to manage to get down more cities to go with all of his cards. He had managed to get a good split of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury cards so he tried to get one of each production type and build a bunch of non-brick cities in a variety of provinces, but his early game poor tempo and neutered economy had slowed down his expansion so while he had acquired a good number of cards, they were less valuable than he desired. Chris on the other hand had built out a ton of early cities and was trying to desperately catch up in cards at the end. He ended with 10 provinces and 10 non-brick cities, but only had 3 cards in each of Jupiter and Saturn. In the end game Sam claimed he played one strategy in Concordia, and that was Colonist. He had scooped up several of them but was blocked from others and settled for a smattering of points from everything. Michael expertly focused on his Mason and Farmer cards along with the natural pairing of Saturn to spread to all the provinces and build all the food and brick.

The game end was triggered by Sam Wolff finishing by acquiring the cards. The final card stayed on the board for several rounds as Sam was the only one who could acquire it resource wise, and he spent those couple extra turns building many important cities while others achieved less. The final scores were tallied up and revealed: Ryan 96, Chris 100, Sam 113, Michael 128.

The finalists discussed the game a bit after and agreed on a few things. Michael seemed to always be in control of the situation the most, he seemed the most comfortable navigating all the various fluctuations and had really played the best and was a worthy champion. All those online event practice apparently pays off! In particular Ryan was likely supposed to have taken the early Mason card, but it was unclear anyone was in great position to nab the Farmer. Ryan regretted not trying a fairly different opening since he felt he had poorly positioned himself when he had to acquire cards in Round 4 and being unable to build more early cities. Chris wished he had noticed the early building spot Sam took, and also wished he had managed to acquire slightly more cards earlier rather than expanding so heavily. Sam wished he had managed to nab a few more Colonist cards to be able to focus on that category, or just find any focus in general.

Additional Awards:

Mercator Maximus is for the player who achieved the highest score in a four or more person game. Mercator Optimus is for the player who had the best first over second score ratio in a four or more person game. The Pyrrhic Victor is awarded to the player with the lowest scoring win (in a game played to completion).

For 2023 these are:

• Allan Jiang - Mercator Maximus - Heat 1 - Score 141
• Brandon Bernard - Mercator Optimus - Heat 1 - Ratio 1.41
• Michael Swinson - Pyrrhic Victor - Heat 1 - Score 97