Ra Shines on Ottey!

In the heats of Ra Dice this year we had the most outrageous score I have ever seen in a game. Truly Ra did not shine his face upon one of the players, as they lost 41 to 39 to 7. There is a great deal you can do with your dice in this game to maximize your position, but when Ra says you lose, that is what happens.

In the Final itself we had four new contenders, with none of the Final table of last year returning. Joe Birnbaum, Riley Gleaton, Janet Ottey, and Darin Murphy came to strive for Ra's favor this year. Last year was an extremely fast Final, with many suns being rolled and the scores ended up being much lower than normal. This year started similarly, with players rolling many suns and rapidly moving the game forward. The key decision of the first era happened when Joe was about to finish the era and had a choice to flood for 4 points or send the boat up the track 3 spaces. He chose to send the boat and missed out on scoring his boats in era 1. This left Janet with an early lead due to Pharoah scoring.

In Era 2, Joe got his boat pushed all the way up to 8, but again missed out on flooding and scored no points for it. Janet and Darin had their boats much lower on the track but both flooded, putting Joe in a terrible position of pushing boats hard and not managing to cash in in both Age 1 and 2. Riley had terrible luck throughout Era 2, rolling almost entirely suns and symbols that could not work together.

In Era 3, it became clear that Janet was the force to beat. She had already scored both Pharoah 5 point blocks and had a massive lead. She had little in endgame points, but the game had been so quick that nobody had managed to build up a significant monument presence. Joe rolled a Disaster on monuments right away, which made it even more difficult for the other players to overcome Janet's early lead as their Monument holdings crashed and burned. The Era raced along, and when it came to Joe's turn, he had a difficult choice. He rolled 2 suns, which would end the game if he did nothing, then sat and calculated all the scores, and concluded that he would come in second if the game ended. If he kept rolling the game might not end, but he was so far behind Janet he thought he could never catch up, but Darin might sneak into second. Joe concluded that the best result was to take a certain second place.... but then decided to roll the dice anyway and let Ra decide!

Ra concluded that enough Ra Dice had been played so far this year, and the game ended. Joe, as he had calculated, got second place with 23, and Janet got the victory at a walk with a score of 32. Darin was not far back of second at 19, and Riley came fourth with 13.

Congratulations to Janet Ottey, the new champion of Ra Dice!