The 2024 Advanced Civilization tournament had a strong showing this year, with a total of 28 unique participants (down from 35 participants in 2023), resulting in five total Heat games. An additional demo was held on the first Saturday (Jay Spencer graciously volunteered to do this demo), increasing visibility on the first weekend. The first Heat held two tables for a total of 15 players (table of 7 and table of 8 players), while the second Heat welcomed three tables for a total of 21 players (three tables of 7).
This year an optional rule was introduced into the Heat games. Water cards, borrowed from Mega Civilization, was added (only if all players at a table agreed to it). For those readers that are unaware, normally when you draw trade cards and a particular trade deck is empty, you get nothing. With the water card option, instead of getting nothing you get a zero-valued water card. This at least gives you something to trade with instead of being forced to use a higher valued card (since you have to trade at least three cards). However, in order to keep the backs of the cards consistent, entire decks from Mega Civ were used, which caused some confusion amongst the players since the use of the Mining advancement had to be used with non-traditional cards from the 6 and 8 decks in some games. All in all, a majority of players agreed that it was well worth trying out and agreed that if traditional trade card decks could be used with the addition of Water cards, it would be a welcome enhancement to future games. For reference, the Final did NOT use the Water cards, instead keeping a traditional cutthroat Final.
The only notes recorded by the Heat players this year was that Herb Heltzer requested he be called “Mr. Sunshine”, the fact that Nathan’s table “had actual napkin math during heat #2.”
Herb “Mr. Sunshine” also showed off his new board tokens: small wooden tokens, ships, and cities he had painstakingly made over the course of the previous year. Other game owners were indeed envious and asked him multiple times how long (and how much) it took to create them.
The 2024 Finalists included Jay Spencer (Iberia), Paul Sampson (Africa), Jennifer Visocnik (Crete), Shantanu Saha (Egypt), Roberto Fournier (Babylon), Nathan Barhorst (Assyria), Jon Anderson (Thrace), and Kevin Youells (Illyria). There were many familiar faces at this Final, and though gameplay itself was quite cutthroat, off board interactions were jovial, relaxed, and good natured.
In general, most of the game went relatively smoothly with little more than minor skirmishes. Until near the endgame, of course. It became apparent to most players that Babylon and Assyria were out of the running (my midgame Assyria had taken an unplanned bump on the AST and Babylon had taken 2 unexpected bumps, putting him 3 AST spaces behind the leaders), and attention focused on the remainder of players vying for the top spot. Thrace silently was about to win the game, when everyone, especially the brave and noble Africa, decided to pay them a visit and come to their house. After this onslaught wave of attacks, with the calamities that round, Thrace was soundly out of the top spot and the remaining players had to figure out who the next target was. Typically, there was a lot of finger pointing, claims of being behind on the AST, declarations that their trade card hand was crap…. The typical misdirection. In the end, it seems that the scramble to the top led to a narrow victory by nine points.
The final results were:
- Jay Spencer (Iberia) 4830
- Kevin Youells (Illyria) 4821
- Shantanu Saha (Egypt) 4466
- Nathan Barhorst (Assyria) 4340
- Jon Anderson (Thrace) 4323>/li>
- Paul Sampson (Africa) 4117
- Jennifer Visocnik (Crete) 3651
- Roberto Fournier (Babylon) 2723
|
|
|
Heat action with hand-made upgraded components. |
Finalists including GM Nathan Barhorst. |
|
Nathan Barhorst [6th Year] |
|
|
|