With the release of another new edition of Great Western Trail shortly after WBC 2023, our tournament added another edition in Great Western Trail New Zealand. Since its release, the New Zealand edition has become quite popular, quickly replacing and surpassing the previously released edition Great Western: Argentina. Throughout all of the heats a mixture of 2nd edition and the New Zealand edition were played. A total of 23 tables were played in the Heats, with 8 being New Zeeland tables and 16 being 2nd edition tables. From the feedback I've gotten, New Zealand definitely has created some new/renewed interest in the game and led to a lot of past winners and finalists playing Heats of it over the 2nd edition. It will be interesting to see as people play this edition more as time goes on and figure out if it has the potential to become the preferred edition over the 2nd edition.
There were 16 unique winners this year, with one triple winner (our previous champion Randy Buehler), and 3 double winners. Two alternates were needed for the Semifinal. Once again, the Semifinal was a star studded field of past champions and finalists. 2nd edition was the edition played for the Semifinal and Final. Tony Alfieri took out past champion and GM Dalton Versak and previous year finalist Patrick Maguire.
Randy Buehler also returned again to the Final to defend his previous year's title. He and Tony were joined in the Final by former finalist Nick Henning and first time finalist Imran Arkham. Despite being newcomers to the Great Western Finals Tony and Imran are very experienced Great Western players who've been familiar (and successful) faces over the past few years at Great Western tournaments.
Following up last year's tight Final, our 2024 group had a much bigger spread for this year's Final. The bids came in fairly low with five for first from Randy, two for second from Nick, two for 3rd from Imran, and zero for 4th from Tony. The initial board setup was a bit awkward for all of the main strategies. There was a lack of hazards and an abundance of bandits which both helps and hurts builder strategy, both of the main train moving buildings were at the very beginning of the loop which leads to an awkward late loop for engineer strategy, and the cow building was at the last space before delivery and the personal cow market building was not in the game hurting cowboy strategy.
Randy, Nick and Tony all bought a single builder the first loop. After that, no more builders flipped until 4 loops in the mid game. So, it turned into an engineer and cow game. Nick and Imran went cowboys, while Randy and Tony went engineers. Randy and Tony fought each other over the station masters, and neither was able to ring the bell and maximize station delivery points. Nick and Imran both scored significant Cow points; however, Nick was also able to buy a lot of hazards and complete several objective cards as a strong second act. Much of this Nick attributes to his cow shuffler building placement at the beginning of the desert. This allowed him to speed his loop up and give him flexibility in the middle of his loop to buy hazards. In the end Nick's hazard buying was able to propel his strategy and earn a well fought victory, 83 pts to Imran's 68 pts, Randy's 67 pts, and Tony's 58 pts.
I also wanted to give shout outs to Chad Weaver, Alexander Goddard and especially Jordyn Sky Felici for helping a first time GM out with taking players badge numbers, randomizing tables and getting games started and finished in a timely manner. It was greatly appreciated! As a veteran of the tournament, it was certainly a different experience running it this year. I learned a lot already from this year and am looking forward to running things smoother for WBC. Can't wait to see everyone out on the trail again next year!
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GWT Heats including Champion Nick Henning. |
Randy Buehler working his way to the Final. |
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Three smiles for the camera. |
Finalists with GM Dalton Versak. |
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