This year’s Final was a tense contest with none of the familiar faces making it to the Final.
Thomas Lind won by 2 points by just trailing the leader in each of the 3 score categories. Thomas was the only player in the Final with previous laurels in Puerto Rico, last in 2015! Matt Lahut has been in the tournament for a few years and finished second. At 3rd and 4th, Reid Barkell and Mycroft Sowizral were first time WBC attendees. With a 6 point spread from top to bottom, it was a very close game.
This year continued the format change with corn seats starting a coin down, University cost at 7 and Factory costing 8. An additional tie-breaker was added (best result overall) before using a die-roll. This resulted in no ties for players qualifying for the Semifinal at the critical 10 to 20 positions.
You can see a transcript of the game at https://www.playboardgamesbetter.com/2024/08/puerto-rico-tournament-wbc-2024/. A video of the game will also be added. The link will be on the page above.
Here is some analysis of the results:
This year, the distribution of finishes for each seat were:
End Phase I Player Boards |
Seat |
Wins |
Seconds |
Thirds |
Fourths |
1 | 9 | 6 | 14 | 16 |
2 | 5 | 13 | 15 | 11 |
3 | 18 | 9 | 10 | 8 |
4 | 13 | 18 | 5 | 8 |
Seat 3 still seems to have a serious advantages. Most, but not all, of the seat 3 wins were the result of a serious shipping engine. The 4 Semifinal games were each won by a different seat and the Final was won by seat 3, but only by 2 points.
The distribution of winning strategies showed a greater success for shipping over building. Roughly dividing the wins into three categories gave the following win counts
Winning Strategies |
Ship |
Mixed |
Build |
17 | 14 | 14 |
Games ends were triggered evenly between all the buildings and all the colonists, with just a couple of VP chip depletions:
Game End Triggers |
VP Ran Out |
Cannot Fill Boat |
Town Filled |
Unkown |
1 | 13 | 22 | 9 |
Several games listed as town filled also had the colonists run out before the round ended, or just checked both, a common occurrence.
Thanks especially to my assistant GMs, Rob Kircher and Marcy Morelli. Thanks to all my players for their support and patience, I look forward to seeing you next year!
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Action begins in Puerto Rico Heat. |
Aaron Birnbum and Eric Freeman in Heat action. |
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GM Richard Shay enjoying time to play. |
Finalists with GM Richard Shay |
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