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Puerto Rico (PRO) WBC 2024 Event Report
Updated October 17, 2024
90 Players Thomas Lind Event History
  2024 Champion & Laurels
 

Thomas Lind Edges Out Some New Faces!

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
1961416
25131511
3189108
4131858

 

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
171414

 

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
113229

 

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!


 
2024 Laurelists Repeating Laurelists: 0
Lahut, Matt Barkell, Reid Sowizral, Mycroft Birnbaum, Aaron Platnick, David
2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
 
Action begins in Puerto Rico Heat. Aaron Birnbum and Eric Freeman in Heat action.
GM Richard Shay enjoying time to play. Finalists with GM Richard Shay
 
GM  Richard Shay [10th Year]