Assante Adds WBC Title to PBEM Win!

Congratulations to long-time regular, and 2023 PBEM champion, Michael Assante, who finally broke through and won this event at WBC. He was joined in the final by another long-time regular in Andrew Norgren, two-time defending champion Carl Chauvin, and three-time champion Allan Jiang. AJ also deserves congratulations for taking over the all-time lead in Through the Ages laurels thanks to his third place finish this year. He and GM Randy Buehler have over 300 laurels each just from this event, and a 100+ point lead on the rest of the field.

AJ almost left Randy on top for another year as he lost the first Heat to newcomer Alex Majlaton. However, AJ won his second Heat and then got his revenge against Majlaton in the Semifinal. Carl’s path through the Semifinal went through Randy and was the only tabletop game played in that round as the vast majority of players continue to opt into the much easier bookkeeping that comes from playing the game through the app, while still gathered around a table with each other, of course.

Final

Mike got to go first and began the game with Library of Alexandria and Ashoka. His first big move was paying fully 3 actions for an early copy of Iron, which was one of the first Age 1 cards off the deck. AJ had the early military lead thanks to a trio of Swordsmen, and was able to invest in Alchemy, but with no tactic he couldn’t leverage his brief lead into any value. As Age 2 dawned, Carl was on top of military despite being in the 4th seat thanks to a clutch Heavy Cav. Mike was in last but was able to stay close enough that it didn’t hurt him as he built infrastructure, following up his early Iron with a pair of Alchemists and then a Monarchy. A late Great Wall combined with two legions worth of warriors then catapulted Mike into the lead on strength early in Age 2.

Age 2 saw Andrew take the early culture lead thanks to Michaelangelo plus Hanging Gardens and, eventually, Organized Religion. Mike continued to invest successfully in infrastructure with an Ocean Liner as well as Riflemen to upgrade his warriors.

As Age 3 began AJ played Classic Army to give him the strength lead. He was 30 culture behind the leaders and 15 behind 3rd, but that’s nothing in this game if you can successfully leverage a military advantage.

Age 3 was witness to a fairly normal arms race. Mike managed to tread the needle of winning a nice colony, Developed Territory II, while still having the defense cards he needed to defend himself from a pair of aggressions. Meanwhile Andrew was the one starting to fall behind in strength while AJ remained well back in culture.

Andrew took a War over Technology from Carl on the chin, losing Warfare and 5 lightning bulbs, but he still remained in first on both culture and culture rate. The next set of turns, however, saw all 3 of the other players declare war on him. Facing 2 Culture Wars and a Hybrid War, but with just one card left in the deck Andrew did not think he was completely out of the game so he played on. Military strength as the wars resolved saw Andrew at 32 with AJ at 45, Carl at 42, and Mike at 48. Andrew used two defense cards to defend an aggression from AJ, but then after that it was open season with Carl immediately resolving a Plunder on him that let Carl build Fast Food Chains.

The culture as Age 4 began and the last war resolved stood at 96 for Mike, 41 for Andrew, 71 for AJ, and 92 for Carl. Mike won a Wealthy Territory in his last turn and used it to build a couple of Operas and push his culture rate to 15 and total to 111. Andrew couldn’t manage much after that Plunder. AJ seeded an impact on his last turn and then Carl used his final political phase for a Raid against Andrew. Those rocks turned into a United Nations for 16, but he didn’t have a particularly exciting impact to resolve, choosing Impact of Industry for +4 relative to Mike but -2 to AJ and -10 versus Andrew.

Going into the final impacts the score was quite close: those two late wonders from Carl had staked him to a 126-113 lead over Mike, with AJ on 91 and Andrew at 69. However, the first impact, Impact of Harmony, favored Mike over Carl 16-8. Mike made up 5 more points on Impact of Strength and the two players were in a dead heat with just one impact left to reveal. Carl won Impact of Wonders 13-12 but wait! Mike has Bill Gates! The 6 end game points from Gates gave Mike a 5-point win 162-157-127-88. It was a tight, well-played game all the way around and in the end Carl came up just short of his 3rd straight win, with Michael Assante covering himself in the glory instead.