Wolff Triumphs In Beyond The Sun!

At table A, the game lasted a long time because it was difficult to achieve specialization and the wrong technologies were drawn for Agility. Finally, Jack Wolff was able to complete Agility and with the 4 points in Transcendence, go on to win comfortably from the fourth position.

At table 2, Ryan Feathers had an astounding 10 points in automation to edge out Curt Collins II by 1 point.

At table 3, Sceadeau D’Tela using the technology strategy from position 2, beat the colonization effort from Jason Leggett.

At table 4, Mathew Leverman and Sam Wolff’s technology game beat Craig Trader’s colonization game. Mathew’s 10 points in colonized planets was enough to edge out Sam’s pure technology game.

In the Final, Ryan Feathers bid 4 points to be second seat and Sol (extra dude), Sceadeau D’Tela bid 3 to go third and 2 extra ore, Mathew Reverman bid 1 for going first and 1 extra ship, and Jack Wolff took fourth position and the Disciples. The blue and green technologies first level were dealt in the 1st and 4th slots and the achievements drawn were Strategist and Agility. Mathew and Jack chose to start with the green technology while Ryan and Sceadeau chose the blue technology. The crucial moment in the game came in the third round when Ryan decided to uncover the Technocrat’s Guild. He later stated that he was gambling to draw the Quantum Data Exchange (QDE), which then would allow him to use the Technocrat’s Guild the next turn. Perhaps he was feeling behind and felt he needed to gamble because he drew Human Experiments as the first level 2 technology. However, this gamble backfired and the Technocrat’s Guild was used 4 times (once with QDE) before Ryan was able to use it. Sceadeau D’Tela was having a great streak, he discovered the Hypercomputing, Hivemind Computing and then finally Metahuman Chambers to claim the first Agility Achievement. Ryan soon claimed the second Agility Achievement. On the bottom part of the board, Mathew Reverman discovered the all important Quantum Data Exchange and both he and Jack were taking advantage of the powerful tech. Also on the bottom of the board was the powerful Subatomic Fabrication.

The game came quickly to an end, lasting only 11 rounds despite the blue and green technologies being separated. Jack Wolff won with 45 points despite having only 1 point in achievements. He made up for the lack of achievement points by accumulating 9 automation points and having more level 2 and 3 technologies researched. Jack also did not have a turn where he generated no points. Mathew came in second with 40 points. He claimed the first Transcendence and the Strategist achievements. But he used two non-point generating turns (perhaps) to get the Strategist achievement, which in the end was costly. Sceadeau had 6 points in achievements (2nd transcendence and Agility) but did not colonize a planet (unlike his opponents who all had 1) and ended up with 38 points (and one non-point generating turn). Ryan’s gamble caused him to take a non-point generating turn on turn 4 and was late to the two achievement to generate only 4 points in achievements and a final score of 33.

Curt Collins II claimed 5th place due to his 1 point loss to Ryan in the Semifinal and Sam Wolff claimed 6th place due to his 5 point loss to Mathew in his Semifinal.

Jack Wolff was delighted to also win the 1st place prize of the Beyond the Sun expansion donated by Rio Grande games.

The 3-player heats worked wonderfully to reduce the play time, though there was a moment when we thought we didn’t have enough copies of the game. I plan to keep the same format going forward. Having the same “visible” setup in the Semifinal was enlightening and I will probably expand it to the Heat.

I want to thank all the people who stepped up when it wasn’t clear that I would be able to attend the 2025 WBC. Thanks to Eric Freeman for organizing the relief GM effort and Erik Mooney for running the excellent demo. I also want to thank my wife Hsiu-Ping Liu who helped tremendously by her meticulous organization.