Emerick Adds 2nd WBC Title To Go With Two PBeM Wins!

Thanks to everyone for playing and making my first time GM’ing this event go as smoothly as possible. Next year, I’m going to see how having a three heat event would do. The plan is to keep it as a Friday and Saturday event still. We may also be playing with a new map next year, but feel free to reach out to me if you have any strong feelings about this. A lot of it will depend on how much Rio Grande games is willing to work with me. This year we recorded the Final and we will be posting them to a dedicated channel asap.

Heats

Heat 1 had 48 players for 12 tables and Heat 2 had 36 players for 9 tables.

Semifinal

We had 18 players with at least 1 win. 15 of those winners checked in, so we barely scraped by again. We had 3 double winners this year. Of those double winners, Robb Effinger was the only one who managed to make it to the Final. Joining him this year were Dominic Blais, Eric Mooney, and Andrew Emerick.

Final

The Final started with Andrew in first seat, Erik in second, Dominic in third, and Robb in fourth. All players were able to build in two cities, though Erik seemed to get the best of the situation by being the only player able to get two cities in the same province with none of the other players riding his coat tails. Dominic and Robb both made a play for the brick city in Corsica, but with neither of them taking the accompanying Wheat city the province became a desert of production and did not produce for the entire game.

The first rounds of Senator were a Mason and Diplomat for Erik, a Mercator and Colonist for Robb, a Farmer and Prefect for Andrew, and an Architect and Consol for Dominic. After the last buy from Dominic, the row got clogged with a Smith and Vintner filling the first two slots. The game continued with players expanding throughout the board. Erik had planned out an incredible and uncontested route throughout the Northwest section of the map, locking down all three cities in Venitia. Andrew managed to slow him down shortly before he was able to go South, picking up two wheats from others’ flips along the way.

During the midgame, Andrew realized his board situation was both a blessing and a curse. Not having the most valuable resource meant that most of his resources were generated by other players' Prefect’s. However, when he did need to produce, he was almost certainly giving other players much needed resources.

The card row finally opened up when Dominic played his Consol, with everyone copying the card afterwards with a Diplomat except for Andrew, who used his Senator to take two cards. After all these cards were taken, Smith and Weaver continued to clog up the card row and buying cards remained just as expensive as it was before the buys.

Deep into the late game when there were five cards left and players had placed most of their buildings, player strategies seemed to be coming to light. Erik was playing a more condensed game of many cities in the same province while Andrew was doing the opposite. Dominic was somewhere in the middle, while Robb was onto “Plan C” in his own words, which seemed to mean he was going for as high a Colonist and Mercator score as possible.

As the game winded down, it became obvious that Erik and Andrew were the two players vying for first place. Dominic and Robb’s buildings had just not paid off as much as they expected. Erik decided to go all in and end the game, hoping his empire was enough. However, Andrew’s empire was just too vast and won with a 4 point lead.Final Scores:

1. Andrew Emerick: 131
2. Erik Mooney: 127
3. Dominic Blais: 116
4. Robb Effinger: 111