Title Stays With The Wolff Family!

Euphrat & Tigris returned again as a Legacy event, drawing 35 players over two Heats. The event again used a rules variant to balance the advantage of the first two players. Instead of their normal two actions, the first two players received one action for the first turn only. This year, the Archer had the best results, with 6 wins, including the Final (spoiler!).

Two qualifying Heats drew 35 players on 11 four-player boards. Copies of the game were in short supply, and we needed two volunteers to sit out the second Heat. The Semifinal consisted of 11 winners joined by 5 runners up, for 4 four-player games. With the event’s long history, the Semifinal were chocked full of past winners.

In the first Semifinal, defending champion Ray Wolff (9-9-10-17) edged Rob Flowers (9-9-9-10), with Eric Freeman(6-6-7-8) in third.

In the next Semifinal, Sam Wolff’s (8-8-8-9) balanced score beat Patrick Shea (7-8-9-12), even after Patrick benefitted from a late successful defense against Craig Moffitt (5-6-7-9).

In the third Semifinal, Matt Amitrano (8-8-13-15) defeated Tony Bosca (7-7-10-10) and Aaron Fuegi (7-7-7-12) to advance.

In the last Semifinal, newcomer Itamar Hochboim (9-10-15-15) defeated last year’s runner-up Robert St. Pierre (9-9-11-11).

In the Final, Ray Wolff (Lion) and Sam Wolff (Archer) chose their dynasties first. Matt Amitrano (Bull) and Itamar Hochboim (Potter) took the remaining seats.

In the first four rounds, a variety of Kingdoms emerged. In the east, Sam (King+Trader) and Itamar (Farmar+Priest) quickly grew towards the center. Itamer’s remaining leaders (King+Trader) were cramped in the southwest. In the south, Matt grabbed a quick treasure by himself with his King+Trader. In the northwest, Ray (King+Trader+Priest) was joined by Sam (Farmer). At the end of this round, Itamer’s temple placement brought the two mixed Kingdoms into crisis, only 1-space apart.

The tension remained for two full turns, with no player ready to risk the multi-player merger. Instead, Kingdoms grew incrementally, with both Sam and Matt gaining another treasure. Ray also added his Farmer to Matt’s southern Kingdom.

Finally, on turn 7, Ray decided he couldn’t win a merger, so he instead relocated his trader and dislodged Sam’s Trader in a revolt, adding 5 extra temples. However, this split the eastern Kingdom and he couldn’t legally relocate into the vacated 2-support nook.

On his next turn, Ray built the Black/Red monument in the northwest corner. Ray’s control didn’t last, though, after Itamar merged the nearby Kingdom and added 3 temples to win the Priest war. Then, Itamar built his own Blue/Red monument in the delta. This set the stage of a violent and consequential round 9.

In round 9, Sam merged the Kingdoms and won Blue (3+3 to 2+1) against Itamar, and Black (5+0 to 1+1) against Ray, before yielding on to Ray on Green. However, this left Ray’s victorious Trader vulnerable, and Sam dislodged it using a revolt (2+2) to (1+0) on his second action.

Immediately following, having seen Ray just fail to defend needing three temples, Matt knocked the defending champion’s last leader off the board with a revolt (2+2 to 1+0). Then, in a rare move, Itamar placed a temple without scoring to provide a home for his King next to the monument.

In round 10, Sam merged the top Kingdoms and won Black and Blue wars, gaining a treasure and again wiping Ray off the board. In the south, Matt mopped up Itamer’s long cramped Trader in a merge, but was not able to claim the treasure, leaving 3 remaining. Then, Ray won a Priest revolt against Itamar and got 2 extra red cubes from the monuments. Itamar tried to get revenge with a Trader revolt against Matt but lost when they both revealed 3 temples.

On round 11, Sam merged Matt’s southern Kingdom with the southwest treasure, giving him a green cube and a treasure, but ending the game. In the final tally, Sam’s (6-6-9-10) warring resulted in 4 treasures to supplement 2 green cubes in his weakest color. Matt (4-5-6-8) and Ray (3-5-6-7) finished next, with Itamar (1-2-7-7) lacking treasures to balance his colors.

Next year, the 1/1/2/2 action rules variant will be kept. However, to allow automated Semifinal seeding, we may add a Heat and switch to the standard Heats: Most Wins - Points format with a new GM-specific tiebreaker.

The GM would like to thank everyone for his or her participation and is looking forward to another great event next year.