Feathers Rides His Cows to Victory on the Trail!

Another WBC, another year on the Trail. This year saw an increase in unique players up to 50 (from 46 last year). This year a mixture of 2nd edition and the New Zealand edition were played in the Heats, and 2nd edition was played in the Semifinal and Final. For the second straight year 2nd edition proved to be the more popular choice for those on the Trail. New Zealand does have a solid, consistent group of players, though, consisting of many past and current finalists. A total of 25 tables were played in the Heats, with 8 being New Zealand tables and 17 being 2nd edition tables.

There were 20 unique winners this year, with one triple winner (2023 champion Randy Buehler), and 4 double winners. This year only one alternate was needed for the Semifinal. This year’s Semifinal featured many past finalists and champions. Ryan Feathers ended up defeating Micah McCormick, Jason Salganick and past champion and GM Dalton Versak. Current PBeM champion Dan Elkins defeated past champion Donte Saccenti, Thomas Lind, and Mike Brazinski. Ryan and Dan were joined in the Final by 2023 PBeM, and multi-time finalist Patrick Maguire. He defeated Charl Chauvin, Luke Koleszar and Ed Gilliland. Eric Wrobel also joined them in the Final by defeating past champion Randy Buehler, Jonathan Naylor and Luke McKinnes. Carl and Micah earned 5th and 6th place respectively for having the closest 2nd places in their Semifinal. All of our finalists are extremely experienced Great Western players who are regulars in the tournament.

The 2024 Final was characterized by a large spread between 2024 champion Nick Henning and the other finalists. This year’s Final was a much closer affair. There was minimal bidding this year with only Ryan bidding 3 points for first seat, and the other finalists bidding 0 points for second through fourth seats. With Bidding complete, turn order was set with Ryan going first, followed by Eric going second, Patrick going third, and Dan going fourth. The initial board state was quite interesting. To start, there was a distinct lack of engineers available to hire. The worker market was flooded with cowboys, which led three of the finalists to go cowboy strategy. The initial building setup also had both the personal cow market and the cow shuffler buildings, both of which lend themselves strongly to cowboy strategy. As for neutral buildings, the cow market was the second to last building on the trail, the building space was in the middle, as well as the hiring spot not giving a clear advantage to any of the main strategies.

With the initial set up, this was a clear cow game. Three of our finalists (Ryan, Eric, and Dan) ended up going cowboys, while Patrick ended up going builders. No engineers ended up coming out until the 4th hiring row which really inhibited train movement and claiming of stationmasters. Builders were also in short supply early too and Patrick had to be patient to hire the builders he needed. Ryan was able to use his turn order to get pace on Eric and Dan when it came to buying cowboys. He was also able to get out both of his personal cow buildings in ideal spots to set up a great cow buying and delivering loop. Ryan, Eric, and Dan all scored decent cow points, but sane amounts as they were all competing for them. Ryan was able to have some lucky well timed draws off his cow shuffler building. Twice he bought high value cows from the market and then immediately was able to trigger deck shuffles with his shuffler builder and then draw his high value cows right before delivering for the loop. This allowed him to do his 10-strength delivery second loop, and 12-strength delivery his 3rd. He was ultimately able to deliver to the 10 through 18 cities without having to go to KC twice. While Ryan was busy buying cows and making good deliveries, Patrick was able to get his 4-4-4 building out and eventually use it to claim all the station masters. This led to a tight game between Patrick and Ryan, but ultimately Ryan was able to hold off Patrick and prevail. Overall, his well-timed Cow draws, strong deliveries, and good objectives were enough to secure him a close win over Patrick, 87 pts to Patrick's 83 pts, to Eric’s 67 pts, and Dan's 50 pts.

I also wanted to thank Alexander Goddard and Erik Mooney for helping with setting up and getting things started during the Heats. It was greatly appreciated! Can't wait to see everyone out on the trail again next year!