Klayder Sails to Victory!

Highlights from Heats

Typical to Ra The Dice Game tournament history, 172 different people participated. With the grace of so many players bringing a copy of Ra the Dice Game (RDG) with some even brining multiple copies and 2 homemade copies, only a few players had to be turned away across all Heats.

Lynda Shea was a hero showing up right at the end of sign-in and offering to run to her hotel room to get her copy of the game. This prevented me from having to turn the last few players away, but I was a little worried about the table finishing on time. They in fact finished before a good 10% of tables and when I saw their score sheet I knew why. The scores were 26 (Dominic Blais), 20 (Trip Buchanan), 18 (Lynda), and 12 (Mitchel Shore). So, the majority of the table rolls were suns!

This was my first year GMing anything at WBC. I stepped up when Sky notified the director that he wouldn’t be able to attend this year. Signing people in and assigning tables during Heat 1 was a bit of a hot mess. But by the time we got to the last Heat, I think we got a smooth system going. I couldn’t have done it without my two official AGMs Chris Kizer and Bowen Niu and my unofficial AGMs who stepped up: Ashley May, John Corrado, Hsiu-Ping Liu, Jeff Wu, and Donna Griffin.

At the end of 4 Heats, there were 75 unique winners with all winners eligible to advance.

Highlights from Quarterfinal

Sticking with tradition, many winners did not attend the Quarterfinal, likely due to conflicts with other games. For example, 1 of the 2 triple-winners, Sarah Morgen, did not attend. I hope Ra brought them luck with whatever they played instead! The other triple-winner Mark Love was delighted to take his bye to the Semifinal. An additional 3 byes were given to randomly selected double-winners: Claire Kaltman, Katie Kolt, and Tonja Stocks. Claire, who made a beautifully embroidered copy of RDG, waited on the sideline of the Quarterfinal working on some fiber crafts. Interestingly none of the players with byes ended up advancing to the Final.

Your GM made it to the Quarterfinal at a table with Cyril Tircuit, Chris Greenfield, and Randy Buehler. Cyril won by striking off on his own when building monuments rather than bogging himself down in the columns that were shared by Chris, Randy and me. Cyril, Chris, and I were a rowdy set of players with Randy being a good sport about the loud energy we brought to the table. Randy and I tied for 2nd and in true Mets fan fashion, Chris finished last.

One of the Quarterfinal tables did have a tie for 1st that had to be decided by random die roll. While somewhat appropriate given that this is a dice game, if I GM RDG again, I would like to institute a tiebreaker for Quarterfinal onwards. I think the fairest tie breaker would be the player with fewest turns. After that, I think the most practical would be most monument points. It will be easy to recalculate those points at the end of the game, and most winning strategies already include playing monuments at least somewhat. But I’m open to suggestions!

The 12 quarterfinal winners plus the 4 byes all advanced to fill out the 16 player Semifinal.

Highlights from Semifinal

Paul Klayder won the tightest of the semifinal games. The scores were Paul 31, Rob Kircher 30, Katie Kolt 29, and Peggy Ng 28!

Chris Wildes had the biggest margin of victory at the table of Chrises and Tonja. The scores were Chris Wildes 37, Chris Houle 30, Chris Trimmer 23, and Tonja Stocks 18.

Bill Carrigan bested Claire Kaltman (2nd), Darin Murphy (3rd), and Brian Litman-Smith (4th) to advance to the Final.

While he did not advance, I think Mark Love was the player who most embraced the spirit of RDG. As I walked around the Semifinal tables, he enthusiastically told me the table rolled a disaster on turn 2. And the disasters kept on coming. By the end, there were 6 disasters, and Mark rolled 4 of them! One of the disasters I observed were used to de-flood 2 boats that were at the 11 point mark. If I return as GM, I want to institute an award for rolling the most disaster throughout the tournament. Sadly, the number of times Mark called on Ra to strike down his opponents was not enough to win. The final scores were Cyril Tircuit 38, Daniel Ottey 35, Mark Love 29, and Zacary Morris 27.

Final

The 4 finalists were Bill Carrigan, Chris Wildes, Cyril Tircuit, and Paul Klayder.

Epoch 1

The first epoch saw most players traveling down the Nile. Paul traveled the furthest and earned 6 points for his boats. Cyril was the only player not on the river. Cyril guided the table through scoring the epoch and accidentally skipped over boats. His fellow players jovially corrected this oversight. Instead of boats, Cyril focused on placing 5 monuments and 4 civilizations. Chris found himself with a commanding lead of the pharaoh track. Bill unfortunately found the dice wanting him to focus on suns but only 1 or 2 at a time. However, he did place a monument, get a few boat points, and avoid the no civ penalty. The scores at the end of the epoch were Cyril 24, Chris 21, Paul 19, and Bill17.

Epoch 2

Early in the epoch, Paul flooded the river to lock in more boat points. Cyril continued his focus on monuments including a turn of rolling entirely monuments and ankhs to place 3 monuments at once. The monuments and score track suffered a localized earthquake (dice were accidentally dropped). Luckily, rebuilding was swift and accurate with recent historical records (photos on my phone). Bill continued advancing the round with his suns. Although he was able to call on Ra to invoke a disaster among the monuments. On the final turn of the epoch, Bill’s first roll included a sun. Chris joked, “Wouldn’t be Bill’s roll without a sun” which was immediately followed by a 2nd sun to end it.

The epoch concluded with small score increases for everyone but Paul. He was able to score 9 points for boats and overtook Chris for 5 points on pharaohs. The scores at this stage were Paul 33, Cyril 25, Chris 23, and Bill 21. While Paul led in points, he was weak in end-game monument points. If monuments were scored as they were then, Paul would have only had 3 points to Chris’ 8 and Cyril’s 15. So, the game was not yet decided.

Epoch 3

The final epoch moved the fastest, despite Bill having an unusual turn where he rolled no suns! Paul continued to cash in on his boat strategy by flooding and advancing 2 spaces during the epoch. Chris rolled a disaster that struck down monuments. But Cyril was determined to be the most prolific builder and replaced his 2 destroyed monuments in the very next turn. Bill also went after placing monuments and eventually had 3 in a single column.

When the dice returned to Chris, his first roll included 2 suns that would have ended the game. But seeing he wouldn’t win the game with his roll; he opted to use a reroll. He ended up rolling a 3rd sun earning him 3 points but also allowing Cyril another turn.

However, Chris’ final roll also allowed him to advance on the pharaoh track. This resulted in a triumvirate of Pharaohs Bill, Chris, and Paul. They all maxed out the pharaoh track leaving Cyril only 4 spaces behind them. The next turn proved to be the final with Cyril rolling 2 suns by the end of his rerolls.

Everyone but Cyril scored 5 points from pharaohs and Cyril lost 2 points. Cyril was further dinged as the only player not to build a civilization thus losing 5 more points. On the river, only Paul managed to flood. His investment paid off with 11 points! Paul also managed to get in 2 more monuments for a total of 5 points. Bill finished with 6 monument points. Chris only managed to add 1 more monument for a total of 9 points. In no surprise, Cyril led monuments with 20 points.

Bill’s lack of actions from consistently rolling an awkward number of suns landed him in 4th place. However, he could still rejoice having earned WBC wood for advancing all the way to the Final. Despite Cyril’s impressive monument score, the 7-point differential from pharaohs and Civilations was too big a loss so he finished in 3rd. Chris’ 8-point, final turn of scoring 3 suns and maxing out pharaohs let him eek past Cyril by just 2 points. Meanwhile Paul took home the victory with 54 points and a 14-point margin over Chris! Part of Paul’s success was being the only one to dominate the river with a whopping 26 points from boats throughout the game.

The final scores were Paul 54, Chris 40, Cyril 38, and Bill 32

Closing

Thank you to the 172 of you who made time to play this silly game that I adore. And thank you for your kindness and grace while learning how to run this tournament by doing.