Houle Surpasses 50VP in Winning the Championship!

The 2025 Space Base event continued its growing tradition of giving everyone an opportunity to have a lot of fun and take a shot at one last big wins on the last Saturday of WBC. The number of entrants (115) remained consistent, and everyone continued to enjoy a light-hearted yet competitive event that brought many a laugh. However, while consistency has its place, this year’s event also showed the need to make an important and I will acknowledge, overdue change for future Space Base events at WBC. More on this matter after the event report.

A total of 32 heat games were played resulting in 29 unique winners. The Semifinal was capped at 25 participants, and all players were alerted to the WBC points system to settle tiebreakers for qualification into the Semifinal. For better or worse, only a total of 24 people arrived for the Semifinal. So, any worry I may have had about having to use tiebreakers went away.

The Semifinal were all competitive. Three of the five had winning scores that were less than 5 points higher than the 2nd place finisher. Also, two of the five had multiple players exceeding the 40 VP threshold to trigger the end of the game. When the Semifinal was done, Tyler Houle, Tom McCorry, Alex Schlosser, Andrea Johnshon, and Bryan Roeper emerged victorious and headed to the Final table.

In the Final, Andrea got off to a fast start by scoring a quick 5 VP’s after she rolled a 9 on her first turn. She decided that 9 would be her focus and started to build up that slot on her board. Tyler also started to focus on his 9-slot with his first play while Tom scored a couple of early VP’s and built his 5-slot.

Turn 2 saw some interesting plays as both Alex and Tom decided to hold on to their money, aka Energy, rather than buy a ship from the market. Andrea and Tyler helped Tom with their dice rolls on turn 2, scoring Tom a total of 3VP’s.

While Alex did score a VP on turn 3, and Tom scored 2 more VP’s thanks to Bryan’s roll this turn. Both continued to hold on to their money looking for bigger prizes. Those prizes finally came on turn 4 when Alex and Tom both acquired Level 3 ships, both in their respective 5-slots. Tyler switched his focus to VP cards and started to build his 7-slot, hoping to start cashing in on other players’ rolls.

The next two rounds saw continued jockeying for growth and scoring opportunities. After turn 6, scores were relatively close, and no one had yet started to make a hard run at the VP Colonies.

That all changed on turn 7. Tyler started the Colony race by buying the 8 VP colony. Tom followed up by showing Andrea some love by rolling a 9 and scoring her some VP’s. Tom then followed up by triggering his ability to swap his 4 and 10-slot cards, putting some scoring opportunities in a better place.

The remainder of the game saw all players either hold on to their money or buy a Colony card. Bryan snagged the 14VP card on Turn 10 and Tyler immediately followed up by realizing he was one money short of buying the Colony he needed to win the game, so he decided to pass and hoped that he would get one last chance to get the Colony he needed. Fortunately for Tyler, no one else was able to get ahead of him on the last turn and he finished off his victory on turn 11 buying the 13VP Colony and launching himself to a final total of 52VP’s!

It was an entertaining and exciting Final game. Thanks to everyone who played in that game and in the event as a whole. However, as I mentioned earlier, it became clear that a key change is necessary going forward to make Space Base the most enjoyable event it can be. The Level 3 Ship UES Gordon, causes all other players to lose 4VP’s or 3 VP’s depending on if has been flipped or not, creates a very negative play experience, especially as this event utilizes the Lightspeed Variant. With the Lightspeed Variant if this card is in the opening Level 3 market, a player can choose to hold on to all 15 of their starting money with the hope of going first and buying this card on turn 1. This results in very negative play experiences for the other players at the table. As a result, the UES Gordon will NOT be allowed in the Level 3 deck for future Space Base events at WBC, at least the future events that I’m the GM for. I believe this decision will only make the event more enjoyable (or at least less not-enjoyable) for everyone.

Thanks again to all 115 of you that participated in the Space Base event this year. I look forward to more fun in 2026!