Master Art takes on increased importance.
We will again be using the Immediate-Discard House Rule for
Master Art which was introduced at the 1998 event. (The buyer
may immediately discard upon purchasing the Master Art advance.
Subsequent purchases occur during the Buy Card Phase.)
Advancement to the Semi-final Round will be handled somewhat
differently this year. Rather than all 2nd place finishers having
a shot at a Semi-final Round slot before any 3rd place finishers,
there will be no distinction between 2nd and 3rd place. What
will matter is your percentage of the 1st place total at your
table. This means the leader is always the #1 target.
Of the 35 games played in 1998, the average bid was between
2 and 3, while the position with the most wins was a tie between
Barcelona and London at eight apiece, followed by Venice at seven,
Paris at six, Genoa at four and Hamburg with two.
Individual games saw such spine-tingling drama as Rob Kircher's
Barcelona playing Piracy on itself when in the lead; Harald Henning's
London scoring 3070, the result of 3 Wool cards played with most
wool provinces held; Jim Stanard's Barcelona allocating -31 tokens
to preserve a silk shortage prior to playing Silk; Eric Eshleman's
Paris getting Cathedral on turn 3; and Mark Gidding's London
skillful play of War, which catapulted it into a permanent lead.
In the finals, Mark Gidding's London prevailed with an aggressive
game, including an overland route to the East (thanks to a Hamburg/Paris
feud) and an astonishing number of Epoch 3 leaders.
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