WBC 2008 -> Day 4

Prelude
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
PR Finals
Recap

So many nights in a row staying up late to play games is eventually going to catch up with you. The Queen's Gambit 'finals' were starting at noon and I wanted to play in that and nothing earlier really caught my eye so I decided to just sleep in until 11ish so I could shower and then Gambit it up.

Queen's Gambit - round of 16 - 12pm - I didn't make the cut to top 16 because for some reason the GM had me down in the 'doesn't own the game' pile so my win in my first round played wasn't good enough. Apparently several other people were in the wrong piles as well and after a little complaining the GM redid the standings. He was not happy about having to do this, especially since he obviously thought some of us were cheating. (Robb could have used my game in the first round, for example, and 'owned' a copy of the game.) I actually own a copy of the game and was the only one to use it so I didn't feel too bad about standing up for myself and getting into the top 16. I don't really agree with that rule as a tiebreaker but since it exists it should be used. (Especially since I’d bought a copy of the game partially because of the rule and certainly had only played one preliminary round because it was going to be good enough because of the rule.)

At any rate, they finally get things sorted out and I’m into the top 16. The really sad thing is we didn’t even use my copy of the game this round because they had enough copies already set up during the kerfuffle. I was matched up against Rob Flowers, the El Grande GM who is an all around nice guy. I bid 1 droid to play as the dark side and won the bidding. Rob took to the tactic of running everyone upstairs with window ledge movement and cleared out all my stuff up top. He eventually managed to get about 12 guards and Captain Panaka into the throne room, with Panaka in the door so I’d have to kill him to get at the guards. Both queens also made it up to the top floor. Unfortunately for Rob I won the Jedi battle handily and Darth Maul came a knocking. Maul eventually killed both queens and Panaka, opening the door for my destroyer droids to finally pour into the throne room and mop up the rest of the guards.

Queen’s Gambit – quarter-finals – 2pm – This time I played Dark Side for no cost, I think. This was an incredible close game, where I lost the Jedi battle but managed to kill an awful lot of guards in the early game. The game was winding down and my opponent got into a situation where he had Obi Wan, the fake queen, and a few guards alive. Obi Wan was running back and forth killing what few droids I was managing to get close to his guards, but due to card stacking (playing no cards one turn and then 4 the next to move droids) I was slowly able to kill them off. On the final turn of the game he only had 1 guard left and positioned Obi Wan in the wrong hex. One spot over and I wouldn’t have had a shot, but as it was if I’d played a move 8 spaces card I could just get into range for a shot. It was my next card, I ran up and took my 50% shot at the win and hit. Woo! It turns out his next card had the potential to win him the game. He rolled it out ‘just to see’ and would have won. (Of course, butterflies in Africa would have changed the roll so that proves nothing! Nothing I say!)

Queen’s Gambit – semi-finals – 4pm – For a change of pace I think I bid 1 guard to play light side this game. Why? I don’t know! At any rate, I managed to barely win the Jedi battle and ended up killing every single droid in the palace. I clogged up the entrance so my opponent could no longer move more droids in, so my palace setup was a guaranteed win. As soon as Anakin made it to the end of the track I would win and there was nothing my opponent could do to stop it. My opponent recognized this and conceded. A spectator (Larry Lingle, a previous champion) pointed out that he shouldn’t concede because I might just miss on every Anakin card I would play. My opponent couldn’t win, but maybe I’d get fantastically unlucky and I couldn’t win either.

Now, to make sure games end in 2 hours they put in a rule such that the dark side wins if time runs out. (Supposedly the light side is the better side, and also they’re the ones who can just stall out by not playing Anakin cards to try to get an advantage elsewhere.) It’s not the greatest rule but you need some way to make games end fast so I can’t really complain. The issue here is that if we keep playing and I whiff on every Anakin my opponent would win. Larry was strongly advocating my opponent take actions that couldn’t change the game position to waste time, and called over a GM to force my opponent to unconcede. The GM came over and ruled that the game could keep going if my opponent wanted it to. He seemed unsure but Larry kept badgering and the GM wasn’t trying to dissuade him so he gave in. We set the board back up and continued the game.

I should point out that when he conceded the first time there was over an hour left in the round and I basically just needed to win 4 coin flips in that hour. Of course in the time it took to decide to keep playing we’d wasted 20 minutes. It quickly became apparent, however, that my opponent had no interest in stalling out and was just trying to appease Larry. (My opponent was like 14 years old and didn’t look too happy to have adults and authority figures telling him he was wrong to have conceded. I honestly just stayed out of it for the most part because I knew I would win if we kept playing, no matter what Larry had to say about potentially getting unlucky.) He took no actions on his turn, basically just letting me cycle through my deck playing Anakin cards as fast as humanly possible. I won 5 minutes later.

It turns out my opponent had beaten Larry in the previous round, and therefore if he’d advanced Larry would have had a higher finish. Robb also pointed out when I told him what happened that this was Larry’s team game so he had a lot to gain by changing the outcome of my match. At the time I was a little annoyed that a random spectator was getting involved in the match but I was even more annoyed when I found out he had something to gain. (Especially since this wasn’t even something that could conceivably have mattered.) If there was 5 minutes left in the round, sure, advocate we keep playing. But we had more than half the round and I had a hard lock on the board and my opponent knew it. Oh well.

As a result of this incident I decided to never play light side again. You see, I play fast. I will sometimes pause to consider a rough choice but I tend to get a pretty good idea of the right plan and can follow it very quickly. It doesn’t matter how fast I play as light side if I get paired against a slow dark side opponent, or if they intentionally stall. Initially I didn’t think this would be a problem but since a former champion and the GM both strongly advocated intentionally stalling I decided I had no choice in the matter. I refuse to put myself in a situation where I need to call the GM over because my opponent is playing slow, and I refuse to lose as a result of not calling one. Therefore I will play dark side (despite it being the worst side) and I will play fast and the games will end. The only way a game won’t end if I play dark side is if my opponent is incredibly slow, and in that case I don’t mind that he loses.

Queen’s Gambit – finals – 6pm – I bid 1 to play dark side and win the bidding. (The fact I have to pay to play the weaker side is aggravating, but thems the breaks.) This game featured both of us rolling abysmally in the Jedi battle. Fortunately for me my droids in the palace were on complete fire. They should hit 50% of the time but were running over 90%. Eventually I generated enough bonus cards to win the Jedi battle and Darth Maul came out and cleaned out the palace. I’m pretty sure with my droids doing as much early as they did that I would have won easily even if I’d lost the Jedi battle. The fact I won it made it a foregone conclusion. It was probably my most lopsided match of the whole event. (Don’t get me wrong, my opponent played very well, the dice just came out strongly in my favour.)

Wits & Wagers – 8pm – This is a fun team trivia game run as a seminar so there’s no real prizes. It’s just an excuse to spend a couple hours having good times with good people. The trivia answers are also solely numbers, which I appreciate. Last year I teamed with Pounder, Robb, Lin, Rich Atwater (the Titan 2 GM) and some guy Lin met. This year Robb, Pounder and I resumed our coalition with Rich and two random dudes joined in. (There is a limited number of teams who can play but no limit to the number of people on each team!) Sorry I don’t remember your names, random dudes, but it was fun having you on our team!

We mostly picked out answers democratically, which unfortunately means that when the two random guys knew the answer and the rest of us thought we did but didn’t we ended up submitting the wrong answer. We had great success last year at this event, this year not so much. We got completely blown out, but we had fun and that’s all that matters!

Steak – 10pm – You may notice I very rarely mention food in this report. Sometimes I managed to sneak away between rounds and grab a hot dog or something, but for the most part games > food and we all know it. Pounder tries to make Robb and I eat when he can for our own good, but we all too often ignore him. At any rate, I’d played 8 straight hours of Queen’s Gambit and followed it up with the trivia game so I was starved. Someone had told Robb about a good actual restaurant that was likely still open downtown, so off we went. I had a nice steak; it was much needed and much appreciated. Of course the downside to this is Liar’s Dice started at 11 and there was no way we’d be back in time to play in it. I’ve always stated that I _will_ be the Liar’s Dice World Champion, but it seemed it would have to wait another year.

Liar’s Dice – 11:10pm – It turns out when hundreds of people show up to play an event it’s tricky to get them all going right at the start time. Games were in progress when we popped in to see what was up but the GM waved us over and said we could still join. The only downside is we’d have to play at the same table as each other, which is ok because clearly I’m better than Robb and Pounder at Liar’s Dice. Unfortunately it turns out the GM is better than all three of us and took us (and two other people) down rather quickly. Doh!

Imperial – 11:40pm – It’s not healthy to go to sleep so soon after eating (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) so we had to find something else to do before going to bed. Pounder expressed interest in learning Imperial and while I’d read the rules and had watched a game on BSW I’d never played so I was in for learning as well. This turned out to be a game in the ‘Rondel’ series. In this game there are 6 European countries vying for military and industrial power. The twist is the players don’t play the countries; instead they play investors who are backing the countries. Whoever has invested the most money in a country controls the actions they take on the country’s turn. Those actions can make the country better or make the investor’s in the country money. (This often worsens the country’s position.) It was an interesting game, but Pounder ended up having his initial countries bought up by Robb and me so he only got to make choices once every six turns. He turned out to have a winning strategy though, as he won by a fair margin. Having only played once I can’t say if that was an aberration or not, but any game where the winning strategy isn’t fun has problems.