WBC 2010 Days 2 and 3 Summary

Sunday involved sleeping in until 11am and then heading out with Robb and Pounder to a nearby game store that has open gaming tables. Once there we played two games of Dungeon Lords and then had to leave when they closed.

We returned to the hotel and tried to sign up for WBC. We bought week passes which start on Monday and they were afraid we'd try to use our week pass to play in a pre-con on Sunday, so they told us to come back at 7 to pick them up. We just sat down at a table and played Hansa Teutonica. 7pm came, and the registration room had a padlock on the door. Oops?

So we went to eat at the Asian Bistro, and when we came back registration was open again and we picked up our badges. Then we played another game of Hansa Teutonica, met up with Daniel (guy who taught us Notre Dame 3 years ago!), and played a game of Le Havre.

Waffle House followed with a chocolate chip waffle, and then sleep.

Monday featured sleeping in until 1pm. This is not a good pattern for actual WBC, since I intend on playing things at 9am. Maybe. At any rate, we went to the open gaming library and pulled out a game to learn. Robb taught Pounder and I how to play Havana, which is apparently a card game version of Cuba which is a game none of us had ever played. We played 3 times and decided the game was not much fun and I doubt I'll ever play it again.

This took us to 4pm, which was the start of the San Juan event. The format here is you play 4 rounds and everyone with 3 wins advances to the single elimination bracket. I won my first two games pretty handily and then lost round 3.

Round 3 I was paired up against a young girl. As I was shuffling up to start Andy Latto came by and told both of us we'd drawn a difficult opponent, which turned out to be very true. She played a near optimal purple building game, and I had a decent Zumft game, which resulted in a 12 point loss.

So I had to win the 4th round to advance. When the game ended we ended up with exactly 40 points each (32+palace) and exactly 2 cards in hand which is the first tiebreaker. Second tiebreaker was number of buildings built which I won 12 to 11, so it was a very close game but I pulled it out. It turned out my opponent had a way to win for sure, but it involved prospecting into something cheap and good and he didn't want to risk doing so and having me dig deeper for the 1 palace in the deck which was my only way to come back. Turned out it was in my hand already, and the top of the deck was the exact card he needed, so it would have worked. It's unclear if he should have risked it or not.

30 people ended up advancing, which meant 15 games in the first SE round and then someone got a bye in the round of 16. (Preferentially to former champions.) I built a chapel fairly early in my round of 32 game and then played builder chicken with my opponent. He was going for a zumft strategy so he kept counciloring with a prefecture, often going above 7 cards with me at 8. So I just took null actions instead of building for him (I crafted once to give us each an inidigo, I sold once when I had no goods and he did...) and kept dropping things into my chapel. My hand was terrible so this was letting me cycle to try to find the statues which was my plan to win. Eventually he decided I was putting too much under the chapel and tried to accelerate to game end but it was too late. I'd found the buildings I wanted and ended up with a triumph bogen and a city hall to go with my 10 card chapel for a score of 55. People commented on how this was the highest score they'd seen, but Robb had scored 70 in round 3 earlier in the day.

I won my round of 16 match as well, with the game ending at near identical boards. You could match up 10 of our buildings exactly (library, smith, prefecture, zumft, indigo, silver, sugar, 3 tobacco/coffee) but I had an extra indigo and an archive. My opponent had nothing in those slots.

The quarterfinals featured a match against Rob Flowers (the El Grande GM). He went for a purple building strategy that didn't quite come home. I went for a Zumft strategy that did. (I built a turn 2 library and then after a turn had a hand of palace, city hall, Zumft, indigo.) After building the Zumft and palace and a couple silvers he was basically done.

The semifinals were against Bruce Reiff, a former champion and the guy who was running the show. He built a turn 1 gold mine which gave him a prefecture right away. I built tobacco which eventually dug me into a library. His second gold mine pull revealed both Zumfts, so it was a purple building day for both of us. We both pulled off pretty decent purple games, with Bruce using a crane at the end to go with his library+prefecture+carpenter combo and me using library+quarry+carpenter. I eventually did build a Zumft for 4 and a city hall for 10, but Bruce used the crane to bust out a late palace and triumph bogen that he otherwise couldn't have afforded. He had also been chapeling for a good chunk of the game (ending with 4 under it I believe) and won the game by 2 points. It was definitely close and I think we both played near optimally. The big difference was the early gold mine proc for prefecture. I've said it before and I'll say it again... I hate gold mine.

So, I ended up either 3rd of 4th depending on if Bruce won the finals or not. The other semifinal loser was the young girl who beat me in round 3. I was hoping for revenge in the finals but it was not to be.

Afterwards we went to the Texas Roadhouse where they gave me a menu featuring an 18 oz t-bone that they actually didn't have in stock. Boo! I ended up getting some other large steak. If you're going to eat breakfast, lunch, and supper all at once at 9pm you should make it count!

We returned to the hotel and learned to play Factory Manager and Mystery Express. Factory Manager is the new Power Grid which is actually a lot different and pretty fun. Mystery Express is a Clue variant that seemed like fun but maybe not the right game to play at 2 in the morning. Oh well.

Waffle House followed, though since I had eaten a big steak a couple hours ago I only had a large order of hashbrowns with ham cubes inside. Very greasy!