WBC Day Six

Thursday at the WBC feels like the tip of the mountain - you're right in the thick of things, but you know you are getting closer to the end of the con than the start. That said, I try to savor the experience as best I can.

The first game of the day was the final heat of Power Grid. This time it was Benelux, and I got put at a table with Bill Crenshaw, who I've played at least twice before in Power Grid and talked to about his game, Manifest Destiny. He's a tough Power Grid player, and I once again came in second, giving me two seconds and a first leading into tomorrow morning's semifinal. I'm pretty consistent at getting firsts and seconds in the heats in Power Grid - I think I had a similar record last year and got second in the semifinal to Raphael Lehrer on the Italy board. Tomorrow will be Korea, which I've never even played before...

After a snack, I entered Caylus and got assigned a table with my wife Bronwen and a guy named Jim who was a really fun opponent. He hadn't played Caylus in a few years, and I beat them pretty handily. (I hope Bronwen isn't going to ever read this... )

That was followed by two back-to-back games of Le Havre. The second heat had Grant Ladue, who I've played Wilderness War with and talked to on wargameroom.com, and two nice older guys who hadn't played very often. We ended up having to cut the game short, and since none of them cared to advance and they agreed I had a good set-up for the end game, they gave me the win. The second game was the semifinal with Mike Kaltman (who is also the GM of Caylus) and a guy who was in my Power Grid game earlier. We had a great, tight game, but Mike clearly knows the game well and got a well deserved win, mostly by building steel ships and luxury liners. I did the most shipping I've ever done in Le Havre, which was interesting, and took second. That should make me come in 5th or 6th overall...

I decided to forgo the second heat of Agricola because I didn't feel like playing a 5 player game. I went to the Lampeter room and signed up for the Saratoga tournament, which I often don't get to play because of its usual conflict with Twilight Struggle (which last year and this year conflicted with Power Grid semis, sigh.). I got paired up with Chris Byrd, who just learned the game, and we had a fun, tense game dancing around the edge of Freeman's Farm trying to flank each other. He captured the Ottawa Indians in the midgame, and Gate's wing was released as early as possible. His attack along the Hudson to try to get my baggage train ended up costing me the game as he did a step loss to a unit there. I probably should have put more thought into how to defense that region. I wish I had more WBC time to find some fun games of this series. Someone out there has got to want to play them.

Tomorrow: Power Grid semis, Agricola heat 2, Agricola semis, and Princes of Florence heat 2!!!

Chris

Caylus Session

I played an interesting game of Caylus online last night, with three players. One of the players built a lot of wood production buildings super fast, while I tried my most common approach - get an early cloth and use the joust field to advance up the building track. I am often able to get two of the three stone production buildings out, one via the joust field later and one via the reward for building in the castle.

On one of the early turns, the third player moved the provost back with the action, then paid three more coins to move it back even further. I never feel like this kind of move is worth it, but it definitely slowed the game down, and before I knew it the first phase was over and I hadn't even built any castle. I guess it worked out fine, because you can't go below zero points!

The guy with the wood buildings was up 15-20 points early on, and he made a very interesting play I had never seen before. The provost and bailiff were five spots away from the gold mine, and he grabbed the provost moving action, moved it three spots, and was the last to pass. Since we were short on money, neither me nor the other player could pay the 2 to keep him from paying 2 to get a gold. I'm not sure if it was worth it for him, but it was unique.

The third player managed to build one of the stone production buildings, but the leader got the Church out. I picked first turn order at good spots, and managed to get more cubes overall. This let me start getting some more favors by building in the castle a few times, and I got one of the stone production buildings out.

The best part of the game was that in the last turn, I had built up so many cubes that I built seven batches! I've never even come close to building that many at one time, before! I was so proud that I took a picture, which I will add to this post later on, since it's on my other computer. Between the 21 points, I got from that, and the 25 from building the cathedral, the final score was close.... I came in second by a score of 99-96.

I'm the blue player in the picture. Apparently I didn't mean church earlier, I meant the blue building that gives two favors.


Chris