Day of Improbable Victory!

I have a ton to report on today. I played five games yesterday, and they were all interesting and tense. I kicked it off with a 9 am heat of Brass, and ended up at the same table as the GM Ed, Elaine (who I had played Through the Ages with earlier in the week and was new to Brass), and at the last minute Eugene, who I had played some game with my first year at WBC but haven't seen him often here since. My impression of him in the past was that he was a bit mercurial, but he was in a good mood and our game was polite and good-spirited.

Eugene played really well: he developed cotton mills away for 18 on the second turn and never looked back from a pure cotton rush strategy. He got all of his level 3 mills out and one level 4 during the canal era, which is pretty much game ending. I tried to counter with a coal-iron strategy but I got beat to my first two iron locations! I did manage to get the level 4 out eventually, and use the income along with well timed loans to end up placing all of my rails on the board. Eugene took it down with a score in the 180s, while Ed and I were a few points apart in the 150s. Unfortunately noone else really fought Eugene for the mill spots, so I ended up with a second.

Power Grid heat 2 was up next, and the board was Central Europe. Last year I won my first game on this map in the semifinals, so I was curious to see how it felt this time. I don't remember a lot about last year's game, but I remember playing really well. One of the players from that game was once again at my table, a really nice player named Jen. This game was really interesting. I put my house out first after getting the 4 plant in what I thought was a pretty safe location, putting a few cheap cities in a pocket behind me. Surprisingly, one of the other players put two houses down behind me, which barricaded himself in... Jen put her red houses down a little bit south of ours, and on turn 2 I put down 2 more houses, and then Jen moved north and blockaded us completely. I figured I was going to be totally hosed by having only 3 cities entirely surrounded, but ended up bidding up the 22 plant a tiny bit, figuring that I would have to save as much money as I could to explode with houses once someone bust into step 2. Once I was freed, my strategy worked perfectly and I won another game of WBC Power Grid. I don't feel like I'm that great at the game and find all kinds of mistakes in my play, yet I am consistently winning or coming in second.

I always have an irrational fear that this year is going to be the year that I don't win a single tournament game, so it felt great to get a very tricky, well-played win in. Our friend Shane, who has just moved to Baltimore, made his first trip to the WBC and played two heats of Dominant Species and won one - he's going to come back on Saturday for that semifinal game. I had a nice, relaxing lunch with him, which was great.

I was really looking forward to Agricola, so I gladly set up a copy of my game. The GM forgot his deck of cards to randomize the seats, so he decided to say "just sit wherever you want". I know the WBC isn't that serious, but... really? So of course there aren't enough players, no one sits at my table, and I look over to see the last seat at another table has a former Agricola champion, Cary. Well, if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best, right? I managed to do just that, winning a really close game 46-44-42-25 or so. Kerrin from Australia who I had already played Le Havre with was the 42!

The start of the game was interesting. In the draft I took Hut Builder first, then got Charcoal Burner and Wooden Hut Builder. After the other player on my right played an Occupation, I took Reed-Stone-Food, Kerrin took 2 clay, which was surprising, and Cary played Berry Picker (1 food when you take a wood). Because Kerrin had the clay, I took start player so I could drop Charcoal Burner in case she was thinking about taking the first Fireplace. It turns out she had some bread baking cards that she wanted to play. Since we were all playing cards, the resource piles got surprisingly big.

Somehow, I just couldn't get the timing down to build my house, as I was busy getting the Basketmaker's Workshop going and making sure my Hut Builder got played in Stage I. Cary used the Axe to build out to four, the guy on my right built a third room, and Kerrin got her third before me as well. So I just bided my time and saved up wood, then built two rooms at once. I was able to grow my family in rounds 9 and 10 with that, and then 11 with the Hut Builder. So even though I was the last to grow, I ended up as the second with four people after Cary and the first with 5. The Wooden Hut Builder meant I didn't need to waste actions getting clay or stone to renovate, so I was able to spend the rest of the game collecting animals and wood to finally make a big fence move. I also used Fruit Tree and Pottery to get the food I would need to feed everyone.

I should also mention that after the game Kerrin said I should be especially proud of my win, not just because I grew my family last, but because her and Cary took Start Player a lot of the game, so I was going third or fourth all the time.
 

I decided to play Stone Age and intentionally relax and have a nice milk stout beer. I had a fun game starving again, but the end result was pretty different because I was in the 4th seat instead of the 3rd, a lot of 6s came up on the "magic dice", and two of the other players knew how to react to my starvation. I ended up in fourth place with 99 points.

By that time, I was sobered up a bit, and ready for a late night Princes of Florence. It's one of my favorite WBC games (especially since I've made the finals twice), but it seems to slowly be slipping in popularity, so who knows how long it will last. Somehow, I ended up winning with 54 points by grabbing a Prestige Card at the second to last turn for 4 points (Most Landscapes) and bidding up John W., the old Puerto Rico GM on Forests, when it turned out he had the Most Forests Prestige Card! The guy on my right, who played a great game, had three failed Prestige Cards!

I will add more about other fun things about yesterday later, but for now I need to go play in Le Havre heat 2!

Chris

More WBC 2012

Tuesday is always an interesting day at WBC because the pre-con tournaments are wrapping up and the auction is the main event. I always avoid the auction because I know it might get me into financial troubles!

After hitting Target for some supplies (cherries, bananas, turkey slices, and some socks), Bronwen and I hit the open gaming room. Pretty quickly we found Alex, an amazing game player who has won tons of tournaments, including winning Ra three times, which impresses the hell out of me. The thing I like about Alex in this context is that he loves to analyze games and talk about what each player might have done differently, so I always learn a great deal by playing with him.

Bronwen of course suggested Agricola (it's her favorite game by a lot) and we found Peter, a nice guy from the UK who was looking for a game. I asked if we could do an E draft to prepare for the first round of the tournament, and all were agreeable. My first pick was Charcoal Burner, who I'm a big fan of. I got Reed Collector second, who is a very solid pick. I believe I had a meaningless third pick, but then a fourth pick Hut Builder, who I'm pretty sure I've never had before! In my original pack, Wooden Hut Builder came back to me, so I thought it would be good to just use him and Hut Builder and not bother upgrading my house at all in the game. It means you don't have to spend two renovation actions or any resources, and only miss out on 4-5 points instead of 8-10 for not having a nice house, but that would mean that I could focus on making sure my board was covered with fencing and fields. It worked out well because I was able to grab Axe in the Minor Improvement draft, and a Reed Pond to go with my good occupations (it requires 3 of them to be in play).

My game played out perfectly as I was able to drop Charcoal Burner and Reed Collector early, take Reed-Stone-Food a few times, and build the Basketmaker's Workshop. On turn 4, I barely remembered that Hut Builder needed to be played in Stage I! Alex had built a room and Head of the Family, and on turn 6 Family Growth still hadn't appeared, so I took Start Player with my first action, and built two rooms with the Axe with my second action so as to be able to take Family Growth right away before Alex could, although with Head of the Family, he could grow as well. I was able to grow to 4 the very next turn, and I was pretty much set up so I focused on collecting wood for one big fences drop. Then it was just a matter of collecting points the rest of the way. I had 53 points, Alex had 49, Bronwen was in the high 30s, and Peter had around 16.

While we were playing, Derek whom I had played in Through the Ages came and watched the end of our game. Afterwards, he wanted in on a game, and Alex suggested Princes of Florence since we had five if Peter still wanted in.

It was a tight, low-scoring game. I don't remember the last time I've seen someone win with 54 points, but Alex did it. I was in second with 50, Bronwen had 48, and Derek and Peter were right behind that. I was in seat two, but our friend Shane was arriving, so I was looking out for him entering the room and totally spaced on taking the extra Profession in turn 2. That's something that I would never do in a tournament! I ended up playing a mixed strategy of getting things opportunistically, so I ended up with 1 Jester, 1 Builder, and 2 Recruiting cards. I was able to build all six of my works but it wasn't easy!

Shane showed up and Bronwen and I went with him to possibly my favorite sit-down restaurant, Texas Roadhouse. I pretty much order the same thing every time: Texas Filet with broccoli (no butter!) and a house salad (no cheese!). We saw Randy and Andrew there, along with Zvi (who I haven't seen in a decade or so, a long-time Magic pro). I asked them what happened in the Through the Ages final. Randy took it down again, Zvi was second, Andrew third, and Sceadeau fourth. Sceadeau and I have been talking a lot of gaming online lately, and we had played two games of Agricola online last week. Apparently Through the Ages is a much more skill-based game than I would have expected.

Finally, the real tournament began! In Power Grid at WBC, you get to choose from one of two map options each heat. One of them always chooses the alternate plant deck, which I didn't really love, so I chose to play Korea regular rather than Germany with the alternate. Unfortunately, I drew the GM, Jim, who is a super nice guy but a really tough Power Grid player. He's one of those people that can keep track of a lot more information in his head, so he often knows to pretty good accuracy how much money you have. Last year he gave the finalists playing-card style money decks to replace the paper money in the game, so I proudly showed him that I brought my decks back to utilize this year, which I know was something he was hoping for.

We had a very tough, tight knife fight of a game. The Korea map is pretty darn brutal. People were hopping over each other left and right for board positioning. Jim had a great start with an early 25 plant, but because of that the coal markets (Korea has two markets!) dried up significantly. After getting blocked off early, I bid 21 for the 18 wind plant because I knew I would have to save money for connection costs as much as possible. I was stuck on 6 capacity for quite a while, and the plant market was awful. After the game, Jim thought I should have bought the 17 nuclear plant to replace the 11 nuclear I had just to churn through the market, even if it costs me some money. In the last turn of the game, it was up to me to end the game or not. I had been holding back a ton of money so I decided to go for it, even though it would be a 13-13-13 tie for first. I went for it and showed my 15 Electros. The opponent on my left showed 14! Then... the guy opposite us showed 17 Electros! First through third, all separated by 3 Electro. Well, at least it secured me a second place, and I can go for a win in the remaining two heats. Usually a first and a second is in...

At this point, the room we were in had multiple different tournaments at once, including a very excitable crowd of people for Elchfest, a dexterity game about moose trying to cross each other's paths. The room was getting muggy and uncomfortable, so Le Havre was going to be a challenge. Continuing with the theme of hard matchups, I drew Kerrin, a regular WBC friend of ours who comes all the way from Australia, Mike., a consistently strong gamer who beat me in the semifinals of Le Havre last year, and Rob, another strong gamer who has won many tournaments and is the GM for El Grande. Mike was able to get the Business Office going, make a lot of steel, build some steel ships and ship a bunch of things, all while not taking a loan. He had 180 while the rest of us were close. Kerrin was surprised to find herself in second with 140, Rob had 137, and I had 136. Considering the tight binds the dynamics of the game put me in, I was happy to be in that tight of a band.

After that, Shane and I met up and went to one of my favorite places in Lancaster: Waffle House! Simple, cheap food that gets the job done. I ordered 2 eggs, hash browns and toast for $4. I think in Boston that probably costs double.

Today should be a long, draining, fun day. The agenda: Brass, Power Grid, Agricola, Egizia, Stone Age, and Princes of Florence. Luckily the two most computationally heavy are the first two! I'm skipping the second heat of Brass which coincides with Stone Age and Princes of Florence. It was going to be a hard choice, but having already won the first heat of Stone Age means that Stone Age/Princes is two chances to make a semifinal, since Princes just needs a win and Stone Age typically needs two wins (due to the much bigger turnout for Stone Age); while Brass is only one chance. Maybe I'll make it a guaranteed choice by winning Brass in the first heat!

Chris

WBC Wrap-Up

The end of the WBC was fun and exciting, and I was only somewhat zombie-fied. I played in the Princes of Florence semi-final and the Brass semifinal, but couldn't pull of the magic this year. Unfortunately I'm hazy on exactly what went down. I played ok but not perfect in both games. I needed to play a game purely for enjoyment with no stakes, so I jumped into the third round of Washington's War just to get a game of it in.

I played an awesome guy also named Chris who was from England, and we ended up choosing the opposite nationalities for the game! My experience with the British paid off as I was able to easily push him out of the New England region and not let him back in. I was able to create a southern diversion with Cornwallis coming into Virginia, which was enough to keep him busy before the Wars End card made the game end early. I'm starting to appreciate Washington's War more, although I still wish there were more interesting event cards. I still feel like too much of the game is spent arbitrarily moving PCs around, and not enough thinking as if you were Washington or Howe. So I have to think of it more like a light strategy game, and less like a typical wargame... and accept it for what it is.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and doing a little open gaming. I ended up playing a three player game of Glen More with my friends Stephanie and Richard. It was a cute little game with a decent number of decisions... kind of like Carcassone/Alhambra but with the river mechanic from Egizia in terms of how you acquire your tiles. And with a resource collection/management aspect because when you add a tile to your board, you activate nearby tiles, which might generate resources or convert resources (like corn into whiskey). I didn't feel compelled to run out and buy it, but it's worth a few more plays.

I also played a few games of Dominion at some point with a nice woman and her 11 year old son. He had just learned the game and had figured out some pretty sophisticated stuff about it pretty quickly. I was impressed!

 

I was hoping to get someone to play a wargame with me, and amazingly at midnight Andy Latto walks by, and I say "Labyrinth?" and he sits right down faster than I've ever seen anyone agree to a game. We had an epic back and forth game where it came down to the very last few card plays, but my jihadists were able to win a victory check at the end of one deck.

To recap, here are the tournament games I played. (S) means semifinal, (F) means final.

   Hannibal 3-2
   Wilderness War 0-2
   Saratoga 0-1
   Washington's War 1-0
   San Juan 3-1

   Power Grid 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 1st (S), 5th (F)
   Le Havre 1st, 1st, 2nd (S)
   Brass 2nd, 3rd, 3rd (S)
   Princes of Florence 1st, 2nd, 3rd (S)
   Agricola 1st, 3rd (S)
   Caylus 1st (skipped semis)
   El Grande 5th

On Sunday, we had a nice lunch out at Red Lobster with one of our WBC friends Laura and a bunch of people she knows, then had a nice drive back with Stephanie in the car with us. Another great year of gaming down... and a second plaque, for my fifth place finish in Power Grid.

This WBC showed me that I have a second game I'm good at, Power Grid, in addition to Princes of Florence. My results in Power Grid have been pretty consistent, with lots of 1st and 2nd places in games. I reached the semis last year and got 2nd there, and the finals this year. I discovered a new found love for Agricola, and am looking to play it more; and I don't like El Grande as much as I once did. In wargaming, I had enjoyable games of Saratoga and Washington's War, came very close to getting a plaque in Hannibal, and learned I have a lot to learn about Wilderness War, if I make that commitment. Unfortunately I once again had to miss the Twilight Struggle tournament for the Power Grid semis, but this year it worked out better!

Chris

WBC Day Seven

I'm writing this after getting back to Boston - I didn't have the time/energy to keep up the daily blogging!

The Power Grid semis were a great game played with great opponents, including Meghan who I had played earlier in heat 1. We played on the Korea map and I won! This game me my first final table of Power Grid and a guaranteed plaque since the top 6 get them.

We went straight to the final after a short break. The Japan map we played on was extremely tough and brain burning. You can start in only 6 specific cities on the map, and you are allowed to start two different networks, even later in the game if you only started with 1 start city and never entered a second.

That made me miss heat 3 of the Agricola tournament, but it didn't matter since my 1 win was enough to make it to the semis. I definitely felt outclassed in that game, but had a lot of fun watching the Occupations fly. There are a number of players who know every card by heart and can play nearly instantaneously. I was at least competitive, tying for last with a score that was something like 41-37-32-32. I did enjoy getting the guy who gives you an extra clay when you get wood or clay, then putting out the guy who lets you get food for clay. This game definitely made me appreciate Agricola more and sparked me to want to play it more regularly and learn it more deeply.

The final game of the night was the second heat of Princes of Florence. I got to play with a guy I knew from way back in the Magic days, Ed Fear, and a few other nice folk. I won this one, with Ed coming in second. Somehow I either win or come in second in most games I play in heats of Princes of Florence and Power Grid, so clearly they are my best games. I need to step it up in other games!

Chris

WBC Day Five

Another exhiliarating and exhausting day at WBC! I'll write more later but here's the wrapup:

I came in 2nd in the closest game of Brass ever: 141-141-140-115, losing by 1 on the income track.

I came in 2nd in Power Grid on the Central Europe map, losing to the GM and two-time winner, Jim Castonguay... I'll accept that loss!

I reluctantly played Agricola, because I found out it was 5 player games, and somehow I pulled it out, mostly through mastery of animals. I'm not great at Agricola, but I have my moments where it all clicks.

I played a snoozer of an El Grande game and got destroyed. I don't understand how to play well, and don't really enjoy the game all that much, I've decided.

That was followed up by a fun game of Princes of Florence with two strong players, David Platnick and Greg Thatcher. David crushed us with 7 works from the two seat, and I came in second, beating Greg on tiebreak money.

The end of the night was a late start Brass at 9 pm, that ended at 12:30. I got to play with Bruce again, which was great. He crushed us this time with a score like 160-120-111-105.

Awesome times, and I'm glad to be in three semis: Power Grid, Agricola, Le Havre.

Chris

WBC Day Four

Despite wanting to catch up on sleep, of course I again was instantly awake at 7:30. At least this meant I could bring Andy Latto an extra copy of Innovation for his demo at the Showcase Sampler as he had requested. As his demo was starting, Eric Brosius walked by and we decided to try out his copy of A Few Acres of Snow, which I had only played about 40% of a game of the other day. Eric smoked me as the French - I tried out a specific strategy I thought of but misimplemented it. I thought it was a pretty cool game and I want to play it more... not sure if I want to buy it yet though.

I stopped by the auction store and found two good deals - Wellington and Imperial, two games I was looking for. I hope I can find people who would play Wellington at some point...

After that I ran into one of our regular friends at WBC, Laura. It was good to see her again since she missed last year's WBC, so I tracked down Andy after his demo and we grabbed another Andy, Andy Gerb, and picked out Yspahan as a game that we were all interested in playing. It was definitely a learning experience since Andy won last year's Yspahan tournament and Laura clearly knew what she was doing. Andy took it down with lots of cards and camels in the last week.

Then, one of those glorious days at WBC got even brighter. I ran into Alex Bove, who is an awesome and intense gamer - every time I talk to him I learn something knew about thinking about games. He's one of the few people I know who really likes Princes of Florence, so we got a 5 player game together. I was very happy to win after the guy in seat 2 decided to go builder heavy and let me have the extra Profession card. The scores ended up very tight: 59-58-58-57-48.

Then the official tournaments kicked off with the Power Grid at 6 pm. I had a fun table with some people I vaguely knew, Deniz and Meghan, a nice 25 year old guy named Derek, and a funny, inattentive 14 year old named Eli. We played the Germany map with the alternate power plant deck, which I owned but hadn't played with yet. In a very, very close game, I pulled it out with 15 cities powered by not building cities on the second to last turn and getting the Step 3 card to come up so I could build out first. I also waited out the auction so even though people had 16 capacity, I doubted they had the cash to build to 16. Derek had about 7 Electros while I had around 27 for the win!

Finally, I was agonizing over a "cake-or-pie" decision: Le Havre or Ra. Even though Le Havre would keep me up later than I wanted (I'm psyched for Brass 9 am tomorrow...), I knew I just like it better overall. The judge didn't randomize the tables for Le Havre, so I ended up playing with Rich Meyer, who is from western Mass but I don't think I had ever played a game with, just because he was sitting near my board. We had just had a nice dinner together with my wife Bronwen and the winner from the St. Pete game yesterday. After the game started, I knew I had made the right decision. The other players were fun, a nice younger guy and Pete Staab, who I knew from the Chicago Express tournament last year. I pulled out a tight 6 point victory with Rich in second place, mostly by building efficiently.

Winning three of my favorite games back-to-back was certainly satisfying! Tomorrow: another day full of heavy eurogames. Check out this intense line-up:

   9    Brass
   12  Power Grid
   3    Agricola
   6    El Grande
   8    Princes of Florence
   10  Brass

Chris

LibertyCon Part 2

Day 2 of LibertyCon was on Friday July 1, and I got to play tons of games, including two for the first time. Here was the lineup:

   Labyrinth
   Indonesia
   Dream Factory
   Taj Mahal
   Princes of Florence

This was my second game of Labyrinth, again playing against Andy L. I took the Jihadists since the last time we had played (at the TotalCon game day), I had the Americans. This game has quite a bit of asymmetry! Again Andy took me out in pretty quick order, getting a successful conversion of the Gulf States to Good governance and then rolling from there. I like the learning curve here, there's things to learn about - how do you respond to things that your opponent does makes a big difference in whether you can hold them off or get rolled.

I had been waiting a long, long time to play Indonesia. Every time I've been at Eric's, I've looked longingly at the game sitting on the shelf and even read the rules once while between games. It's highly rated on BoardGameGeek, and sounds exactly like the kind of game I really like: heavy and economic. The way you can merge companies in the game sounded really interesting, and the people at LibertyCon who played it before seemed enthusiastic about it. So finally I was going to get my chance!

After the first play, I was left feeling like I really liked Indonesia. It had some similarities to 18xx games in that you were controlling companies that had to operate, but without the track laying. People have complained about the graphic design and components, which while beautiful, really do get in the way of game play. Some of the areas on the board are way too small, especially since the component used for a city is a glass bead.

One of the most fascinating and bizarre aspects to the game is that you can cause two companies to merge. The strange thing about the way it works mechanically is that one player can cause two companies owned by two other players to merge, and there is nothing they can do to stop it. This makes Indonesia really feel pretty abstract and unreal, but from a game standpoint it's a really interesting mechanic. I was looking forward to playing it again soon so I could try out some different things.

After that, Eric taught us Traumfabrik, which has recently been printed in English as Dream Factory. This game was a lot of fun - you get three movie scripts which require different components: for example an actor, a director, and special effects. Another script might require two actors, a camera, and a director. Some actors are better than others, so all of the pieces have a value. When you finish a film, you get points for it based on how good the actors, directors, etc. that you got were. You are bidding currency in a closed economy: after the winner gets the pieces they just bid on (they come in lots of 2 or 3 components), you divide the money up amongst the other players. This means that the game ebbs and flows for each player because if you are not winning auctions, you are accumulating money for future auctions. You also get to see which lots are coming up ahead, so a key is timing your expenditures so you get the best stuff for your films. The scoring is cute and nicely done: after a certain number of lots, the person with the best finished movie gets some points; at the end of the game you get points based on things like best comedy. I'm not entirely sure but I may have won this game, or at least come close. Considering I hadn't really heard all that much about this game, I have to say I found it really just plain fun. Easy to learn with plenty going on to think about. I'm not sure why this game isn't as popular as some of Knizia's other light, auction games like Ra, Amun-Re, Modern Art, or Medici.

Speaking of other Knizia games, we then got a group together for Taj Mahal, which is one of the games I own that I have not played nearly enough. (Another Knizia, Amun-Re, is also in that category.) I decided I was going to explore the design space in this game instead of focusing on a greedy strategy, which is my default, and instead pick out a more defined strategy to push for and stick with it. For those of you who don't know Taj Mahal, there are 12 rounds of bidding for things in different districts on a map. You play one or two cards which have various symbols on them, or you withdraw from the bidding. When you withdraw, if you are leading in one of the symbols, you get that reward for that district. Four of the symbols let you put a castle down in that district and get a piece that is 1/2 of a special power card, one of them lets you put an extra castle down that doesn't take up a space so can share with someone else, and one (elephants) lets you get a tile from that district that has some picture of a good on it. There are other little tokens on spots that when you put a castle down, you get the token and some of those also have goods on them. You get points when you acquire a good based on how many other of that good you already have. When you withdraw, you also get to pick two cards from an array that is put out before the card plays.

The interesting thing in Taj is that you might not be winning anything and have to decide whether to push for it, or to cut your losses now and try to get an early pick of new cards. This can be a pretty fascinating decision, at times. The strategy I decided to try was to take elephant cards as often as possible, and try to win as many of the goods tiles as I could, and see if that was a viable way to try to win. Eric's son-in-law ran to victory by making chains of castles, which is another way to get bonus points, but I did end up in second, even though my strategy became quickly obvious to everyone at the table and they started actively trying to get in the way of it. Good stuff!

The last game I played on game 2 was one of my all time favorites, The Princes of Florence. I'm biased because it's the game I've done the best at in the WBCs, coming in 4th and 2nd in back to back years. I feel like I've lost my touch a little bit because it's hard to find people to play this game, especially to get a five player game. This game at LibertyCon was with a bunch of WBC eurogame veterans and really felt like the quality of a semifinal game. I've found at WBC the first round heats are very winnable in games that you like a lot and practice at, but the difficulty really rachets up in any semifinal game. I've made the semifinals of lots of games: Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Caylus, Ra for example, but only won a semi in Princes of Florence.

Anyway, this was a really tight game. I had artists with four different buildings since I was in seat 4, so I decided to try to push builders a little more than I normally would. For a game that seems so tight and simple, the variance in the cards you get and the chaos created by the player dynamic adds quite a bit of replayability. I was able to get a late "least open spaces" Prestige card which saved my game a little bit, but I believe I ended up coming in third. I wish I could get a few more games of this in before WBC, but maybe I'll find an open gaming game of it during the pre-cons.

Chris