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cathyr19355 at 09:40pm on 27/09/2009 under wbc
cathyr19355 at 09:40pm on 27/09/2009 under wbcOkay, no more screwing around. It's been nearly two full months since WBC ended; time to finish the saga.
Saturday
My first event of Saturday morning was the last preliminary heat of Puerto Rico. How I did during this heat would determine whether I made it into the quarterfinals, because given the size of the field a player needed at least one win, and so far I had a close second and a clear loss.
The GM had some difficulty filling all the tables for this heat. Finally, after nearly everybody else had started, he came to me and asked if I minded playing at a table where there were only three players, instead of the canonical four they prefer for the Puerto Rico tournament at WBC.
I was delighted, since I usually do even better at the three-player game than at the four-player game. So I agreed, and was seated with yet another old LARP group friend (not the same one who helped mete out my latest defeat) and, of all things, a blind man. Yes, a blind man, with a cane, was about to play one of the most visually-intensive games I'm familiar with.
He actually played well enough. Out of courtesy, my friend and I announced our moves orally as we made them, and we placed plantations, colonist pieces, building pieces, into his hand and told him what they were, and he placed them on his board, more or less where they belonged, and presumably kept track in his head. However, I was successful at ramping up my shipping strategy first, and won--56-51-46.
Next was Race for the Galaxy, and again I got lucky. In the last two heats, I ended up playing one with the same novice Race for the Galaxy player I described in my last post. He had improved just enough to have some understanding of how badly he was playing. I won one of the two heats, which gave me two wins out of the four--enough to get me into the semifinals.
After that was the third heat of Ticket to Ride. It was another good game, but I didn't even come close to winning. One of the experienced players at the table ran away with the score, leaving the rest of us to eat his dust. I came in third I think, again, but this time it was a distant third--the lead player was about 40 points ahead. So much for Ticket to Ride.
The Puerto Rico quarterfinals were after dinner. One of the players at my table was the winner of my first game, the one with the close second. It was a good solid game, but I came in ... second, I think. I don't remember what place I had, but I do remember that the GM said there was a chance I could get into the semifinals on Sunday morning if enough potential contestants failed to show up.
Race for the Galaxy went straight to semifinals. Four tables, sixteen players. I made it in and was assigned to one of them. Unfortunately, I ended up with perfect cards for a military strategy while all three of my opponents opted for a civilian shipping strategy. Consequently, they were all in a perfect position to unite to defeat me, which they managed though my start was good. I was out.
After my loss in Race for the Galaxy, I tracked down![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
esrblog in the open gaming area, playing--guess what? Why, Race for the Galaxy, with Fan Boy and his entire family. I opted for playing one last game with all of them, which turned out to be a mistake. The game lasted longer than I'd anticipated, I got lousy cards, and esrblog was unhappy because he wanted to go to bed early; his semifinal in "Monsters Ravage America" was scheduled for 9 a.m. Eventually, we finished, said good night to our new friends and headed for bed.
Sunday
It turned out that no one who qualified for the Puerto Rico semifinal failed to show up, so I was out of luck. I watched one of the games for awhile, but eventually wandered off to take one final look at the dealer's room.
Meanwhile,esrblog failed to win his semifinal round. After his loss, we hung out in the main function area for awhile, while our friend Craig taught us the rudiments of a rail game called Steam, which is based on an earlier game called Age of Steam that esrblog and I hadn't particularly liked. Steam was better than Age of Steam, in my opinion, but still isn't going to qualify as one of my favorites.
Eventually, we headed out to a nearby diner for a late brunch with Craig and Carrie, and then went we drove home in the intermittent rain.
Round up:
New games learned: Aqua Romana, To Court the King, Steam, Maori, Dominion. (I also got to play Martian Rails for the first time with the game's designer, as I mentioned in a previous post--very cool!)
Tournament Rankings: None, but this year I got into both the quarterfinals at Puerto Rico and the semifinals at Race for the Galaxy! Not bad.
Fun: Lots. A surprising number of our friends turned up, and we never lacked people to hang out and socialize with.
Best of all, since Worldcon next year is in Australia and we're not likely to go, we'll probably be back at WBC next year.
Saturday
My first event of Saturday morning was the last preliminary heat of Puerto Rico. How I did during this heat would determine whether I made it into the quarterfinals, because given the size of the field a player needed at least one win, and so far I had a close second and a clear loss.
The GM had some difficulty filling all the tables for this heat. Finally, after nearly everybody else had started, he came to me and asked if I minded playing at a table where there were only three players, instead of the canonical four they prefer for the Puerto Rico tournament at WBC.
I was delighted, since I usually do even better at the three-player game than at the four-player game. So I agreed, and was seated with yet another old LARP group friend (not the same one who helped mete out my latest defeat) and, of all things, a blind man. Yes, a blind man, with a cane, was about to play one of the most visually-intensive games I'm familiar with.
He actually played well enough. Out of courtesy, my friend and I announced our moves orally as we made them, and we placed plantations, colonist pieces, building pieces, into his hand and told him what they were, and he placed them on his board, more or less where they belonged, and presumably kept track in his head. However, I was successful at ramping up my shipping strategy first, and won--56-51-46.
Next was Race for the Galaxy, and again I got lucky. In the last two heats, I ended up playing one with the same novice Race for the Galaxy player I described in my last post. He had improved just enough to have some understanding of how badly he was playing. I won one of the two heats, which gave me two wins out of the four--enough to get me into the semifinals.
After that was the third heat of Ticket to Ride. It was another good game, but I didn't even come close to winning. One of the experienced players at the table ran away with the score, leaving the rest of us to eat his dust. I came in third I think, again, but this time it was a distant third--the lead player was about 40 points ahead. So much for Ticket to Ride.
The Puerto Rico quarterfinals were after dinner. One of the players at my table was the winner of my first game, the one with the close second. It was a good solid game, but I came in ... second, I think. I don't remember what place I had, but I do remember that the GM said there was a chance I could get into the semifinals on Sunday morning if enough potential contestants failed to show up.
Race for the Galaxy went straight to semifinals. Four tables, sixteen players. I made it in and was assigned to one of them. Unfortunately, I ended up with perfect cards for a military strategy while all three of my opponents opted for a civilian shipping strategy. Consequently, they were all in a perfect position to unite to defeat me, which they managed though my start was good. I was out.
After my loss in Race for the Galaxy, I tracked down
esrblog in the open gaming area, playing--guess what? Why, Race for the Galaxy, with Fan Boy and his entire family. I opted for playing one last game with all of them, which turned out to be a mistake. The game lasted longer than I'd anticipated, I got lousy cards, and esrblog was unhappy because he wanted to go to bed early; his semifinal in "Monsters Ravage America" was scheduled for 9 a.m. Eventually, we finished, said good night to our new friends and headed for bed.Sunday
It turned out that no one who qualified for the Puerto Rico semifinal failed to show up, so I was out of luck. I watched one of the games for awhile, but eventually wandered off to take one final look at the dealer's room.
Meanwhile,
esrblog failed to win his semifinal round. After his loss, we hung out in the main function area for awhile, while our friend Craig taught us the rudiments of a rail game called Steam, which is based on an earlier game called Age of Steam that esrblog and I hadn't particularly liked. Steam was better than Age of Steam, in my opinion, but still isn't going to qualify as one of my favorites.Eventually, we headed out to a nearby diner for a late brunch with Craig and Carrie, and then went we drove home in the intermittent rain.
Round up:
New games learned: Aqua Romana, To Court the King, Steam, Maori, Dominion. (I also got to play Martian Rails for the first time with the game's designer, as I mentioned in a previous post--very cool!)
Tournament Rankings: None, but this year I got into both the quarterfinals at Puerto Rico and the semifinals at Race for the Galaxy! Not bad.
Fun: Lots. A surprising number of our friends turned up, and we never lacked people to hang out and socialize with.
Best of all, since Worldcon next year is in Australia and we're not likely to go, we'll probably be back at WBC next year.