WBC 2014 Recap - Part 1

Unfortunately, real life has gotten a little bit in the way the last month or two, so I've not picked my blogging back up at the pace I would like.  However, things are getting back to normal, so I hope to do this a little more regularly.  I did manage to squeeze in time to make the annual pilgrimage to Lancaster, PA for the World Boardgaming Championships from Thurs-Sunday, though.  I took some notes - but have since lost those, and I didn't do a good job with picture-taking this year (I will be glad to see Summer 2014 come to a close...it's been challenging, and I've been off my game).  So, I'm going to do my best to give a brief recap, with some thoughts on WBC in general. 

My friend Paul Owen and I headed up early Thursday morning.  We got there around 10ish, and headed in to the Lancaster Host.  I thought about playing Stone Age, however I decided to play Thurn & Taxis, which I don't get to pay often...in fact my last play was last year at WBC.  I was seated with 3 veterans, and had to ask for a quick rehash of the rules, which they provided.  The game went fairly quickly...it ended about a turn or two before I was ready and I finished in last place...however it was very close with a 5 or 6 point spread from first to last.  I was pleased with how I fared against 3 players who obviously were much more familiar with the game than I was.  Next up for me was a round of 7 Wonders.  GM Nick Ferris has a great randomizing method to seat people with unique cards he hands out to everyone, calls a row and column and everyone had their table and seat assignment.  My three opponents consisted of 1 fellow who was pretty experienced and 2 other folks who were fairly new to the game.  We played 2 games in an hour, and I finished 3rd in both, for an overall 3rd place.  In both games, I was hampered with lack of certain resources. 
 


Paul didn't advance either and I tagged along with him to the Lampeter room where he was going to engage in some Wooden Ships & Iron Men.  I took the opportunity to relearn this game, and played against one of the experienced hands in a frigate duel.  As expected my experienced foe got the upper hand, I didn't adjust to the wind very well...but his hot  dice luck didn't help any.  Next up I took part in a heat of Navegador...another game I don't get to play often enough.  I concentrated on building churches, but my lack of investing in any kind of ships in the 2nd half of the game caught up to me in the end.  Still, I finished in 2nd, about 8 or so points behind the winner.  At 9:00 that night I participated in my first heat of Conquest of Paradise, which had been expanded to 4 heats this year.  As at Prezcon, we were playing with the advanced rules and random events.  My game went very quickly...we were done in under an hour.  As Samoa I started last, and my 3 opponents each found 2 or more islands on their first turn.  I only found found one, but I consistently found islands over the next several rounds, and was able to expand my Polynesian empire for a quick and bloodless win (there was no combat in the entire game). 

After that, Paul and I wen to the open gaming area where we found Peter Gousis and his friend Jerry and played a game of Tobago, a clever little game about finding treasure, where the location of the treasures is narrowed down in a sort of logical card progression by the players.  Peter had come to our Unpub Mini and I was glad to catch up with him.  After that we all joined several other players, including T.C. Petty III for some Coup, followed by Panic on Wall Street.  With Coup, we played with the Reformation expansion, where players are assigned to the Catholic or Protestant faction, and can't act against someone in their faction...although you can change someone else's faction.  It adds another twist to an already fun hidden role/deduction game.  We had played Panic on Wall Street last year, and I was kind of "meh" on the game, though as I recall I was very tired at the time.  This time we also started late, but I got into the game more...and manged to eek out a win as a manager by riding the high-risk shares. 

Friday morning came too early (all the mornings seem to come too early at these conventions...)  I briefly toyed with the idea of playing in the Circus Maximus heat, but decided to wait for the vendors to open at 10:00.  I made a beeline to the Stronghold Games booth in order to pick up the Die Fighter expansion for Space Cadets:Dice Duel.  (About a week later I had a package arrive at home...the copy of Die Fighter that I had forgotten I had pre-ordered...DOH).  I picked up a few other things as well - a copy of Caylus Magna Carta (the card game version of Caylus), Freedom:The Underground Railroad, of which I had heard many good things, and game called Quilt Show to use as a gift for a friend that is really into quilting.  I didn't actually sit down for a game until 1:00, when I decided to try my hand at a heat of Ticket to Ride.  I enjoy TTR but I haven't played in a tournament in years because it's so popular, and it tends to conflict with other things.  One player ran away with it at our table - I finished 4th...I might have finished higher but I knew I wasn't winning so went for the Hail Mary on the last turn and drew more tickets...none of them I had complete.  But I did get a set of translucent trains just for playing. 



There was another heat of Conquest of Paradise at 3:00, but instead I decided to help Paul with a demo of East India Company he was giving to a publisher.  Now, I hadn't played EIC in a quite some time, and was eager to see the changes Paul had made.  He had streamlined it by removing the dividend track, taking out the Caribbean, removing the tariffs, and eliminating the option of using wood to build new ships.  The demo went well, I thought, although afterwards, on the drive home in particular, we brainstormed some about the game.  I thought Paul had actually removed too much, and we talked specifically about a way to add the tariffs back in, and possible some changes to how the pirates work.  Now, I will also admit that I had an ulterior motive.  This same publisher had contacted me after our Mini Unpub, specifically about Santa's Workshop.  I had sent him rulebook, but he had contacted me right after we got to WBC to tell me that it wasn't what they were looking for.  Which is fine, I'm happy he looked at it...and did take the opportunity to get his advice for 5 minutes or so after the EIC demo was done.  I specifically wanted to get his feedback on the theme...which had really gotten a negative reaction from a publisher at Unpub back in January.  This particular publisher thought the theme may be a bit of a tough sell, but he didn't think it was necessarily a deal breaker.  So, I was happy to get some feedback.

About this time, Brian made his WBC appearance, and we just decided to hit open gaming.  Paul sat down to re-teach us St. Petersberg, and we were joined by a 4th player...who also wanted to teach the game.  Once we got started, it came back quick enough.  Our 4th player won, but I made a strong showing with a building heavy strategy.  Brian and I hit the vendors for a while, and I picked up a copy of Villainous Vikings.  We had seen a demo of this game last year at WBC when designer Jeremy Stoltzfus had brought his prototype to demo.  Victory Point games had picked it up, and I decided to get a copy, including a promo captain.  Brian and I sat down in open gaming to give a 2-player game a try.  Fortunately, Jeremy was a few tables over teaching some other folk, so we were able to get quick answers to some rules questions.  We had a fun game, but were thinking it would bet better with more than 2 players.  After our game, Paul joined us along with Bill and Laurie from Nomad games.  Brian had purchased a copy of Spurs from them earlier, and we broke it out. Set in the Old West, with just about every trope you can imagine packed into the game, this was probably the purchase of the con.  The best part was watching Paul and Brian "gunfight" by drawing bullets out of their bags.  Brian pulled out the victory, I was a few points behind in 2nd place.  The last game of the night was another round of Villainous Vikings, with Paul joining in for a 3-player game.  Paul ended up running away with the game, but I did think it was better with more players.

Well, I had intended to do one short recap of WBC, but I think it's probably better to break it up into two sections....so next up, Saturday & Sunday, plus general thoughts on WBC.

WBC 2013 Part 1

Well, this year the World Boardgaming Championships seemed to sneak up on me.  Held every year in early August, in Lancaster PA, the WBC is essentially a bigger version of Prezcon.  While Prezcon has 600ish attendees, the WBC gets 1500+ - one of their board members recently told me that they are the 3rd largest pure boardgame con, after Origins and BGGCon (clearly, he wasn't counting GenCon with it's 30K attendees as "pure boardgame").  In any case, like Prezcon, the WBC is a tournament style convention first and foremost, although they have a very large open gaming area.  At the beginning of each year, the Boardgame Players Association (BPA) members vote on which games will make the "Century List", i.e. the 100 (give or take) games that will make the cut at WBC.  They actually run a little over 100 as publishers can sponsor games, and my impression is that there is a core group of favorites that it's almost impossible to get dropped.  Now, this is a long convention - it officially runs from Monday - Sunday, however they have "pre-con" events starting the previous weekend as well - so you could spend 9-10 days at this convention if you so desired.

Last year, the WBC was plagued by some infrastructure issues that hit the aging location - The Lancaster Host.  Primarily this was in the form of lack of air conditioning in much of the conference center, including the large "Lampeter Room".  As you might imagine in a building full of gamers - who's hygiene habits can sometimes be questionable - this led to some uncomfortable situations by weeks end.  One of the side effects was that more people escaped to the open gaming area, which was still cool - and that led to a lot of crowding and table scarcity.  I'm happy to report that the A/C was in fine form this year, though. 

Unfortunately, I have a little too much in the way of home responsibilities to go for the whole week, so I typically head up on Thursday and stay through the weekend.  This year my buddies Brian Green and Paul Owen joined me at the con.  I'm not going to give a thorough game-by-game rundown like I did for Prezcon, but I want to hit a few highlights.  And, unfortunately, I was a little lazy on taking pictures - so any that you see here are likely one's I've stolen from the internet somewhere.

Pic from BGG user David Morriss

Thurn & Taxis - It had been about 3 years since I last played this euro about building postal routes across Bavaria (you have to love euros and their themes) - since they removed it from the Prezcon list much to my friend Grant's dismay.  The other players at the table were gracious enough to help me shake off the rules rust.  I'm happy to say I finished in a tie for 2nd - and I conceded the actual 2nd place finisher to another player who was looking to move on in the tournament.



7 Wonders - This was the largest game I played in, with probably 120+ participants.  The GM separated everyone into 4 player games.  Each table was to play two games, you got points for your finish in each game (8,5,3,0 I believe and 8.2, 5.1, 2.5 and 0 for the 2nd - the decimals to help prevent ties).  In my first game I was the Pyramids of Gaza and finished in 2nd place.  In the 2nd game I had the Hanging Gardens, and I misplayed the very last card, causing me to finish in 3rd instead of 2nd.  If I had finished 2nd both times, I would have had the highest total, and moved on.  Bummer.

Amateurs to Arms - This game about the War of 1812 was published last year, from Conquest of Paradise designer Kevin McPartland and co-designer Jerry Shiles.  I had pre-ordered it, but had yet to get it to the table.  So, I went to the demo, and then played in the "Mulligan" round.  This is a card driven game, in the same vein as Twilight Struggle - i.e. each card has text that you use to invoke certain events, or a number value, which you can use as "operation points" to do many different things such as levy troops, build forts, etc.  Each side starts at opposite ends of a "peace track", and where those two counters meet on the track determines the winner.

This is an interesting game, but I'm not sure these type of card driven games are my cup of tea - I'm so-so on the aforementioned Twilight Struggle for example.  The game is beautiful - the map consists of essentially everything east of the Mississippi.  But 90% of the action takes place around the great lakes.  So, there's a lot of empty real estate.  It also runs long - I conceded to my opponent after 4 hours - although he didn't have a huge advantage, and it's conceivable I could have come back.  I definitely want to get some more plays of this under my belt - but considering it's length, and it's only  2 players, I'm not sure when that will happen.  Let me take the opportunity once again to praise the components of this game - in particular the map and cards.  The map is practically a work of art, and the cards contain lots of historical tidbits.  Also, the "designers notes" are a funny read - Jerry's sense of humor certainly comes through.

This is the upper right quadrant of the board...but where most of the action takes place.

Thursday night open gaming consisted of playing World Without End, St. Petersburg and Hex Hex XL.  St. Pete is an interesting one - Brian and I had both played this several year ago, as were just getting into the "hobby boardgaming" arena, and both of us came away with negative impressions that kept us from the game for years.  Paul brought it back out, and re-taught us, and we played again.  Brian didn't change his opinion much, but I came away with a better impression.  Some of that might be because I had a good game, and won - but I think years of playing these games now has given me some insight into many of the mechanics, and I think I just "got it" this time around.  I'm not saying it's my favorite - but I won't avoid it either.  Hex Hex XL was one we had high aspirations for - but it fell flat for us.  Brian in particular seemed disappointed, but I think a large part of it was due to having only 3 players.  My intuition says this one would be better with 5+ players. 

More to come in Part 2.....