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The 2024 Beyond the Sun PBeM tournament got a small bump in attendance over the 2022 tournament. 32 participants played a total of 50 games over 3 rounds, this was an increase from 28 participants last year. The tournament was relatively quick, the first two rounds took about a month of calendar time, and the finals took about two weeks.
The first round showed that there was a “bimodal” distribution of players: a total of 6 players had 3 or more wins. With this heavy distribution among the top end, all players except for one qualified for the Semifinal with 1 or more wins. Andrew Emerick and Jeff Wu led with a perfect 4 wins record. Jon McSenn, Curt Collins II, Eric Freeman, and Scott Burns were close behind with 3 wins.
13 players qualified for the Semifinal. This allowed every player to play every other player in their 4 games. Andrew Emerick led the Semifinal with 3 wins, and 2 wins was required to qualify for the Final.
In the Final, 5 players played against each opponent 3 times. It was a very close Final round with the last game deciding the champion. Most games finished around the same time because pretty much the same people were playing. The last game wasn’t created until much later and it being last provided some drama to the Final. After 4 games had finished, 4 different players had 1 win, so the winner of this game was the champion or it would end up in a 5 way tie. Andrew won this game and was crowned the champion.
The top six finishers were:
- Andrew Emerick
- Eric Freeman
- Zhe Sun
- Curt Collins II
- Antero Kuusi
- Jeff Wu
In game 3-1, the bottom 2 technologies were the Robotics and Genetics. Everybody except Tai went for the bottom 2 tracks. Eric had set up the combination of Psionics Research and Android Rights to allow a cheap way to research level 3 techs. This was followed by everyone except Tai. Tai discovered Spacetime Anomaly Studies and followed up with Quantum Data Exchange to dominate the planets while still doing some technological advancements. Eric followed up being first to a level 4 tech (Android Independence) with being the first to the Prosperity achievement. Tai was the first to 2 level 3 techs and 2 colonized planets but was unable to achieve Prosperity due to lack of Automations. Perhaps this was the difference in Eric’s win over Tai.
Early in game 3-2, Anterro got the first achievement—Strategist. However, the effort spent on this achievement ultimately set him too far back. The race to Transcendence and Prosperity achievements were the keys in this game. Eric beat Andrew to both achievements even though Andrew was ahead in turn order. Andrew’s retirement of donation of a size 4 spaceship to the Museum late in the game was perhaps the key to edge Eric by one point.
In this last pivotal game (3-3), Curt Collins had the early technology lead. He was the first to discover a level 3 tech, but he uncovered the Technocrat’s Guild with the event. The original Mass Cloning card allowed players to research a level one card while getting some resources. This was determined to be overpowered if the technology was discovered early. This led to the popular green tech opening in an effort to be first to find and research Mass Cloning and it was popular to “queue” up in turn order so that you can take advantage of Mass Cloning. Technocrat’s Guild has very similar attributes as the original Mass Cloning. It usually doesn’t have the status of being overpowered because it usually is found much later in the game. Curiously, both Antero and David passed on it leaving Andrew to pounce on it. This perhaps gave Andrew momentum to edge the others for the win.
In Game 3-4, it took a long time before any Tech 4 research ability was found. Andrew used this time to achieve Warlord and Empire. However, the Meta-Science Guild was eventually revealed, and the two players who achieved Transcendence finished 1 and 2. Even though Curt only had 3 points from achievements (Transcendence), his points in automation was the difference.
In Game 3-5, level 3 technology advances were slowed by the lack of alternatives to Professor’s Guild. But with Hivemind Computing, it was easier to research level 4 if you were able to get a couple of level 3 techs. Andrew won an early Warlord achievement, but ultimately Tai was able to research 2 level 4 technologies (via Mass Enlightenment) and achieve Efficiency to take 1st place.
The following table lists the finishes for the starting turn order (heats+SF+F=total). There doesn’t seem to be a dominant turn order. Overall going first does seem to be the worst by a small margin, but 60% of the final round was won by the player going first.
| Finishes by Starting Turn Order |
| Turn Order | Finished 1st | Finished 2nd | Finished 3rd | Finished 4th |
| First | 6+2+3=11 | 7+3+1=11 | 13+4+0=17 | 6+4+1=11 |
| Second | 10+2+1=13 | 8+3+1=12 | 6+3+2=11 | 8+5+1=14 |
| Third | 8+5+1=14 | 9+3+2=14 | 5+1+2=8 | 10+4+0=14 |
| Fourth | 8+4+0=12 | 8+4+1=13 | 8+5+1=14 | 8+0+3=11 |
The following table shows the finishes for the starting faction. Sol and Nishida-Ostergaard seem to fair better and the Disciples seems to be the worst.
| Finishes by Starting Faction |
| Turn Order | Finished 1st | Finished 2nd | Finished 3rd | Finished 4th |
| Nishida-Ostergaard Brotherhood | 10+4+1=15 | 8+4+1=13 | 9+3+1=13 | 5+2+2=9 |
| United Nations of Sol | 8+4+3=15 | 12+2+0=14 | 5+3+1=9 | 7+4+1=12 |
| The Zheng-Yi Brotherhood | 10+2+1=13 | 7+2+1=10 | 7+3+3=13 | 8+6+0=14 |
| Disciples of the Cosmic Tabernacle | 4+3+0=7 | 5+5+3=13 | 11+4+0=15 | 12+1+2=15 |
The following table shows the finishes for the opening move. Research Robotics and Genetics were the most popular openings—it was taken almost every time. Unsurprisingly, nobody opened with the “pity” action take 1 ore and 1 population. It was surprising that the first move researching terraforming did so badly—eeking out one win in 21 games. The first move jump did not fair better with only 1 win in 22 games. While the 2nd player to research Robotics or Genetics did worse than the 1st player to research those technologies, it was possible to win sometimes.
| Finishes by Opening Move |
| Turn Order | Finished 1st | Finished 2nd | Finished 3rd | Finished 4th |
| Research Genetics | 12+4+1=17 | 8+3+1=12 | 7+5+1=13 | 4+1+2=7 |
| Research Robotics | 8+5+4=17 | 10+2+0=12 | 9+1+1=11 | 5+5+0=10 |
| R. Narrow Beam Lasers | 7+2+0=9 | 1+3+1=5 | 4+3+1=8 | 3+1+1=5 |
| Research Terraforming | 1+0+0=1 | 1+1+1=3 | 4+1+1=6 | 11+0+0=11 |
| 2nd+ Research Genetics | 2+0+0=2 | 6+2+2=10 | 3+0+0=3 | 4+0+1=5 |
| 2nd+ Research Robotics | 1+1+0=2 | 2+1+0=3 | 1+2+1=4 | 1+1+1=3 |
| 2nd+ R. Narrow Beam Lasers | 0+0+0=0 | 0+0+0=0 | 0+0+0=0 | 0+0+0=0 |
| 2nd+ Research Terraforming | 0+0+0=0 | 1+0+0=1 | 0+0+0=0 | 0+0+0=0 |
| Jump 2 (Build Ship) | 0+1+0=1 | 3+1+0=4 | 4+3+1=8 | 4+5+0=9 |
All this analysis needs to be taken with a big grain of salt. There were decidedly newbies in the heats (shown by the bi-modal distribution in the heats) and perhaps those results should be thrown out.
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During the 2022 Beyond the Sun PBEM tournament, 28 participants played a total of 42 games over three rounds. The tournament consisted of two rounds of four simultaneous games, followed by a single game final. Within each round, players were ranked according to a 1000-100-10-1 scoring system to determine advancement to the next stage.