Thirty-two entrants played four games each in the Preliminary Round of the tournament. Michael Swinson (who has won the previous two PBEM tournaments) led the round; he and Rob Kircher both had three wins and a second place finish.

Sixteen advanced to the Second round, where Michael once again was at the top, this time with four wins. Chris Wildes and Andrew Emerick (WBC GM) had two wins. I continued a strong tradition of losing on a tiebreaker and being eliminated.

In the Final round, the eight remaining players competed for the top six spots. The players with Laurels captured all the wins. Dominic Blais, Eric Freeman, Jeff Meyer and Michael Swinson had one win each. Chris Wildes and Andrew Emerick had two wins each, but Andrew also got a second place finish in a third game to cement the title.

Some notes on the game winners in the Final Round:

Sphinx cards obviously make up a significant chunk of your final score, and it’s hard to get by with skipping too many. Among the eight games, two had 6 sphinx cards, four had 5 cards, and two had 4 cards. You can also miss out on a card and still win (3 cards got a big fat zero for the winner; two were for most stone quarries, and one for completing the graves).

End of game graves points were pretty well spread (one at 0, two at 2, two at 5, three at 9).

Crew sizes ranged from a low of 12 to high of 17. Like last year, we had only a couple of winners that were all Green.

Stone production ranged from a low of 5 (and another at 6), to high of 12. No one went really overboard this year.

Sphinx Cards held by winners:

• Obelisk Level 7 – 2
• Obelisk Level 8 – 1
• Obelisk Level 9 – none
• Temple, 1 column – none
• Temple, 2 columns - none
• Graves completed – 1, but it was not scored
• Pyramids completed – 1
• # of players Level 4 Grain tech – 2, scored 7 each
• # of players Level 4 Stone tech – 1, scored 5
• Pyramids, 6 stones – 2
• Pyramids, 7 stones – 3
• Obelisk, 4 stones – 2
• Obelisk, 5 stones – 2 (in both cases was held in pair with previous card)
• Temple, 4 stones – none
• 2 stones in each – none!!
• 1 point per Grave stone – 2, for 2 and 4 points
• Black crew – 1 for 7
• Orange crew – none
• Blue crew – 3, for 4, 5, and 8 points
• White crew – 2, for 5 and 9 points
• Most quarries – 4, but only two scored
• Most Green fields – 2
• Most Yellow fields – none
• Most Brown fields - 2
• Level 4 stone tech – 3
• Level 4 grain tech – 1
• Level 4 both techs – 1
• 2 per Permanent card – 2, for 8 and 10 points

Top six places went to

1. Andrew Emerick
2. Chris Wildes
3. Jeff Meyer
4. Michael Swinson
5. Eric Freeman
6. Dominic Blais

Full results can be seen at https://epworthian.wordpress.com/egizia/egizia-2023-2024-results/.

Thirty-seven entrants played four games each in the Preliminary Round of the tournament. We had no quadruple winners this year, but Kevin Breza, Rob Kircher, Eric Freeman, and Chris Wildes managed three wins each.

Eighteen advanced to the Second round, where Andrew Emerick (WBC GM) and Jon Senn were at the top with three wins and a second each. Assistant GMs James Thompson and Chris Wildes also advanced, while yours truly dropped off.

In the Final round, the nine remaining players competed for the top six spots. The players with Laurels captured all the wins. Eric Freeman, Jon Senn, Chris Wildes, and Andrew Emerick had one win each. Dominic Blais got two wins, and with an outstanding performance, Michael Swinson had three wins and a second place finish.

Some notes on the game winners in the Final Round:

Sphinx cards obviously make up a significant chunk of your final score, and it is hard to get by with skipping too many. Among the nine games, three had 6 sphinx cards, three had 5 cards, and three had 4 cards. Notably, though, in two of those games with 4 cards (won by Eric and Michael) the winning player failed to score one of the cards!

Everybody had at least some end-of-game Graves points, but in a departure from last year, none of the winners scored the maximum 9 points.

Crew sizes ranged from a low of 10 to high of 18. Whereas last year saw a lot of winners with Green only fields, only a couple of games saw that this year.

Stone production ranged from a low of 6 (in two games), to high of 16, although that was an outlier. The rest were between 8 and 12.

Sphinx Cards held by winners:

• Obelisk Level 7 – none
• Obelisk Level 8 – none
• Obelisk Level 9 – 1, but it was not scored
• Temple, 1 column – 1
• Temple, 2 columns – none
• Graves completed – 2, but only one scored
• Pyramids completed – 1, but it was not scored
• # of players Level 4 Grain tech – 2, scored 7 each
• # of players Level 4 Stone tech – 2, scored 5 each
• Pyramids, 6 stones – 2, but only one scored
• Pyramids, 7 stones – 2
• Obelisk, 4 stones – 1
• Obelisk, 5 stones – none
• Temple, 4 stones – 1
• 2 stones in each – 1
• 1 point per Grave stone – 2, for 3 and 6 points
• Black crew – none
• Orange crew – none
• Blue crew – 5, average score 4.4
• White crew – 4, average score 6.75
• Most quarries – 1
• Most Green fields – 2
• Most Yellow fields – 2
• Most Brown fields – 3
• Level 4 stone tech – 2
• Level 4 grain tech – 4
• Level 4 both techs – 2
• 2 per Permanent card – 2, average score 6

Top six places went to

1. Michael Swinson
2. Dominic Blais
3. Andrew Emerick
4. Chris Wildes
5. Jon Senn
6. Eric Freeman

Full results can be seen at href=”https://epworthian.wordpress.com/egizia/egizia-2022-results/">https://epworthian.wordpress.com/egizia/egizia-2022-results/.

In the initial round, both Allan Jiang and Jon Senn racked up four wins, while Michael Swinson, Eric Freeman, and Kevin Breza had three wins each. Twenty players advanced to the second round, where this time Michael Swinson led with three wins. He was joined by Andrew Emerick, Chris Wildes, Ivan Lawson, Robert St. Pierre, Kevin Breza, Rich Meyer, and Dominic Blais for the final round

Sort summaries from the final eight games:

• Game 1 – Dominic had a 7 point lead over Ivan, with Chris very close behind. Dominic had 14 stone production and scored 5 sphinx cards.
• Game 2 – Michael won with a 12 point lead over Rich. He only had five stone production, but scored 6 sphinx cards.
• Game 3 – Chris beat Andrew by 11 points. He only scored 5 sphinx cards over Andrew’s 6, but had a strong point lead before going into final scoring.
• Game 4- Robert secured a narrow 1 point lead over Michael. Michael had a lead going into the final round, but Robert got one more Sphinx card.
• Game 5 – Dominic won by 11 points over Andrew, with the others close behind. Dominic had a significant lead going into final scoring, and Andrew was unable to complete one of his cards.
• Game 6 – Ivan lead by 5 at the end over Robert. Despite missing completion of one of his cards, he got 12 points from one of his other cards and maximum points from the graves.
• Game 7 – Andrew got 2 point win over Michael. They were tied going into the final scoring, both received the same points for leftover stones and grave tiles, and each missed out on a Sphinx card, but Andrew’s three Sphinx cards were slightly better than Michael’s four.
• Game 8 – Kevin passed Michael by 4 points at the end. He only scored four Sphinx cards to Michael’s six, but had a lead going into final scoring and maximum grave points.

As expected for a final round, the competition was tougher, but Michael’s one win and three seconds secured the top honors.

Top six finishers were:

1. Michael Swinson
2. Dominic Blais
3. Andrew Emerick
4. Ivan Lawson
5. Chris Wildes
6. Robert St. Pierre

The game is very tactical and dependent on card order, so I’m not sure how useful any statistics are. But here are some number from the final positions of the winners in the last round:

• Six of the eight winners had 5 sphinx cards at game end, with the two others having 4 or 6 cards. The points scored from the cards ranged widely, from 21 points up to 41 points (with the 6 cards). The average total score from cards was 29.25.
• Stone production ranged widely. Three players had 5 or 6, while the greatest was 14. The average was 8.375.
• Interestingly, five of the eight winners had all green fields at end of game. Of the other three, only one had brown fields (that hadn’t been upgraded).
• With one exception at 18, everyone had total crews between 14 and 16.
• Three winners scored max grave points, three reached the second tier, and the last two got 2 and 0 points.
• Three winners maxed both technologies, four winners maxed one while ignoring the other (evenly split), and one player reached the 3rd level in both.

Thanks all, we’ll see you next year!

Full results can be seen at https://epworthian.wordpress.com/egizia/egizia-2020-2021-results/.