medici [Updated May 2000]

MED   
     22-23    14-15
     14     15    16
     

   Salon A   Maryland 4    Belmont

Kevin Wojtasczyk, NY

1999 Champion

2nd: Bruce Reiff, OH

3rd: Fred Minard, PA

4th: Alfred Wong, IL

5th: Harald Henning, CT

6th: Thomas Strokes, NJ
Event History
1991    None      -
1992    None      -
1993    None      -
1994    None      -
1995    None      -
1996    None      -
1997    None      -
1998    None      -
1999    Kevin Wojtasczyk     86
AREA Ratings
1    Bruce Reiff      1602
2    Fred Minard      1569
3    Kevin Wojtaszyk      1568
4    Bobby LaBoon      1553
5    Peter Perla      1553
6    Randy Cox      1543
7    Alfred Wong      1536
8    Robert Destro      1535
9    Steven Cameron      1535
10    Eric Wrobel      1535

Fine porcelain! Bolts and bolts of fabric! Spices for sale! Dye! Dye here! Precious metals here!

These are the sounds you hear as you walk through the Italian marketplace. In "Medici," you are a merchant sailor whose job is to buy the most valuable loads for your ship. In addition, you are also trying to corner one or more of these commodity markets. However, your ship can only carry a maximum of five loads of goods at a time. Therefore, you have to be careful in your bidding at the auctions where one, two or three loads are available for purchase in a lot. You also have to watch out because there are other merchants there also bidding for these valuable goods. Once you have purchased your five loads, you are finished buying for this buying session. Then each of the merchants sell the loads on their ships. The more valuable the items you are carrying, the more florins you will receive. You will also receive florins for purchasing the most goods in any
of the five different commodities. After three buying sessions, the game ends and the merchant who has the most florins wins.

Each turn, the dealer turns over up to three cards one at a time. The dealer can decide to stop turning over cards after one, two or three cards have been revealed. Most of the cards contain one of the five commodities and a value of 0 to 5. There is also one special card with the value of 10 representing very valuable bulk cargo. This card is neutral and does not represent any of the five commodities. So while it is helpful in letting you have the most valuable loads in your ship, it does not help you corner
any of the commodity markets. The revealed cards will then be auctioned off amongst the players. Each merchant gets one bid on the revealed cards, starting with the player on the dealer's left and ending with the dealer. The high bidder takes the cargo and adjusts his money indicator. The deal then passes to the left and the process continues. This happens until all of the players have five cargoes or until the deck is exhausted.

Once the buying session is complete, the merchants sell their cargoes. The players adjust the commodity markers to indicate the commodities purchased in this buying session. Each player totals the value of the cargoes carried on their ships. The merchant with the greatest total value receives 30 florins, the next highest merchant receives a lesser amount of florins and
so on to the merchant with the lowest value receives no florins. Then each of the commodity markets is evaluated. The merchants with the greatest and second-most amount of each commodity purchased receive florins. In addition, if a merchant has purchased six or more of any commodity cumulatively over the three buying sessions, the merchant will receive bonus florins during the payment for the individual commodity.

There will be three heats of the game, one each on three different days. Players may participate in one or more heats. Each heat
is scheduled for one hour. I will try to limit each game to five players, although there may be some fiur- or six-player games to fill out the field. The winners of each game in each heat plus enough second-place players to complete a field of 25 will then advance to a single elimination semi-final round. The winners of each of the semi-finals will advance to the final immediately following the semi-final.

Please note that some players prefer adjusting the markers on the individual commodity markets after each auction while some players prefer to wait until the end of the round to adjust the commodity markers. I do not care which way the participants do this as long as they agree. In addition, please note that the seating order will be random for the semi-final and final. However, for each heat, the players may use random seating or not at their discretion.

As many of you probably know, Rio Grande Games released an American version of the game, which has a couple of differences from the German version of the game. We will be using the rules in the German game for this tournament. Therefore, those players who own the German version of the game will not have to worry about any rule changes. For those players who only know the American version of the game, here is a list of the two rules differences in the versions.

1. In 6-player games, the player who has the third highest total cargo receives 10 florins, not 15 florins.

2. The American version has an extra 5-florin bonus space on the third highest level of each of the commodity markets. This space will not be in effect for this tournament.

This is your tournament, which I am happy to run for you. Therefore, if you have any ways that I can improve this tournament, please let me know. I can be contacted via e-mail, snail mail or personally at the WBC. I will consider all ideas presented to me for future tournaments.

 GM      Peter Staab  [2nd Year]   700 Bayridge Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15226-2112
    pstaab@adatainc.com   (412) 343-5937

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