Deep in the Deepest Jungles ...
TIKAL
celebrated its fifth anniversary as a Century event at WBC 2004,
and based on the turnout, it shows no signs of abating. This
official GM write-up will be broken down into four distinct areas:
Demonstration, Initial Heats and Scheduling, the Semi Finals,
and the all-important Final. Read on to discover if perennial
finalists Jack Jaeger, Arthur Field, or Davyd Field won the tournament,
or was it relative newcomer Harald Henning?
Demonstration: Let us start off with the Demonstration
activity, scheduled for 7 o'clock on a Friday evening, dinnertime.
Based on the Gamemaster's previous experience with demonstrations,
he had limited expectations, looking for a turnout of perhaps
two or three newbies. Imagine his pleasant surprise when over
a dozen people appeared, possibly as many as twenty, all eager
to learn the nuances of this fascinating strategy game. Fortunately
Tikal, like many Euros, is easy to learn, if difficult
to master.
The Tikal game itself comes with a player cheat sheet,
which shows everything a player can do on a simple 3 by 4.5 inch
card. No language skills are required, as there are no words
whatsoever on the player card or the map. In a nutshell, a player
places a tile, and then allocates 10 action points in his or
her turn as he or she sees fit on the map board. Scoring is also
simple: In a scoring round, and there are four of them in the
game, each player receives the usual 10 action points, without
the tile placement, and then they score. The last scoring round
is done in reverse score order, meaning whoever is in last place
at the final scoring round gets to go first in the last scoring
round, often an advantage.
The monkey wrench in Tikal 2004 was that the bidding
rules of the game were used, in which players bid on the tile
they choose to place, some tiles having more perceived value
to one player than another. Bidding provides a bit more strategy
to the game, and also prevents the ubiquitous whining about poor
tile selection. It also allows a player to go last in one round,
and then first in the next, allowing them, in effect, 20 action
points in a row.
Initial Heats and Scheduling There were three heats
scheduled for the game, set for different times and different
days. With this flexible scheduling format, anyone who truly
wanted to play a game could get in a heat some point during the
very busy WBC week. Social Tikal should be a 90-minute
game, and the GM allowed two hours for each of the heats and
the Semis. With very few exceptions, all games were, or could
have been, finished in under two hours. The Wednesday evening
heat had six games, the late Thursday heat had seven, and the
Friday heat had nine games. Friday's third heat potentially was
a disaster, with eight players showing up with no games. Let
this be your call, people, that even four-player tournaments
need players to bring their games! Fortunately, Ken Samuel, an
earlier heat winner, and Alan Keisel, a non-participant altogether,
unselfishly offered their games so that others could play. The
GM's, and eight other players' gratitude, go to these two stalwart
individuals. Heats were scored on cards, with each individual
disclosing his or her finish place, ratio to the winner, and
reserve pieces for a tie-breaker. This information would be used
to move on in the semis.
The Semi Finals: With 21 individual heat winners, 22
including the gamemaster, the potential arose for a disastrous
scheduling problem in the semi-finals on Saturday night. The
semis scheduling included room for alternates including last
year's champ, Barbara Flaxington, who scored within 1% of her
heat's winner. The Gods of Tikal were clearly smiling,
as miraculously, the problem resolved itself, with exactly 16
of the 21 qualifiers posting for the semis on time. Since Tikal
works best as a four player game, it was easily agreed that the
four semi-final winners would advance to a single, four-person
final.
During the semis, the GM did an aggressive job moving the
four scoring rounds along, with two finishing exactly in two
hours and the other two, ten minutes later. Next year, all four
semis will finish in two hours. The Gamemaster's eternal gratitude
goes out to Jonathan Tivel, a third heat winner, who had planned
to show up for the semi-finals, only to arrive at 9 o'clock,
an hour after they started. Poor Jonathan spent that hour watching
ESPN Classic waiting for the semis to start, not realizing they
were already underway! Jonathan was outdone by another heat winner,
Ben Shanks, who arrived at 9:30, or in his words, after dinner!
The Final. Part of the tournament scoring methodology
for the heats was to look at the winner's total score, his score
as a percentage of total points at the table, and for runners-up,
the ratio of their score to the winners. Ranked in order of winner's
scoring percentage, two very interesting pieces of information
could be gleaned. Two of the four finalists, Jack Jaeger and
Arthur Field, not only scored over 100 points in their original
heats, but each scored almost one third of all the points at
their table, at 33% and 32% of their boards respectively. This
placed them first and second, respectively, on the winners list
when based on points as a percentage of the total. On the other
end of the spectrum, the other two finalists, Davyd Field and
Harald Henning, scored at the bottom of that same list, each
squeaking out a victory with 27% or 26% of their board's points.
In both of their heats, the runners-up scored only two points
less than those two winners. This ability to win a close game
would serve both well in the final.
At the beginning of the final, the Gamemaster was surprised
to observe aggressive bidding amongst the four finalists, which
led to a low initial scoring round. Still, scoring after the
first round was extremely close, with all within five points
of the leader. A narrative of the final will not do as much justice
as a simple scoring chart, as shown below.
Looking at the chart reveals some critical information about
how the game would turn out. Normally, one would expect a player's
score to increase in each of the four scoring rounds, as each
player uncovers more monuments (possibly capping them) or discovers
more treasure. However, intense competition in the final between
Jack and Arthur over a particularly valuable monument on one
side of the board ultimately hurt both of them, as their scores
actually declined in the second round. (For the uninitiated,
competition means throwing resources, i.e. explorers, around
one or two objectives, which ultimately denies a player the ability
to get as many points as he can on the board during his scoring
round. When over half of ones resources are locked in a battle
of attrition with another player, the only people who benefit
are the uninvolved players.) Although both Davyd and Harald competed
for points against each other, they appeared not to let their
competition get out of hand, and their initial two scoring rounds
reflected that. Perhaps they had learned from their initial heat
wins the ultimate cost of competition.
By the time Jack and Arthur had reached a détente,
it was too late. Both were able to start a comeback, with impressive
scoring rounds after the third volcano, but it wasn't enough.
Although Arthur scored the most points in the last two rounds,
the impact of the two earlier rounds had already robbed him of
any chance for a victory. Harald Henning, the relative newcomer
to this group of Tikal Laurelists, pulled off the victory.
Harald credits his final victory to a slightly different strategy
- a focus on obtaining treasure and controlling medium sized
monuments, as opposed to his opponents' overall focus on large
monuments. Harald's key move was to cap a big monument with one
guy near a large group of Arthur's men. One might also note the
judicious use of bids, and the points spent on bids were clearly
justified as the final score shows. So the moral of bidding is:Spend
the VPs you need in bidding to get the tiles you need!
All in all, Tikal 2004 can be judged an overwhelming
success, based on both the number of players (significantly higher
than the previous year) and the quality of the competition (intense,
as usual). The diplomacy, discussion, and dialogue at the final
was as intense as any game I have ever seen, but when it was
over, the four finalists shook hands, knowing full well that
they would probably meet again at some future Tikal tournament.
Next year, by scheduling the demonstrations well before the last
of three initial heats, the tournament easily has the potential
to attract over 100 participants. So we'll see you at Tikal
2005!
Harald Arthur Davyd Jack Total
First Volcano 20 18 19 16 73
Second Volcano 23 12 15 07 57
Third Volcano 28 32 29 28 117
Fourth Scoring 35 36 29 35 135
Score Tally 90 85 82 78 335
Total Bids 16 13 10 8 47
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