navegador   

Updated Nov. 23, 2012

2012 WBC Report  

 2013 Status: pending 2013 GM commitment

Andrew Emerick, CT

2011-12 Champion

Event History
2011    Andrew Emerick     48
2012    Andrew Emerick     66

 Laurels

 Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
   1.  Andrew Emerick     CT    12     60
   2.  Randy Buehler      WA    12     18
   3.  David Platnik      VA    11     18
   4.  Rob Kircher        RI    12     12
   5.  Samantha Berk      PA    11     12
   6.  John Kilbride      PA    12      9
   7.  John Sizemore      VA    11      9
   8.  Alex Bove          PA    12      6
   9.  Emily Bacon        PA    11      6
  10.  Vien Bounma        NY    12      3
  11.  Rob Kilroy         PA    11      3

2012 Laurelists                                                Repeating Laurelists:

Randy Buehler, WA
2nd

Rob Kirchner, RI
3rd

John Kilbride, PA
4th

Alex Bove, PA
5th

Vien Bounma, NY
6th


Rob Flowers, John Kilbride, Chaka Benson, and defending champ Andrew Emerick

Rob Kilmore and Samantha Berk circumnavigate the globe in the first heat.

Eight is Enough ...

Navegador's second chance at WBC saw a significant attendance increase from its debut. It's been great to see this event grow, and I hope that even more will join us next year!

The heats saw a wide variety of strategies. Games were much more likely to finish with all the buildings bought than they were from a player sailing to Nagasaki. Building ended 13 games while sailing ended only nine, with two tables failing to report. However, that does not mean that little sailing took place; all but five contests made it at least to Macao by the end of the game. The winning scores ranged from 145 to 92. The two highest winning scores both came from colonizing: John Kilbride's 145 points in Heat 1, which came mostly from his 18 colonies and seven exploration tokens, and Vien Bounma's 142 points in the second heat, mostly from 19 colonies and six exploration tokens. Still, winners in the heats used almost every conceivable strategy, from very common factory/church strategy to the less common exploration strategy to the very rare shipyard/church combination. The three players with multiple wins all used different strategies. Vien Bounma won in all three heats by scooping up huge numbers of colonies. Emily Bacon won two with an exploration strategy, and defending champion Andrew Emerick had one win with factories and churches and another by colonizing.

The semis yielded two close games and two more decisive results. John Kilbride won his table decisively with a strong factory/colony strategy, and Andrew Emerick blew out the competition with 80 points from factories and 45 from churches. The close games were more interesting; Vien Bounma built up a strong economy early by pursuing colonies as usual, but by the endgame, Rob Kircher edged him out by one point with a more balanced strategy in which his shipyards earned both exploration tokens and colonies. At the fourth table, Randy Buehler was very successful with factories and churches, besting Alex Bove's shipyard strategy by three points.

Defending champ Andrew Emerick proved to be the only multiple heat winner to advance to the Final, as well as the only former finalist to return to the last round.. The Final did not begin with much strategic diversity. All four players clustered on the same field of the rondel for the first several rounds. All four opened with sailing, then colony, then market, with Rob and John investing in gold and Andrew and Randy in sugar. They followed each other around the rondel a bit longer, but by the time Randy sent the game into Phase 2, the players had begun to commit to different strategies. Andrew had gained a church and the privilege to go with it, Randy a shipyard and the corresponding privilege, and John and Rob were buying factories. Players continued on these paths throughout the game. It was a building-heavy game, with little emphasis on colonies. Although Randy and John did most of the sailing in the second phase, they gained only modest numbers of colonies -- five and six, respectively. Randy was more interested in shipyards, eventually amassing six of them, while John combined colonies with factories, mixing in a little bit of everything. Rob, meanwhile, focused on factories and Andrew invested heavily in churches and workers. Shortly before the end, John sent the game into Phase 3, using the Navegador to sail to Goa and then grabbing another navigation token with the sailing action. This gave each player one more privilege, and Randy a second.

Andrew's maxed-out church privileges exactly matched Randy's maxed-out shipyard privileges -- 54 points each -- but Andrew's factories gave him a healthy win. The tie for third between Rob and John was broken by the Navegador. Once more, Andrew was crowned champion, and remains undefeated in this tournament with eight straight wins.

Patrick Mirk, Romain Jacques and Virignia Colin.

GM Anni Foasberg oversees her finalists.

 GM      Anni Foasberg  [2nd Year]   NA
   nfoasberg@gmail.com   NA

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