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Pierre LeBoeuf and Josh Lanham enjoy
the deluxe Catan board. |
Faith Wobbeking and Dana Champion
can't get enough Catan. |
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Laurie Voisin was one of 15
women players - 25% of the field. |
Tim Tu and Andy Latto enjoy
a full day of Settlers Saturday. |
Catan Redux ...
The second year of Catan: Cities & Knights at WBC
saw 46 unique players, a drop off from the 61 players we got
last year. About half of the participants played in more than
one heat. Wednesday's and Friday's heats were both well attended,
with 17 total games between the two heats. Saturday's heat generated
only four games, since it was competing with advancement rounds
of other tournaments.
Three of the four semifinal tables were fairly close games,
with at least one other person being within two points of winning.
The one blowout was a feast or famine strategy, where the player
doubled up on 8s and 10s, and the feast occurred.
The Final consisted of Kate Fractal, Janet Ottey, John Gitzen,
and Alistair Thach. Both Kate and Alistair started with paper
heavy strategies, each of them placing their city on a double
lumber intersection. Of course, you make sacrifices to do that.
Kate did not produce any wheat, and Alistair did not produce
any ore. Kate was able to build an active knight before the
first barbarian attack. However, Alistair was not, but he was
saved by Janet's double knight (Janet gaining a Defender of Catan
card for her efforts). Kate was able to build to the aqueduct
("gold") early, ensuring she had some wheat production
to manage the knights. Alistair was completely blocked from
the ore production hexes, but the other players have plenty to
spare, and were very willing to trade with him, even favorably.
At this point, it was a very close game, with Janet at 5 VPs,
and the others only a point behind.
Alistair and John were able to build the Aqueduct shortly
thereafter. With some help from the Aqueduct, Alistair was able
to build more cities, and with the paper production still rolling
in, claimed the green metropolis. At this point, the game is
appeared to be a blowout, with Alistair at 10 VPs, and his closest
opponent at 7.
Janet still had very good resource production, and was able
to build a settlement and a city in the same turn, making it
a closer game (Alistair 10, Janet 10, John 5, and Kate 5). The
next round, with the help of two mining progress cards, she built
another city. A few rounds went by, and Alistair is able to
build another city, tying them again at 11. It's anyone's game
at this point. With Alistair's cloth production, and some extra
paper to trade 2:1 (with the cloth special), he's able to claim
that metropolis, putting him at 13.
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Peter Tu and Lynda Shea |
GM Christopher Gnech and his finalists. |
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