catan: cities & knights  

Updated Nov. 22, 2014

2014 WBC Report  

 2015 Status: pending 2015 GM commitment

Alistair Thach, TN

2014 Champion

Event History
2013    Rich Shipley    61
2014    Alistair Thach    46

 Laurels

 Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
   1.  Alistair Thach     TN    14     30
   2.  Rich Shipley       MD    13     30
   3.  Janet Ottey        PA    14     24
   4.  Colin Crook        PA    13     18
   5.  Kate Fractal       MA    14     12
   6.  Josh Lanham        MD    13     12
   7.  John Gitzen II     NY    14      9
   8.  Matt Leader        MA    13      9
   9.  Winton Lemoine     NV    14      6
  10.  Tim Tu             NJ    14      3
  11.  Peter Tu           NJ    13      3

2014 Laurelists                        Returning Laurelists:

Janet Ottey, PA
2nd

Kate Fractal, MA
3rd

John Gitzen II, NY
4th

Winton Lemoine, NV
5th

Tim Tu, NJ
6th

Past Winners

Rich Shipley, MD
2013

Alistair Thach, TN
2014


Pierre LeBoeuf and Josh Lanham enjoy the deluxe Catan board.

Faith Wobbeking and Dana Champion can't get enough Catan.

 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.

Peter Tu and Lynda Shea

GM Christopher Gnech and his finalists.
 GM     Christopher Gnech  [2nd Year]  NA
   dicegods1@gmail.com    717-919-9217 

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