Joseph Marriott working his way through the heats to the title.	Mad King Ludwig—or a reasonable facsimile—Andrew Drummond.
Trella Bromley builds castles when she's not riding the rails.	The Titan Arena GM likes to build castles too.

The event’s WBC debut drew an astounding 109 players across three heats and 42 preliminary games. The first heat on Friday afternoon had the largest attendance; the Saturday heats, running against many semis didn’t fare as well. Still, it was surprising to see so many people appear for a Trial Event, and the GM wants to especially thank his Assistant GM Greg Crowe for getting people organized and through the sign-in line with minimal wait.

With such a large field, the top 16 was crewed by seven double winners, eight with a win and a second, and one player with a win and a third. The best performance was by Sceadeau D’Tela, with an astounding 151 points to the runner-up’s 106. However, he ranked only second alternate due to having played but once.

But, as Woody Allen said, 90% of life is showing up, and with only 13 qualifiers at Sunday morning’s semifinals, several alternates (all of whom had at least one win) filled the tables to make three games of four players each, with the Final table to be manned by the three winners and the best runner-up as a percentage of the winner’s score. At Table 1, Elaine Pearson beat April Alfieri, Michael Brazinski, and Loc Nguyen 99-89-84-79.  At Table 2, twice Caesar Randy Buehler rolled over Corey Davis, Nick Henning, and Dennis Gomer 135-101-101-86. Table 3 saw Sceadeau D’Tela take advantage of his alternate status to advance over Joseph Marriott, Keith Ferguson, and Anni Foasberg 105-99-88-72, with Joseph taking best runner-up to also advance.

The Final had the King’s Bonuses for Number of Corridors and for Number of Rooms Completed, which drove everyone to grab early stairs; Sceadeau took an early lead by getting three on his board before the stack of six were gone. Joseph then grabbed the Vestibule (the 600 ft Living Room with a bonus for adjacent Food rooms) and was rewarded by a series of Food rooms coming out for later draws which he dutifully snatched—until Sceadeau’s turn, when Sceadeau set the Food rooms to the highest price on the block. Joe reacted by buying cheap, finishing a Food room and then buying cheap again, forcing everyone else to buy high-priced rooms and leaving Joe and Sceadeau with the best money position. Elaine swerved at this point to begin to focus on picking up Sleeping Rooms to allow herself to control which tiles came out next.

Randy then was given an awful deal by the board and had to decide how to set up several Food and Sleeping Rooms to avoid setting up either Elaine or Joe; unfortunately, even with his best layout he still gave a double move and 13 points to Elaine and a double move and eight points to Joseph and was left with nothing good on the board for his own turn. His only hope was to end the game quickly before Joe completed his Vestibule or before Elaine emptied more stacks, but she and Sceadeau began finishing nothing but Sleeping Rooms, leaving the game in a time warp where the end was always two turns away.

Finally, Sleeping Rooms ran out and the decks began putting out Utility Rooms instead. Joseph was able to finish his Vestibule for a huge point boost, and everyone else conspired to keep him away from Utility Rooms that might give him good bonus cards. However, when the game ended and all the cards were flipped, Joe revealed that the 3-points for Food Room bonus card had been in his hand since mid game, making the Vestibule and the four Food Rooms he bought to complete it worth an astounding 58 points of his 132 total.

In the end, Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Vestibule was enough to outpace Sceadeau, Randy, and Elaine 132-119-113-100 and take the first plaque WBC offered for The Castles of Mad King Ludwig—and, coincidentally, Joe’s first WBC title. We hope he and everyone else had a great time at the event, and look forward to seeing everyone in Seven Springs in 2016!