Automobiles Got Made!

Thanks to a sponsor, Automobile was able to return in 2023 even after low attendance in 2022. All of the dedicated fans of the game came back again, and a few more joined them for a little better attendance in 2023. Between the two Heats 7 tables were played with 21 different players. With half the field advancing, that meant 10 people could advance to the Semifinal. The new tie-break rules meant that in addition to the 7 winners, the 3 people who had a 2nd and showed up to both Heats qualified, while those who had a 2nd but only came to one heat becoming the alternatives. One of the winners, the 2nd highest historical laurel winner (Matt Calkins) was unable to play in the Semifinal due to a conflict with another tournament, so the GM (DJ Borton) was able to advance to the Semifinal as the first alternate.

I was an alternate because I was only able to be at the second Heat due to missing the first couple days of WBC while finishing recovering from the covid I had the week before. I would like to thank my assistant GMs for stepping up and helping out, with Devin Smith running the demo and Mike Kaltman running the first Heat.

To not have different number of players among the Semifinal tables, it was decided to have two 5-player Semifinal games, with the winner and 2nd at each table advancing to the Final. Playing at 5 players makes for a lot tighter games, as more players try to sell into markets that aren’t much bigger, so all the players had to adjust their normal strategies.

At the first Semifinal table there was the highest bid yet for turn order since bidding was implemented last year, at $60 for Howard by Romain Jacques. Greg Staton started with Crysler for $40, Francois de Bellefeuille started with Durant for $20, Erin Weir started with Kettering for $10, and Patrick Shea settled for Ford at $0. It was a very close game, with Francois and Romain tying for first at $4,010 and Erin in 3rd only $30 behind at $3,980. Greg ended up in 4th with $3,650 and Patrick got 5th with $2,530. Francois and Romain played very different games to end up in the tie, with Francois being the only player to not take a loan, while Romain took the max 2 loans. The final turn order tie-breaker went to Romain, but since 1st and 2nd advanced, both went to the Final.

At the second Semifinal table the bids were much lower, with Nick Henning bidding $30 to pick 1st, DJ Borton bidding $20 to pick 2nd, Lyman Moquin bidding $10 to pick 3rd, and Mike Kaltman picking 4th and Jesse Adcox picking 5th for $0. Sales in this game were higher than the first Semifinal table, causing only two players (DJ and Jesse) to take one loan each, while the other three players did not need a loan. In the end, the players who managed their money better and didn’t need loans finished 1-3, while those with loans finished 4-5. Nick, the highest historical laurel winner, continued his dominance of the game, winning with $4,870. Lyman got 2nd and also qualified for the finals with $4,760. Mike had 3rd with $3,800. DJ had $3,720 for 4th and Jesse had $3,530 for 5th.

Unfortunately, Nick Henning had another Final scheduled for the same time as the Automobile Final. The finalists tried to find another time that would work for them all, but because it was late in the week, they couldn’t find a good time to move the Final to, and so Nick was forced to drop out and a 3-player final was played.

The Final started with Romain Jacques bidding $40 for Howard, while Francois de Bellefeuille got Chrysler for $0 and Lyman Moquin took Durant for $0. Romain and Lyman started cautiously, and only had single factories to produce and sell 3 cars each, while Francois built a double factory and built and sold 7 cars. In the second round, Francois built the only luxury factory, allowing him to build and sell 4 luxury cars. The early advantage from those two turns compounded through the game, giving Francois a large win with $5,810 over Lyman’s $4,320 for 2nd and Romain’s $3,840 for 3rd. Although Francois had the 7th most lifetime laurels, he had never won the event before, and now he is finally the champion!