LeWinter Captures Third Mad King Crown!

2023 saw a miniature renaissance in the game - not a pun, given that King Ludwig of Bavaria was born will into the Industrial Age. But between the higher attention for the convention and the recent shipping of the Deluxe Edition and the Big Box edition, CMK attracted numbers much closer to pre-pandemic, with 100 attendees in 191 starts.

As always, those numbers meant that a first, a second, and some third result was the baseline for getting one of the sixteen seats in the Semifinal, with the first nine seats going to double winners. In the Semifinal, Samantha Raszewski bested Antony Saccenti, Nick Henning, and Eric Kleist; Ricky Boyes beat out Devon Smith, Kristen LaDue, and Mike Kaltman; Andrew Drummond edged out Loc Nguyen, Preston Saccenti, and Janet Ottey in a 103-102-101-95 game; and in possibly the softest table we’ve ever had, two-time event winner Steve LeWinter beat perennial semifinalist Dalton Versak 121-120 with two-time event winner DJ Borton and also perennial semifinalist Felicia Alfieri having 93 and 89 respectively.

The Final was set up on Andrew Drummond’s Big Box set, because when you can play in style, you should. Overall game objectives were incomplete rooms, square rooms, circular rooms, and money.

Steve started as Master Builder, but it gave him no advantage as the opening set of rooms couldn’t be sold for anything more than 4000. Steve then compounded his money issues with early investments in the West Tapestry Room for 10,000 and then later in the Throne Room for 8,000. Ricky grabbed a few Outdoors Rooms early and Steve was hoping that money would get pushed into the game and let him breathe a bit, but Sam’s game was also going awry. She had picked up a utility card paying off for food rooms, and that led to her pushing hard for food rooms and ending up broke one round and having to take 5000 as her action - a round that Steve was unfortunately Master Builder.

But Andrew and Ricky were having their own problems. Ricky’s early Outdoor rooms gave him money, but Sam as his RHO was buying big and giving him no space to spend it well. Ricky turned to focusing on Utility Rooms but couldn’t find a good card or a consistent set of room types or colors to buy to make good points. Andrew, meanwhile, was Steve’s RHO. Steve’s money problems had pushed him to focus on hunting bargains, and as he did, he set up multiple threats with Living Rooms ready to pay big if the right tiles showed up. Andrew found himself having to buy questionable rooms to keep them out of Steve’s hands.

In the last few turns it was clear that it was down to Steve and Andrew, and Andrew’s chance to win came down to being able to choose the right rooms to buy and to price to keep them out of Steve’s hands; But Steve had multiple living rooms waiting for connections, and Andrew couldn’t defend against all of the possibilities, especially on the turns he was Master Building.

In the final scoring, Steve’s Living Rooms pulled him through, and he won 149 to Andrew’s 134, Ricky’s 92, and Sam’s 79, to get his third 1st Place plaque in CMK and cement his place as the biggest threat at any Castles of Mad King Ludwig table.