Emerick Uses End Game Scoring to Secure Victory!

Thanks to everyone who came out this year to play Castles of Mad King Ludwig (CMK)!

This year was our first year with a Quarterfinal under the new guidelines. We weren’t quite sure what this would do to our player count or to our overall Heat numbers, but we ended up with 104 players, up from 100 players last year! That turned into 51 total games of CMK, up from 45 in the previous year - not yet our pre-pandemic peak, but well on the way.

This was the second year we collected data on turn order and seat placement (technically we tried in 2022 but I didn’t design the form well enough to be clear to players). Across 94 recorded games, first, second, and third seat all tied in wins at 23 each; fourth seat had a slightly better performance with 25, but that’s only a 26.6% win rate compared to 24.5% for the others. Average performance for first seat was 2.46 place (2.5 would be perfectly average); second seat was 2.69, and third and fourth tied at 2.43 each. I’ve heard people discuss whether first seat is best because of the immediate income boost, or whether fourth seat is worst because you don’t get income for three full rounds, but the overall numbers seem to indicate that each seat does about as well.

The other discussion that occurs is whether having an inexperienced player as your Righ Hand Opponent (RHO) is a big boost. The assumption here is that because your RHO gives you full pick of the tiles when they’re the Master Builder, if they do a poor job valuing tiles, you’ll get points for cheap. But taking a look at average deficits, the RHO of the winner lost by 23.2 points on average, while the person two seats after lost by 22.7, and the Left Hand Opponent (LHO) lost by 20.8 on average. The indication is that unskilled players don’t directly affect players in specific relative position enough to matter in an 80-140 point game. We’ll keep tracking the numbers, though, as more data is never bad!

Our Quarterfinal had 3 tables; we gave out 13 byes to players who had at least a win and a second. The three Quarterfinal winners, Chris Wildes, David Metzger, and DJ Borton, 12 of our bye winners, and one alternate, Carl Chauvin, the highest ranked person of those who would have received a bye had they been able to attend the Quarterfinal joined together on a bleary morning to wrap up the convention with one last Semifinal.

Our Semifinal had four tables: at the first, Jon McSenn beat out Michael Assante, Christian Wen, and Jack Wolff. The second saw Carl Chauvin beat out Dalton Versak, Sceadeau D’Tela, and David Metzger. At the third, Andrew Emerick beat out Ben Scholl, Andrew Drummond, and Natasha Metzger. The fourth saw Steven LeWinter beat out DJ Borton, Chris Wildes, and Patrick Maguire. This set up a Final where two players without laurels, Carl and Jon, faced Andrew Emerick with 12 laurels, and Steve LeWinter, laurel leader in CMK with an amazing 136.

The Final was set up with completed rooms, number of downstairs rooms, size of utility rooms, and number of small rooms as bonuses. Steve was the first Master Builder (MB); two downstairs rooms and the Shed were in the opening flop, which Steve priced at the lowest amount, leading to the entire table each buying stairs. With the downstairs rooms now available to all, Andrew set up for profit, letting Jon and Steve pay 6 and 8 for valuable rooms. Several utility rooms flipped and Jon attempted to repeat Andrew’s success by placing them at a medium price above some sleeping rooms, only to find the table suddenly stingy as the buys went 4, 2, 1 leaving Jon with a 8K utility room and a net loss for his MB round. Carl then had the opposite issue of everything on the table being too good for his MB round, and the table went 1, 2, 4 picking up great value and leaving Carl with a 6K size 100 living room, albeit one that fit his utility cards and downstairs room.

The second series started in a tough place for Steve as MB, two tiles had come out selected by his LHO Andrew, as did the Vestibule, always a dangerous room to let an opponent get early. Steve decides to push for value over denial and accepts 2 from Andrew for his choice of tiles, 1 from Jon that closes a dungeon for a second buy of the other blue room at 4, and Carl pays 6 for a living room. Steve is left with the choice of the Vestibule at 8 or a food room at 10 and chooses the food room even though it wipes out most of his earnings this turn. But this puts Andrew in a tight spot as next MB when the Throne Room flips, and now both of the high value 600 living rooms are out, his LHO Jon has an open sleeping room for the Throne Room, Steve has both an open sleeping room and now an open food room for either one, and there is still a sleeping and 2 food rooms available on the table. Andrew decides to place the Vestibule at 15 to prevent shenanigans, prices the Throne Room at 8, and drops the sleeping room to 1 to encourage it to get picked up. But no one picks it up, as Jon goes for a high value dungeon room, Carl grabs one of the food rooms, and Steve decides to get the Vestibule despite the table generally agreeing that there aren’t many sleeping rooms left. Andrew, with decent cash, wants to grab the 10K utility room but realizes he can’t place it, and has to take the 6K food room, closing a sleeping room and adding two more tiles to the deck, which are both sleeping rooms. Jon now has a wash of sleeping rooms he needs to price, any of which is good for Steve, and he doesn’t want one to get left for Steve next round, so he prices them low and while Carl can’t be tempted, Andrew closes a food room with one to claim the other (and, if you’re wondering if this was just blocking on Andrew’s part, I should mention he had the utility card for sleeping rooms), and Jon makes only barely enough money to cover the utility room he wants. Carl finishes the series with a set of size 500 tiles flipping that no one is thrilled about, but which provide enough varied value that Carl makes a small profit even as he completes a food room to act twice.

The third series starts disastrously for Steve. To get where he is and open so many good opportunities, he’s spent all of his money, and needs to begin saving again, but the flop for him is a set of worse tiles than Carl’s previous flip and includes a sleep room he desperately wants but needs to price high to keep others away from. The table goes 4-2-1, and Steve buys the sleep room he wanted for strong points but has now 1K in funds remaining following his MB round, which is terrible for Steve. Andrew is only too happy to set up a terrible size 350 hallway as the 1K bid, which Steve takes, uses to complete both a food room and a sleep room with it, and takes 5K as his bonus action - a terrible bonus action, but one that keeps Steve in the game. Jon is then set up with a flop that includes 4 utility rooms and loses money on his MB as he takes the one, he priced at 10K. Carl flips some low value gardens and puts them in low slots to build value for the other tiles, not realizing that one of the gardens Steve can place and immediately close for 10K, solving his money issues. But while that might seem like a mistake, Steve was about to be MB and make money again, and Carl got 11K from Andrew (who was also running low on money and also had to close a food room for 5K as his third action of the turn) and 6K from Jon, leaving him yet another size 100 living room for 4K for a strong 15K profit.

The last series were two turns which both went Carl’s way: few clearly good-value tiles remained, and Jon had position but no money, Steve had money but no position, that let Carl get good points on both turns, splitting what remained with Jon on one turn and Andrew on the other.

Before figuring bonuses, Carl was the on-board leader with 93, followed by Steve at 76, Jon at 72, and Andrew at 53. But Andrew won two of the end-game bonuses and came in second in another and scored a whopping 22 points on empty room stacks. In the end, Andrews off-board points brought him the win with a total of 143 to Jon’s 135, Carl’s 124, and Steve’s 119. Andrew pulled his synergies together very strongly and used his sleeping rooms to bring out more tiles that he had bonus cards for, which also then cleared out those stacks to make them worth even more.

Thank you all for reading, and we’ll see you next year at Seven Springs!