Morris Wins The Race For The Galaxy!

The Race for the Galaxy tournament was held as two back-to-back one hour Heats as a “getaway" event the last weekend of WBC. Over the course of those 4 Heats, 19 players won at least one game.

7 people won two Heats, while Andrew Martin and Sam Wolff (for the second year in a row) were the only players to win 3 Heats.

One of Sam’s wins was the closest win with him winning the tie break by two cards over Steve Packwood.

Notable preliminary games included Mike Kaltman with the biggest win of the tournament winning one of his Heat games by 33 points. You can find Mike’s account of this game plus his other games at the following geeklist link: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/340239/wbc-2024-rise-of-the-kalt-menagerie?itemid=10948972#10948972,

Mike was also involved, but this time on the wrong end, with Nate Heiss besting his closest opponent by 30. (Not 40 as Mike’s account mentions. It turns out the score card overstated Nate’s score by 10.)

The closest game from top to bottom also featured a tiebreak between first and second. Bradford McCandless 33 (+7 cards) (Bradford was also involved in the closest game in 2023), over Ryan Feathers 33 (+1 card), Ernie Chambers 28 and Rodney Bacigalupo 25.

Ryan’s account of this game plus some of his other games can be found at https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/340204/wbc-2024-ryan-feathers-year-5-convention-experienc?itemid=10972298#10972298,

Ryan’s’ account of his first preliminary game is at https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/340204/wbc-2024-ryan-feathers-year-5-convention-experienc?itemid=10971786#10971786,

Exactly 16 of the 17 winners showed up for the Semifinal, so no winners were turned away.

The Semifinal were blowouts in three of the four games.

Of the blowouts, Andrew Freeman (56) with Abandoned Mine Squatters as his start world, had the biggest, with his score driven by 25 points from 6 developments and outsourcing the table with 11 points from goals. Andrew Martin (33), Winton Lemoine (33), and Luke Koleszar (28) were the other Semifinalist.

2022 Finalist Jack Wolff punched his ticket back to the Final (52) with Galactic Developers and 32 points from his tableau. Jack took down three of the 2023 Finalists in Ryan Feathers (34), defending champion Brandon Bernard (31), and Dylan Quintana (30).

Cary Morris with Doomed World, used a balanced approach to scoring (59) to down 2022 Finalist Sam Wolff (41 pts + 6 cards...hard to believe a 18 pt loss was still good for 6th place laurels), Mike Kaltman (41 pts + 2 cards), and 2022 Finalist Keith Dent.

Francois de Bellefeuille prevailed in the closest semifinal. Francois used Alpha Centauri and scored 30 of his 50 points in tableau points to narrowly edge Eric Freeman (48). Mark Geary (41) and Bradford McCandless (34) finished 3rd and 4th respectively.

Final

The Most Goals for the Final were Most Production worlds and most Rebel Worlds.

The First Goals were 5 shipping VPs, 3 Alien cards, discard a card at round end, and 4 goods.

The participants chose between their two start worlds and revealed, Andrew - Terraforming Colonists, Cary - Earth Lost Colony, Jack - Industrial Robots, and Francois - Old Earth

Final Highlights:

• Turn 2: Jack already has three development based powers with Industrial Robots, Galactic Developers, and Public Works
• Turn 6: Jack and Cary claim discard goal (After this I stopped tracking turns)
• Cary gets the 4 Production Worlds 4 Goods goal on the same turn
• Jack drops Galactic Federation for his 9th card which seems to dovetail well with his tableau
• Andrew claims the first to 5 shipping VPs goal
• Jack got Improved Logistics down on the penultimate turn but isn’t able to get a second world down. It appears he made a miscount of the cards he would have available to build worlds.
• The extra turn lets Cary get another consume cycle in.

Scoring:

• VPs from tableau: Andrew (11), Cary (11), Jack (17), Francois (13)
• VP chips: Andrew (14), Cary (15), Jack (4), Francois (3)
• Bonus VPs for 6 developments: Andrew (4), Cary (14), Jack (13), Francois (13)
• Most Goal points: Cary (5)
• First goal points: Andrew (3), Cary (6), Jack (3)

Like his Semifinal win, Cary used a balanced scoring approach (this time driven by a brown world produce/consume engine) to win the tournament (51), ahead of Jack (37), Francois (33), and Andrew (32). It turns out that Cary had a big enough lead that the extra consume cycle turn was not necessary for him to win the game.

In Cary’s tableau at the end of the game was Earth’s Lost Colony, Replicant Robots, Empath World, Volcanic World, Mining Robots, Gem Smugglers, Mining League, Bio Hazard Mining World, New Earth, Export Duties, and Galactic Bankers.