I finished 3rd at WBC finals, and I'm not happy about it. Not because there was anything wrong with the tournament or any shady dealings, but I lost to people who weren't familiar with the cards (e.g., I had my Coppers Swindled into more Coppers, and players bought Coppers).
I won all my preliminary heats (intrigue-only), quarterfinals (intrigue-only), and semifinals (seaside-only) playing various versions of Big Money modified (and in semifinals, being the only one interested in Sea Hag while others went for Pirate Ships was pretty dominating). The finals was two games (5 intrigue 5 seaside). The first set was:
Courtyard
Ambassador
Great Hall
Scout
Swindler
Treasury
Outpost
Conspirator
Pirate Ship
Native Village
In 4th position, I opened Ambassador/Ambassador while others opened Baron/Silver, Pirate Ship/Silver (!), and Scout/Swindler (!!). One Ambassador missed the first reshuffle, but whatever. I thinned my deck dramatically and built a pretty good Treasury/Conspirator/Outpost engine. But right before I was able to kick my engine into high gear (I had 1 Province and was ready for 2-Province turns), the game ended on piles and I was in last place. As it turns out, Ambassador in 4p is very different than in 2p: somehow it feels less effective (though I have no theoretical justification for this), but more importantly, it drains piles. I drained the estates, they had emptied the Great Halls, and my opponent had been swindling everyone's Silvers into Ambassadors (since it was a "useless" card). With two Ambassadors left, the second-place player played Outpost, bought an Ambassador, and bought the last Ambassador on her Outpost turn.
Second game, I played Masquerade/Big Money while they messed around with Baron. (Maybe my Masquerades indirectly kept people's Barons fed.) The person who placed first last game hit his Baron on every reshuffle and won again, while I made one mistake (early Nobles instead of Gold) and bottom-decked all my money on the last turn, so I finished second. My 4th and 2nd put me to 3rd overall.
So yeah, I'm not particularly pleased I finished third behind people who opened Scout. C'est la vie. At least I didn't fly all the way out to GenCon, since if I had done that and lost under similar circumstances I might have punched a hole in something.
(Don't even ask me about Twilight Struggle. Against the best player in the world, I stupidly play Defectors when he sees my headline first, so I cancel out Africa Scoring, costing myself 10VP, and I lose in Final Scoring by 1VP.)