Short version: I won.Long version starts here.
Disclaimer: I may not have been the best player in the room today (which was probably -Stef-), nor the most lucky (don't know who that was), but I had a pretty good combination of both.My day started at about 8 AM. As I will tell anyone who will listen, I am the proud father of a young baby boy called Noah (not because of the ark, but we like the name) who is now 2 weeks old. So you can imagine it's been a while ago since I had a good night's sleep and these convention days can be very exhausting. But as I took a shower I remembered the fun I had last year and decided to go and if I would be out of the tournament quickly and get too tired, I would just go home.
I fired up my trusty steed (a Citroën Xsara), pulled out the navigation kit and entered the address. I was a bit sleepy still and took a wrong exit and ended up in Rotterdam instead of The Hague. Luckily, my navigation corrected me and sent me back the right way. Finally I had arrived at my destination, but I couldn't find any sign of the convention. I looked at the streetname: Colensenstraat. Doh! I had punched in the wrong street name as I had to go the Colijnplein! At this point it was already a couple of minutes since the registration had "closed" so I hoped I could still make it on time and that they would go easy on the people who were late.
Miraculously, the right address was only ~10 minutes from my current address, it could have been the other end of the city and cost more than 20 minutes. I turned up at 10.45, got a stamp and reported to the tournament officials. Pfew, I was still on time.
At this point I had no idea whether Stef or Geronimoo would be there, but I thought that they might as I knew Stef was Dutch and would probably like to grab this title.
There were 46 entrants with fourteen tables of 3 and one of 4.
I will now start going through the matches and try to remember the cards, but I have forgotten some.
Time for round #1: Base onlySetup: Chapel, Library, Thief, Militia, Council Room, Market, Gardens, Moat, Smithy, Feast As you can see, I've already forgotten some cards, but it was base game only, so let's say Mine was also in there. I had seat #2 and my opponent opened with Chapel. I had 3 and chose Silver. I often take Chapel, maybe too often, but I let it go here. Don't know exactly why, but it was the first game and I was rusty with 3p. Hadn't really practiced before the tourney as I wasn't really sure that I would go. Seat #3 took Library or Chapel, don't know which order but they both ended up with Chapel/Library and I had Militia/Silver.
Militia, so so with Library as a nice counter, but it would be useful if I could cut down on their Chapel hands. So the #1 seat continued Chapeling and Librarying and broke his deck down to the bare essentials pretty fast. In an effort to make him stall I took a Thief on the first reshuffle, but it was a dubious buy and netted me only 2 Silvers. The Chapeled guy just showed Coppers, I hit none of his crucial Golds.
I was struggling, but crawled my way to 2nd place by buying the last Province, before seat #3 could.
Gardens was not really an option here, I think.
Last year I started with a win and now I had just a 2nd, so I knew I pretty much had to win the other matches to go through to the semis.
Game #2: Intrigue onlySetup: Swindler, Torturer, Nobles, Saboteur, Masquerade, Secret Chamber, Courtyard, Steward, Bridge, Great HallTorturer always stands out, but you have to look for support, otherwise it's not as game warping as usual. I thought Nobles would be way too expensive to use as a village for a Torturer chain. I opened Masq/Silver and bought another Masq and basically just money. Masq is a nice soft counter to Torturer and everytime my right neighbor played Torturer, I was lucky enough to have Masq in hand.
Swindler is okay in the beginning, but I thought double Masq would be able to counter Swindler nicely and it worked out.
In the end, I won this one pretty easily.
Game #3: Base + IntrigueSetup: Adventurer, Throne Room, Bridge, Laboratory, Militia, Library, Masquerade, Shanty Town, Trading Post, StewardThe setup for this game had been sent out a couple of weeks before the tournament and in the mail it said that Donald X. had also used this setup for GenCon. We could all practice at home and give it our best in the tournament.
I had not practiced at home. I pit some BM+X's together in Geronimoo's simulator, but that was it.
Sitting down at the table and looking at the cards I thought: "There's got to be an engine here." I decided to go for broke and build it. I opened Shanty Town/Masq to clear out some stuff and my opponents didn't go heavy on the Militias and played some money decks.
I ended up with 6 Bridges, a bunch of Labs and Throne Rooms. In my last turn I had started with TR-TR-Lab in hand after a Militia and ended with a TR-Bridge and all of my other Bridges in play for -$7 to costs and 8 buys. I took the last 5 Provinces and 3 Duchies for a high scoring final turn.
My opponents' jaws almost dropped to the floor as I completed my megaturn.
Now I had to await my fate. Three straight wins would have gotten me in the semis for sure, but you never know with 2 wins and a 2nd. Luckily, I went through.
At this point I peeked at the tournament official's screen and saw -Stef-'s name. So I asked them: "Which one is Stef?" "The guy in the black-and-white striped shirt", they said, but he was away for the moment. When he finally showed up, I introduced myself and also met Geronimoo who tagged along with Stef to write an article for his blog or these forums.
As you would expect they're both really nice guys and it's always fun to meet the faces behind the name. When you're playing a random guy over the internet, you don't have a clue who you're actually playing. And in your mind a highly rated guy like Stef is like a monster pouncing on innocent BMU newbies. In actuality, as I said, he's a nice guy and I'm honored and happy I could meet him. Geronimoo likewise. I had already missed him last year, so finally we got a chance to shake hands. Too bad the Belgians couldn't compete this year. I also met Dubdubdub who was a real jerk! Just kidding, also a nice guy of course.
In the semis I met ArjanB and his girlfriend Loes. Loes had three wins under her belt, so she would be a fierce opponent for sure.
Semis: Base + SeasideSetup: Chapel, Festival, Smithy, Library, Caravan, Lighthouse, Moneylender, Remodel, LaboratoryI was lucky enough to open 5/2 here and chose Festival/Chapel. ArjanB did the same and Loes had 4/3 and chose Chapel/Caravan. Festival/Library seems like an obvious strategy here, but I ended up with Festivals and Smithies, but that's just because I often drew the right amount to take the Smithy with something else and taking the Library would have meant taking a Silver I didn't want.
I had a fortunate start with Chapel on T3 with CCCE and Festival+4C for Gold on T4. Loes was not so fortunate as she trashed 4 Coppers. ArjanB's deck never really got going, that happens sometimes.
I didn't trash as aggressively as I usually do with Chapel, since I felt I could always trash those Coppers later. With a deck that draws itself pretty reliably an extra Copper isn't going to hurt and I could use them to buy more components for my engine.
I ended up with exactly 6 Provinces for 36 VP, on to the finals!
Final: Base + SeasideSetup: Workshop, Gardens, the rest doesn't matterIt was me, Stef and a guy named
Stephan or Stefan Steven in the finals. The cards were drawn randomly and Workshop came out first and I remember saying "you'll see Gardens will be in there" and then it happened. What was to be the epitome of a battle of wits between the best players (and I think we three were certainly among the best if not that) turned out to be a boring three way Workshop/Gardens mirror. Geronimoo who was keeping up with the action for his blog and sitting next to me could have probably put his laptop with his simulator on my chair and it would have played the same.
The finesse is in the details in these kinds of games and at some point I had 2 Workshops and my hand was Workshop+4C. I decided to go for a third Workshop and a Gardens instead of 2 Workshops or 2 Gardens. I think 3 is enough and you have to try to win the split. Later I found myself with $3 and where I had taken an Estate earlier I chose a Silver this time. It payed off in a $5 hand which allowed me to grab a Duchy. Stefan also grabbed a lucky Duchy so we both ended up with 18 points.
Stef was unfortunate this game and ended with 15 points.
Our tie meant we had to play an extra game heads-up for the trophy and it would be a lot more interesting!
Final: Part TwoSetup: Native Village, Library, Sea Hag, Salvager, Moat, Smugglers, Embargo, Market, Remodel, MoneylenderI opened Sea Hag which I think is the default move heads-up even with Moat. To my surprise my opponent opened Salvager. With Sea Hag games, a card like Native Village is more interesting because of all the junk. NV is a card I rarely buy on Iso, no particular reason why I do it, I know it can be good, but I just have to find a really good reason to get it or I won't. In this case, I could see its potential, especially with Library. On one hand I had Salvager-Silver-3C and options. Salvage the Silver, get a Gold? I Salvaged a Copper and got 2 NVs. I only got one Library because I had $6 or $4 more often than $5 and for $6 I really wanted Golds.
On my last turn I Salvaged a Gold to pick up the last Province and as I had 5 Provinces, my opponent kindly told me I had won. Hooray!
I was so happy of course!
Parting ThoughtsDoes a tournament with a structure like this always crown the best player? Probably not, but I'd like to think I played well enough to have a shot at least and it paid off in the end.
I tried to go about things my way and if that wasn't good enough, well, someone else had to prove it to me by beating me. In the final game I said "what would Stef do?" but I didn't try to emulate Stef, I wanted to play as well as
I could with my own game plan and it proved sufficient to beat my opponent in that decisive match.
I felt kind of bad for Stef that he went out on such a lame board and felt kind of dirty opening Workshop/Workshop, but what are you going to do?
Whoever organizes the tournament gets to choose the rules and if you don't like them, don't compete. I would have liked it better if they had predetermined sets for the semis and final. They got one from Donald X. for round 3 of the regular matches so why not the semis and final? They didn't have to publish them ahead of schedule, but it could have made it more fair.
Special thanks goes out to my lovely wife who made it clear she didn't have a problem with me going.
I had a blast playing and it was even more fun winning and now I get to call myself Dutch Champion for a year! For whatever that's worth.
Hey, Theory, do I get a cool forum title now with a blue star?