After a tour of Qualifiers hosted by newly set-up boardgame cafes, we are honored to be back among one of the oldest game shop to premier in M’sia – WOLF GAME SHOP. Only the brave lurks in the lair of the wolf, and with rumours of Empress Hacan the Merciful making a return from her Catan slumber, we were all set for an explosive qualifier!

 

1. Triona Leo

2. Norman Chuo

3. Arjun Armand

4. Ian Binn

5. Emil Ali

6. Aaron Khoh

 

Game Masters (GM): jack208 & aanemesis (Game #6)

Location: Wolf Game Shop, Section 14 PJ

Date/Time: 3 April 2011 2.15 PM – 4.00 pm (Sun)

 

 

WOLF GAME SHOP (WGS) has been around for as long as I can remember, from way back in their early days in Amcorp Mall when I was but a mere noob in boardgaming, they have now moved to Section 14. They are not a boardgame café but set up as a game shop with emphasis on miniatures gaming and yet have a fair share of boardgames being played here.

 

WGS commands a loyal set of followers and though some of them “disappeared” every now and then, a competitive event such as this would see the “long-lost” gamers coming back for some sort of reunion. While today’s qualifier saw 6 gamers who already knew each other, it’s not expected to get any less competitive for the simple reason they knew two will win and four will not.

 

News of Empress Hacan the Merciful making a comeback from her sojurn (since returning from Essen a few years back with M’sia’s best showing in the Catan Championship) fueled the fire that drew the other marauders into the wolf’s lair. Would she drink from the poisoned chalice?

 

Players (initial turn order): Norman (red), Arjun (yellow), Triona (green), Ian (black), Aaron (blue) and Emil (purple)

Map: China, with north-east area not in play

GM: jack208 & aanemesis

 

 

(L-R) Aaron, Triona, Ian, Arjun, Emil, Norman

We’d the resource-hoarders in the previous Setapak qualifier (read sessrep here) and map builders in the earlier ones; I wondered how would this play out? 😛

 

The 1st turn seemed to be a rush for building as three players were already on 2-cities. First turn average resource cost was down to a mere $9 (compared to the Setapak Qualifier’s average of $16).

 

However this was probably skewed due to Aaron-blue’s interesting non-purchase of any resource in this turn (he’ll still get $10 even if he powered zero city). Was Aaron’s gambit justified? Read on to see if he makes the cut. 😛

 

 

Loyal followers of our session reports on the qualifiers would not doubt have read about my comments of the first build in the north-east area which have entrapped all those who ventured there for the cheap early connections (Ang in Q1, Ken in Q2 and Lee in Q3).

 

Interestingly it was Triona-green who dropped her first two cities in that area. Hmmm. The Empress took a sip from the poisoned chalice….

 

The city building continued to keep pace with all except Ian-black not getting to 2-cities. Arjun-yellow has the most plant capacity when he bought the #15 giving him the ability to supply 5 cities.

 

 

Ian-black (left) and Arjun-yellow

 

Norman-red and Emil-purple were the first among the six to get their 3rd plants, pushing their capacity to 6 and overtook Arjun-yellow’s five capacity.

 

 

Emil-purple (left) and Norman-red and their respective 3-power-plants (below)

 

 

The laggers were quick to acquire their own 3rd power plants to catch up with the early high-capacity players (not that anyone has 5 or 6 cities to reap the rewards yet) while map building continued at a frantic pace with more than half the players getting to their 4th cities! This session seems to be on steroids!

 

 

With massive expansion done quickly on the map, you can see Triona-green being boxed in while Emil-purple appeared to have the freedom of growth!

 

With the mid-game plants coming out, the players were pushing the prices higher in the plant bidding phase. Can’t afford to lose out. The #2x plants went as high as $30!

 

 

Norman-red (middle) trying to decide if he wanted to pay more than $30. 😛

 

This appeared to be shaping into a fast-n-frantic Power Grid session with the players getting to their 5th cities in this turn. Looked like Step 2 was only a turn away.

 

 

Triona-green was already locked-in with no more room for her to build her 6th city unless she makes a quantum leap of faith!  So was Norman-red.

 

Emil-purple appeared to have the advantage on the map as the critical Step 2 was looming on the horizon when the leaders can break away from the pack. So can the Queen escape from her predicament?

 

Almost everyone was reaching 10-cities supply capacity now, and even though their building was lagging behind their supply capacity, this still indicated a quick game as everyone would be pushing towards the 14-city trigger.

 

 

The power plants available at the start of Turn 6, which meant Step 3 could also be triggered at the end of this turn.

 

 

Resources have tanked bottom coz everyone was putting their money on power plants and city building instead of hoarding resources.

 

 

With everyone getting choked on city building options, Emil-purple was the first to grab his 6th cities (Step 2) when he took the last 2 available cities in the central regions. Except for Ian-black who built first before Emil-purple, the rest were unable to find any empty city to expand. And with access to the north-west cities being blocked completely by Emil-purple, he looked set to continue his map dominance in future turns to come.

 

Step 3 did not happen this round as expected, so the players continued the game as Step 2 (which was triggered last turn). The #34 uranium plant was highly coveted and Emil-purple had to go as high as $40 in order to win it. With it, Emil-purple now has the capacity to power 13 cities (the only other player with this capacity was Aaron-blue) and unrestricted access to 4 cheap cities in the north-west – can he make a dash for the finish?

 

 

Not so fast! This was when Empress Hacan Triona-green made her move! She dropped 5 cities in this turn to jump from 5 to 10 cities!

 

 

Only Arjun-yellow and Norman-red were able to keep pace (but only till 9-cities) with the rest falling behind at 6- to 7-cities. A possible good news for the chasing players was Triona-green has supply capacity for 10-cities only and would still need to acquire at least one more power plant before she can pushed for the game-end trigger.

 

 

The critical Step 2 where the leaders can move away from the chasing pack with a well-timed break!

 

 

Norman-red (right) trying not to lag too far behind Triona-green while Emil-purple saw his early lead being cut back mercilessly by the Queen of Merciful. 😛

 

Step 3 was also started in this turn.

 

Can the back-three catch up with the front-three (Triona-green, Arjun-yellow and Norman-red)?

 

 

Everyone acquired one of the high-powered Step 3 plants to push their supply capacity to 14 or more as the game neared it’s inevitable conclusion.

 

Everyone except Arjun-yellow who surprisingly did not get any new plant and as such his supply capacity remained at just 10-cities. Arjun-yellow was still in a lead position with his 9-cities but could his underwhelming supply capacity cost him in the last straight?

 

 

Triona-green managed to get the #31 (above) to push her supply capacity to 15 cities (the downside was she has one too many coal/oil plants in her inventory) while Emil-purple got the #50 eco-plant at cost to put him at the highest capacity of 16-cities.

 

 

Triona-green (right) surveying the resource market, getting worried at the price of oil & coal since she’ll be the last player to buy resources this turn.

 

This is how the players stacked up moving into the building stage of this turn:

 

Turn Order	Player’s Name	Color	Cities	Capacity
1st	Triona	Green	10	15
2nd	Norman	Red	9	13
3rd	Arjun	Yellow	9	10
4th	Aaron	Blue	7	15
5th	Ian	Black	7	14
6th	Emil	Purple	6	16

 

 

Everyone’s in standing mode now as the game reached it’s finale….

 

 

Kareem (left) and Aanemesis joined the players in their finale frenzy…

 

In the Building phase, while most of the others built only one-city (I supposed their money all went to bidding for the needed Step 3 plants earlier in this turn) Aaron-blue dropped 3-cities to rush up to a 10-cities pole position and with Norman-red unable to build this turn and Arjun-yellow only adding one city to his previous nine, Aaron has now came into joint 2nd/3rd breathing down  Triona’s neck.

 

 

Can Triona-green (being the last to build) dropped 4 cities to end the game and claim victory?

 

 

No, she can’t! Can only managed 2 which still kept her in pole position going into the next turn and this surely has to be the final turn.

 

Only two players went for power plant bidding in this last turn – Arjun-yellow with his mandatory purchase of the #46 to bring his capacity to 15-cities, and Norman-red who has to do one more upgrading of his power plants to move from 13- to 17-cities capacity. Would spending the money on this last power plant set them back in terms of building one more crucial city?

 

 

Norman-red (above) with his newly acquired #38 to boost capacity to 17-cities… would that be a step too late?

 

 

With Triona-green on 12 cities and almost sure to be able to build at least 2 (to trigger game end), no one can leave anything to chance and have to build as many cities as they can in order to claim one of the two Finalist spots on offer!

 

Emil-purple and Ian-black both managed to build 4 cities to bring them to their 11th cities but alas this would not be enough to win the game.

 

Norman-red can only add 3 cities bringing him to 13-cities. I think the last #38 power plant took out too much moolah from him. L

 

Arjun-yellow was the first to trigger the 14th game-end condition when he built 4 cities to jump from 10- to 14-cities! He later commented he didn’t knew it was possible for him to build 4 cities in a single turn (for a total of $92) until he played in this game. LOL

 

There’s still Aaron-blue and Triona-green yet to build. Would Arjun-yellow’s 14th be enough to tip him over the line? He still has $21 left and was searching the map to see if he can build just one more city but to no avail!

 

 

Aaron-blue had everyone especially Triona in suspense when he placed 5 blue houses to the board…. that would have meant he was building 5 cities to reach 15-cities!

 

But alamak! He mistook one of the empty cities in the (not-in-play) north-east area of the map as one of his planned five cities built. Oops…. so he quickly recalculated and paid $100 for his 4 cities and with only $25 left was trying to find a possible 5th city. Again none found so Aaron-blue ended the game with 14-cities but he should be able to win a tie-break with Arjun-yellow.

 

As expected, Triona-green took 3 new cities bringing her total cities to 15 for an outright victory! 2nd place went to Aaron-blue on the basis of money as tie-break with Arjun-yellow.

 

Phew!

 

 

 

Triona-green (left) achieved two firsts in this qualifier. She became the first lady Finalists (cheers!) and she was also the first not only to survive the dreaded “north-east poison chalice” but claimed victory!

 

Both Triona and Aaron also won a Rm50 boardgame voucher from Boardgamecafe.net for being the top 2 finishers from this qualifier. CONGRATS!

 

Position	Player’s Name	Color	Cities	Supplied	Cash
1st	Triona Leo	Green	15	15	$22
2nd	Aaron Khoh	Blue	14	14	$25
3rd	Arjun Armand	Yellow	14	14	$21
4th	Norman Chuo	Red	13	13	$3
5th	Ian Binn	Black	11	11	$18
6th	Emil Ali	Purple	11	11	$0

 

 

Special thanks to our host, Wolf Game Shop and Francis Wolf for hosting this Qualifier.

 

 

The competitors (below) unwinding with a game or two of The Speicherstadt (courtesy of Emil)

 

From one of the earliest game shop in town (WGS), we take you next week to the first boardgame café in Msia – MAGE CAFE of Damansara Jaya – where we expect to see euro-centric boardgamers gather to compete to become the 9th & 10th Finalists.

 

 

 

For more photos of this Qualifier, visit our Facebook Album.

 

– Qualifier #1 @ Boardgame Depot > round 1 > round 2 > photo album 1 > photo album 2

– Qualifier #2 @ Cassian Kitchen > report > photo album

– Qualifier #3 @ Family Boardgame Station > report > photo album

 

Learn more about POWER GRID board game at Boardgamegeek (link)

Buy POWER GRID from our webstore (link) and its expansion maps:

– France & Italy maps (link)

– Benelux & Central Europe maps (link)

– China & Korea maps (link)

– Brazil & Iberia maps (link)

– Russia & Japan maps (latest) (link)

– Power Plant Deck 2 (link)

 

For more boardgaming reports, visit our Boardgamecafe.net Blog.

To discuss this tournament, join us in our Facebook Page.

 

To buy the games played in this meetup, please visit our Web Store.

To view a listing of POWER GRID and all its expansion maps, click here.

 

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