The Catan Tour continues from Bangsar & Cheras to SS15 this time as we head to the popular MEEPLES Boardgamecafe as they host the 3rd Qualifier. No popcorn bribe nor world peace here but you get a bunch of boisterous group of Cataners – sixteen of them in fact – competing for the two places in the MAGACON Finals.

 

Given that MAGACON is willing to host the BGC Catan Finals this Dec, it’s only proper that our Catan Qualifier tour includes some of their boardgame partners. MEEPLES and FND Mindspot will be there doing game demos while Boardgamecafe.net is hosting the boardgame tournament section. Mage Cafe is also there with Tracy’s delicious F&B (yummy) and Comics Mart their comics & miniatures.

 

This week’s qualifiers would be from MEEPLES and FND Mindspot, while next week MAGE CAFE (nice to be back there again) and COMICS MART shall host the remaining two qualifiers.

 

Some peeps have been asking us what’s MAGACON? A quick reply, it’s the Malaysian Gamers Convention being held in Dec 17 & 18 this month at KDU which is an event NOT to be missed if you love boardgames! All the leading boardgame players will be there… so mark your calendar, block out these dates and get yourself a ticket (which costs only Rm20 for both days).

 

 

Even better… get yourself to one of the remaining Catan qualifiers next week (one ticket Rm20 entitles you to one seat in the qualifier round) and stand a chance to win the limited edition 15th Anniversary Settlers of Catan set worth USD150. 🙂

 

At Meeples, we started with 16 eager beaver Cataners and as such we’ll be doing a two-round qualifier in order to find out top two from this venue. So four table (of four) it is.. .and the top two finishers from each table shall proceed to Round 2 (two tables of four) where only the winner from each table shall make it to the MAGACON Finals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timber Tycoon….

 

 

Expensive lady… hehe.. She always ask you for two when trading!

 

 

The youngest Catan competitor at 12 yrs old

 

 

Longest Road seems like a fave strategy here…

 

After about an hour plus of Cataning, we have our eight Round 1 finishers, who shall now compete in Round Two to decide the two qualifiers for the Finals in MAGACON.

 

 

This is when the competition gets intense coz it’s now winner takes all! The eight finishers from Round One are grouped into two tables of four and only the winner of each table gets to the MAGACON Finals.

 

 

Two MEEPLES staff – Edward (left) and Richard – in the 2nd Round? Are they both going to make it to the Finals?

 

 

 

Starting position for Table 1 (Round 2)

 

 

Suk Yan (red) was rushing up a strong lead (8 VP) with her 2 cities, 2 settlements and Longest Road card – see pic below. Just two points short of winning this game and I was looking forward to her being the first female Catan qualifier for this year. 😛

 

 

That lead somehow attracted lots of unwanted attention for her from the guys (ah well, I’m sure as the only lady in Round 2, she attracted attention from the guys already, hehe) and soon everyone was executing blocking and thieving moves on her. Haha.. So much for being “gentlemen”.

 

 

But no one was looking to block Edward who suddenly laid down one more settlement to claim his win for Table #1 (with 3 hidden VPs in Development Card). Well played.

 

 

Final board position after Edward’s win. I think Edward is blue.

 

Note: Kevin (Boardgame Depot)’s four Dev Card VPs from the BG Depot Qualifier last week (sessrep here) is still the highest number of Dev Card VPs in a winning set I’ve seen so far. Anyone seen all 5 VP? 😛

 

 

 

Starting position for Table 2 (Round 2)

 

 

This group (with Meeples’ Richard) is the noisiest – and also the slowest! I wonder why ler… LOL

 

 

Another Longest Road being set up in Table 2. This one by Red looks almost unbreakable…

 

Unlike Table #1, here Richard was more or less in the lead for most of the game so it was not a surprise when he also claimed victory on this table.

 

 

Final board position for Richard (white). I think he did pretty well considering he was hemmed into a corner of the map.

  

So there we have the two finalists from Meeples – Richard & Edward… err.. ahem… oooh… both of them Meeples staff. :S

 

All the best anyway to both of them for the Finals @ Magacon!

 

To view pictures from this event

 

If you miss this weekend’s qualifiers, we’ll be at Mage Cafe (Damansara Jaya) and Comics Mart (Midvalley) next weekend

– Mage Cafe (Damansara Jaya) on Saturday, Dec 10th, 2.00 pm onwards (link to event invite), and

– Comics Mart (Midvalley) on Sunday, Dec 11th, 2:00 pm onwards (link to event invite)

 

See ya!

 

Meeples SS15 (this report)

FND Mindspot