Castles of Burgundy 2022 – 2023 BPA PBEM Tournament Report
Forty-one players played in the first round, each playing 4 simultaneous games and each game having the same, randomly selected board for all four players. Michael Swinson led the first round with four wins, while Dominic Blais, previous PBEM champion Ray Wolff, and Chris Bert scored three wins each.
In the second round, previous WBC champion, Allan Jiang, won all four games, while Chris Bert won three. While looking through the games for my writeup, I found one unusual one in this round where Jon Senn managed a win without collecting a single yellow tile.
With the large field, the final round still had ten players competing for six laurel slots.
A rundown of the games in the final round:
Game 1 – On board 5, Michael Swinson won by 21 over Goran Kero, with the others not far behind. He scored 24 points with his two yellow tiles (both 4VP building tiles) and completed two animal areas with a herd of cows.
Game 2 – On board 6, Goran Kero beat DJ Borton by just 8 points. Goran had just the 3VP/type of good tile, but also finished ships, animals, cities and mines each for the 7VP bonus.
Game 3 – On board 10, Ray Wolff passed Allan Jiang by 12 points. He completed the yellow tiles, including 3 scoring tiles as well as the “same building” tile, which helped him complete the 8-space building area.
Game 4 – On board 2, Michael Swinson won the game with Chris Bert 21 points behind. He had only two yellow tiles, but filled in the entire rest of the board including a decent pig field.
Game 5 – On board 8, Ray Wolff edged by Eric Freeman by only 4 points, only finishing the anmals and buildings, but completing a 6-space sheep field and scoring the maximum possible 21 points with yellow tile 7 (an additional point for every animal tile).
Game 6 – On board 9, Allan Jiang squeaked out the win over Ray Wolff by just 2 points, finishing buildings, castles, mines and ships.
Eric beat Dominic again, this time by 26 points, filling everything but the light green spaces.
Game 7 – On board 3, Michael Swinson had a comfortable margin of 34 points over DJ Borton, finishing yellow tiles, animals, buildings, and cities.
Game 8 – On board 4, Allan Jiang won by just 1 point over Chris Bert, only missing out on 3 animal and 2 city spaces.
Game 9 – On board 5, Allan Jiang won by 23 points over Goran Kero. Allan finished everything but 5 animal tiles, racking up five bonus tiles.
Game 10 – On board 8, Ray Wolff got past Jon Senn by only 2 points, with the help of a 6-space pig field.
In the end, both Allan Jiang and Ray Wolff had three wins and a second place finish, followed closely by Michael Swinson, with three wins and a third place. I calculate a tiebreaker for each player based on how close they were to the winner in each game (or if they won, how much the passed the second place player). Ray Wolff managed the win by a very, VERY close margin. It Is at least worth noting that in the two final games where Ray and Allan played each other, each won a game, but Ray’s margin of victory was larger.
1) Ray Wolff
2) Allan Jiang
3) Michael Swinson
4) Goran Kero
5) DJ Borton
6) Chris Bert
This being online, I had the luxury of pulling some statistics. I opted to gather the following:
a) How often each different type of tile was completed by a winner (whether getting the bonus or not for being 1st/2nd to do so)
b) How often each yellow tile was picked by a winner, and what was the average score of a VP tile (across the winning boards)
c) How often each player (by initial turn order) won a game.
Type of Tile – number of winner boards that completed (% – for reference we had 71 total games)
Yellow / Special Tiles – 31 (44%)
Blue / Ship Tiles – 42 (59%)
Light Green / Animal Tiles – 45 (63%)
Dark Green / City Tiles – 54 (76%)
Brown / Building Tiles – 45 (63%)
Grey / Mine Tiles – 48 (68%)
Yellow Tile – number of winner boards that selected (%) – average score
1) use same building – 3 (4%)
2) worker with mines – 14 (20%)
3) silverling with mines – 14 (20%)
4) worker with sell good – 11 (15%)
5) ship – gather adjacent goods – 4 (6%)
6) buy from anywhere – 7 (10%)
7) +1 VP per animal tile – 14 (20%) – 12.0 VP – this included one zero score and Ray’s max 21 VP score.
8) workers +/- 2 – 4 (6%)
9) place brown tiles +/- 1 – 3 (4%)
10) place blue/light green tiles +/- 1 – 9 (13%)
11) place dark green/yellow/gray tiles +/- 1 – 4 (6%)
12) take any tiles +/- 1 – 11 (15%)
13) silverling with workers – 8 (11%)
14) 4 workers – 15 (21%)
15) 3 VP per type of good – 24 (34%) – 15.5 VP – most popular, for good reason
16) 4 VP per Warehouse (sell goods) – 13 (18%) – 10.2 VP
17) 4 VP per Watchtower (4 VP) – 12 (17%) – 8.7 VP
18) 4 VP per Workshop (take building) – 10 (14%) – 10.8 VP
19) 4 VP per Church (take mine/city/special) – 16 (23%) – 8.0 VP
20) 4 VP per Market (take ship/animal) – 13 (18%) – 7.4 VP
21) 4 VP per Boarding House (4 workers) – 19 (27%) – 9.7 VP
22) 4VP per Bank (2 silverlings) – 18 (25%) – 10.0 VP
23) 4 VP per City Hall (place tile) – 15 (21%) – 8.3 VP
24) 4 VP per type of animal – 13 (18%) – 9.2 VP
25) 1 VP per good sold – 16 (23%) – 9.3 VP
26) 2 VP per bonus tile – 14 (20%) – 7.6 VP
Number of wins by Initial Turn Order:
1st – 17
2nd – 14
3rd – 24
4th – 16
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