The 2009 World Boardgaming Championships Club Report

Writen by Ken Horan

EPGS rocked the house in Lancaster with eigth tournament victories and many other impressive finishes.  Four events featured two EPGS members at the final tables, and at two of them the club members finished first and second.  Below are the highligths for our club members:

Alex Bove
Besides receiving his 2008 Caesar award, Alex won both Goa and Ra, the latter being his team game.  Alex is now the only three time WBC Ra champion.  Alex also came in second in Amun Re, losing on the fourth tie-breaker...to another EPGS member (see below).

Steve Cameron
Steve made it to the finals of Stockcar Racing.  Unfortunately, he crashed and burned early on and spent the rest of his time at the final playing the role of secretary.

Jim Castonguay
Jim won the Power Grid championship for the third time in five years and also won Die Macher as well. Jim also finished 6th in Napoleanic Wars.

Doug Faust
Doug's first trip to the WBC turned out to be very successful as he won the Notre Dame tournament.  Doug wrote about his experiences at WBC on the Board Game Geek website - you can read his report by clicking here.

Barbara Flaxington
Barb's best result was coming in 6th overall in El Grande, finishing one point behind eventual tournament winner Rob Flowers (Another EPGS member would finish one point behind Rob in the final round...see below).

Eric Freeman
Eric was the person that edged out Alex in Amun-Re, which also happened to be Eric's team game.  Eric also GMed and won Vegas showdown.

Ken Horan
I earned my first ever WBC plaque by finishing 4th overall in Power Grid.  Seven more dollars and I could have made this another one-two finish for EPGS.  I also wrote a personal WBC report on Board Game Geek which can be read by clicking here.

Mike Kaltman
Mike made it to the finals in three sepearte events but couldn't get his long-sought after first championship.  The closest he game was an agonizing one point loss in El Grande.  In his other finals, Mike placed third in Agricola and fourth in Vegas Showdown.  Mike also had the best score of everyone eliminated in the semi-final round of Caylus, thus securing fifth place overall.

As always, Mike wrote about his experiences on the Board Game Geek website.  Click here to see what he had to say.

John Karr
John made it to the final table of Age of Steam, and he's not even French-Canadian!  John finished fourth overall.

Chris Moffa
Chris took second place in Goa.  He also had the best result of any EPGSer in Puerto Rico; he tied an opponent in the semi-final round but lost due to having bid more than his opponent to take a favorable seat.  If my calculations are correct, Chris was 7th overall.

Kevin Youells
Kevin won Advanced Civilization and also made it to the final table of History of the World where he unfortunately finished, in his words, a "very distant 6th".

Some other useful links: the Boardgaming Players Association has releashed this list of all of the winners from this year's WBC, and will follow up with full reports on each event by November.  And last but not least, if you are interested in attending next year's WBC, here's a link to the Boardgame Players Association homepage.  Hope to see you there next year!