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WBC: 1775 Tournament After Action Report

August 24, 2018

World Boardgaming Championships

A Revolution In Gaming

by Jeff Lange

1775 continues its expansion in popularity at WBC by increasing its participants from thirty-nine to forty this year. Academy Games’ Birth of America series (1754, 1775, 1812) allows players for each side to strategize together either the British or American factions to control the most colonies. Although the game can be played as either a two, three, or four-player game, 1775 in tournament format, each side as a faction controlling either the British or American moves his or her forces from a random draw bag each turn.

Once again, following the format of last year, the mulligan round was set on the first Sunday afternoon. Last year’s event drew twenty-six participants that mostly had never played the game. This year twenty-two folks showed up ready to test their skill and new-found education from the demo event in the afternoon. Given the high number of new players, pairings were made up of mostly experienced players with games versus those still learning without games. In the end, the British side won five of the eleven mulligan round matches with the three closest matches being Joe Yaure as the British beating Bill Place 5-4; Jeff Lange as the Americans beating Paul Bean 7-6 and Ed Welsh as the British defeating Chris Greenfield by the score of 6-5.

In Round-1, many of the vanquished returned. Those that won the mulligan round were not required to play Round-1, so many of the games had players with little experience playing opponents of similar skills. In all, twenty-two men and women faced off with the American side winning six of the eleven contests. Five of those contests were by a single colony, with another two being decided by two. Additionally, we had one game decided with a tiebreaker as it ended in a 6-6 colony tie. The tiebreaker consisted of each side totaling the number of blocks in their factions with Sam Burdett winning 67-41 on the tie-break as the Continentals.

In Round-2, every Mulligan winner, as well as Round-1 winners, were eligible to continue. So, twenty folks took their seats in the ten games of Round-2. Five games went to the Americans and five to the British. Most games were quite close with three one-colony margins, and three with two-colony margins. There were no ties that had to be resolved with a tie-break.

Round-3 began with mostly very experienced veterans, six games, and 12 contestants. Joe Harrison, last year’s runner-up, finished in a tie with John Faella. Joe eked out a 43-40 tiebreaker. Dave Schneider, last year’s winner, defeated Bill Place 8-3 as the British. Greg Hultgren’s Brits defeated Marc Nelson 5-4. Sam Wolff’s Americans defeated Steve Altbacker 7-2. Finally, John Conlon’s Brits defeated Liz Nelson 8-1

Round-4 started with five players so John Faella played as an eliminator vs John Conlon. John Faella’s Americans proved too much for John Conlon’s Brits and he was eliminated with a score of 7-0. Joe Harrison defeated Greg Hultgren 7-2 as the British. David Schneider beat Sam Wolff 7-2 as the Americans.

Final: interestingly this resulted in a rematch of last year’s final with David Schneider as the British vs Joe Harrison as the Americans in the Quebec Scenario. The Quebec Scenario is vastly different from the campaign game as it only uses half the map and is centered on control of province or colony cities in specific areas. In the end, after over twelve hours of continuous play in five-player rounds, we had a very close fought final game that went to Joe Harrison’s British 8-3.

Academy games will be listing the top two finishers on their website, presented the top three finishers with a 50% off coupon, and are listing the two finalists in future editions of the game rulebooks to honor their accomplishments.

--We want to say a special thank you to Jeff Lange for providing coverage of this year's tournament.--