First Impressions
Imagine walking into a hotel and seeing packed before you table after table of games. There will be a scream from one table yelling "Stalingrad has fallen!"
Players are walking around having games tucked under their arms ready for battle in one of over 100 tournaments that are run here. There are tournaments in everything from Risk to Age of Renaissance.
The WBC runs in Hunt Valley, MD near Baltimore the week of August 1-6. It was started after Hasbro acquired Avalon Hill and insisted that there would no longer be a convention called Avaloncon. Many AH fans were upset because they concluded that their long-loved convention would no longer be allowed to run. Their committee met and decided to call it the World Boardgaming Championships; all of the board game fans were excited to see that Avaloncon would continue to run, but only under the name WBC.
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| La Citta |
I got a chance to meet Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games and he personally taught me and four other avid gamers La Citta.
We managed to play on the only English copy of La Citta available in the United States. Its play mechanisms are very similar to Settlers of Catan with the initial placement, but the game is much more complex than that. The basic struggle is to balance your city's culture, education and health so that your citizens will want to stay and you'll be able to attract citizens from your opponent's cities. Then, your people need to be fed. If you starve your people, they'll run off and look for berries and nuts in the wilderness and disappear and you'll have one less action you can play in the following year. Each game takes about 1.5-2 hours, but is well worth the time. The player with the most citizens residing in their cities wins.
Keep checking back for updates on the WBC and if you live near the Baltimore area come down and check it out. There's sure to be something that you will enjoy. The WBC is run by Don Greenwood of the BPA and you can visit their website at http://www.boardgamers.org/
