Want to learn a new game? Amy Rule demoed new game Calico during our recent EuroQuest 2020 Virtual event.
You can watch the demo here:
Thanks Amy!
The Center of the Board Game Tournament Universe
magazine article
Want to learn a new game? Amy Rule demoed new game Calico during our recent EuroQuest 2020 Virtual event.
You can watch the demo here:
Thanks Amy!
New for 2020 – Revised points for tournaments. After looking at the results of the past 3 years, we have decided to make a small adjustments to how many points are awarded.
To determine player standings across events for each of the Meeple League’s featured games every year, points are awarded based on how well the players do. Here I will explain how the points are determined.
First by just playing in one game of a tournament you will get your first point. Next, if you win any game during the tournament you will get 3 more points. If your tournament has a semi or quarterfinal, just for playing in those rounds you will earn additional points. Lastly, if you get to play at the final table you will get more points for the place you finish in. Now, the number of points for playing in the quarter/semi/finals of a tournament will depend on the total number of different players entered into the tournament.
For example, let’s say that you play in a 37 player Ticket to Ride tournament and you finish 3rd overall and the tournament includes a semifinal round which you win. You would get 5 points for playing in the semi, plus 18 for finishing 3rd overall. Your total for the event would be 27. The other 4 points are coming from entering and winning a game during the tournament.
Finish or | Number of Different Players | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Achievement | 8 - 16 | 17 - 32 | 33 - 64 | 65+ |
1st Overall | 15 | 25 | 30 | 35 |
2nd Overall | 10 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
3rd Overall | 7 | 14 | 18 | 22 |
4th Overall | 6 | 12 | 15 | 18 |
5th Overall* | 5 | 10 | 12 | 14 |
6th Overall* | 4 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
In Semi Final | 0 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
In Quarter Final | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Win any game | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
Play a game | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
First tie-breaker is number of events where the players made the final table.
The second tie-breaker is how many people each player placed above in tournaments where they made the final table. That would be calculated as the sum of each tournament size minus the finish at the final table. For example, finishing second in a 32-player tournament adds 30 to that total.
Through 2019, live play points were distributed differently as shown below:
Finish or | Number of Different Players | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Achievement | 8 - 16 | 17 - 32 | 33 - 64 | 65 - 128 | 129+ |
1st Overall | 15 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 |
2nd Overall | 10 | 20 | 26 | 32 | 38 |
3rd Overall | 7 | 14 | 18 | 22 | 26 |
4th Overall | 6 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 |
5th Overall* | 5 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 |
6th Overall* | 4 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
In Semi Final | 0 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
In Quarter Final | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
Win any game | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
Play a game | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
The final standings are in and Allan Jiang is the first-ever Meeple League Online Player of the Year. Allan crushed the field, finishing with a very impressive 36% more points than runner-up Randy Buehler. Fully 355 players played at least 1 season of 1 game in 2018. You can see the full standings here, but here’s a look at the Top 25:
1. Allan Jiang – 617.5
2. Randy Buehler – 454
3. Rob Murray – 419
4. Rob Kircher – 357.5
5. DJ Borton – 324.5
6. Nick Henning – 323
7. Richard M. Shay – 277.5
8. Stephen Voland – 262.5
9. Steven LeWinter – 259.5
10. Matthew Vienneau – 256
11. Sky Winslow Roy – 255
12. Haim Hochboim – 247
13. Mike Turian – 246
14. Chris Bert – 231
15. Andy Schwarz – 227
16. Antero Kuusi – 225.33
17. Gilbert Quinonez – 220.5
18. Andrew Norgren – 216
19. Alexandre Fafard – 209.5
20. Aaron Buchanan – 209
21. Sceadeau d’Tela – 208
22. Eric Freeman – 203
23. Ray Wolff – 201.5
24. Andrew Emerick – 197
25. Alex Bove – 189.5
For 2019 we’re going to tweak the formula slightly, but the basics will be the same: only your best 3 seasons of any given game count and you get credit for all the league points you earn plus bonuses for winning games and winning your group (where the bonuses scale up depending on how difficult your division is). We feel this worked pretty well (especially for a first attempt), but the one tweak we want to make is to reward folks for maintaining their position in the higher divisions: 2nd place – 5th place in Division 1 will now receive 5 bonus points and 2nd – 5th in each Division 2 Group will earn 2 bonus points.
We don’t have separate official awards for each of our 5 online games, but that’s not going to stop me from pointing out who our highest scorers were. I’ll be looking at aggregate scores here (aka, the sum of your best 3 seasons) since that’s what counts toward Player of the Year.
Allan scored 144 of his points in Brass, which was tops. Jon Wilcox pipped Maciek Dud 136-135 for the second best Brass year. Brass has proven to be our fastest game, by the way, with 7 different seasons happening during 2018. Andrew Emerick and Scott Rothstein rounded out the top 5 with 115 and 111.
Eric Freeman had the best year in Castles of Burgundy, winning Division 1 in 2 of the 4 seasons that happened in 2018 to take home 135 points. Allan had to settle for 2nd here, with 119.5 points as he worked his way up the ladder, while Andrew Norgren was 3rd with 117, Ming Wei Liem was 4th at 112, and Chris Bert was 5th at 111.
Switching to the app for Through The Ages helped us get in 5 seasons over the course of 2018. Allan spent all 5 in Division 1, winning it twice, but his 142 points was actually 1 less than Eric Krasnauskas (aka Kolo), who only played 3 seasons but won all 3 of them, climbing from Division 3 up to Division 1 (which he won last season). Eugene Harvey was 3rd with 122. Only 2 others broke 100 points: Luis Leitao (104) and Ray Fernandez (103).
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Kyle Smith earned the most points in Thurn & Taxis (with 124). No one else has won Division 1 more than once, but Kyle has won it *5* times, including in 2 of the 4 seasons that happened in 2018. Other games have had 3-time winners (Eric Freeman in Castles and Petri Savola in Agricola), but Kyle’s dominance of Thurn & Taxis is the most complete of any online Meeple League game. Rob Kircher’s 112 was 2nd for 2018 while my own 102 was 3rd. Alex Bove was 4th on 99, meanwhile with 98 points and 5th place overall this is apparently Allan’s worst game!
Agricola seasons are our longest and there were only 3 in 2018, so there was no opportunity to ignore a bad season. Manpanzee was the clear winner with 139.5 points. Having won his Division 4 group in late 2017, Elliot started 2018 by winning his Div 3 group, then won his Div 2 group, then won Division 1! Allan was 2nd with 114 as he also completed his own rise up the ladder into Division 1. 3rd place for the year was a tie between William Francis and ecotone at 105.5, with Terry Borer being the only other players to break 100 (which he did half half a point).
All in all 2018 was a very successful year for us – lots of people got to play lots of board games. Here’s hoping 2019 is even better!
BFGCon is a brand new convention starting up this year in Frederick Maryland. BFGCon will offer a variety of game types and events, and for this first year the Meeple League will be sponsoring two events:
Ticket to Ride (Fri March 23 8pm)
Splendor (Sat March 24 3pm)
Players can sign up early for the tournaments on Warhorn, and if spots are still open they can sign up on site.
We’re really excited to be part of this fun new event – come on down and check it out!
The Meeple League is proud to announce that we’re adding a new plaque to next year’s awards:
Online Player of the Year
We will keep track of everyone’s performance across all of our online leagues using the following point system:
One of our goals was to acknowledge the (much) tougher strength of schedule and accomplishment of winning the top divisions, while also making sure you didn’t need to be playing in the top Divisions to win this. Using the points above it works out that crushing a Division 3 Group 4-0-0-0 is worth about the same amount of points as winning 2 games and narrowly taking the Group in Division 1. This is our first year doing an Online Player of the Year, so there’s no guarantee we got all weights tuned correctly, but we feel pretty good about this as a starting point. Meanwhile, it is pure point accumulation, so the more leagues you play in, the more points you can get.
We currently run leagues for 5 games: Agricola, Brass, Castles of Burgundy, Through the Ages, and Thurn and Taxis. If we add any new games during 2018, they will count, too. For whatever it’s worth, we started our first two leagues in January and over the course of 2017 we ran 5 seasons of Thurn and Taxis and 4 seasons of Agricola (counting the two seasons that are currently in progress). We expect to open up at least two seasons for registration in December (Through The Ages season 2 and Castles of Burgundy Season 4) and those will count as the first events of the 2018 year.
Good luck and have fun!