Board Game Arena

The TinyTourney tournament, which despite its name was a 5 edge (X=15) competition, is just wrapping up, and I wanted to leave my list of games I thought particularly interesting/well played/close, hopefully others might wish to offer their own choices or comment on some of the games.

https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!table?table=49470376
https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!gamerev ... e=49470380
https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!gamerev ... e=49470397
https://en.1.boardgamearena.com/blooms?table=49470316

Congratulatons to andycupid who won the Long Summer in he Garden tournament (4x4 with a high X), the final game between andycupid and Mathteacher is worth looking at:

https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!table?table=49625283

The Porphychem v timpiece game is really good, timpiece looks to have it in the bag early on after the blue chain was taken, but then Porphychem connects the 2 black chains together. Some very good perseverance.

andy is an awesome LITS player and a friendly guy, we'll see if he can also climb to the top-spot at blooms - if he has time(?)

I think its a good game showing the importance of more subtle structural elements, the black blooms are actually very strong, while the detached yellow and red blooms turn out to be much weaker than they first appeared. I think playing B2-D4 immediately after the capture of the blue bloom would have paid dividends, allowing a much more conservative build that would have allowed the territorial advantage to have been played out.

The 6x6 Winter in the Forest just ended

Two interesting games, the first I played in involves a series of small exchanges and exhibits a whole range of tensions; the second Tashina's semi-final game, which I think is really interesting as Tashina starts with what appears to be a very weak opening, one colour hugging a missing space but in which the two colours ultimately work very well together.

https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!table?table=49567486
https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!table?table=49620490

It was interesting to see 6x6 played with a low X count.

With 26 players I think the Black Hex tournament has been the largest so far played on the site. I've picked out two games by my opponent in the final (lololee):

https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!table?table=49629272
https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!table?table=49687202

The first is a great example of seeking territorial compensation in return for a bloom the opponent captures. The second is worth studying to see how lololee repeatedly creates structural weaknesses in the opponents blooms, leading to a cascade that eventualy takes everything on the board.

I was also really pleased with my own game against lololee in the final
https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!gamerev ... e=49743256

In the game the critical move to me was blue to D3, that was the moment I sacrificed the blue bloom and sought a territorial compensation. I even got in may analysis as far as having that double blue reserve on the right of the board, though lololee did not make it easy.

Panteri brought my winning streak to an end taking the March Yellow Hex tournament (5x5, X=20). It is worth looking at his games which are all relatively dynamic (a lot of X=20 games tend towards rather static endgames).

https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!gamerev ... e=49854054
https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!gamerev ... e=49927974