News

Magazine articles about events and tournaments

Agricola Online Tournament

Agricola Season 16 Online
Tournament

Standings
Report Results
Pairings
Sign Up
Overview & News

Season 16 Standings

As games end the standings are updated. See how each league is doing and check on your friends and rivals. You can see lifetime standings HERE.

If the frame below is hard to read on your device follow the link:

Tournament Results

Report Season 16 Agricola Online Tournament Game Results

Record the results at www.meepleleague.club

Game Assignments

Your Season 16 Game Assignments will be on www.meepleleague.club when the season starts. You should also receive an email from the GM. All the game assignments are available below when the season starts.

This Agricola league uses the online implementation of the Revised Edition of Agricola at www.boardgamearena.com. Games must be created with the Tournament mode setting (which just means the banned list used in most tournaments is implemented) and “Draft 7” will be used to distribute occupations and minor improvements from all 3 of the implemented decks: E, I, and K, though there are a few cards from the printed version of the game that have not been implemented  (see the article about online Agricola).

Be sure to name the game using the game name below and invite the other players listed. Any player may set up the game, but the winner of each game is responsible for entering the results using the form further down the page.

If you have trouble reading the iframe, click on the title below to open it in its own tab.

Game Assignments

Sign Ups Closed for Season 16 of
Agricola Online Tournament

Sign ups for the next season will be available on:

bucketofdice.com

Make sure you have an account on:

www.bucketofdice.com

If you don’t already have one, create an account for the sign up system the Meeple League is using. Be sure to add your boiteajeux user name (and any others you have) to your account.

When you login you will see all the events open for sign up.

Players are sorted into groups of 7 players based on previous results.  In a season, each player plays in 4 games. Each other member of your group will be in 2 games against you. See scoring rules below.

Divisions are based on previous Season results. New players enter at the bottom level for their first season.

Our Agricola tournaments use the online implementation at www.boardgamearena.com. Drafting is used.

You’ll receive a notice in your email once the pairings are ready. If you do sign up, you are committing to checking the website a couple of times on most days (it’s OK if something comes up every once in a while, or if you’re out of town for a weekend (for example), but in general we’re hoping game lengths will be measured in weeks not months.

Previous Season Results

The results of the last season (15) are here. The overall standings are on a separate page. Please see the menu under Standings.

If the frame below is hard to read on your device follow the link:

Tournament Results

Thurn & Taxis Online Tournament

Thurn & Taxis Online Season 27

Standings
Report Results
Pairings
Sign Up for Next Season
Last Season Results

Season 27 Standings

As games end the standings are updated. See how each Group is doing and check on your friends and rivals.

Lifetime standings can be seen HERE.

If the frame below is hard to read on your device follow the link:

Tournament Results

Game Assignments

Season 27 Matches

Our Thurn & Taxis tournaments use the online implementation at www.yucata.de. We use the original version of the game – no expansion content, and no special options.

Players are sorted into leagues of 7 players based on previous results.  In a season, each player plays in 4 games. Each other member of your league will be in 2 games against you. See scoring rules below.

Divisions are based on previous Season results. New players enter at the bottom level for their first season.

Your tables are also available on meepleleague.club.

If you have trouble viewing the list below, click here to see just the listing.

Thurn & Taxis Next Season
Sign Ups Open

You can sign up for the next season on meepleleague.club.

If you haven’t already, create an account for yourself:

  • Go to meepleleague.club.
  • Login  OR
  • Create an account (Register on the menu), if you do not already have one. Then activate it. If you do not receive an email quickly, please check your spam folder for the activation email.
  • Under Manage Account, select Game Names and enter your game name ids. You only need to do this once for each id. Check the spelling, as some game platforms are case-sensitive.
  • Register on the Home page or use the Play! menu, select Register for Tournament.
  • You should receive a confirmation email. If you do not, check your spam folder.

You to withdraw from a tournament while registrations are still open. Just click the “Withdraw” button next to each entry for tournaments that have not started.

Report Season 27 Results

Game results are now reported on meepleleague.club. Login and go to the information about the table that is finished.

Only the winner of each game should record the results. Be sure to add the seat number of the player who triggered the game end.

Last Season Results

slewinter won Division 1 in Season 26.

Lifetime standings can be seen HERE.  

If the frame below is hard to read on your device follow the link:

Tournament Results

2022 Meeple League Games and Events

2022 Live Play Lineup

The games listed below are the 2022 Meeple League games for live events. Tournaments in these games will be sanctioned and tracked all year.

  • Azul
  • Great Western Trail
  • Lords of Waterdeep
  • Puerto Rico
  • Saint Petersburg
  • Splendor
  • Stone Age
  • Ticket to Ride
  • Terraforming Mars
  • Wingspan

Online Tournaments Growing

We now have 5 active online tournament games:

  • Castles of Burgundy
  • Egizia
  • Thurn & Taxis
  • Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
  • Agricola (1st edition)

All the games have run multiple seasons per year. At the end of the year, Online Player of the Year will be determined. See the rules for point awards.

How Points are Awarded for Meeple League Featured Game Tournaments

How Do You Get Meeple League Points?

by Rob Kircher

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.

Meeple League Point Awards 2020

Finish orNumber of Different Players
Achievement8 - 1617 - 3233 - 6465+
1st Overall15253035
2nd Overall10182430
3rd Overall7141822
4th Overall6121518
5th Overall*5101214
6th Overall*48910
In Semi Final0456
In Quarter Final0002
Win any game3333
Play a game1111
How Meeple League Standing Points are determined for each Featured Tournament
* Only awarded if 5th and/or 6th player in final game.

Standings Tie-Breakers

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.


Points before 2020

Through 2019, live play points were distributed differently as shown below:

Meeple League Point Awards 2019 and Earlier

Finish orNumber of Different Players
Achievement8 - 1617 - 3233 - 6465 - 128129+
1st Overall1530405060
2nd Overall1020263238
3rd Overall714182226
4th Overall612151821
5th Overall*510121416
6th Overall*4891011
In Semi Final04567
In Quarter Final00024
Win any game33333
Play a game11111
How Meeple League Standing Points were determined for each Featured Tournament before 2020
* Only awarded if 5th and/or 6th player in final game.





2018 Online Player of the Year is Allan Jiang

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 to hold Meeple League games

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!

 

 

NEW: Online Player of the Year in 2018

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:

  1. You get points equal to the league points you accumulate in every game you play, so the usual 10 points for 1st place in a game, 6 for 2nd, 3 for 3rd, and 1 point for finishing in 4th place.
  2. You get bonus points for each game you win
    1. 1-point bonus for winning a game in Division 3
    2. 2-point bonus for winning a game in Division 2
    3. 3-point bonus for winning a game in Division 1
  3. You also get bonus points for winning your group
    1. 2-point bonus for winning a Group in Division 3
    2. 5-point bonus for winning a Group in Division 2
    3. 10-point bonus for winning a Group in Division 1

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!

Agricola Online Season 1 Report

Agricola Season 1 Wrap-Up

by Randy Buehler

Season 1 of the Agricola league was a smashing success, with the Meeple League’s largest turn-out for an online event so far and some great matches up and down the ladder. 77 players signed up to play, which meant 11 leagues spread across four divisions. I was the biggest winner, but by the narrowest of margins as I defeated Sceadeau d’Tela for the Division 1-A crown *on tiebreakers* (3 match wins to 2). Congratulations are also due to Bernt Nodland and Steven LeWinter, who won the two leagues in Division 2 and thus earned spots in the top division for season 2. (Steve’s win was particularly close with only 3 league points separating 1st from 4th in his league.) You can see all the standings HERE.

Season 2 is about to start, and the field has expanded to 96 competitors. That means there will be 7 leagues in division 4 and 14 leagues in total. Good luck to everyone as they try to win promotion, and have fun playing.

With season 1 in the books, I thought it would be interesting to see how accurate the initial seeds were. As you may recall, I did the initial player sort first by looking at BPA laurels and then at Elo ratings on boiteajeux. There has been some debate (bordering on trash talk) about how accurate Elo ratings are, and I saved a copy of everyone’s rating before the season began. I then looked at the absolute value of how far each player’s finish position was from the position that would be predicted by Elo or laurels. (In other words, if you had the 5th highest Elo in your league but finished 1st then you were 4 spots away from where you were predicted to be.)

Laurels did a significantly better job of predicting division 1 than Elo did (8 spots off in total versus 18), but in Division 2-A it was the other way around (20 spots off versus just 4). Meanwhile Division 2-B was close to a wash (12 off for laurels versus 10 off for Elo). If you add up all 3 leagues that included at least some players with laurels, Elo comes out looking a little better at 32 to 40 (or an average of 1.5 spots off per player versus 1.9). Meanwhile in Division 3 there were some major upsets, including division wins from each of the two lowest rated competitors, but Elo was a quite reasonable predictor if you ignore those two players (1.7 spots off per player, or 1.1 spots off per player if you ignore the two outliers).

One surprising fact about season 1 is that only one player managed to collect exactly a first, a second, a third, and also a 4th place finish. Ed Fear is apparently the Epitome of Average. Meanwhile the triple winners club included only 3 people and exactly one person managed to win all four of their games: William F, aka wsefranc, from league 4-D.

There were, unfortunately, some players who played too slowly in season 1. The vast majority of games were done by the end of March and I think that two-month timeline is what folks should see as acceptable (we started in the last few days of January). The truly unfortunate part of having a slow player is that they impact four different games. My only real recourse to deal with this problem is to tell those players they aren’t allowed to play in future Meeple League events, and while most of the slowpokes from season 1 did not choose to sign up again, I did decline one registration attempt for season 2. For the handful of matches which haven’t finished, I treated them as 4-way ties when determining promotion and relegation and I will add the real points to the lifetime standings page once they finally do complete.

All of which brings us to season 2, which has quite a few interesting storylines to follow. A few more well-known WBC ringers have entered the league now (Jon Senn, Eric Wrobel, Josh Cooper, Rob Kircher), but they will have to fight their way up from the bottom. Turambar will be the champion of the pro-Elo crowd as he joins Division 1 and is the only player there without a WBC pedigree. Rob Murray and Petri Savola barely missed getting themselves promoted to division 1 and will be trying to finish the job. Meanwhile Daniel Eppolito will have something to prove as he was a consensus pick to finish in the top 2 of division 1 according to the fantasy league participants, but instead got himself relegated to division 2. In my own case, Agricola has not historically been one of my best game but I have invested a lot of time in the last 18 months or so trying to bring my game up to a world class level. I don’t know if I’m there yet, but I will do my best to claim back-to-back titles.

I’m confident there are many other interesting stories around the players I’m not yet familiar with, but that’s the beauty of a league like this. As the seasons go by we’ll get to see who rises and who falls. Good luck to everyone, and have fun in season 2!

PrezCon Winter Nationals Trip Report

By Marcy Morelli

This was my second year attending PrezCon. It’s a bit of a hike from Suburban Philly – especially in the winter. But Amtrak runs right into Charlottesville and that’s a great way to travel. Charlottesville is the home of the University of Virginia and offers some good sightseeing opportunities for those who are interested in Presidential history.

I arrived Monday evening and the Doubletree shuttle picked me up at the train station. It ended up being too late to pick up my badge, but I was able to catch up with some friends.
The Doubletree Charlottesville is a really great spot for a convention the size of PrezCon. The hotel staff are very well organized and seem appreciative of the convention’s presence. A few employees even seemed interested in learning some games.
Besides the shuttle, a pool with hot tub, and the ubiquitous cookie, the hotel also runs a great restaurant. Breakfast offers a large buffet with made-to-order omelets. Lunch and dinner have a tasty menu and you can call in an order and pick it up at the restaurant. There is also a special stand outside the ballroom that offers drinks, sandwiches, pizza, and some special meals throughout the day. In the late evening, 4 or 5 different pies are available. If you have a car at hand, there are plenty of local eating establishments nearby as well as a Walmart.

I’m primarily a EuroGames tournament gamer, and the conference room layout works well for that. Most tournaments are held in either the large Ballroom, or a few steps away in the Gallery Rooms. The food stand is just outside the Ballroom which makes it easy to catch a quick bite if you don’t have many breaks. The vendors set up in-between while open gaming has a large room downstairs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The convention registration desk is organized and well-staffed for the long hours of the convention. Convention Director Justin Thompson is generally floating around keeping tabs on things, but is easy to find if you need him. PrezCon players are friendly and welcoming to newcomers.

Tournaments at PrezCon award plaques to the final table based on the total numbers of players who participated in the game.

Besides the regular tournament line-up PrezCon also holds several mini-cons during the convention: ColumbiaCon, RevCon, and a EuroGames sampler event. The Agricola and Catan tournaments are both regional championships with winners advancing to a National Championship.

PrezCon will also hold a Summer Nationals event in June. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to attend – you’ll have a great time!