Jump to:
The Round of 64 is done. We have 32 survivors. War of the Ring is out, beaten by Jaipur. Sky Team lost 100-0. Heat: Pedal to the Metal was knocked out by 7 Wonders. Brass: Birmingham, Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars and Pangemia are all still in. The Round of 32 draw is at the bottom of this post. Vote at the bottom of this post. Vote closes 23:59 13/07
Well. That was not what I expected.
The World Cup of Board Games Round of 64 results are in, and the bracket has produced some genuinely surprising results alongside the expected ones. Some of the highest-seeded games in the tournament are through with barely a scratch. Others are already on the plane home. Let’s go through the wreckage.
Round of 64: The Full Results
Quarter 1 — Top Half (Brass: Birmingham’s Quarter)
| M# | Winner | Vote % | Loser % | Eliminated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brass: Birmingham | 71.4% | 28.6% | Earth |
| 2 | The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship | 100.0% | 0.0% | Wingspan Asia |
| 3 | Wingspan | 66.7% | 33.3% | Patchwork |
| 4 | Dominion | 85.7% | 14.3% | Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory |
| 5 | The Castles of Burgundy | 57.1% | 42.9% | Stone Age |
| 6 | Azul | 71.4% | 28.6% | Grand Austria Hotel |
| 7 | Codenames | 66.7% | 33.3% | Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated |
| 8 | 7 Wonders | 55.6% | 44.4% | Heat: Pedal to the Metal |
Quarter 2 — Top Half (Terraforming Mars’s Quarter)
| M# | Winner | Vote % | Loser % | Eliminated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Terraforming Mars | 80.0% | 20.0% | The Isle of Cats |
| 10 | Five Tribes | 57.1% | 42.9% | The White Castle |
| 11 | Lost Ruins of Arnak | 66.7% | 33.3% | Just One |
| 12 | Wyrmspan | 77.8% | 22.2% | Crokinole |
| 13 | Star Realms | 60.0% | 40.0% | The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth |
| 14 | Cascadia | 100.0% | 0.0% | Splendor Duel |
| 15 | A Feast for Odin | 100.0% | 0.0% | The 7th Continent |
| 16 | Clank!: Catacombs | 100.0% | 0.0% | The Search for Planet X |
Quarter 3 — Bottom Half (War of the Ring’s Quarter)
| M# | Winner | Vote % | Loser % | Eliminated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | Jaipur | 83.3% | 16.7% | War of the Ring (Second Edition) |
| 18 | Endeavor: Deep Sea | 66.7% | 33.3% | Bomb Busters |
| 19 | Forest Shuffle | 100.0% | 0.0% | Sky Team |
| 20 | Viticulture: Essential Edition | 100.0% | 0.0% | The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth |
| 21 | SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence | 100.0% | 0.0% | PARKS |
| 22 | Lords of Waterdeep | 66.7% | 33.3% | Blood on the Clocktower |
| 23 | Magic: The Gathering | 75.0% | 25.0% | Scythe |
| 24 | Harmonies | 100.0% | 0.0% | Galactic Cruise |
Quarter 4 — Bottom Half (Ark Nova’s Quarter)
| M# | Winner | Vote % | Loser % | Eliminated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | Ark Nova | 66.7% | 33.3% | That’s Pretty Clever! |
| 26 | Race for the Galaxy | 55.6% | 44.4% | The Quacks of Quedlinburg |
| 27 | Root | 62.5% | 37.5% | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game |
| 28 | Everdell | 100.0% | 0.0% | Mombasa |
| 29 | Ticket to Ride: Europe | 83.3% | 16.7% | Slay the Spire: The Board Game |
| 30 | Agricola | 80.0% | 20.0% | SCOUT |
| 31 | Pandemic | 80.0% | 20.0% | 7 Wonders Duel |
| 32 | Puerto Rico | 57.1% | 42.9% | Beyond the Sun |
The Round of 64 Talking Points
The Biggest Upset: Jaipur beats War of the Ring
I don’t know what to do with this result.
War of the Ring was the third highest seed in this tournament. It is a genuinely extraordinary two-player game recreating the whole sweep of the Lord of the Rings story across a massive board, and it lost 83-17 to Jaipur. Jaipur is a lovely two-player card game about trading camels and spices in a Rajasthan market. I like Jaipur. I like it a lot, in fact. But this is like Brighton knocking out Brazil. War of the Ring is a BGG top-ten game. Jaipur came through as seed 62.
The only explanation I can come up with is that Jaipur is an extremely accessible, widely played game and War of the Ring has a narrow but devoted audience. In a popular vote, that matters. The people who love Jaipur really love it. The people who own War of the Ring are presumably still mid-campaign from their last session and forgot to vote.
Either way: Jaipur is in the Round of 32. Wild.
My Personal Highlight
7 Wonders Beats Heat
This was the result I most enjoyed. Heat: Pedal to the Metal was one of the games I highlighted in the group stage post as a hidden gem worth watching. It’s a racing game that actually feels like racing, with gear management and deck building and the horrible decision of whether to push your engine into the red on the final corner. I thought it would go deep in this tournament.
Instead it lost to 7 Wonders by 55.6% to 44.4%, which is about as tight as results get in this tournament. And I’ll be honest: I prefer 7 Wonders of the two. It is a wonderfully elegant card-drafting game that plays up to seven people in about 45 minutes, and the fact that everyone is playing simultaneously means it doesn’t drag regardless of player count. I expected Heat to be more popular than me, though. Apparently not.
7 Wonders advances. Heat does not. The bracket does what it wants.
Sky Team: 0%
In the group stage post I wrote that Sky Team was one of the results that made me smile. The cooperative two-player game about landing a plane where you can’t discuss your dice had made it through as seed 14, and I thought it could go far.
It lost to Forest Shuffle 100-0. Not a single vote. Forest Shuffle is a lovely card game about building a woodland ecosystem, and it clearly struck a chord with voters. But I am still a bit stunned that Sky Team got absolutely nothing. It’s a brilliant game. Vote for it. Oh wait, it’s already out. Never mind.
The Whitewash Count
Eight matches ended 100-0 in this round. Eight. That’s a quarter of the entire bracket. The games on the wrong end of those results were: Wingspan Asia, Splendor Duel, The 7th Continent, The Search for Planet X, The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth, PARKS, Galactic Cruise, and Mombasa.
Some of those I can understand. The Search for Planet X is a deduction game for a specific type of player, and it ran into Clank!: Catacombs, which is a crowd favourite. But Journeys in Middle-Earth losing 100-0? It’s a decent campaign game with good app integration. It didn’t deserve that.
Scythe Is Out
Scythe (seed 10) lost to Magic: The Gathering 75-25. I did say in the bracket post that Scythe was going to upset someone’s quarter. I just didn’t expect it to be Scythe that did the losing. Magic: The Gathering is the original collectible card game and has 33 years of nostalgia behind it. Scythe is a beautiful area control euro with mechs. In a different matchup Scythe would absolutely go further. It ran into the one opponent with more brand recognition than itself.
The Big Seeds Still Standing
Brass: Birmingham (seed 1) won 71-29 against Earth. Ark Nova (seed 2) won 67-33 against That’s Pretty Clever!. Terraforming Mars (seed 4) won 80-20. The top seeds are through, though Brass’s margin was slightly less commanding than I’d have expected against the lowest-ranked qualifier.
The third seed, War of the Ring, is of course now watching from home. Its quarter is now effectively open for anyone.
Round of 32: The Full Draw
Winners of each pair progress to the Quarter Finals. Top half and bottom half stay separate until the Semi Finals.
Top Half
| Match | Game A | vs | Game B |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brass: Birmingham | vs | The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship |
| 2 | Wingspan | vs | Dominion |
| 3 | The Castles of Burgundy | vs | Azul |
| 4 | Codenames | vs | 7 Wonders |
| 5 | Terraforming Mars | vs | Five Tribes |
| 6 | Lost Ruins of Arnak | vs | Wyrmspan |
| 7 | Star Realms | vs | Cascadia |
| 8 | A Feast for Odin | vs | Clank!: Catacombs |
Bottom Half
| Match | Game A | vs | Game B |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Jaipur | vs | Endeavor: Deep Sea |
| 10 | Forest Shuffle | vs | Viticulture: Essential Edition |
| 11 | SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence | vs | Lords of Waterdeep |
| 12 | Magic: The Gathering | vs | Harmonies |
| 13 | Ark Nova | vs | Race for the Galaxy |
| 14 | Root | vs | Everdell |
| 15 | Ticket to Ride: Europe | vs | Agricola |
| 16 | Pandemic | vs | Puerto Rico |
Three Round of 32 Matchups I’m Watching Closely
Match 1: Brass: Birmingham vs The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
This is the match that interests me most in the top half. Fate of the Fellowship came through as seed 32 and then beat Wingspan Asia 100-0 in the first round, which doesn’t tell us much about its ceiling since Wingspan Asia polled 0%. Now it faces the number one seed. Both are super popular. I can’t wait to see how this one goes.
Fate of the Fellowship is a cooperative game for 1-4 players where the fellowship tries to get the ring to Mordor before Sauron’s forces overwhelm them. It’s tense, thematic, and sits at BGG #84. Brass: Birmingham is a heavy economic game about building industrial networks in 19th century England. They are about as tonally different as two games can be.
Brass should win this comfortably. But I thought War of the Ring should beat Jaipur, and look how that went.
Match 14: Root vs Everdell
This is the one I’m most excited about. Root (seed 15) is an asymmetric area control game set in a woodland where different animal factions play almost entirely differently from each other. It is genuinely brilliant and genuinely divisive: some people love the asymmetry, others find it frustrating to learn. Everdell (seed 18) is a worker placement and card game also set in a woodland, with one of the best table presences in the hobby and a much gentler learning curve.
Both games came through their round of 64 matches comfortably. Root won 62.5-37.5. Everdell won 100-0. This is a genuine clash of woodland games with different audiences, and I have no idea which way it goes. I love both of them, which makes it worse.
Match 11: SETI vs Lords of Waterdeep
SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (seed 6) came through with 100% of the vote against PARKS, which is perhaps not the most informative result since PARKS is a light National Parks hiking game up against one of the more acclaimed recent releases. But SETI has clearly got a fanbase voting for it.
It now faces Lords of Waterdeep (seed 38), a worker placement game set in the Forgotten Realms D&D universe that came through 67-33 against Blood on the Clocktower. Lords of Waterdeep is a good gateway to worker placement (where players place tokens to claim actions and block opponents). It is approachable, it’s been around since 2012, and it has a lot of fans, me very much included.
SETI is the heavier, newer, and higher-rated game. Lords of Waterdeep has brand recognition and a warmer reputation with casual players. This one could go either way.
VOTE NOW
Drop your Round of 32 picks in the comments below. Pick a winner from each of the 16 matchups. I’ll post the Quarter Final draw once voting closes. Tiebreaker remains BGG rank throughout.
All Votes close 23:59 13/07
One more thought before I go: Azul beat Grand Austria Hotel 71-29 in the first round. It now plays The Castles of Burgundy in the Round of 32 (Match 3). That is an abstract tile-placement game against an abstract tile-placement game. May the better tiles win. I am still backing Azul.