Is Marty lost or has he been officially adopted by the Greenville Mafia? Get with the program Mr. Sample - the cool uniform for the day is burgundy.	Dan Mathias and Carolyn Caton enjoy Haakon Monson's move. Don't they know Norwegians drive on the wrong side of the road? Or is that just England?

WBC 2013 was a year of firsts for Robo Rally players. It was the first time we had three heats, the first time Mark Geary a veteran of many attempts won the event, and, I am sorry to say, it was the first time that yours truly won the Kaarin Engelmann Memorial Crash and Burn award - taking that dubious distinction in the second heat. For those of you who do not know the storied history of this award, it is given to the first person to be eliminated (ie, to have all of their robots killed -- no suicides allowed). The award is given out during each heat, the semifinals and the Final and comes complete with left hand-right hand playing aid to help with those tricky turns. This award is one of the ways I judge how good the board setup used is. Any setup that does not generate a KEMC&B does not get re-used -- ever. It turns out it was not a good year for Roborally GMs in general as Tom McCorry who runs the Roborally event at Prezcon was the recipient of the award during heat 3, beating out Fred Gosnell by a mere ten seconds. To be fair to Tom, I was playing at his table, and it was a brutal board. A couple of players very early on got some of the meaner options for their robots, and it was robot death city after that. I too was completely eliminated (again) though this time it was not until near the end of the game.

I had to adjudicate two tables (Including the one that had evicted me) though both were within two turns of winning. Notably, the other table was the one that had Fred's number. The winner ended the game with all five registers locked, but still managed to win on the ideal hand adjudication despite getting zero cards as his first two registers already had the cards he needed to touch the last flag.

A final note about next year, after much discussion with many of the players in the record breaking field of this years tournament (we were knocking on the door of triple digits) I believe next year we will start making one of the heats a wacky heat. If we have a heat on Wednesday that will have to be the one, but I will, as always, leave the scheduling up to the Convention Director or his appointees.

Side note: If it makes any difference, I really loved the Exhibition center for open gaming, of course, part of that love may have been how quiet it was over there, which I'm guessing would not be the case if it were made the exclusive open gaming area. Still worth it for the improved lighting IMHO.

Jeff Finkeldey, Karl Henning, Philip Shea, Roderick Lee and Quinn Dyer plot their 'bots.	GM Marc Houde with his finalists. Who'd a thunk it? Seven-time champ Brad Johnson is odd man out.