GM Peter Staab and his four finalists.

Short and Sweet ...

The preliminaries encompassed 71 four-player games spread over three heats. To advance, players needed to win a game. There were seven players who won multiple games during the three heats with Eugene Yee winning three while Cliff Ackman, Eric Engelmann, Paul Klayder, Blair Morgen, Antony Saccenti and Kyle Smith all won twice. The three closest games occurred during the heats as one game in each heat was deadlocked and decided by a tiebreaker. There was also a game won by one point with third place just another point behind that. Conversely, Haakon Monsen enjoyed the largest margin of victory with a 76-point spread. The top score of the tournament was achieved in the third heat when Charles Faella scored 223 points.

49 of 63 qualifying winners appeared for the quarterfinals which resulted in 13 games, ten 4-players and three 3-players. The top three runners-up in these games (as a percentage of the winner’s score) also qualified for the semifinals. The players in the 3-player games were randomly chosen and all of the multiple game winners were placed in different games. The winners of the quarterfinal games were Steve Alfieri, Chris Bert, Rod Davidson, Henry Dove, Andrew Emerick, Eric Engelmann, Eric Freeman, Mike Kaltman, Ashley Kilroy, Rachel Long, Haakon Monsen, Cary Morris and Gordon Rodgers (with the lowest winning score of the tournament with 106 points). Scott Saccenti, Kyle Smith and Alex Bove also qualified by virtue of their close runner-up finishes.

Rod Davidson, Andrew Emerick, Haakon Monsen and Scott Saccenti emerged from the semifinal games to qualify for the final. The seating order was randomly determined with Scott being first followed by Andrew, Haakon and Rod in that order. In the game setup two of the three buildings that allow the players to turn in up to seven resources were in the initial choice of buildings.

On the first turn, Scott assigned four workers to get wood and he rolled a total of 18 giving him six wood early which led him to say that he was a “Stone Age genius.” Rod took one of the “Christmas” cards on the first turn and rolled tool, tool, stone and brick which gave Scott a tool as well and a very good first turn. On the second turn, Rod and Scott claimed the two “7-resource” buildings with Rod turning in two bricks and a wood for 11 points while Scott turned in a wood for three points. Andrew’s luck abandoned him and the “Christmas” card on the fourth turn that Haakon took gave a good example of this as Haakon claimed a tool, Rod and Scott both received gold and Andrew only got wood from the card. On Turn 5, the final “7-resource” building was revealed as the fourth building in the first stack of buildings. Haakon claimed this building with two brick and a wood for 11 points. This turn also saw the first person double up in the village as Scott got both a farm and an additional person. Through the first five turns, the first player always took the farm with the first action. Andrew changed this pattern on Turn 6 as he instead chose a card that gave him a brick and two shaman for bonus points. Turn 7 saw all patterns break as Haakon started by claiming a card, then Rod claimed the “3 hut builder” bonus card from the fourth space which kept the card from Scott who had eight wood available to pay for the card and four buildings at the time while Rod only had three buildings when he took the card. Rod then managed to get a tool from the village with the sixth play of the round and no one took the additional person that turn. There were two Christmas cards taken in this turn, both by Scott. For the first card, Scott took a stone and left a gold for Andrew while Haakon and Rod both got wood. The second card was even more interesting as Scott got a tool, then Andrew took stone and Haakon took brick leaving a tool for Rod. Andrew also starved his people on this turn. On Turn 8, people didn’t go to the village early as there was only one building left in the first building stack so the game had the potential to end after the turn. Rod got the tool from the village on the fifth play of the turn while Andrew got a farm on the 11th play. There was one last Christmas card taken by Rod. Rod took a stone from this card as a defensive play to stop Scott, then Scott did the same thing by taking a brick that Andrew needed to complete a building. Someone did manage to build the last building in the first stack, ending the game quickly after eight turns. There were 12 cards stranded in the deck.

Scott had managed to complete six buildings for 72 points and scored 19 points from card bonuses and three points for resources for a total of 94. Andrew had 52 points scored with four buildings, ten points for civilization bonus cards and 18 points from other card bonuses for a total of 80 points. Of the 16 civilization bonus cards in the deck, only six were drawn keeping those points very low. Another example of Andrew’s misfortune was that he had taken the card that gives the additional card for end game scoring and drew the card that gives the player two free resources with the agriculture civilization that Andrew had already gotten on a previous card. So Andrew only got one point from the card. Haakon had 62 points with four buildings, four points from civilization bonus cards, 16 points from other card bonuses and two points for resources for 84 points total. Finally Rod scored 40 points while building three buildings but he had six tool makers and seven tools, five hut builders to go with his three buildings and three farmers with two farms to give him 63 end game points and six additional resources for a total of 109 points and his second WBC shield.

31 Gamers took to Yucata for the Third BPA Stone Age PBeM tournament. Unlike it's WBC event, the online version features a different style of play—the two player game. Three gamers, including Stefan Mecay, Rob Kircher, and Tim Mossman went unbeaten to win their pools with identical 6-0 records. Nick Henning earned the high score of the event with a score of 328 against GM Max Jamelli.

Pool play sent 15 of the 31 players into the Round Robin playoff. Seeding was interesting, as 4 "lower" seeds upset their opponents including 15th seed Pete Staab downing 2nd seed Stefan Mecay. Keith Dent and Andrew Emerick outlasted the round robin field to meet in the best 2 out of 3 Final. Emerick won Game 1 and Dent came back to tie the series in Game 2. The deciding game was then won by Dent 264-213. Dent used a strong building strategy while Emerick focused on cards throughout the series. Dent's early success in buildings allowed him to win Game 3 and the championship.

The other laurelists were Curt Collins II, Tim Mossman, Pete Staab and the defending champion, Eric freeman who finished third through sixth respectively.