While WBC attendance was up overall, the Tyranno Ex tournament was only able to hold steady with last year's attendance - probably due to increasing competition with other German style games. Attendance was poor for the first heat on Wednesday,
with only four veterans playing. In that game, Michael Mahady moved from second to first on turn 2, then led throughout the rest of the game to beat Katherine Hitchings, Marc Houde, and Tom DeMarco.

Because ten arrived for the second heat, for the first time we had to use three-player games in the tournament. In the four-player game, Verity Hitchings edged out Mark Love, Robert Destro, and Wendy DeMarco. In the others, Matt Evinger
comfortably beat Dino Fritsch and Tim Evinger, while in the third game, Steve Simmons surpassed Christina Hancock and Tom DeMarco.

The final heat had 12 entrants for three full boards. Thomas Vickery led throughout the game in his win over Jason Levine, Ed Kendrick, and Christina Hancock. Josh Githens scored big on turn 4 to gain and keep the lead in his win over Martin Svensson, Tim Kirchner, & Kaarin Engelmann. Robert Hooper & Jeff Finkeldey traded off the lead for the first four turns, then Robert surged ahead to win, leaving Jeff, Gary Noe and Tom DeMarco in his dust.

Seven players qualified for the semifinals by virtue of a win in the heats. But only four qualifiers and two alternates appeared, so the game became a final. Matt Evinger & Michael Mahady pulled ten or more points ahead of Thomas Vickery and Verity Hitchings on turn 2. Thomas used his "5" marker to make an additional environment change on turn 3 which helped Verity and him to pull closer to the leaders. Verity scored 28 points to Thomas's 23 and Matt's 17 on turn 4 to take over the lead. At the end of turn 5's environment phase, Mike's dinosaurs were poorly supported by the resulting environments. He chose to use his "5" marker to change the environments to ones more to his favor. Unfortunately, his attempt instead caused the remaining environments to go into confusion, eliminating all the remaining dinosaurs, and ending the game. When the asteriod
dust had settled, Verity had held onto her lead to win with 55 points. Matt finished second with 52, Thomas had 46, and Mike scored 30.

Verity has been a part of this tournament for at least the last six years. During that time she has been in the finals three times, and the semifinals at least four times so it was a well-deserved victory and a long time coming.

I plan on instituting some changes for next year. I need to schedule heats later in the week and later in the day. I think the games can be completed in three hours instead of four. It may even be viable to run it as an "A" tournament. If you have any suggestions or ideas on what you would like to see, email me at TomAnneTim@Home.com