There were 22 entrants in the HWB tournament, down one from last year. In the first heat there were two 6-player games. Bob Destro, the 2000 runner-up just beat out his closest competitor, Harald Henning, 129 to 127 in one game and Matt Mason won the second with 123 points.

In the second heat 13 entrants necessitatied three games. In the 5-player game, Jeff Mullet edged defending champ Kevin Wotjaszyk 120 to 118. Ewan McNay won easily in his game and Tim Tow, playing in his second heat, convincingly
won his second chance.

The five winners advanced to the final along with Harald who edged Kevin as first alternate by the tie-breaker rules. In the final, Jeff got off to an early lead but Ewan soon passed him with his double score of Persians followed by Celts. His lead held with the T'ang as Epoch IV ended but Jeff only trailed by two (53 to 51) with Tim at 44. Meanwhile, Harald and Bob, with the two
big empires from Epochs IV and III, the Arabs and Romans, trailed at 37 and 25 respectively with good board positions. Ewan was, unfortunately for him, still the obvious leader (also read as target), however. In Epoch V Harald moved ahead 72 to 71 over Ewan as his Holy Romans benefited from his Arab holdings. Ewan had an excellent turn with the Mongols, though, and was ready for another big score bounce. The scores ranged now from 72 to 49 for Matt. Jeff bid high to take the Ming from Ewan who still scored well with the Timurids, keeping him the perceived leader. Bob was thus able to make deals with Tim and Harald to spare his Chola capitol in exchange for attacking Ewan. Harald had an unlucky turn with Spain and Bob came out of 5th place to a strong second with the Mughals, helped by a perfect Timurid civil war in China. So, going into Epoch 7 Ewan led Bob by 13 but Bob had a better board position and the minor empire of Japan. Bob spent big for Russia and won by 21 points as Ewan couldn't catch him with France. Harald was third with Britain and Tim 4th with Netherlands.

For those who play "normal" HWD, I recommend you give the bidding game a try. It may seem intimidating at first but you can do well with low bids the first two epochs while you get the hang of it. You can then start to plan your world conquest with the more powerful later empires!