Defending champion Greg Thatcher looked spiffy in his El Grande Centurion shirt but was unable to advance this year.	The five survivors gather for the 2007 Final.

Better scheduling enabled El Grande to increase its numbers this year. It also helps that the game was reprinted not too long ago. There were 21 individual winners for this year's semi-finals, and two no-shows allowed six runner-ups to advance.

Thursday's Final was a fairly high-scoring game. Relatively few pieces got removed from the board by means of the cards in the 2 stack. Both Veto cards came out, as well as all three scoring cards from that stack. Only one scoring card was Vetoed while one other one (Dial a Region) was burned. And this game became (almost) all about the scoring cards.

Mike Hazel is an El Grande veteran and the lone former laurelist among the finalists, and focused on securing first place scores in regions as well as making generous use of the Castillo. He succeeded in getting a good number of his pieces on the board early, although they were fairly concentrated. Robb Effinger and Winton Lemoine also did a pretty good job of building up board position, but not putting as many pieces into the Castillo as Mike.

Robb started off the scoring on his first turn with a "Score the region with the Most Caballeros", and he manipulated the board to score twice, borrowing Rich Meyer's home region, thereby jumping out to a lead which he would maintain for the duration. Robb played three scoring cards throughout the game, and was so well positioned that he was often a minor beneficiary of other players' scoring cards. In the end, he scored as many points on other players' score cards as his own, for an impressive total of 56 points from scoring cards alone.

Mike, and to an extent, Winton, continued to dominate the main scoring rounds, but they could not overcome the gap. Mike came close in Turn 8, when the "Score the Firsts" card allowed him to score 23 points while Robb only scored 6. However, his hopes were dashed in Turn 9, when the "Score the 6 and 7 regions" card came out. Rich bid first, but no longer had his 13 card, so Winton played the 13 to execute the card since it scored 15 points for himself. Unfortunately for Mike, it only scored 1 point for him while netting another 8 for Robb. This finally secured first place for Robb while Winton and Mike battled it out for second . In the end, the two were tied, with Winton winning the tiebreaker with more unused pieces.

This year I tried a somewhat controversial rule regarding the use of the Veto card to stop special actions partway. The feedback was mixed, but there were more complaints than not. I personally feel that it became overly cumbersome without adding much to the game. I expect I will revise the rule next year to only allow partial vetoes of Intrigue actions, or perhaps no partial vetoes at all. Feel free to send me comments before next year. I worked up an Excel spreadsheet detailing all the moves of the Final which I can share upon request.