Steve Packwood (right) en route to his sixth straight and 12th overall 1776 title -- both current WBC records. 1776 was published over 30 years ago for the bicentennial.	Chuck Leonard studies for his next match with a rulebook session. The refresher course proved good enough for third place in the Grognard golden oldie.

The 1776 tournament format used the first nine months of the Campaign Game with players bidding the number of strategic towns (out of a total of 24, including Montreal and Quebec) that the British player must control on the last turn. All optional rules except hidden and decoy counters are used. The bids this year were at 14-15 towns, with 15 towns being difficult to hold against a good American player. A bid of less than 14 generally results in a British victory, while a game where the British player bid 16 towns resulted in his subsequent defeat.
 
For 2008, 1776 joined Grognardcon for the first time and switched scheduling to free form. The earlier start for gaming and the increased flexibility in start times paid immediate dividends and resulted in the highest participation ever for this scarcely attended event with 17 players and 18 games. Since chess clocks (with 90 minutes for movement for each side) are required for the semi-finals and Final, most players opted to use them for the preliminary rounds. All games were completed within the four-hour time limit but the British players sometimes ran their time allotment down to just a few minutes. Since the British player was attempting to manage offensives in four areas, his use of additional time was not surprising.
 
By Thursday afternoon, 15 games had been played and the four players with the highest point scores were selected to advance to the semi-finals. This resulted in a match between Chuck Leonard and mega-champion Steve Packwood with the other match between Robert Frisby and Matt Burkins. Packwood bid 14 towns in a game that did not have any big battles until the last turn. Packwood's 1:1 British attack on Ticonderoga fizzled out when he rolled a No Effect; however, he was still victorious by retaining control of at least 15 towns at the end of the American turn. For the other semi-final match, Frisby demonstrated his previous free form defeat of Burkins was no fluke. Although Burkins had bid 14 towns for the British side, an American counter-offensive on the last turn reduced the number of British controlled towns to 12.
 
This led to a championship match between Frisby and Packwood. Packwood, bidding for his sixth straight championship, had bid 14 towns to play the British and, by Turn 9, he was in control of 17. To win, Frisby had to take four towns in order to reduce Packwood's total of controlled towns to 13. Three attacks at 1:1, 3:2, and 4:1 succeeded, but the final attack at 3:2 (-1) failed, leaving Packwood with 14 towns and his 12th 1776 championship.