This year, players had to survive an opening round 5-player game to advance to the Single Elimination 2-player rounds.	Olin Hentz (right) gives the heave ho to our beloved Chairman of the Board, Ken Gutermuth, in the semi-finals.

The 2008 Carcassonne event once again featured a single-elimination tournament with a slight modification: the first round was composed of 5-player games with winners advancing to 2-player single elimination contests. Scoring used Rio Grande standard rules and only the basic set with the single starting piece. The tournament started a little late due to the GM being scheduled to run the Final in one event back-to-back with the other tournament he was running. Thanks to Dan Mathias for stepping in on his own initiative to get people signed in so we could get started with a minimal delay.

Round 1 consisted of 17 5-player games. Kevin Wojtaszyk had the highest score for the round with 79 points, 32 of them coming from farmers at the end. Eric Hymowitz had the lowest winning total at 48. Starting with Round 2, the GM played as an eliminator (not eligible to win having lost in Round 1 but hoping to win one game to restore balance to the bracket). The GM started 0-2 losing the first eliminator game to Lisa "I got all the Monasteries" Gutermuth 90 to 100. One of the more exciting and high scoring matches of the tournament came in this round when Joe Chacon beat Alex Gesing 159 to 157.

Round 3 saw the GM finally win, eliminating poor Eric Monte to balance the bracket. The Semi-finalists advancing to Round 4 were Ken Gutermuth, Kevin Wojtaszyk, Olin Hentz, and defending champion Robbie Mitchell. A consolation bracket for the Round 3 losers was held to determine 5th and 6th place with Dan Mathias and Marilyn Flowers emerging as the top contenders with Marilyn claiming the victory 129 to 97 for 5th place laurels.

Olin was able to overcome Ken's superior farm scoring to advance to the Final 117 to 99. Robbie extended his unbeaten streak to 10 games going back to last year's WBC with a convincing win over Kevin 132 to 103. Ken came back in the 'Bronze Medal' game to beat Kevin 132 to 106 to claim the 3rd place plaque. In a very close Final, Robbie extended his unbeaten streak to win 129 to 126 to repeat as the WBC Carcassonne champion. A repeat championship is nothing to sneeze at but it is doubly unique in Carcassonne where it not only has never been done before, even returning laurelists are as rare as hen's teeth with but ten such achievements in BPA's 11 tournament history.

Looking forward, next year will incorporate two changes based on 2008's feedback. The first is to remove one straight road tile from the set in two-player games so that each player gets an equal number of turns (35 each). The second is to stay with 4-player games in Round 1. This will likely cause the tournament to go one more round (6 instead of 5) but is a worthwhile tradeoff to keep a multi-player round while increasing the number of turns each player can take (1).

Kevin Wojtaszcyk (left) meets his match in the semis against defending champ Robbie Mitchell.	Olin Hentz's run ends in the Final as Robbie Mitchell successfully defends his title and scores beaucoup Team Tournament points too.