Chris Valk was one of only six players in the fledging trial event which was unable to attract enough players to qualify as a BPA tournament.	Nathan Trent consults the rules. New wargames have a tough time drawing players due to the large time investment in learning their sophisticated rules.

Occasionally the stars are not aligned and despite our best efforts, an event fails to draw sufficient players to cross the BPA threshold of an official tournament. Such was the case here. When this happens, we still award a plaque or plaques as the case may be, but the event fails to make our archives and is not recorded as an actual tournament. No laurels are awarded and the event is ineligible for membership vote the following year.

Six players entered the inaugural WBC Flying Colors tournament to vie for control of the seas. The preliminary rounds saw two games of Cape Ortugal and one of El Ferrol fought to completion. Most of the entrants were either new to the game or had very limited experience, so this was an excellent opportunity for them to try out the smaller scenarios and learn some valuable lessons!

 The finalists, Richard Shay and Chris Valk, played a DYO scenario that pitted Richard's small but well-led British fleet against Chris' larger but less-inspired French fleet. As Chris notes, there were some tense moments for both sides:

 "My Frenchmen entered on the south map edge, beating into the wind. Rich's Englishmen entering from the north, held the weather gauge. I brought my fleet on in two columns in an attempt to get all my ships in play ASAP. But one turn into the match I realized I'd made a potentially disastrous error with my initial placement, which was too far to the west and allowed Rich to cut my line while holding the weather gauge

But Rich must have done something to annoy the gods of chance. On the fifth turn he suffered the first of what would prove to be many unfortunate die rolls. The wind direction changed and put his entire fleet in irons. I focused my fire on his two lead ships, especially the second one which held his admiral. I also hoped to divide and conquer his fleet. In this I was moderately successful --especially when, on Turn 10, the wind changed again and put his fleet, which he had skillfully and painstakingly maneuvered into a beating position, once more in irons.

Unfortunately, although I had mauled Rich's rigging, I had done little damage to his hulls or his firepower, while he had been able to flip a couple of my ships. And even though I was blessed with several unbelievably lucky rake attempts, his restricted movement proved far less of a handicap than I'd hoped, and in a wild melee he quickly sent two of my ships to the bottom."

Chris conceded at this point.