The tower resolves combat by seeing how many cubes are dislodged as opposing to becoming stuck in the tower.	Arthu Field, Kaarin Engelmann, John Emery and Pete Pollard engage in a bit of table kicking to help the tower see the error of its ways.

Thanks to the voting membership, Shogun returned as a trial event this year. Not be confused with Milton Bradley's namesake game circa 1980, Shogun is a rethemed version of the game Wallenstein. The game blends Euro-mechanics and wargame elements, and is most well-known for its use of the unique 'cube-tower' to determine combat results. All the first round games used the standard setup (where initial provinces are chosen) on the sun side of the board. Winners of preliminary games included Greg Thatcher, Arthur Field, Peter Pollard, defending champion Craig Moffit, and GM Eric Freeman. There were a few tight preliminary games, but the tightest was the game won by Craig at 53 points, with Kaarin Engelman and assistant GM Mark Guttag on his heels with 49 and 48 points, respectively. Domination of the green area on the far west side of the board appeared to be the key to victory in the preliminary games. Four of the five preliminary winners used this area as their primary source of points, and in the fifth game Lyman Moquin used a similar strategy to finish a close second, only one point behind the winner.

In the semi-final, the top ten ranked players met in two 5-player games, with the top pair from each game advancing to a 4-person Final. The semi-final and Final games were held on the Moon side of the board. All of the top ten players appeared for the semis, except for Eric who had to withdraw due to his advancement in the Princes of Florence Final. In one semi-final, Craig continued his Shogun winning ways with 50 points, but second place and advancement to the Final was extremely close, with Bruce Hodgins (who the GM thanks for his help in the demo, semis, and Final) prevailing with 44 points over Greg and Lyman who had 43 and 42 points, respectively. 2007 4th place finisher, Ted Mullally finished a distant 5th. Craig rode dominance of the Southeast yellow/green area along with opportune scoring in other regions to victory. In the other semi Peter and John Emery finished with a tie on points at 46 and both advanced. Peter technically won the game due to having more gold at the end. This game was the closest game from top to bottom, with Arthur and last year's 3rd place laurelist, John Faella, six points behind and Kaarin only 12. Like Craig, Peter used dominance of the southeast to drive his scoring, while John used a "little bit everywhere" strategy that gave bonus scoring in three different regions, but was driven by having more countries and buildings than everyone else.

In the initial province selection for the Final, Bruce established an early dominant presence in the northwest part of the island, with two other provinces isolated in the east. John established a stronghold in the east along the northern coastline. Craig started scattered with his heaviest concentration along the middle southern part of the island. Pete started on the southwest island with two other areas in the east.

In the Spring of Year 1, Bruce took "first blood" by attacking Craig in Aki. The 3 vs. 4 battle ended in a tie meaning that neither player took possession, but for Bruce's purposes it accomplished the task as it removed Craig's only presence in the west where Bruce sought dominance. Craig retaliated with two attacks on other areas of the board against Bruce. In both battles Craig was favored, but lost.

In the Summer of Year 1, Bruce and Pete declared a truce and this made the season a relatively quiet one. Bruce was ejected from his two isolated eastern provinces, and Craig took a province from John before he could successfully harvest from it.

The Fall of Year 1 is the last season before the first scoring, so typically games see a lot of big conflicts then. However, here, peace treaties were made and honored between the players this season.

In the Winter of Year 1, the only revolt of consequence was John's loss of province that contained a castle, which happened in large part due to losing the rice harvest in Summer. The other revolts in the winter were successfully put down.

At the end of Year 1, Pete led with 25 points, followed by John with 23, Bruce 20, and Craig 17. Pete's scoring consisted of ten provinces, six buildings, castle bonus scoring in three regions, and temple bonus scoring in two. There was only one region where Pete did not score some building bonus, with his major base of operation being the southwest. John's scoring consisted of nine countries, six buildings, total domination of the bonus scoring in the north central/east region, and a temple bonus from the central region. Bruce had nine countries, four buildings, dominating presence in the west and castle bonus scoring in the central region. Craig had nine countries, four buildings, and strong presence in the southeast.

In the Spring of Year 2, things stayed relatively quiet with only two small attacks occurring.

In the Summer of Year 2, some of the amassed armies moved into action. Bruce moved five armies from Aki against six of Pete's armies in Iyo, and Pete hung on by one. But the victory was a brief one, as Bruce later moved eight armies from Bingo into Iyo, which supplemented by Pete's armies in the cup and the defense special action card managed to make it close, with Bruce only winning the battle by two.

In the Fall of Year 2, Pete sends a softening attack of seven black into a province containing Bruce's massive 18 strong army. The attack left Bruce with only seven armies. Later in the season, Bruce attacked with the remnants of that army into a huge built up area of Pete's (10 vs 14) and Pete was able to survive, which meant that his earlier attack had paid dividends. Craig then took Hida, which contained a temple from John early in the season, but then later John came right back to retake the province. Pete made an attack to retake Iyo which he had lost the previous season, but the battle ended in a tie, denying the province and the temple it contained to either Bruce or Pete.

No revolts happened in the Winter of Year 2.

In the final reckoning, Craig had a better second year showing, but still finished in 4th (eight provinces, eight buildings, dominating presences in the southeast) with 40 points. Pete got hammered down from his first half lead to finish with 44 points (eight countries, only five buildings, and very strong presence in the southwest). Bruce grew his western kingdom, but not enough to win getting to 47 points (nine countries, ten buildings, dominating presence in the west). John poured it on in the second half, expanding his northeast empire into the center of the board to become the Shogun of Japan with an impressive 57 points. John dominated in every facet with the most countries (12), the most buildings (11), and dominating presence in two regions.

As with last year, the attendance numbers will be short of Century status, so I urge everyone that has read this far to vote for Shogun to return as a trial event in 2008. I will be happy to return as GM in that case.