Andy Latto was unable to repeat his four-title year in 2009.	Tom DeMarco, Chris Trimmer and Carol Caler join the crowd.

Dominion drew one of the largest fields ever for a WBC event with 106 games played in three preliminary heats. 
 
Heat 1:  Money Cards
Heat 1 had 38 tables competing with a set of cards meant to provide options for generating money without having to buy treasure cards -- either by providing more money directly, or through improving a players hand.  The cards for this round were Cellar, Chancellor, Woodcutter, Bureaucrat, Moneylender, Smithy, Throne Room, Festival, Mine and Market. Provinces were the primary card of this round, with all but one table finishing because Provinces ran out.  For most games, Provinces were the only deck to run out, but other popular cards were Duchy, Festival, Market and Cellar.  The sole exception to this high scoring round was the table won by Richard  Sciacca, where Bruce Hodgins' six markets helped the table run out of Markets, Estates and Duchies.
 
Heat 2:  Deck Management
Heat 2 had only slightly lower attendance resulting in 35 tables competing with a set of "deck management" cards.  Players in this heat were presented with a tableau consisting of Moat, Chancellor, Village, Feast, Gardens, Moneylender, Militia, Spy, Library and Adventurer.  Gardens provided an option for building a large deck (with cards like Library and Adventurer) for a way to bypass extra cards, while other cards like Feast and Moneylender helped to thin a deck. While Provinces were still the most common ending condition, this set showed a much greater variety in how the games ended with nearly a third of the tables ending from three cards being bought out.  The most common configuration was Gardens, Moat and Duchy - which happened at three separate tables.
 
Heat 3:  Chain Deck
After Heat 2, there were six two-time winners - none of whom played in Heat 3 so as not to hurt their chances of advancing.  Given the expected need for two victories to advance, Heat 3 had the fewest participants, with only 28 tables competing in a set of cards that allowed for continuous chaining of draws and actions. 
The tableau for Heat 3 consisted of Moat, Cellar, Village, Workshop, Feast, Remodel, Spy, Council Room, Laboratory and Markets. Provinces were the determining factor in most games again, but there were a number of interesting games.  Lee Nguyen won at a table that ended their game by running out all three victory point piles.  Another table had a lower scoring game where cheaper cards such as Estates, Duchies and Feasts were the order of the day.  Villages and Remodels were also popular at a number of tables.
 
Semi-Finals:  Assault
After the preliminaries were over, there were 15 two-time winners for 16 spots.  Only 11 of these double winners appeared though.  This allowed a number of one-time winners to advance.  It ended up coming down to a die roll amongst five players for the last four spots, and Tom De Marco was the unfortunate loser of the roll off. The semi-finals consisted of a deck of attack cards and cards that are meant to counter some of those effects. The set consisted of Chapel, Chancellor, Workshop, Bureaucrat, Remodel, Spy, Thief, Festival, Laboratory and Witch. Three of the tables ended up with low scores as the Witch proved popular, allowing the Curse pile to run out.  The sole exception was at a table where each player went for a different strategy at the start, and witches were few - resulting in a high scoring game where Provinces and Remodels were the only piles exhausted Arthur Field, Lee Nguyen, John Fanjoy and Edward Fu emerged as the victors to move on to the Final round. 
 
Final:  Money Set #2
Because two people had conflicts at the scheduled time, all of the finalists agree to delay the Final for one hour.  When the new time came though, Lee Nguyen was still involved in his other tournament -- given the choice, he decided to forego the Dominion Final. Since it was not possible to find a replacement from our other laurelists, Lee was awarded fourth place, and a three-player Final was held.  It was played with another set of "high money" cards - Moat, Woodcutter, Workshop, Bureaucrat, Militia, Moneylender, Smithy, Throne Room, Mine and Library.

Edward Fu randomly received the first seat position, followed by John Fanjoy, and Arthur Field in third. All three players started out with Moneylender and Silver purchases.  In the third and fourth turns though, John started to fall behind as Arthur and Edward both picked up Gold and Smithy, while John only managed a Silver and a Smithy. Arthur took an early lead as he purchased the first Province on Turn 7.  Edward countered quickly with his first Province on Turn 8, and John bought his on Turn 9.  Arthur kept building his engine though with another Gold, and a Militia purchase on those turns. On Turns 10 and 11 though, a pair of Smithy plays allowed Arthur to pick up two more Provinces.  While Edward and John both tried to counter on Turn 12, Arthur maintained his lead and added a Duchy to his pile as well. The next four turns had all of the players purchasing Duchies or Provinces with the game ending when John bought the last Province, leaving Arthur with one turn less than the other two finalists.  In the end, Arthur's purchase of victory points on every turn from 10 through 15 allowed him to pull out a three-point victory over Edward 36-33-30 despite the turn disadvantage.
 
The Future:
I'd like to thank everyone who participated in this year's tournament, and especially those who volunteered to help as assistant GM's.  I'd also like to thank everyone who provided feedback to me in person, as well as the approximately 20 players who took the time to fill out my survey about what they'd like to see next year. I am still going through all of the surveys, and don't have any firm decisions yet - but rest assured that I already plan on a number of changes to the format that I HOPE will make the tournament fairer and more fun for everyone involved.

One of the primary focuses will be on the issue of turn order.  There were 95 4-player games in the preliminary rounds.  Victories were pretty much split evenly amongst the first through third positions (with 27, 26 and 26 victories apiece), but there were only 16 victories from the fourth position.  I have not decided on how to address this discrepancy yet, but it will be one of my top concerns in developing next year's tournament. Another major change will be the tiebreaker structure, which inadvertently had exactly the opposite effect of what I was going for because I failed to account for players not playing the same number of heats.  This will also definitely be addressed next year.

Playing a Euro in a Giants jersey in August in the year of the Yankee's 27th World Championship? Who are you and what did you do with Dennis Nicholson?	The ballroom is overflowing with Dominion games in the convention's biggest tournament. Next year's format will play several games in each heat.