Overall attendance held steady this year, although I was pleasantly surprised to see many new faces. Every year I wonder if I should continue to hold a demo for the game, but this year I was rewarded with more attendance at the demo than I expected, and several of them played in the tournament. This game can be a bit tough on newer players because between the 2-hour time limit and the experience level of the regulars.

Winning scores in the heats ranged from a high of 131 points (Bryan Berkenstock) to a low of 81 (Geoff Pounder). There was one tie between Greg Crowe and Tom Saal, with Greg advancing on the tiebreaker. There were no double winners in the three heats this year, but there were four former laurelists who managed a win and a second place finish: Robb Effinger, Geoff Pounder, Marc Berenbach, and Greg Thatcher. All four were alumni of the 2008 Final proving that creme rises to the top. Only David Gagne, Keith Layton, and the GM, who finally got a win on his third try, attempted all three heats.

At four of the five semi-final tables, the winner had a decent margin over the second player; however, at my table, I managed to make a good run at the leader (Robb Effinger) and tied his score, only to lose on the tiebreaker. The Final inspired the title of this report. Because I run the semi-final and Final rounds back to back, and the advanced rounds tend to run long, it can be tough to stick within the two-hour time limit, releasing players to continue on to other events. In this Final, however, all participants were playing quickly... perhaps TOO quickly, as many mistakes were made on all sides. By request, I won't go into who made each mistake!

One telling mistake included a player taking an Intrigue action, using it to move several pieces on the board, and then forgetting to place his own piece after the action was completed! Another player bid high with a near-empty court to take a valuable scoring card, forgetting that another player still had a Veto in his hand. Several times, players bid middling cards but then ended up with the 4 or 5 caballero actions and didn't have enough people in their court to take full advantage of their turn. Near the end of the game, one player made a move which made it unnecessary to defend his home territory in the final Castillo drop, but then moved his troops there anyway, when a different location probably would have won him the game. Finally, in the replay of the game, the GM discovered a scoring error in which one player was given too many points! Fortunately, it was a small enough error that it didn't change the rankings at all.

This ended up being a low-scoring game, as several scoring cards were either vetoed, or taken and not scored. This scenario tends to favor the player who develops the strongest board position over the course of the game, which in this case was Curt. He managed to get the most pieces on the board and avoid having them in useless positions. Although he was 10 points behind the leader before final scoring, he managed to outscore everyone and win the game. After several near misses in the semi-finals and last year's Final, Curt persevered for his first ELG title.