Alex Bove and Greg Thatcher are frequent antagonists.	Eric Freeman gets a kick out of Dan Eppolito's Combat Goa.

33 players explored Goa this year, giving us 11 tables in two heats and 15 games total. Although it wasn't a record, attendance was low enough to drop it out of the Century for the first time. Overall, margins of victory were a bit wider this year, though one game resulted in a 48-48 tie between former finalists Raphael Lehrer and Rod Spade (Rod had the edge in ducats, 25-24, to break the tie). Among winners, the highest score was 57 (by Alex Bove) and the lowest was 44 (Sceadeau D'Tela).

A lot of ink has been spilled in strategy forums over the perceived dominance of the card/spice track combination, but tournament players know that Goa offers many paths to victory. Nine winners advanced both cards and spices to the bottom level, but nine non-winners did the same. While cards and spices together did not necessarily equal victory, cards were still very important: 13 of 15 winners advanced that track all the way (but so did 20 non-winners - cards are indeed a focal point of many Goa strategies!). Three winners reached the bottom of the colonist track, two maxed out the ship track, and one made the rare trip to the end of the tax track.

The player who finished with the most money won five games (as opposed to 11 last year), and the player who started with the flag won only twice (compared to seven times last year). Founding all four colonies was very important as only two players won while founding fewer than four.

The two heats produced only nine winners, so three alternates advanced to a 12-player semi-final. In order to ensure a 4-player Final, we played three 4-player games and advanced three winners and the best runner-up (by percentage of the winner's score).

The three semi-final winners were Daniel Eppolito, Chris Trimmer, and Andy Gerb. Defending champ Alex Bove and Rich Meyer both lost by two points, but Alex's second was one point higher than Rich's, keeping his title defense alive. Rich took fifth place laurels, and Rod Spade added some more laurels to his Goa collection by finishing sixth.

The Final featured two former champions (Alex and Chris), a former finalist (Daniel) and a Euroquest finalist (Andy). Daniel raced down the expedition card track early, getting to the bottom at the end of Round 3 and prompting everyone at the table, including Daniel, to think that this might be a runaway. Andy failed twice on early colony attempts and fell behind. Alex decided to push the spice track first before switching to cards in mid-game. Chris pursued his proven strategy of even development and solid money-management in the auction.

Phase B saw Andy get to the bottom of the ship and colonist tracks while Daniel pushed spices and colonists to the bottom. Alex maxed out spices and cards, while Chris was unable to get any track all the way down. Daniel's multiple card drawing actions gained him free boats and spices, but he was short on money and colonists: he was the only finalist who was unable to found all four colonies. Andy developed his board beautifully - scoring 32 points - but ran low on money for the all-important final auctions and failed to accumulate enough cards to score big in that important category. Andy was also the only player not to finish the game with a scoring tile. Chris scored 10 points from cards and tiles to help balance his deficit in board development, but his early money edge never turned into late-game points. Alex managed to take seven actions in Round 7 and was able to overtake Andy and close the gap between himself and Daniel. In the end, Alex pulled out the win (51 points) with Daniel close behind (47), followed by Andy (44) and Chris (41).

Ra GM Stephen Scott takes a break from the Sun God heats to join the mercantile wars.	Fnalists Eppolito, Bove, Gerb and Trimmer celebrate their soon-to-be-won laurels.