Defying the WBC trend, attendance dipped slightly, perhaps due to a combination of a return to Class A status, and the elimination of the Tuesday night heat. Next year, we will return to Class B with a Tuesday demo in a quest for new faces.

The nationality statistics for the six games played were:

Nation	Wins	Average Finish
Assyria	2	2.67
Illyria	2	3.80
Thrace	0	4.00
Crete	0	4.16
Africa	0	4.33
Babylon	0	4.67
Egypt	1	4.83
Iberia	1	5.50

The two preliminary heats mustered five games. The winners were Zvi Mowshowitz (Iberia), Kevin Youells (two wins, Illyria and Assyria), Sean Bryan (Assyria), and Nathan Barhorst (Egypt). Jennifer Visocnik, Harald Henning, Christina Harley, and Jon Anderson joined these victors in the Final. Positions were awarded by random draw with trading allowed. Everybody seemed content with their selection except Kevin who was anxiously trying to pawn Illyria off on some other poor sucker ... err, contender, but to no avail. The sides were thus established as: Africa/Zvi, Iberia/Nathan, Illyria/Kevin, Thrace/Sean, Jon/Crete, Assyria/Jenn, Babylon/Harald, and Egypt/Christina.

There was the usual discussion of borders at the outset, and it soon became apparent that Assyria was going to be in trouble. Her normal territory was coveted by both Babylon and Crete, and they combined to limit her growth from the Stone Age on. Africa and Egypt also disputed the territories near Cyrene. The rulers of Illyria and Iberia probably didn't improve matters by encouraging Africa's claims, but they sure had fun doing it.

As the game progressed, calamities became a major factor. Africa was the primary victim of no less than 13 calamities, including a nasty Civil War/Epidemic combination on Turn 9. Zvi lost 20 units to Crete, and did not have Medicine at the time. Insult was added to injury in the next turn when he caught another round of the flu and was reduced to zero cities. To his credit, he never gave up trying to win despite going backwards on the AST. Three turns later, it was Crete's turn to lose all his cities as he was stuck with both Famine and Iconoclasm & Heresy in addition to being chosen for the full secondary effects of Epidemic by Thrace.
Crete had chosen to play a highly aggressive game. He took full advantage of any player having no units in stock and sacking the undefended city. He did this to Egypt on Turn 13. Both Crete and Illyria joined in on Turn 14, knowing that the Egyptian queen was holding several Spice cards. Nathan then uttered the quote of the tournament when he leaned back in his chair and announced "I'm looking for Spice."

Turn 14 also proved brutal for Assyria as she was hit by both Civil War and Barbarians. Jenn was only able to rebuild to four cities the next turn as she had to clear her territory of both Barbarians and Cretans.

By this time, Illyria had used Mining to catch the pack and was becoming a force to be reckoned with. Crete and Thrace had previously purchased Military, and Crete had launched multiple attacks into Illyria. Kevin chose to respond by purchasing Monotheism instead of Military for defense. The powerful effects of this buy helped push the Illyrians to victory as he used Monotheism as a diplomatic tool, and Babylon had to rearrange his entire purchase for the turn to buy Theology to avoid becoming the target for Monotheism. Babylon had been working his way to the Black Sea to attack Thrace, but Sean chose to eliminate the Babylonian coastal presence so Harald could not launch any attacks. This had the unintended consequence of helping Kevin as he cut individual deals to give immunity from Monotheism to any player who did not attack him. In the end, Kevin was able to hold on for a slim victory.

The final tally was: Kevin/Illyria 4406, Harald/Babylon 4313, Sean/Thrace 4090, Christina/Egypt 4070, Nathan/Iberia 3800, Zvi/Africa 3328, Jon/Crete 3288, and Jenn/Assyria 3033.

The BPA also provides an online ACV tournament. Check us out at http://bpa-civ.rol-play.com/