Anthony Daw finds humor in Joshua Gottesman's play in the opening heat.	Greg Thatcher, Evan Davis, Bill Burch and Charles Ward in the first heat on Wednesday morning.

Attendance at the second Brass tournament grew by more than a third with four nations represented. Coupled with similar results for his Autombile design and the talk of open gaming with his latest, A Few Acres of Snow, Martin Wallace designs are really taking off at WBC. After 17 preliminary games, 13 of the 15 unique winners opted to advance to the semis, so three runner-ups (based on percentage of their winner's score) were added to make four 4-player games.

On this occasion the four semi-final winners advanced in orderly fashion and the Canal Era progressed evenly, with all players building iron and developing. Speyer shipped two mills to market early, but got caught later, losing an M1 and failing to flip an M3 to finish the Canal era last. Corrado was confined to the west coast by his cards and built ports up to P3, allowing Kendrick to use them to ship two M3s. Flowers shipped an M2 to another Corrado port and overbuilt his own ironworks in Rochdale. At the halfway point Kendrick had a clear lead with 34 points, of which 18 were going to score again.

But round about then the wheels began to wobble on the Kendrick chariot. The others had coaled up and spread a rapid network of rails while he borrowed and developed. By Turn 4 Speyer had built another M3 and shipped both to market, used a two-card build for an M4 in Bury, built another M4 in Rochdale and shipped both the next turn, and after that Kendrick was always playing catch-up. Corrado built out all his ports and negotiated with the zoning authorities for permission to build mills, eventually erecting an M3 and M4 in Stockport - only one of which ever shipped. Flowers built his I4 and plunged into a shipyard in Liverpool. Coal was in shortage and there was some overbuilding, most strikingly with Speyer offing Flowers' I3 in Rochdale to win the Rail era, but failing to make up for his poor start. A second shipyard with a solid coal and rail foundation - and no mills or ports - took Flowers to a low-key but very competent victory with 138 points to Speyer's 131.

Over the 22 games the average score was 123.6 - slightly higher than last year- and the highest belonged to defending champion Bruce Hodgins with 166. There was again one game decided on a tie-break - this time during the heats - and Chris Senhouse qualified with the highest possible alternate score of 3.00.

If attendance for the 2012 tournament rises again as anticipated and we have more than 16 heat winners, qualifiers will be ranked by their best second score - so playing twice or three times can't hurt your chances and can only improve them. Canadian Bruce Hodgins has agreed to replace Roy Gibson as second assistant GM, so we will have a truly international panel, eh?

Daniel Eppolito and Chris Senhouse in the first heat.	GM Ed Kendrick shepherds his finalists thru the second Brass Final.