Steve Shambeda, Paul Bean, Rebecca Melton, Forrest Speck and Rob Winslow in a distant galaxy, far, far away ...	Mark Mitchell looks like he just lost a secret base to Jody Folk. That's a forced smile hiding a grimace if I ever saw one.

As usual the Galaxy tournament didn't disappoint, but this year, it didn't provide a lot of "firsts". This was the third consecutive year that a former champion reclaimed the title. There have been other Finals with close scores but this year all five players finished the game within three points of each other! That might normally indicate there was no clear leader throughout the game, but not in this case. It was pretty evident from the outset that the table agreed Craig Melton should be the target of opportunity. He managed to take and keep control of the Divergence until they were eliminated on the last round. Every round it seemed that the topic of discussion was how to rid the galaxy of the Divergence, but somehow, nobody had the right cards at the right time. Finally, on the last round, Steve Cameron used the E Cup's Governor power to exchange a card with Marty Sample so he could play it on the Kha in order to kill the Divergence. It was a pretty clever play, and it did take down the leader, but then ended up giving the game to Rob Winslow who was flying under the radar the entire game and was just keeping himself in position to win by one point over Craig.

As for the numbers of this year's tournament, once again, the Myrmidon were the most eliminated world (17) and broke the record for the fewest times chosen as a secret base with two out of 21 total games played! Next year there needs to be some marketing promotion to help the Myrmidon gain support. Perhaps the most significant first was that the Kha were the world that survived the most games with 12. There were some other notable events as well. The aforementioned Cameron won his heat with a measly total of six points (and in a 4-player game which tends to produce higher scores). As one can assume, all four secret bases were eliminated. Overall, there was some consistency with the game play as it relates to the winners, such as Rob Winslow winning his semi-final match by being the one who eliminated ALL five worlds! If you do that, you had better win the game or else don't ever show your face in the galaxy again. And finally, there was one last notable feat that was achieved this year. Yours truly, the GM, managed to be the only heat winner without eliminating a single world. Just an innocent bystander hoping we can all get along - that's me. Mr. Nice Guy! This game is easy when all the other players do your dirty work for you. Well, not that easy ... since I didn't get past the semi-finals again.

Steve Shambeda places Max DuBoff's base for him - then blows it up.	John Speck, Bill Place and Laura Brown decide the fate of worlds.