Brian Mountford, Jesse Boomer, Ed Rothenheber, Steve Koleszar and John Emery	Nick Benedict, Phil Barcafer, Ken Richards and Pete Stein enjoy the comfortable early heat.
Kevin Emery and Geoff Allbutt	Bart Pisarik, Tommy Johnston, and GM Gareth Williams

Monday night saw a turnout of 33, the highest of the week and vindicating I think the decision to move a heat there. While it was not intended to run a demo table that night, it happened anyway.

This heat saw the only French conquest of Britain during the week, Napoleon touring London and the Spanish playing Capitulation. Austria responded with a major invasion and got as far as Marseilles. However, in the last card play of the turn Blake attacked over into Languedoc and Charles intercepted. Charles won the battle, but had left Marseilles empty, allowing a secondary Spanish force to come in by sea and retake the key. This kept France at +6 VP and caused an automatic game end.

Tuesday drew 25 players overall, and saw the formal demo with a much appreciated use of Rich Shipley's 3D pieces. The demo result was posted after one turn; however we played a second turn to demonstrate some of the logistic difficulties involved in invading Russia. Attrition and Cossacks wore Napoleon, Davout and Blake down to little more than their corps by the end of the turn. Nappy pulled the conquest off, even if reduced to fending off kamikaze Finnish cavalry by himself at times. Britain also conquered Denmark, a feat that was managed twice during the week. The Danes did however enjoy a moment of glory when their lone squadron sortied under Admiral Fischer and accounted for a British SQ but were left in the Irish Sea. The British fleet converged on them and proceeded to get two disrupts on 12 dice. The Danes returned fire, earning two kills on two dice and prompting a second day of battle at 6 dice to 0 which finally ended their historic voyage.

Thursday's heat dropped to 15 players, perhaps not helped by the conditions in Lampeter. At this point both Casselberry's made a Bernadottesque late appearance to slot in as Prussia in two games. Melvin managed the rare result of losing all keys except his capital to conquest, posting a -5 and thereby edging out Rejean Tremblay for the wooden spoon.

Other highlights of the heats included a game with Wellington being hit with just about every debilitating card: Dysentery, Generals Health, Leader Wounded and killed twice in battle. In that reality he presumably has a very large statue in London that is missing a great many body parts.

The Semis were, for the first time ever, seeded based on performance in the heats, with the best performing players getting first pick of side. This change seems to have been universally considered an improvement. There were five no shows, thereby allowing some alternates a seat in the last 24, one of whom went on to claim 6th place.

In the only 4-player game, John Emery's French took a commanding win, with dark horse Bart Pisarik (who had attended the first demo Monday, then stayed to play the Tuesday game till 0400) taking second with Britain -- making that three runner-up performances in the first three plays of his Napoleonic career. In the 5-player semi's, the first pick was usually Britain, though France swept all the elimination games. Despite being preferred, Britain did no better than one second with Jesse Boomer scoring 3 VP. Jesse looked tied with Bill Burtless's Prussians and Henry Russell's Russians until Lane Hess narrowly missed out on a Nobel Peace Prize by posting 4 VP as a neutral Prussia with three pacts to take 6th place overall.

The Final proved to be the shortest ever, indeed one of the shortest games ever. John Emery used his 1st seed to claim France and took only 35 minutes to win, advancing to 5 VP and then playing Drought when the bulk of the rest of the table had one card + reserve each, causing them to lose their cards and be deprived of the chance to play their reserves. Europe Exhausted was in play, and France was allowed a shot at a peace die roll. C'est la guerre!

I'd like to thank everyone who played, especially Rich Shipley and Henry Russell for agreeing to act as assistant GMs. Inshallah I will be able to return next year and move forward. Despite the issues in Lampeter Nappy posted its second highest participation in five years, and I would like to build on that with a stable ref team.

Rich Shipley, Jim Doughan and Jesse Boomer	Lane Hess, Scott Fenn and Ed Rothenheber