Kevin Lewis and GM Rob Flowers breathlessly await the next card play.	GM Rob Flowers and his fellow finalists.

18 years after the game's release and 15 years after its WBC debut, the El Grande tournament continues to command a steady field. Some of the mechanics have been improved upon since then, but the basic game has aged well.

This year's preliminaries generated 20 games with no double winners. Some have noted that since the field has been relatively steady, it's likely that a single win will suffice to advance. Thus, most of the players that win don't play in the later heats, which, in theory, could make it easier in those heats. The two risks with that, of course, are that there are a lot of good players in this game, and the inherent chaos of multiplayer games makes it iffy to count on getting a win in a single heat.

Brad Sherwood had the highest score in Heat 1 with a particularly close game where he scored 133 to Robb Effinger's 132. Robb then went on to get his own winning score of 133 in Heat 2. The distinction of the lowest winning score in the heats went to Doug Faust, who bested newcomer Kolbe DiGiulio 84 - 83.

The semifinals had three no-shows (including one inadvertent deserter who overslept), but enough alternates were on hand to fill all 25 slots. One of the five semifinal games ended in a tie, with Kolbe losing on the second tiebreaker to Robb Effinger (but securing 6th place laurels in the process).

Unfortunately, notes on the Final are again scarce, as the GM and both assistants (Robb and Geoff) advanced. In addition, the GM was a little sleep deprived, having recently become a father. Nonetheless, the Final featured three previous champions, and the 2008 runner-up. Brad Sherwood was the lone newcomer to laurels land.

Rob concentrated on early board position, but somehow couldn't avoid being in the way of other people's plans. Decays and Intrigue cards combined with bad timing on scoring left him pretty much out of the running by mid-game. Robb and Geoff managed to separate themselves from the pack with a score the firsts card, and had decent board position by then. At one point Marc set up an 8/4/0 scoreboard in Catalonia. Rob moved the board to Aragon where other players had been piling up his pieces. The board was then moved BACK to Catalonia when the third mobile scoreboard card came out.

Brad had been staying out of trouble and slowly gaining on Robb and Geoff. In the end, both Rob and Brad made a play for Catalonia, each thinking they had a lock on those eight points, only to tie for first in the province. Brad fell just one point short and Robb became the third player to capture his second ELG title.