Charley Hickok goes up against Israeli Yossi Dvora who won all three of his preliminary games before running into a semifinal sharkpool.	Rob Flowers and Legend Dan Hoffman were two of many taking advantage of the Pre-Con to get in a game with hefty playing time.

The first round of heats saw some big surprises with all three competing members of last year's final table losing their opening games. All three rattled off wins in Heats 2 and 3 to advance to the semifinals, but without the three wins required to be seeded, they wound up with one very shark-filled semifinal populated by two-time champion Randy Buehler, defending champ Joel Lytle, and one of this year's two triple-heat-winners: Yossi Dvora. Randy won that table to reach the Final for the fifth consecutive year. The other two-time champion, Jason Ley, also won his semi and they were joined at the Final table by Sceadeau d'Tela riding a four-game winning streak and AGE newcomer (but rising star gamer) Nick Henning.

Jason seemed to get the best of the opening deal with both Hanging Gardens and Moses, but Age 1 ended a bit quicker than he anticipated so Hanging Gardens never got built. Age 1 saw the usual arms race that most expert-level tables experience, with Sceadeau starting off a cascade of aggressive drafting by taking Knights for three actions. With all three copies of Iron buried deep in the deck, and only one of them ever getting deployed, the players developed their civilizations quite slowly while constantly hitting each other with what one can only assume must have been rocks and assorted other blunt weapons. Halfway through Age 2 all four players were still on Bronze and three were still on just two bulbs per turn as well.

Jason got off the first successful aggression, Plundering Nick for five rocks (and using them to build a pair of Alchemists). Nick then got hit by a Rebellion and seemed all but dead, though no one actually stepped on his neck and he recovered nicely over the next few turns by building Great Wall, playing a fully modern Defensive Army, and making Napoleon his leader. With Jason building a Railroad and two Napoleonic Armies, and Sceadeau's Columbus discovering a Strategic Territory II (which found him a Classic Army), it was actually Randy who fell behind in the arms race (failing to find a single tactic that he could turn on until well into Age 3, thanks in large part to all of the other players aggressively drafting Knights).

The aggressions kept flying in Age 3, with everyone's civilization seeming particularly anti-science. Three Spies were played (which is only possible if the Age 2 military deck gets reshuffled and one if redrawn), along with a War over Technology, and Raids that blew up two Scientific Method workers plus a Computers.

What did not happen was anyone building a meaningful culture engine. Randy went Gandhi both to try to protect himself from wars (no one had six military actions, but that aforementioned War over Technology only required four red beads when pointed at him) and also because it put him in the lead with five culture per turn.

It was a brutal, low-scoring game that was actually turned upside down by Jason declaring a culture war against Sceadeau on the last possible turn. Sceadeau was in the lead at the time (followed by Nick, Randy and Jason in that order), but he probably overextended when he built two Computers to go with his late Game Designer. One bulb short of playing an Air Force technology and 2 rocks short of building a 2nd Classic Army he wound up losing 29 points of culture to Jason, leaving the score going into the Impacts as Jason - 69, Nick - 65, Randy - 59, and Sceadeau - 22. Sceadeau knew he had seeded some great Impacts so he declined to withdraw, and he did indeed pick up fully 83 points on Impacts to claw his way back into third, just three points behind Jason for second. Meanwhile, it was Nick Henning who benefitted most from Jason's war once the music stopped, he was the one holding the first place trophy - the perfect start to what turned out to be a spectacular week for him! He would grab four more titles before the week ended - setting a record for number of events won in one WBC.

Final Scores: Nick Henning - 131, Jason Ley - 108, Sceadeau d'Tela - 105, Randy Buehler - 98

Jeff Cornett and Rich Atwater try to learn some new tricks in a game other than their usual specialty.	The finalists, including two past champs, gather for one more romp through the ages.