Pieter Villion ot the Netherlands, UK's Ed Kendrick, and Canadian Al Hurda all meet in Lancaster, PA to play an English boardgame.	Richard Shay, Carl Shapiro, Kevin Barry, amd Jack Jung play in one of the three preliminary heats.

It's not surprising that players discriminating enough to play Brass would also be successful in other games requiring planning, forethought, deep strategic thinking and ruthless exploitation. So several of the qualifiers missed the semifinals to play in the Final of such games as Dune, Puerto Rico, and Automobile, while others passed up the Circus Maximus Final to play Brass. It's tough at the top.

Of the 13 qualifiers (two of whom were double winners), ten appeared at the semis and two alternates were co-opted on their two best scores, one of whom was last year's champion who had a second and a "perfect second" - having lost on a tiebreak. The three tables of four produced three winners, one of whom then chose to play in a different Final, so the two best runners-up advanced to the Final table.

The game started conventionally with development and coal builds leading to ironworks. By Turn 4 both Red (Shea) and Yellow (Hodgins) had wasted six mills while Purple (Mullally) had built three ironworks and Green (Kendrick) had built ports and iron. In the second half of the Canal Phase, Purple and Green developed shipyards while Yellow and Red each laid out three 3-mills, with Green pushing out his iron and overbuilding Purple. At the turn Green had a 1-point lead over Purple and Yellow with 32 points set to score twice, while Red trailed by 7 points.

However, it's often the case that the early leader fades in the second half and this game proved no exception. After the usual flurry of rail builds, Green carried on with coal, ports and rail, edging towards Ellesmere, but mistimed his turn and allowed Purple to drop shipyards in Liverpool and Barrow while the other two continued their mill-building, each eventually shipping three 4-mills. Coal and iron shortages led to overbuilding, with Red offing a Green ironworks and Purple nulling a Yellow one, and at game end Shea had turned round his position to edge Yellow by two points and emerge a worthy champion.

It's interesting that in this Final the top two both used the mill strategy and were assisted by ports built by other players, Last year the winner countered similar strategies with a broad-brush coal, iron, rail and shipyards mix, but that proved to be no panacea and confirms that there is no single winning strategy in this great game. Those wishing to read last year's event report can find it on the website after it was dropped from the printed Yearbook by a printer's error.

Food for thought; it was observed after the convention had finished that members of the famed Greenville Mafia had developed an interest in the game, so perhaps next year we'll be hearing "nice little tournament you've got here ... but very winnable, know what I mean ..."?

Philip Shea, Jean Villion of South Africa, and William Kendrick of the UK further the international flair of WBC competition.	GM Ed Kendrick (at right) with his finalists for the Martin Wallce design now in its fifth year at WBC.