John Elliott, Andy Gardner and Chris Entwistle are fated to remain smalltime hoods this year.	Craig Reece, eventual champ Phillip Entwistle and Katie Elliott take over the east side.
Da Viper keeps an eye on Kevin Hacker playing the big board.	GM John "The Viper" Pack and his cool co-finalists.

(BPA Lancaster) Phillip "Iron" Entwistle claimed the Godfather title by narrowly edging Ben "The Roach" Gardner by one tiny $100 piece of real estate. Keith "Twitch" Boone took home Junior Godfather honors. But it was Geoffrey "Cartridge" Entwistle who took home the dancing Gangster teddy bear, making him the envy of all the Vamps, who will no doubt visit him often in 2015.

To celebrate the colors of Gangsters, each arriving player claimed a fully-loaded colorful grenade squirt gun. Games were wet and wild. At check-in, each player received a colorful wristband that determined which game and gang color they'd play. Some gangsters were seen sporting several wristbands. The leftovers were made available to everyone at the WBC on Sunday.
Winners took home a pair of shades in the color of their gangs -- red, green, yellow, and brown. "Tommy Dice" Johnston was the only one to claim a blue pair of shades for winning the Barney Fife Memorial Award.

2014 Final -- Vampage claims 17 Innocent Bystanders!
The four finalists in move order, their starting positions, and their status at the end of the game:
Phillip "Iron" Entwistle - Start: 5/1/2; $400; Brizelli's Riverside [Vamp], Franklin Hostel [Racketeer/Thug], Greenwood Park
Finish: 9/1/2, 4 Hits, 3 Seductions; $800, 10 joints (5 of 8 Yellow) - Wins!
John "The Viper" Pack - Start: 5/1/1; $400; Brzkowski's Imports [Racketeer], Ambassadors' Club [Vamp], Belmar Theatre [Thug]
Finish: 1/1/1, 4 Hits, 4 Seductions; $8,000; 3 joints (2 of 6 Blue) - 3rd Place
Chris "Little Red" Entwistle - Start: 5/1/2; $400; Downtown Bus Station [Racketeer/Thug], Taylor's Machine Shop [Vamp], Jeager's Clothier Finish: 1/1/2, 1 Hit, 8 Seductions; $4,700, 6 joints (2 of 7 Green) - 4th Place
Ben "The Roach" Gardner - Start: 6/1/2; $100; Palace Chophouse [Vamp], Sadler's Stichery [Racketeer], Wylie's Storage [Thug] Finish: 7/1/3, 0 Hits, 2 Seductions; $800; 9 joints (3 of 9 Brown) - 2nd Place

As usual, I cover just the key aspects of each turn and only record unusually high cash collections (so that I have no advantage). I have tried to reconstruct the Final using my notes & memory and the player chits. Let's examine the setups before going into the turn-by-turn report.

Setup: Iron starts with a key Green one-jump joint, but moves to a cheaper Yellow one-jump strategy after Little Red picks up the Downtown Bus Station to block the Green juggernaut. With $400 saved, it looks like a sneak-up-the-cash strategy from the get-go.
For the second year in a row, the Viper goes with a Blue one-jump strategy -- picking up both Brzkowski's Imports and Ambassadors' Club -- and going with a cheap gang to keep $400 for a first-turn upgrade. This is a one-jump cash strategy all the way. I remember feeling as if I'd gotten the best start with the two Blue kingpins in my starting line-up.

Little Red blocks the dynamic-duo of Brizelli's and the Bus Station by taking the latter immediately. I'm guessing Little Red has seen Iron play before. He keeps $400 for a first turn upgrade and picks up the highly mobile Taylor's Machine Shop to allow it. Cash looks like his goal -- but it'll be hampered by only owning half of the Green duo and the hard-for-public-to-get-to Taylor's substituting for Brizelli's.

The Roach is used to having a crime family (Andy "Scarface" Gardner) in the Final to watch his back. This time he faces the Entwistle crime syndicate alone. He goes cheap but picks up a pair of yellow joints. He looks to be going for the roach motel strategy (ten cheap joints). But this allows him to start with a huge gang (6 Racketeers) and three moves. That'll let him earn some cash every turn, react to opponents, and buy up the little joints all at once.

Turn 1: Iron upgrades Franklin Hostel. His reaction to his red die, "Gross!" "You calling your Vamp gross?" -- The Roach. The Viper gets his Vamp and Thug extorting. Little Red brings Public x2 into the upgraded Bus Station to score $1,200. The Roach moves the Public to Sadler's. Kojak [Cop #6] whiffs against Iron's Thug.

Turn 2: The Public x2 moves all the way to the upgraded Franklin Hostel. Then the Viper gets a Public x1 into the Ambassadors' Club. Little Red bribes a cop and vamps Viper's Thug off the map. Ambassadors' Club pays again though Viper was worried it would head into the Downtown Bus Station. "I haven't sold any bus tickets, after all." -- The Viper. The Roach vamps Iron's Thug.

Turn 3: Iron bribes a cop, vamps Little Red's Thug, and draws Public x3 at Subway #1. The Viper Public x2 into the Level-2 Brzkowski's Imports and collect $2,100. "He's got a bribe." -- The Roach. "Like he's gonna use it." -- The Viper. Little Red brings in Dudley Do-Right [Cop #4] to raid Brzkowski's and recruits one Racketeer for $500. "I don't think you mean that." -- The Roach. "What gave it away?" -- Iron. The Roach vamps the Viper's Racketeer and moves Public x1 into Level-2 Sadler's Stichery.

Turn 4: Iron also vamps the Viper. The Viper recruits two Thugs for $1,200 but forgets to upgrade Ambassadors' Club. The Public x1 in Sadler's pays the Roach a third time. Finally, Dirty Harry [Cop #9] busts Sadler's and sends the Public packing. Little Red also uses Barney Fife on Iron's Thug and scores one hit. He gets both his Vamp and Thug extorting to collect $1,200. The Roach buys his sixth joint. He hasn't missed an eligible buying turn yet!

Turn 5: Iron vamps the Roach. The Viper forgets to upgrade again. "Sorry, it's business." -- Iron. Little Red moves his Racketeer into the Pussycat Club and bribes a Cop. "Just hand over da cash, and we protect your place, see?" -- The Viper. "The Cops just don't get it." -- Little Red. The Roach vamps Little Red and bribes a Cop. Iron buys his seventh joint. He hasn't missed an eligible buying turn yet either! "No matter where I go, they follow." -- The Viper. "Groupies." -- The Roach. "It speaks ill of us that all of our Racketeers spend the whole game running away from women." -- Little Red. Little Red then vamps the Viper's Thug.

Turn 6: Iron moves Public x3 into Hotel Belgrave. Viper vamps Little Red and bribes a Cop. "No ladies comes free." -- Little Red. "That's a universal constant." -- The Viper. The Roach vamps Iron. John McClane [Cop #8] blows away Iron's Thug (though it took three Cops to do so). "Whacked." -- Iron.

Turn 7: Iron buys his eighth joint. The Viper uses Dirty Harry [Cop #9] on Little Red's Thug for ... one hit. And then Viper vamps Little Red as does the Roach. The Roach blasts Serva's Market to smithereens but takes a hit in exchange.

Turn 8: Iron vamps the Roach and buys his ninth joint. The Viper vamps Little Red again. Little Red is officially designated, "the babe magnet." Little Red moves the Public x2 into the Level-2 Downtown Bus Station for $1,200. The Roach buys Serva's Market, his eighth.

Turn 9: T.J. Hooker [Cop #7] hits the Roach's Racketeer -- but the Roach uses a well-timed bribe to distract T.J. with a donut. Rejected! Iron buys a ninth joint again, vamps the Viper, and puts a Public x1 into Huck's Marine. The Viper moves the Public x3 into the Level-2 Ambassadors' Club for $2,500. Little Red moves the Public x3 directly to the Downtown Bus Station for $1,800. "Darn those bus ticket prices!" - The Viper. The Roach buys a ninth joint, raids the Bus Station with Starsky & Hutch [Cop #5], vamps the Viper, and hits Hotel Belgrave to send the Public to the cup. He shoots himself with the squirt gun.

Turn 10: Iron buys his ninth joint for the third time. "Calm down and go for the monopoly." He bribes a Cop and takes both Public x1's from the cup at Subway #3. The Viper get $1,100 with a Public x1 in the Ambassadors' Club and then shoots up the Cavalry Club (which dings his Racketeer for two and puts him down to two total). Little Red is at one Racketeer. Rosco P. Coltrane [Cop #3] hits the Viper's Racketeer for one hit. The Roach buys his ninth joint for the second time and moves his Racketeer to a possible tenth joint. But he isn't able to get to any of Iron's establishments to stop him this time.

Turn 11: Iron buys his tenth joint for the first time and wins the game. No shootouts on his turn that could have prevented it.
The Viper and Little Red both finish with almost no gang -- and certainly no ability to stop either of the leaders. As a result, the Roach's last move is decisive when he is unable to attack Iron's joint a third turn in a row. For a ten-joint win, this game was very short. In fact, between the two of them Iron and the Roach missed buying joints only three times. The bad news for the Roach is that Iron missed only one turn while the Roach missed two. There are very few games where missing a joint buy twice is decisive.

Both of the ruling crime syndicates ended with huge gangs, 9/1/2 and 7/1/3 respectively. We know where they got them -- vamping the Viper and, more especially, Little Red. However, Iron never had to use his to attack one of the Roach's joints since the Viper handled that task for him.

The Viper was up to 8 G's, but spending to replace vamped Thugs was too costly to put him in the running. But Little Red, hounded by vamps continuously, never got off the ground despite a couple of good payoffs at the Downtown Bus Station. The silver lining? Little Red won the "I Think She Likes Me!" award to prove he's a very unorthodox finalist.

But, in the final analysis, it came down to the real estate war. It was definitely a seller's market with two slumlords doing their best to corner the market. In the end, one turn was all that separated the Godfather from the Roach. Congratulations, Phillip "Iron" Entwistle!

Nobody out accessorizes da Viper.