Anthony Lainesse, Dominic Blais and Michael Parsons	Steve LeWinter and Andrew Drummond
Randy Buehler, Francois deBellfeuille, Anthony Lainesse, Dominic Blais and Richard Shay	Duncan McGregor, Gary Roberts, Dylan Quintana and Robb Effinger durng the Final.

This event is a good example of the law of diminishing returns so far as the use of multiple heats is concerned. Heat 1 drew 58 entrants—more than eclipsing its entire field in its WBC debut last year. Heat 2 attracted 43 entrants, 24 of whom had played in the prior heat. Heat 3 fell to 23 entrants—no doubt aided by a 9AM Saturday start, 16 of whom had played in a prior heat. In all, the three heats produced 31 games with 25 winners. Six of those qualifiers had cemented their positions with two preliminary wins.

Two of the Heat 3 games were scored early with the scheduled semifinals bearing down on the stragglers. One of the other games was decided by the tiebreaker of who would get the Praefectus Magnus card next.

An unexpected expansion of the semifinal to 25 players was neatly avoided when nine of the 25 qualifiers failed to appear. The first semifinal game to finish was won by Dylan Quintana and was completed in one hour and 15 minutes (including setup time). Gary Roberts again won his game by tiebreaker; amusingly the same way he qualified to advance in Heat 3.

The Final table (in seating order) was manned by Robb Effinger, Quintana,
defending champ Duncan McGregor and Roberts. Robb opened with the traditional Architect card play. Dylan started by playing his Senator card to get the Mason and the Farmer cards. Duncan started by using his Diplomat
on Robb's Architect. Gary also used his Diplomat on Robb's Architect.
Duncan ended the game and received the seven-point Concordia card. However, Robb still won by nine points to take his fifth WBC title.

ADDITIONAL AWARDS for 4- or more Player Games

Mercator Maximus is won by the player who achieved the highest score. Mercator Optimus is awarded to the player who had the best first over runner-up score ratio.

For 2015 these were:

Dylan Quintana - Mercator Maximus - Heat 1 - Score 169
Steven LeWinter - Mercator Optimus - Heat 1 - Ratio 1.35

TOURNAMENT RULES DISCUSSION

Many players asked me to do away with the 'Win in first heat played'
tie-breaker since it discourages players who don't win in their first
heat from coming back to try again.

In looking at the attendance statistics I see that 33 players were in
at least two heats. That is nearly half of the total attendance so it
would appear that this tiebreaker doesn't particularly discourage
players from playing in multiple heats.

When I re-evaluated the player order without taking this tiebreaker
into account the biggest change was that Pierre-Luc Ramier would have
been first rather than sixth due to his having a second in his first
heat; following that up with two wins. Clearly he was not discouraged by not winning his first heat.

Therefore, I don't buy into the discouragement argument. However, I do prefer the player order I get when I don't have this tie-breaker so I plan to not use it for 2016.

ANECDOTES

• "If you only have one card left, that's the card you play."
• "I want to buy stock in Michael."
• "I hate it when math doesn't work."
• "Is it too late to declare Grand Tichu?"
• "Robb is out of 'stuff' again."