Kevin Broh-Kahn welcomes Ashley Worley back from Bulgaria.	Rebecca Hebner gives Dr Thatcher all he can handle.
One of our favorite Israelis with Scott Fenn	Rebecca is outnumbered by the Jay's Basement cheering section.

This year's tournament was unique in that, for the first time that I can remember, we played all 5-player games throughout the heats and advanced rounds. As the GM, I had to bow out during one of the heats to make the numbers work, but otherwise we had exact multiples of five throughout. I prefer 5-player games, even though it can be chaotic, and sometimes one or more people can more easily find themselves out of the running. Some people have suggested I switch to 4-player games, but I remain unconvinced.

One of the downsides of having all 5-player games is that we had slightly fewer winners than usual, so a few more runners-up were eligible to advance but didn't know it. I'll have to make a point of explaining that better in the future.

One quirk this year was that, in the heat I did not play, I took to reading the rules over again, since I seldom read them during the year, this being a nearly 20-year old game. In the process, I found a rule of which I was unaware. Apparently, the action cards which allow you to choose a region to score can target the Castillo. Neither I, or any other players I mentioned it to, were aware of this, and yet it was clearly stated in several different versions of the rules I found. Might be useful for the future!

This year we had one triple winner in the heats (Chris McCurry) and one double winner (Greg Thatcher). Many other regulars managed to qualify for the semifinals, along with last year's champion, Alex Bove. The highest winning score was 118 points by Geoff Pounder, while the lowest was 74 by Bryan Berkenstock.

The beginning two turns of the Final were relatively quiet, points-wise. A couple of scoring cards came out that gave everyone a few points, except for Pete who was concentrating mainly in the Castillo and a couple of other territories.

Then the cards turned up for Turn 3, and there was one of the cards that can really change the course of the game, and it did. It was the Score the Firsts card, which can have a huge impact if your board position is temporarily off. After the bidding was complete, Rob was going first and Yoel was to go second. Rob managed to set up the board such that Yoel decided to score the firsts, giving Yoel 22 points, Rob 17, Kevin 6, and the rest zero. This set up a gap between Yoel/Rob and the rest that was never successfully closed.

During the first scoring Kevin went to support his Grande in Catalonia. Yoel went to Valencia and managed to claim first place with only two caballeros. The others went to empty Granada, which worked fine for Pete (with his lead in the Castillo), but much less so for Rebecca and Rob.

Nevertheless, after the first scoring round, Rob had a two-point lead on Yoel. During the later turns, it became a duel between them. During that time, Yoel even took a couple of moves which helped one or more of the others quite a bit, but managed to gain on Rob by one or two points. As a result of this, and some good moves on the board, Kevin was slowly gaining on the leaders, while Pete and Rebecca were still trailing.

During the second scoring around, all minds were once again thinking alike as four of the five contenders headed for Valencia, where Pete got first and Rob second. Rebecca took over first place in Granada.

After the second scoring round, Rob had a six-point lead on Yoel. Victory was still potentially in reach, but then the action cards and bidding went very favorably for Rob. He secured the Veto near the beginning of the eighth turn, and was able to prevent too much deterioration of his position. Then, on the last turn, Rob was able to play his 13 card (which he had taken back earlier with a special action), because no one else had a 13 left to play. This allowed him to defend his home territory and seal his third ELG shield.

GM Rob Flowers about to pull a Coussis on his fellow finalists.