GM Scott Buckwalter's event now has the longest streak of increasing fields.	Ivan Lawson is outnumbered by three ladies in the event attracting the most members of the fair sex
Shea Lawson and Claire Kaltman	Three of the 51 ladies in the event.

RDG continued its record of drawing ever bigger fields with its fifth straight increase since its 2010 debut.  Over 30% of that field was composed of folks entering the tournament for the first time.  This year the newcomers did not fare quite as well as in previous years.  Only 14 of the 65 players that advanced past the preliminaries were there for the first time.  Among this year’s advancers, over half had enjoyed similar success in previous years along with nine who had previously ventured as far as the Final table.  It would appear this year that skill won out. Although there were some impressive showings from the new folks; namely Francois de Bellefeuille who advanced to the semifinal round, David Seiler who had the only four-game winning streak, and Sam Shambeda who made it to the Final.  Veterans turning in impressive performances included Peggy Ng, Peter Tu, Joe Millovich, and Alyssa Morgen who each won three preliminary games.  Honorable mention goes to David Bohnenberger (77) and Lex Jackson (76) for being the only players scoring over 70 points in the tournament.

65 players won at least once in the preliminary round, all of whom qualified for the quarterfinal. Nearly 40% failed to appear, leaving 40 to battle for the 4-player Final.  Alexandra Henning, Andrew Martin, Kara Felix, and Sam Shambeda survived two elimination rounds to make it to the Final.

The pace of the title game was a bit slower than the 12-turn average for the event with each player receiving 15 turns, averaging five dice rolls per epoch.  Sam began by coming out strong in boats and soon switching to a civilizations strategy.  Kara, going second, adopted a pharaoh strategy.  Andrew started with a boats and civilizations strategy.  Alexandra, seeing multiple players going for civilizations, succeeded in rolling a disaster hitting the civilizations and then going for monuments.  Kara was able to roll multiple bonus points, along with capturing the most pharaohs and thereby finished the first epoch with 21 points for the early lead.  Sam suffered severely from the loss of his destroyed civilizations and lack of pharaohs, finishing the epoch with only 11 points.

Epoch II was very quick.  Only 13 throws of the dice brought an end to the epoch.  Sam benefited from the quick ending and succeeded in maxing out boats, flooding the Nile, and switching to a pharaohs strategy.  Andrew, lacking any boat rolls, switched to a pharaohs and monuments strategy.  Kara and Alexandra both went all out for monuments.  Sam scored well to finish the epoch with 19 points.  Kara lost a point for the epoch but still held onto the lead with 20 points.

The last epoch saw a pressing of the strategies established earlier in the game.  Andrew again started with boats but switched, first to monuments and then to pharaohs.  Unfortunately, this strategy of covering all areas took its toll as he was hit by every disaster and finished with just 32 points.  Sam succeeded in flooding all 12 boats again and then proceeded to max out pharaohs.  But lacking monuments, Sam was only able to score 42 points to finish third.  Alexandra was able to score pharaohs for five, flooded the Nile for seven, and pressed the monuments to an impressive 17 points for a total of 52.  Meanwhile, Kara went all out in civilizations for ten points and monuments for 16, ignoring pharaohs and boats altogether.  This strategy paid off and Kara finished with 53 points to win her first shield by one point.