Decline? What decline?

This year’s field of 51, the largest ever for Brass, included 26 new participants. 18 preliminary games in three heats produced a trio of double winners, one of whom, Tony Newton, could not continue due to a conflicting Final. Eugene Hourany was the only double winner to survive the semifinals where 13 of the remaining 14 qualifiers and three alternates converged to thin the herd. When the survivors emerged, only two-time Caesar Randy Buehler was a first-time finalist along with returning Brass players Lee Proctor and 2014 champion Philip Shea. John Corrado, who has been a consistently strong Brass competitor, qualified with a score of 147. Unfortunately, he had to relinquish his position in order to GM his own tournament.

Hourany, moving first, indicated that he was using the “Sceadeau” opening, building a coal mine in Wigan. The conventional wisdom amongst Brass players is to develop two tiles as an opening play when moving first. Proctor proceeded to execute a ruthlessly efficient mills strategy to build and ship 3xMill-3 and a Mill-4 in the Canal phase. By the end of the Canal era, Shea had built a shipyard in Liverpool and enjoyed a narrow lead. Proctor added to his point total by adding two Mill-4s in the Rail phase and adding 33 VP of rails before exhausting his money. Hourany balanced coal, iron and mills with some canal and rail building. Meanwhile, Buehler drove his income up, eventually building all his coal. Shea built two shipyards in Liverpool and Barrow-in-Furness in the Rail phase. His shipbuilding strategy succeeded, producing an excellent 114 vps of industry, which proved to be too much for the others to overcome, becoming the first two-time Brass champion.

I thank Paul Sampson, Kevin Snider and especially assistant GM Jack Jung for their efforts to keep a virgin GM on the correct track. If anyone has comments or questions on the tournament please contact me at hodginsb@sympatico.ca. For people interested in Brass, the site brass.orderofthehammer.com is an excellent way to meet other Brass players on-line and to get some games played (at least until WBC’s 2017 tournament).