The 2003 tournament saw the first house rule in the history of the tournament: a bidding system for capitals based on that used for History of the World. This seemed to go down very smoothly, as I didn't get any complaints, and meant that we could go back to running 6-player games as opposed to the 5-player (no Hamburg) used the previous year. The primary aim of the new rule was to ensure that no-one would be hosed by having to pay (say) 3 for Hamburg, and this seemed to be achieved; your GM was slightly perturbed at having to play Hamburg in both semi-final and final, but it came out OK in the wash. Further feedback is welcomed, of course, but currently the plan is to repeat this bidding system next year.

It was great to see new faces continue to be drawn to the tourney, although some old (at least, familiar!) faces were missed, not least the defending champion Ken Gutermuth whose event of Win, Place and Show conflilcted :-(. Laurels especially to Mike Hodgkins, the only double heat winner as well as the owner of the highest single score - yes, as Hamburg. The only questions that I had to answer were over the definition of 'cocked dice' - pretty good!

Meriting laurels on a different front was Shantanu Saha, who received no fewer than three separate nominations, including one for extreme 'grace under fire' when faced with some unfortunate behavior in the first round. Shantanu's play and mien are a model for us all - thanks, and some well-deserved public praise.

Oh, and there were the usual crop of oddities. Barcelona seemed to come in for more abuse than usual - hit by Civil War in one game on turn 1 and by AG similarly in another (which meant that the poor Spanish could not even buy a boat!). In a third game, Nick Henning's Spanish watched helpless on turn 1 as Hamburg bought the 3-card, the Genoese took Montpelier *and* Marseilles, and Pirates paid an early visit. So much for the fast start he had bid 7 for, yet Nick still came back to be leading until the final turn, when Ted Mullally's Venice took four Cloth, then rolled a Cloth shortage. Nick groaned "I bet he draws a Cloth card too!". Well, the bonus card for the shortage was, indeed Cloth. Ted's card next turn was Cloth/Wine followed by Cloth as the UA card! In one semi, we managed to put a player out into Chaos with several turns remaining, while the eventual win came courtesy of being the recipient of Civil War, moving expansion to last place and allowing the retaking of two Metal markets from Bret Mingo's Paris, whose two Metal cards were the last significant payouts in final cardplay - this after Eric Wrobel had shot into the lead courtesy of a $256 Silk payout, only to find himself going from 14 to 0 cities that turn. Oops.

Anyway, that's more than the 400 words I'm allotted. Ted Mullally has volunteered to share GMing duty next year, a generous offer, so lend him your support.