Usual suspects Jeff Mullet, Tedd Mulally, Chris Trimmer and Mark Smith enlighten newcomer Sean Bryan.	John Corrado, defending champ Doug Galullo, Doug Mercer, Greg Crowe and Deb Anderson contest a rare 6-player game.

The event finally stopped its steady decline in attendance as a result of the change to Pre-Con in 2010 and actually reversed that trend this year with its first back-to-back increase in 12 years. Three Enlightenment mini-con style heats were held with the best two scores summed to determine the winner. The times were Saturday 11 AM, Saturday 6 PM and Sunday 9 AM. This allowed players interested in other pre-cons to make at least one heat and also gave the option to just come for that weekend instead of the long haul which is the entire WBC week.

The first heat was marred by a setup error. Failing to check the deck in advance, one game started with more than the 29 cards required for Deck 1. Some people got Deck 1 cards when they should have gotten Deck 2 cards and vice verse, but there was no remedy for that. The moral of the story is to 'count the cards' before beginning a long game. This in itself would not have been noteworthy if it did not follow an adjustment where the table had a double deck!! Yes, since AOR is out of print and people may start borrowing from a second set, or auctioning sets off with some defects, it is possible. But when the GM walks by and says 'That deck looks too big, are you sure it is only Deck 1?' you would expect someone to count the cards. Nope, they continued on oblivious to the fact that they had 70 odd Epoch 1 cards. It was only after the fourth Stone card came out that they called the GM to fix it. The decision to restart the game was telling since an hour had been wasted.

Coincidentally, the table I was playing at was also penalized for late play, because I was literally away from the table 30 minutes fixing these other problems. The slow play penalty has been the subject of much discussion. It can cost a winning player dearly in the overall rankings. Yet it serves an important purpose in tournament play where the heats are fixed times. It keeps the players motivated to finish in a reasonable time! This is a strong contributor to the possibility of attending other pre-con events.

The Enlightenment Style itself has a downside. Those who don't do well in either of the first two rounds do not have much incentive to show for the third round which greatly reduces the final round seats. However, that is true for all swiss style events as losses take their toll and send people off to other pursuits. It is an inherent problem of running events where so many other gaming choices abound.

It seems like Venice is having a hard time of late. The boost from an Era 1 Cloth/Wine played favorably does little to offset the weakness of small, desirable dominations. People are trending toward Genoa over Venice because some smart negotiations can give Genoa numerous secondary payouts and a great income base. The trending towards 5-player games has left Hamburg woefully underplayed, and when an inexperienced player is saddled with Hamburg in the rare 6-player contest, the game can deteriorate rapidly, especially for Paris.

Hopefully, the upward attendance trend will continue and Enlightenment will be around for many years to come. But for now, we survive for another year. See you in 2012!!

Jason Levine, Kurt Miller and John Panagotopulos plot strategy as Kurt revisits the last Avalon Hill game for which he did the art.	Nick Henning keeps an eye on his dad and Jason Levine, but Harald takes his first WBC Age of Renaissance title anyway.