I won 1st place in Tyranno Ex, the game featured in last Saturday's Baltimore Sun interview of Rebecca Hebner. All of my dinosaurs were wiped out in the last round, and I only had a 3-point lead on the 2nd place player. So I could score no points at all and expected to lose. Asked GM Tom Demarco, (who was playing in the final and actually CONTROLLING almost everything that happened) to have someone tell me how it turned out, as I raced to the already-started 4th heat of MRA (Did ANYONE from GCOM besides John Koski play it??) Tom and another player knocked out the 2nd place player's dino's, but they could score enough points to catch up to me (as I had caused their best dino's to go extinct.)

I thought Tom DeMarco was joking when he came into the Maryland room later and told me I'd won the plaque. He's a terrific player, and I had ended the DeMarco lock on this game several years ago. In the only heat I could play, had to beat BOTH Tom DeMarco AND current and two-time champion Verity Hitchings (my assistant GM, who ran the MRA demo and got two MRA heats started when I couldn't be there on time - THANK YOU VERITY!!!!) I then had to face Tom AGAIN in the semi. This was like trying to beat the St Louis Rams in three consecutive games. I had not played Tyranno Ex in two years, and I'm not good at memorization, so I was really surprised to walk away with 1st. The game has a very interesting mechanic to it, but the end game is kind of complicated in how it's scored - which I still don't totally understand.

Some of my MONSTERS Ravage America substitute pieces were bought at Party City, a $400 million company that reportedly has some good GM's of their own.

Mark Love
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Hi Keith. Robert Waters here. Well, my wonderful story is that, after an 8 year drought, Charlie Kibler and I reclaimed the Wrasslin' Tag Team tournament, beating the powerful Dolan brothers in a battle for the ages. We won it the first time in 1994, when I was but a humble employee at Avalon Hill, and a couple more attempts in between came up dry. But this year the stars were right. Our dynamic duo of Big Ben and Tricky Dicky wrestled their way to glory.

[RW] Robert Waters
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I came in second in Attila!! Also played in Taj Mahal, Tikal, Puerto Rice and Medici but never advanced.

Susan Dyer
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My best story is of the Union Pacific game I played.

I thought for sure my initial stock card was a safe play, but after turning over our first dividend cards the player to my left also had the gray WW card laid out. To top it off when the first payout card surfaced neither of us had laid out any other dividend card nor had we added to the gray line. We both received a whopping one dollar for the first payout.

After the third dividend card we all were behind the leader by about 25-30 bucks. But I had just managed to take over the red line and was tied on green. As luck would have it I took a hidden stock card (green) and was able to play it just before the last payoff card showed. After totaling it all up I had a 110 bucks enough to tie for first and advance.

Great fun.
Brian

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At this year's WBC, I entered half a dozen tournaments, making the semi-finals in most but not actually winning anything. I did, however, run most of the late night Werewolf games. We started every night at 11, and usually ended around 4:00 am, making Werewolf the most played game at WBC. And I was always a freaking villager.

idh (Dan Hoffman)

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I just showed up on Saturday to be there and wear the T-Shirt, but I had a good time. I stayed until one or two on Sunday morning after several games of Puerto Rico and an introduction to Zombies (the game). I saw several of my friends from my sf convention circle, one of whom is now a game publisher whose card game of movie making has just gone to the printer. I am going to try to be present for more of WBC next year.

Hal Haag
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This was my first WBC. When I looked at the selection of tournament games, I concluded that there was only one I had the remotest chance of winning: Facts in Five. That didn't stop me from entering other tournaments, including Puerto Rico, Settlers, Taj Mahal, and Aladdin's Dragons, winning no games in any of them. I was only ten points out of first place in my Traders of Genoa game, which was remarkable because (a) I had never played it before and (b) I stink at negotiation games. The last event I attended was the Facts in Five tournament, and guess what? I won it.

Doug Hoylman