COMPETITION. It was an incredibly fun weekend with some great competition. Three people finished within 0.007 points for the big prize. Going into Sunday, Tony Medici held the lead at 12.9 but he did not make the Eurorails final. Jeff Jackson started the day at 12.7, with Roger Jarrett and Dave Beery at 12.6,. As usual it all came down to the top Eurorails table, and the 0.3 and 0.2 points it offered to first and second place.

EURORAILS FINAL. This was a most memorable game. You wouldn’t have known it from the peals of laughter that regularly came from that table, but it was a close, fascinating battle set to the theme of “floods”. TGA ventured into the world of LARP when one unnamed player spilled a 48 ounce soda all over the floor just before the Danube flood card. Affectionately dubbed “Lake Roger”, this live action event led the second table to speculate about what might happen for a derailment… After much back and forth, Roger and Jeff were neck and neck going into the home stretch. Jeff seemed to have the game (and the PBT) won as he arrived in Sevilla with the winning load, but continued the theme by drawing the Rhine flood, which gave Roger two more turns to pull out a close win (256-252).

RESULTS. That was just enough for Roger to capture the Puffing Billy title by 0.0007 points over Tony, and by 0.0068 points over Jeff. That’s two Origins wins in a row for Roger. Tony Medici took home the Challenger plaque. The rest of the top ten were Michael Cheng, Dave, Phil, Charles, Jen McConnell, Mark Liberman, and Brian Martin. 18 people came in with four category wins. Chris Meyer diligently plugged away to get eight category scores and win his first Iron Man plaque. Pasquinel Boussery was a first-time winner of the Ticket to Ride tournament. Trella Bromley erased a curse by winning her first EBI plaque in more years than she cares to admit (along with the Eurorails plaque to sweep the category). And to everyone’s shock, Bruce Beard won the 18xx tournament (where does he keep all those plaques?).