I had great fun running RA! We had 140 different people attend the tournament this year. I didn't even make it to the semi's....I could have, as I was an alternate, but I wanted to see others play in it this year. I just felt priviledged to be a GM and to be able to play amongst such great players! As it turned out, I only had four of the five qualifying gentlemen show up for the final game, so all four of them received a plaque. The game turned out to be a rather exciting one -- very close; fame points tied, sun totals tied, # pharoahs tied, so it came down to who possesed the highest sun at the end of the last epoch. I think that next year I am going to do something similar to what John did with the POF tournament so that I don't have to worry about having too many semifinalists.

I also enjoyed helping Eric run Carcasonne. He was a little overwhelmed, since we ended up having 168 different players participate in that tournament (in its first year ever). I think that he and I might switch games that we are GMing, since he wants to play Carcasonne more, and I want to play RA more. I entered several other tournaments; in POF I won a game which did qualify me for the semifinals, but I blew them off and went to play Lost Cities (thought I had a better chance to win that one than to win POF); in Robo Ralley, I won my first game which put me into an 8 player final that turned out to be completely brutal! I pulled out before the end (with everyone's permission) to go play the semifinal round of my team game. It was a lot of fun though! In Settlers of Catan, I couldn't get a break and I lost all three games; but I enjoyed every one of them. Finally, my last tournament was Slapshot, and I made it to the finals in my first game, but I got knocked out, so I didn't move on. But I had loads of fun. You couldn't give me enough plaques to equal the amount of fun I had playing at BPA. That's what is so wonderful about gaming conventions!

I finally learned how to play Puerto Rico. Eric is buying it on the internet as we speak, so it should be available at my house by Aug. 16th. Let's play! See everyone on the 16th!