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.