This was my first year GMing an event at the WBC. I have GM'd events at much smaller conventions, such as Prezcon in Charlottesville, VA, but this one presented my first real challenge. I believe that I rose to the occasion; I was the RA champion at WBC last year, so I had to fight to retain my title! Unfortunately, that is not what happened, but I digress. I worked very hard to attract the 140 different players who participated in the RA tournament this year. My fame was widespread....on many displays and Kiosks to see, so I was able to offer a challenge to any newcomer or skilled player, since all newcomers were welcome to play in my tournament.

As it turns out, only a few players won more than one heat, but more than a third of the participants played in at least two of the four heats. This year, I allowed all winners of at least one heat to qualify for the semifinals, but in retrospect that left me with a large number of semifinalists when the best number for me would have been 25 (I ended up with 41 different winners after all the heats were over.) I am considering several other ideas of how to handle this overflow of winners: Qualify
semifinalists based on number of games won (all winners of two games qualify automatically), and then use the best percentage out of your games played and won to choose the remaining semifinalists up to the 25th slot. Another idea would be to use a system such as the one that the Settlers of Catan GM used, assigning points based on which position you finished in and only qualifying people with at least a certain point amount. If anyone planning to participate in the tournament next year has any suggestions, I am always happy to hear them: michg2@msn.com.

I had seven semifinal games (49 semifinalists, including a few alternates), which left me with seven qualifiers for the final. I took the top five percentages out of all the winners and they went to the finals. I had two alternates in case any of the finalists had already qualified in other events. Two of the final qualifying players could not make it to the final, so both alternates
were able to play. It turns out that only one of the two alternates showed up, so the RA final was only a 4-player game.

It became very exciting, right until the bitter end. The winner was tied with the runnerup on fame points, # pharoahs, # lands, and sun totals, so the tie-breaker was the person who had the highest sun in his possession. You don't always think that you need so many tie-breakers, but I am glad that I had thought that out very carefully from previous RA tournaments. Overall, it was an awful lot of fun running this event, and I look forward to seeing everyone next year at WBC!

Fun, but Possibly Useless Statistical Facts for Future Reference:

Stats	5-Player Game	4-Player Game
Total Game Score Average	152.1	141.6
Player Score Average	30.4	35.4
Average Score Gain Per Round	6.8	8.5
Winner's Score Average	43.7	46.3
Average Score Gain per Round for Winners	11.2	12.1