After winning the Puffing Billy tournament at Railcon two years in a row, Roger Jarrett couldn’t possibly pull it off a third time, could he?  Nope. This time a couple of people managed to knock him off his throne.  At the very top?  Phil Cottrell!  Phil won his first Railcon ever. 

Phil remarked at one point “am I going to get into seven finals and still not win this?”  Well, we all tried to make that happen.  And as we sat down for the Eurorails final on Sunday morning, four other people still had some path to winning.  But we needed to crush Phil, and we didn’t.

 

Sigh...  I mean, Congratulations, Phil!

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Out of 88 total competitors (record attendance since we moved to Chicago), a full 25% (22 players!) managed to win the five categories needed at Railcon (also a record).  That included seven players who have never won a championship (modern record). 

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The Challenger class (which goes to the highest ranked player who has never won a major championship) was really close.  The winner was William Spear, who beat out Jonathan DeSimone by 0.0043 points. The two of them were barely ahead of Pete Calfas.  Congrats to William, who  gets the black dot this time.

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As for the Iron Man, there were six people who played at least one game in all nine categories.  That isn’t required, but it’s worth noting (and it does get you a boost in the prize table draw).  The overall winner, though, didn’t just play all nine categories.  Anthony Medici won all nine categories!  Well done!

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