It hardly seems a year since the last MasterCon and looking at my diary it wasn't quite. This years being brought forward into February, from it's normal mid-March date. What effect this may have had on numbers would be conjecture, but there did seem to be less people than usual about. This could have been caused by the unfortunate clash with the SFCP Intergame qualifier though. Which SFCP must shoulder the majority of the responsibility for, as their event was announced second and has moved furthest in the calendar (from the late May bank holiday).

Still, the hotel was full and the Diplomacy had a healthy four boards in each of it's three rounds. I'm not going to dwell on the Diplomacy (for a change), but in brief. Dave Horton won the standard, with ex- Massolit sub zine Editor Richard Turner second. Tricky Dicky gleefully picked up third place with an excellent Sunday game. For my sins I finished tenth. Picking up my first ftf elimination on Friday and another to go with it on Sunday. Friday's disappointment, I will blame on playing in the afternoon Colonial game which I won as Britain. That game alone was enough to give me the Colonial Diplomacy title, but with only three boards played, perhaps it's time for Shaun to start looking around for another side tournament. Also worth noting is this was the first UK tournament to use the notorious C-Diplo scoring system but not use a final round top table. A mistake, in my opinion. After two rounds the top table would have been - Toby Harris, Richard Turner, Dave Horton, Susie Horton, Keith Smith, Paul Spurgeon and Me (with Guy Thomas to back up sleepy head Harris). A mouth watering prospect, if I do say so myself.

Finally, it wouldn't be fair not to finish without telling you something about the Hotel, which was a masterpiece of non-Euclidean architecture. My bedroom was up on the third floor and there were at least five different routes you could use to get to it. It reminded me of playing Wiz-War - where the board is wrap-around. Very confusing. Also worth mentioning were the Hotel staff whose helpfulness made a refreshing change from the normal surly youths conventions have to put up with. They even got a round of applause at the end, something I never thought I'd see.

Long time readers must be wondering why this report doesn't start with one of my traditional anti-rail transport diatribes. There are two alternatives - I travelled by train and had no problems or I got a lift from somebody. No prizes for guessing which.