Great
Lakes Area Great
Lakes Area 
As I'd hoped, my additions to the tournament format created more than just "eye candy" for the players. Not only did it allow them to see at a glance which emperors were forming massive empires, it allowed them to sit down and plot a course of action, and see the strategic import of the various battles taking place. As such, it helped define the rough framework of this event, making it more "campaign" and less "just another tournament."
Like all the other ATC 06 DBA events, the turnout was incredible and heartwarming. I had 21 players show up (which meant I had to play to make an even 22). Since I'd created only 24 15mm tokens to represent the player's kingdoms, I WAS sweating it a bit...! Anyway, there were quite a few New Kingdom Egyptian armies (7), making the Nile Valley the most crowded portion of the map. This was important as another wrinkle I tossed into the format was geographical based matchups. Retaining Mike Stelzer's card driven system of determining who had first choice of invading, I asked each player when it was his turn: "Are you marching North, South, East or West?" They would thus invade the nearest kingdom in that direction (assuming they weren't already fighting a battle, this turn). The cards DO add a random element to the game, which means a player with poor cards may not have much of a chance to build an empire. However, History itself wasn't equally kind to all kingdoms, and we all know how unkind dice can be, so I figured players would understand.
The players seemed to be happy with the system, and I received lots of nice comments from them. One thing I did notice, is that the outcome of other player's battles was more eagerly and closely watched in this system. Players would cluster at the map, pointing out the strategic ramifications of this or that player won. Then they would gather around that important matchup, cheering on whichever helped their kingdom's lot.
And for the first time in the five years of running, we had a repeat Emperor. The winner of this year's tourney was Ted Bender, playing a Hittite Empire army. One of the unique things about this format is that losses do not disqualify a player from winning it, nor does going undefeated guarentee anything. Ted went 3-1 in his battles, but was helped out much, much more by his vassals in empire building than second place Steve Smith, who went 4-0, and third place Tom Graves, who was similarly undefeated.
The results of this year's Emperor of Great Lakes tournament were:
