11 brave souls came forward for the first UK draft of Empire of Evil, held at
the Dragonmeet convention/shopping opportunity.
(I hear that the only trader there who had Shadowfist singles did a very good
trade).

I had hoped for 12 so we could have only 3-player games, but Ted wimped^W
couldn't be persuaded to join in.

In traditional Finchley style the draft was done round one large table.
The sequence was 4 boosters of EoE
then (non-drafted) 4 of standard
then 1 booster each of
7 Masters
Dark Future
N2
Throne War

then an opportunity at the draft pods and some very mediocre FSS (one of each of
the Standard Edition VC FSSs)

My strategy had mixed results, I had planned to draft Architects and FSS (and
fingertip razors). I did get 4 Combat Engineers (probably 80% of those
available) and the same number of the Razors, but few of the bigger Architects.
Happenstance got me a lot of the bigger Purists (including 4 Uncertainty
Spirits, Yea!) and some Origami Handguns ... but only 1 foundation (thank heaven
for the pods)

OK, on to the first round

Table 1 had
myself
Richard Waring
Tom Hooker (who had drafted most of the rest of the Purists)
Andrew Davidson

Table 2
Ivan Hartley
Matt Sancster
Alex Turvey
Ron Wheelhouse

Table 3
Alex Laney
Daniel Vandenburg
Mark Wheelhouse

After 1hr no games had ended; as we approached the 75 minute mark I was thinking
that I would have to call the zebra team together to agree a time extension, but
then Alex won on table 3 and we did a time-out evaluation on the other two
Ivan was clear leader on table 2; on table 1 Richard and I were both on 3 in
play + 1 BFV.

Seconds Out - Round Two

Daniel beat Ivan + Alex T
Ron beat Andrew, Richard, + Alex L
the third table was a time-out
evaluated to a three-way draw with me as the only loser.
[my Neutron Bomb stopped an apparently unstoppable winning attack as the timer
went off]

This gave us 4 clear single winners, 2 clear double losers, and 5 with 1/3 or
1/2 a win.

So the final was Daniel versus Ivan, Ron, and Alex L;
the "Don't be the Gimp" game: Andrew, Alex T, and Tom;
and "we tried": myself, Matt, Mark, and Richard.

Alex T won the bottom game, leaving Andrew as the Gimp
Matt's Infernal Army ("Under the Knife") had some very Tortured Memories (3
played on it over 2 turns) but ended-up as decisive.
and
as previously reported

Daniel's return to Shadowfist after 3 years out in the cold was also a return to
his winning ways.

Thanks to the Dragonmeet Organisers for providing a good place to play; to the
town hall staff for NOT being jobsworths; to Braz and to Daniel Griego for prize
support; to Andrew for providing some of the draft materials; and to Ron for
providing the draft pods.