IRON MAN XI ­ September 30, 2006

Well another Iron Man has come and gone, everyone had a blast and my poor ears didn't get assaulted with any complaints so all must have been well. We had an official turn out of 19 players from around the valley and several from out of town. I would like to thank them for taking the time and coming to our event! Also I would like to thank Tim Martin, Dan Glover, and Rex King for helping me set up and run the event. Their help made it possible for me to retain my sanity for yet another year. Thanks guys! Also want to thank Frank B. for doing up the really cool T-shirts for the event. With out further ado on with the action.

Mission One. Cleanse III was the first mission to break everyone up into win/tie/loss categories and make it much easier to break every one down into pairs for matching up for the next round. Personally I didn't have much time to watch any of the action but it seemed that once the missions where passed out everyone got right to business. Mission Two was Arch Rivals and the competition heated up a couple of degrees as the early leaders of overall started to stand out at this point. For mission three I threw everyone a curve with Unplanned Assault which is one of the more wilder missions in my opinion as to quote Forrest Gump "It's like a box of chocolates, you never know what your going to get". You just said that with his accent too didn't you? Knew it.

Lunch was then served and everyone partook in that wonderful feast. The youth and their adult supervision, my fiancée Kary did a great job serving us some darn good food. While everyone was busy stuffing their guts with some good grub Rex and myself started scoring everyone on appearance. Kirk remarked afterwards that he received two points and should have gotten zero. Well Kirk, part of the appearance score was does your commander stand out and guess what, that bare metal mini sure stood out from the rest of your army so that is one of the reasons you got some points.

At the end of round three it the leaders had all but worked them selves out to three in the lead for overall with things going just about either way. The final mission was Suicide Squad which forces armies that are not geared toward hand to hand combat to throw a squad out there for just that. Some times they get slaughtered and some times they just got ignored. At the conclusion of round 4 the clear leader had been decided on and just some final tabulations where needed to be done to conclude this years events and hand out the trophies.

Vern Harlow finished overall in first place with Lance and Shawn coming in second and third respectively. Best Army went to Nick Tompkins with his nicely done up Orks that where also a nicely balanced force also. Best appearance went to Jason Christopher for his Eldar which where not only very nicely painted but conversions up the ying-yang. Last and not least of course is Best Sports man award which went to Kirk for although his army didn't look the best everyone enjoyed playing him which is all that mattered.

I want to thank everyone for coming to play, setup and tear down. I also hope everyone has as much of a good time as it seemed to me and looking forward to next year and another great event.

- Robert Scheel