So Its been a while...

Title says it all, it has been a while since I last posted and your probably wondering why? Well good question! I'm wondering as well, so lets recap whats been going on.

During the last week of June, I went with my church up to Prescott with 352 Jr highers for camp. Had an awesome time up there, and felt really plugged into God while I was there. But after spending a week up there with 352 crazy Jr Highers, I find that I needed a vacation! So what did I do, I sent my Wife, Son & his girlfriend to San Diego over the 4th of July weekend. I stayed home (no it was not a vacation from my wife) but I had to work, well sort of worked.

July 5th & 6th, 2008 saw the 1st annual Independent Grand Tournament for Lord of the Rings. While at Adepticon, I had an idea to run a Lord of the Rings tournament, but I didn't want to do any old tourney, but a Independent GT for LotR. So on the flight home from Chicago Dean & I hatched an idea for the event.

The tournament would be 600 points of fully painted LotR goodness over two days. What I didn't know was just how much work needed to be done, but Dean & I put our noses to the grindstone and pressed on, wanting the 1st ever Indy GT to be a smash.

Well we had 13 local players & one friend (Frank Brown, who I met at Adepticon) fly in from Tampa Florida because I was organizing this LotR event. So at 9:00am on 7/5/08, we threw the doors open at our local shop and had people rolling dice to determine the fate of Middle Earth. Everyone that attended got a raffel prize from either a Tee shirt to models. And when the dust settled we had our winners:

Overall Winner - Frank Brown, Mordor

Best Sportsmanship - Jerry Autieri - Gondor

Best Appearance - Howard Beam - Elves

Best General - Anthony Pigati - Uruk Hai

2nd General - Sean Ramirez - Easterlings

3rd General - Carl Matherly - Gondor/Grey Company

Now I have to mention something about Frank, but let me set the story up. GW sent us $300.00 in prize support for the event & Overall winner would walk away with $100.00 in new Muhad warriors from the Harad book. Well I knew Frank was a seasoned circuit player for LotR (I thought he placed 3rd last year, but it was 1st!) and some guys were giving me grief about inviting "Ringers" to the event to take away their prizes.

Well when it was announced that Frank won, we startled the crowd by saying that he was donating the prize back to Adeptus Arizona to be divided up between the Best sportsmen (we had a tie with Jerry A & Rob B, but Jerry won out). All Frank took back with him was a few extra Tee Shirts as well as his certificate. Now that's a class act player!

Now I will post up a few pictures as soon as I edit over 200 photos from the event. We are already planning for the next one (February 21st & 22nd, 2009) which is only 6 months away. So I will be busy with LotR for awhile.

Now besides this I have been thinking of other projects. I will be getting back into WW2 gaming using Rob Brightwells Hammer & Anvil Rules that he is writing. I have also had my interest peaked by a few other projects using the Legends rules. My Friend Tom O put an idea in my head about using the LotHS rules for Cossacks and Rob B brought up doing African Tribal wars from a crazy idea eons ago from a buddy by the name of Evil Kevin. So we will see where these go and where my interest lies. That's it for now, will try to get some photos up soon...

TK