Here's a link to my Team Covenant blog post about Nationals, back in GenCon last week. I hope folks enjoy it!

Spoiler alert: I wasn't a fancy-pants awesome guy that made it to the final cut, much less first place. That said, some folks dug my Regionals report as I bumbled my way from match to match (occasionally winning!), so here's more of the same.

Nice article.. I'm new to X-wing.. played a few games and I've got a head for tactics so I'm looking forward to getting into the UK Tournament scene....

Good job. I played two of the same guys you did and in the end had the same record as you but one of my wins was a bye from a player who never identified the drop before hand... You are right about Victor's beautiful Phantoms. They were magnet linked to the stand. He had a mini emergency before round one when the magnet came off the stand next to me and was scrambling for glue. Good to hear his hastily made repairs held.

Good job. I played two of the same guys you did and in the end had the same record as you but one of my wins was a bye from a player who never identified the drop before hand... You are right about Victor's beautiful Phantoms. They were magnet linked to the stand. He had a mini emergency before round one when the magnet came off the stand next to me and was scrambling for glue. Good to hear his hastily made repairs held.

Victor really was a pleasure to play against (his Decimator's big terrifying cannon was neat, too, but to me that Phantom stole the show). Even in round 6, getting close to midnight, he was Johnny On The Spot, just quick-quick-quick, keeping focused on the game and ready to go. I don't know if he was really young, but I know I was feeling plenty old and tired by that time, but he kept up a great pace. One way or the other, the game was gonna end quickly and there wasn't gonna be any sort of slow-play involved, y'know?

It was pretty awesome to see that kind of enthusiasm to play, that late in the day.

Nice write up. Especially love the signed card...that's just awesome: Love Stackpoles books.

Nice write up. Any links to pics of those phantoms, etc that you mentioned?

Great write up! I enjoy reading this type of write up as opposed to the many 'look how great a player I am' recaps I typically see. I especially appreciate the fact that you stuck around for the entire day.

Nice write up. Any links to pics of those phantoms, etc that you mentioned?

Unfortunately, no. I had some sort of SNAFU with my camera phone, and lost all my GenCon pics (my Stackpole/Horn card I had to take as I was typing up the blog post, in fact, and the cool thermo pic I only have 'cause it was someone else's camera). I did take a pic of the cool see-through Phantom, but it's gone forever now.

Great write up! I enjoy reading this type of write up as opposed to the many 'look how great a player I am' recaps I typically see. I especially appreciate the fact that you stuck around for the entire day.

Thanks! I've stayed acutely aware of my "big fish, small pond" status in X-Wing, and I don't swagger up to every game expecting to thrash my opponent. I've had a nice nack for the spatial awareness of this game, which helps a lot and has kept me with a fairly okay tournament and overall record, but I know full well how much of my game knowledge is purely theoretical, so I'm pleasantly surprised by that overall record. I'm glad some sort of...of...humility, or at least honesty, shines through in my little after-action reports.

And thanks for that appreciation, too, for the endurance thing. It was a long day. A really long day. An "I almost missed out on buying my own novel" long day. But I'd shown up to play X-Wing, so X-Wing I played, y'know? I was there to play as much as (or more than) I was there to win.

I caught on to this earlier but I'll jump on it now... Your own novel? Got yourself published?

Yup! I'm a freelancer in the RPG/Wargame industry, have been for quite a while now. I've been published in lots of Shadowrun stuff in particular, but after a couple dozen sourcebooks, intro fiction contributions, and an e-novella (which kind of "kicked off" the new novel line, a sort of proof of design piece to show there was a market for fiction), we recently re-started the SR novel line. My first novel -- Shaken (No Job Too Small) -- had a sort of pre-launch at Origins, is available at distributors as well as e-book distributors now, but the way the timing fell out, the first chance I had to grab it was GenCon (which was good, because they sold out of the stock they'd brought later on in day one of the con).

I've got more comin' down the pipes, in various stages of done-ness, but I'm still super excited over this first one being a real thing, y'know? It's one thing to look at a document on a Kindle, and to even have Amazon sales and stuff like that to look at, but...holding an actual paperback in your hands, seeing people pick it up off a shelf and buy it, that's a whole different ball of wax.

Congratulations are definitely in order. Heard about your book through Catalyst myself though of course names don't mean anything to me at that stage. Definitely more satisfying to hold a book.

Thanks!

And sorry for the derail (if I can even derail my own thread), I mostly did want to talk about my tournament experience and stuff, but my GenCon was so tangled up in other projects, too, I kind of couldn't help it.