Miranda... you are now going to get PM-stalked like no other.

No-way, man! I saw her first, so I want to stalk her.


DoomStat


just kidding, due to the fact that being stalked is not fun in any way, shape or form.

Nerd boys everywhere just had to change their pants...

My name's Steve, and thanks to Miranda, I can now spell the word "camaraderie".

Although I tend to prefer the anonymity of the net, I like the sentiment Tchalla's displayed here, and will try to add a little to it.

I'm a call centre trainer (no, not the call centre that calls you at all hours of the night,...a different one) currently living in the Philippines, but originally from Canada. I have a BA in psych, but have yet to use it. Up until recently I also worked at Children's Aide as a supervised access worker (read documentation crony), but have opted out of that line of work, at least for the time being, to instead pursue teaching ESL abroad.

Despite being an avid board game player for much of my life, my first TCG experience came near the start of university, in the form of Raw DEAL, when a friend of mine (WK) showed some interest and extended an invitation. That's really all it takes for me. From there I descended deeper into the pit of gaming, joining a RAW league along with many other games, including mech warrior, D&D, and a plethora of other board games.

By the time VS came along it was too late, I just couldn't say no.

Despite what I considered to be an outrageous booster pack price of $5.00 each (after all, it's just coloured cardboard), the intense game play along with recognizable cartoon/comic characters convinced me to continue shelling out some of my hard earned sheckles, bit by bit, until I could finally build all the ideas and decks I'd been reading and thinking about for months. (Yes, that was all one sentence....good idea to teach ESL eh?)

Fast forward through a few years of realms-trolling, several (luck-sacking) money finishes and one A-team membership later, and here I am.

This is true.

Oh man... An athletic gaming car-loving cheerleader? Next you're going to tell us that you're open to experimentation and love to cook.

she's already said she loves to cook...yes, I am starting a shrine...no, it's not creepy, stop looking at me that way.

In lou of starting a post about ones self like so many other people do I am going to avoid the "so here I go", "seeing as everyone else is", and "My name is" starters and choose to point out how silly we all introduce ourselves on the internet. Honestly, most good gamers I know are at least street smart enough and funny enough to do better than that. Yet as I sat here starting to type I caught myself wanting to do just that as well. Talk about a wasted Masters degree....

I am like a crazy combination of chemicals that shouldn't go together but for some reason unknown to anyone (or at least those of us that are science impared) do. I am the kind of person who likes to tell my opponent good job when he does something amazing or even just mediocre but difficult for them. I like to talk about what myself and my opponents can do better in the future. I HATE TO LOSE. If I lose and you rub it in my face there is a good chance I will let you know how I feel about you or my preconceaved, most-likely not true, notions of who you are and why you still live with your parents. If I were in Star Wars I would be the Wookie because I am loyal to a fault and you best let me win!

I was always addicted to competition and played sports though high school. Mostly soccer. My high school team was nationally ranked at one point and that was a pretty bad ### feeling. I also was depressed and mildly suicidal for 7 years. Those years from 4th grade to 10th grade give or take. Because I didn't have a lot of friends I read a lot of books. I went through the classics and on to Tolkien and CS Lewis by 6th grade. RA Salvatore is still a fan favorite of mine to this day. In 6th grade my best friend (2nd grade til now) and I had a mutually socially inept friend who played Magic. A card game where being smart and anti-social actually could be an advantage????!!!! sweet!

We proceeded to get hooked up by the local store with probably 500 free commons and dive head first into the game. We taught ourselves and for 3 months though Trample meant that the creature doubled in power if attacking another creature. This was around 4th edition and Fallen Empires. I was pretty good at Magic but quit by 8th grade because cards were not nearly as entertaining as pursuing females. I still played in Type 1 tournaments every so often and almost always placed in the top 4.

In high school I put my energy into sports until I blew out one of many body parts I have blown out in the last 8 years of my sports career. When I washed out of soccer thanks to 3 months in a sling and a dislocated shoulder I got into computer gaming. I ran a LAN center and in a short time became a semi-pro cometetior, even playing in a few world championships with limited success. I also became a Christian in high school and it changed me forever. Not in the, I wake up and go to church and am a Christian way but in the truest sense was saved by grace. My depression rolled away in no time and somehow I ended up a few votes shy of being Prom King.

In college I kept gaming on computers and then started working for Div. 1 basketball teams. Sports and competition are one of the few things that no matter how I feel I want to be doing....some would say that means thats what I am meant to do. Basketball became my life but one summer I was back home with a friend and we walked into a card shop we used to go into every once in a while and saw VS. on the shelves. Since we both enjoyed Magic and we loved the X-men and other comic characters we thought what the hell. DOR came out soon after and we bought a few boxes of that before I left for Texas again and he stayed in Kansas. 2 years later he got a job paying a fat paycheck and we decided to buy up some old collections and jump back in.

There are a ton of guys down here in Waco that are great competitive players and got me hooked in the game from a competitive stand point. We build, rebuild, test, rebuild, and play when we can. It has been a great outlet for me since working with division 1 athletes and not being anywhere near their level of skill can drive the competitive person insane. 3 PCQ wins, a team domination of City Championships (yes we won Austin once, Dallas twice, Waco once, and finished 2nd in Austin another time) and we are pushing it to a new level for ourselves in prep for Indy.

I still work with a basketball team but that tenure is almost up. I didn't get a quality coaching offer for a college position for this year and am probably going to work for a sports software company for a few years and network my way back into coaching if I want later.

I am 24. Live in Texas, moving back to Kansas, and my name is Reid Cox.

How is that for a late introduction?

You know... I had my doubts... but this thread is pretty awesome.

a shrine is only creepy if you place it somewhere that nobody could see it from your living room. and, yes... bedroom closets and bathrooms make it creepy/discusting.


pining for Miranda,(jk)
DoomStat

So Miranda can turn my car into a giant robot? or my radio into Soundwave? (please let that be what she meant by transform)

(500 posts. yay me!)

Ok, let's get this thread back on track. I've always loved gaming. Of course with me, it all started with video games. Viva NES! (It still works!) I was pretty much a loner coming up through school. Growing up on a farm in the middle of nowhere does that to a guy. I started meeting people and hanging out in high school after I started my 1st official job (McDonald's). some of my friends there had started playing Magic and were telling me about it. It seemed like fun so I started trying to learn how to play. One of them also started playing Pokemon and decided I should try to learn how also. Neither of them really stuck (I was too busy between school and work.), so I would just listen to them tell me about the decks they would make and how they worked and whatnot. I've always enjoyed anime, so it wasn't surprising that when Yugioh came out, I started watching it. And of course, It got me interested in collecting the cards and playing the game. Unfortunately, at the time, not too many places around here sold it, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on 2 packs of the 1st set and 2 starter decks. I play Yugioh for a while, but with all the bannings and reprints (I worked my butt off to get cards I was able to get a few months later as commons), I started getting tired of it. I started getting into Vs. with the Web of Spiderman set. My fave character, of course I'm playing it! I couldn't support 2 habits, so bye bye Yugioh! Hello Vs! Beautiful artwork, fun characters I'd read about all my life (I've always collected comics), and rules that weren't too hard to understand. Then we started getting a Hobby League going at our local shop, I got a few more people interested (doomedskrull), met some new friends (KardKrazy), and now we're hosting one of the Elite Series Tournaments. Wow, we've come far from having just enough to hold sanctioned tournaments (we do still have those days sometimes, some players have lives too).

Lee

I have to say that this thread turned out even better than I thought it would! This is awesome getting to learn more about the people who I virtually talk to multiple times a week!

I hope You all make it down to Comic-con or Indy this year. We'll have a blast!

Hey guys, my name is Christopher Bramasco, I'm 26 years old. My Vs story started several years ago if i think about it. It started with me not wanting to goto class one summer night. Stupid summer college. :tired: I ended up driving around Torrance (California) and finding a comic store. This would be the greatest find for me since moving back to the Los Angeles area. Over time I would become great friends with the owner and his wife, Bob and Nancy. They are the nicest people who will go out of their way to make you happy. This was the first step to Vs.

The next step happens a few years later, with my troublesome teenage brother. Who can only seem to find Yu-Gi-Oh to keep him out of trouble. So I, trying to be a good big brother, decide to get him his drugs, I mean yugi cards. He becomes a avid player. I notice while he's at my house he gets bored, so I take up the game as well so I have something to connect with him on. I learn the game and eventually become a judge, and a T.O. Since I was good friends with Bob, I end up becoming the back up judge for Yugi.

Later on down the line Vs is announced. This looks to be a huge game on the verge. So Bob asks me if I want to run the game for him. If it wasnt for that I would have completely overlooked this game, for I my brother and I had just quit playing yugi. After playing I was instantly hooked and needless to say 4 cases of Orgins later I was set.

Bringing us to current date, I have been running probably one of the longest running Hobby Leagues around, we started day 1, and still going strong.

BTW nice thread Curtis, and everyone else. And where do I get my line number for the Miranda stalker line? :p

Now, me ole mates, me story begins in the land of blighty, that's right, I used the word blighty. Anyway, when I was just a little lad I loved pokemon, still do truth be told, the Gameboy game anyhows, so when me best mate comes a knockin with this new fangled system of playing, that involved cards I was wowed. We played for a while, played wrong for longer, collected and traded even longer, way back when in middle school. Me mum and dad went to america for their anniversary one time and I remember they brought back some packs that had not yet been released over here! Even the most common card was a super rare now, made me the coolest cat around. I don't know where my Pokemon cards are nowadays, it's not really fair to say I stopped playing as I didn't really start but there ya have it.

Let's move on a couple years, to when I secretly watched Yu-Gi-Oh before going to school cos I actualy quite enjoyed it (James, ignore this bit!), I was about 13. So of course when we go to the states on holiday and I see the game in Toys R Us and my birthday is coming up with nothing else I wanted, I got me some of that, me and my brother played it, for about 2 weeks. Yeah, bad choice.

With a little bit of disdain for CCGs now I moved on and away from Yu-Gi-Oh, I am, I suppose, the epitomy of geek. I play computer games, a little too much. I read comics and I like science. Unlike a few before me there has been no great drama in my life, no wondrous thing happen or disatrous effect. My parents are well off and I have had a good upbringing.

Now to Vs! Again in the states, as I live on the Isle of Wight (Yes! It is part of England) and we have no shops that sell Vs. Anywho, in the states again, my brothers, more so then I, are into Warhammer, they're creative you see (goes with the dyslexia! Hah, dyslexics) where as I am not and don't really enjoy the modelling or painting, but don't mind a game or too. Anyway, they're into warhammer and wanted to find a shop that sold and played Warhammer near our holiday home in Kissimme, Florida. Enter Coliseum of Comics, when we first found it is was after that real bad hurricane and the shop was about 1/5 of it's normal size, having lost most of it's roof. Anyway, it had a nice feel to it, the people we met there were ncie enough and they played Warhammer! So yeah, I spotted Vs around Web of Spiderman but I still had that little bit of Hatred for CCGs so I didn't pick it up while we were there that time.

Let's now advance to two holidays later, my brothers are plugging away at their warhammer but I'm a little bored in shop and have the dollars my dad gave me burning away in my pocket. Well I couldn't have this, I saw superheroes again, at the time of Avengers this was, so I gave way and bought a starter, got one of the shop assistants to teach me witht eh starter deck I just bought and then bought a couple boosters and of DOR and clumped the Batman starter together to creat the ultimate GK/AI deck. Yeah. Anywho, I played against another employee who wasn't running some warhammer thing and actualy won a game due to his amazing bad luck, of course this went to my head and made me think I was awesome. He let me think that, god bless him. So I took this deck to teh hobby league the next day and got trounced, met some great people like Jimmy and James and had a blast, I was hooked. Of course I needed people to play with elsewhen too, so I got my brother hooked as well.

Well that is my Vs story.

William Hanson

-Lil Eclipse.

Hey Miranda what do you think a bout a man in uniform...huh wink , wink ;)

Oh well gave it a shot. Great thread btw and I will see you at Comic-Con fo sho! I will be first (or second) in line for the Masquerade on Saturday.