You are currently viewing HCRealms.com, The Premier HeroClix Community, as a Guest. If you would like to participate in the community, please Register to join the discussion!
If you are having problems registering to an account, feel free to Contact Us.
Now for some thoughts on the local scene here in Alabama:
Although he no longer plays [like most “famous” players], only one person from Alabama ever held a rank in the Top 100 on the WizKids’ ranking system: SpidyJoe. Spidey was ranked somewhere around 22 or 23 for most of the time that I paid any attention to that list. In 2007, I moved to the same town that Spidey lives in, and saw him play in a few tournaments. Only played against him once . . . and he creamed me. I wish we’d played again, but I haven’t seen him in over 2 years now.
So who is the best AL player who is STILL active?
We organized our first State Championship in 2007 – one year after the last full set (Wolf Strike) released, and only one year before the end of the game line in 2008. So our most competitive tournaments have mostly been held in the aftermath of the WK’s closing and the game’s demise.
We ran three state championships from 2007 through 2009. Those three winners – Tungz / Rich O’Connor, Denelic, and GuppyLips / Travis Shults – would be some of the first names on a list of our best players. Those tournaments gathered 16, 33, and 14 players respectively, so Denelic’s championship was definitely in the most-attended event. However, Rich retired after 2008, and Denelic has not played in a while (that I know of), so we may have to consider them inactive. One more note on Denelic: he also won the first Southeast Regional Championship in 2007.
That leaves Travis. Travis also won the Featherweight division of the Solaris Championship at GenCon in 2007. Not a “real” MechWarrior event, technically, but there were lots of players there (approximately 40), and Travis blew his opponents away.
There are plenty of other good players out there, but only one other name has any sort of “hardware” to go along with reputation: me!! I was the runner-up in all three State Championship tournaments; in fact, I won every match in those events EXCEPT the Championship rounds, giving me a record of 14-3 in Alabama’s three largest recent events. I also won the Southeast Regional Championship at DragCon in 2008, and placed 6th overall in the Unrestricted Worlds Championship in 2005 [also at DragonCon]. It’s a matter of opinion whether the three second-place finishes are impressive, or if they simply rate me as first loser!
So what order would you rank these folks in?
My third and last part of this series will be about the southeast region, including Alabama and nearby states. I know it seems backward to talk about world-best, then state-best, THEN region-best . . . but I have to build up this argument of mine about the best of the best. And it ends outside the state of Alabama.