It's time to finish my little essay on the best-of-the-best in our hobby.

13 months ago, my playing group in Alabama arranged to play against two other states - Tennessee and North Carolina. Meeting in TN (the midway point), we began to encounter many players we had never met before.

The leader of the NC group is named CJ. One of the other NC players told me that he had never lost a match at their venue, after at least 3 years of play. I don't know if he meant this literally - as in, CJ has NEVER lost a game - or figuratively, meaning he loses very rarely.

However, during the past 13 months, we have held three inter-state events. The first gathered 24 players, the second also 24 players, and the last one had 13 attendees. Altogether, there have been 13 rounds of play during those events. CJ has not lost a match in any of these tournaments.

After the latest event, I began thinking back on the WK ranking system. Back in 2006/2007, when I was paying attention and trying to actually raise my ranking, I remember one player who was pushing Baw's consecutive wins record. This other player also hailed from NC, which struck me as odd at the time because Baw played in NC. I don't remember this other person's WK ID, nor their real name. Could this person be CJ?

Even throwing that odd idea out, CJ has an impressive list of accomplishments going. Three years with no or very few losses at his home venue. 13 straight wins in our interstate events. Two championships in those tournaments (he ranked third based on victory conditions won at the first tournament, which was ended early).

Now, there are two knocks on CJ's record. First, you could argue that his impressive win streak is limited to his local venue - he is a "big fish in a small pond", so to speak. Except that he has also won big events outside his home venue. Second, CJ plays a very slow and deliberate style. Some have wondered if he is breaking the stalling rule. Except that stalling is such a subjective idea, CJ has not yet been penalized for this. It's possible that CJ is simply playing a very strong army type within the rules as WK left them two years ago.

So . . . is CJ the best MW player still active? If we were still using the WK ranking system, and we threw out all the rankings of players who were no longer active, would CJ be ranked #1?

I do not think he is.

I do not remember if CJ faced David Overman (wizKids ID: SkyFlare) in the TN/AL/NC team challenge, but I do remember David was the over all winner of the event. He beat Leon in the finals with a HS "re-roll" army.
David was at one time ranked 5th in the US, but started to decrease the amount of times he attended venues and thus his rank started to drop some. I think he ended up 9th or 10th in the US the last time I looked before WK took down their website.

Do not get me wrong, I actual have learned respect CJ's ability to work the rules and build armies to max/min the Meta game out of it, but I think David would take CJ to school if they were to fight 10 times. CJ may win one match out of those 10. David is that good.

Sadly, he never got to go to Nationals or Worlds due to his work schedule. I would have loved to have seen him in there with the "Big Dogs". :cool:

Viktor

I was the one who ended BAW's Streak... BlackHornDeath. I too was one of the top ranked players in the world until WizKids screwed up the game...

Sad that they fired some of the designers that listened to the top players and adjusted the rules to help balance the game. They ruined the game that had the potential of being the best overall game of all time. Glad that some people are still playing - I would love to find the point calculater that was used to assign points to units...