Road to Lock and Load 2012

I interrupt my series of Domination Reaction Corners to instead bring up my random musings about my plans for the competitive tournament scene in 2012.  If all goes to plan then next year will be a pretty damn busy one for me in terms of tournament play, first up there is Smogcon in February held down at my local store Firestorm Games in Cardiff, followed by the Welsh Open second weekend of May at the same venue, just two weeks after that then I have the UK Masters in Birmingham and the very next weekend I hope to wrap up the tournament schedule with a journey to Lock and Load way way across the pond over in Seattle.

Admittedly not too much is really known yet about what tournaments will be running at Smogcon and if there was any event that would have to make way due to financial reasons then this would likely be the one.

I have a personal interest in the Welsh Open, having won the event back in 2010 I lost my title to Jamie Perkins last year.  I had the joy of playing Jamie during the tournament but came away unhappy with some of the glaringly obvious mistakes I had made over the course of the match and lost rather tamely as a result.  First off I have to doff my proverbial hat to Jamie, he had a truly astounding year last year cumulating in winning the UK Masters with his Khador.  That said however, as mentioned earlier I have a personal interest in the Welsh Open and will be hoping that I can come up with the goods to take back my title :)

This is very quickly followed by the UK Masters just a fortnight later.  Last year was the biggest Masters yet, almost twice the size of the previous year and demand was so high that the initial allocation of 64 tickets sold out in the space of 8 hours, a period in which myself (and many others) were working.  I was lucky enough to get a hold of one of the extra 64 that were made available and had a massively enjoyable weekend, really getting to know many of the major faces in the H/WM scene here in the UK.  I surprised many last year by taking along Retribution instead of Trollbloods, though the reasons why I took them I still believe were valid at the time, though that is another blog for another day.  I bettered my previous year's placing to finish 14th out of 109, not bad with a faction that I had managed to get just a single practice game in before the Masters.

Finally comes the one that I am looking forward to the most, Lock and Load 2012.  This is the one that I will be pulling out al the stops to be able to make it to and for several reasons, first and foremost is because it is PP's flagship event.  Secondly I will finally have the honour of being present in the same timezone as the rest of the Scrummers, and finally (though by no means least) I get to test myself against the finest that the United States (and possibly many other countries besides) has to offer.  Logistically this represents the most challenging of the events for me to make it to, however I have already been able to secure my Lock and Load ticket as well as accommodation thanks to PG_thegreatblah, leaving only transportation and spending money as my major considerations with just over 7 months to get those sorted out.

Naturally that only leaves the quandary of list building, however as mentioned above, that is another blog for another day.  To those who read this from both the UK and beyond, I look forward to meeting and testing myself against you and may the best Troll win!