Baka's Road to Lock and Load

Its been a long year, and one where I have at times had to live like a hermit, but roughly one month ago I was finally able to punch the sky and relax, it was official... BakaRyu is coming to Lock and Load!

That's right, coming to a Seattle near you from all the way across the Atlantic Ocean is one borderline sane Welshman determined to sample the American con and tourney scene at least once in his lifetime, and he figured that if he was going to pick any event, he might as well make it PP's very own con.

Having been kindly put up by Goris for a few days before the con to allow myself to get over any jet lag that I might be experiencing has allowed me to concentrate on coming to the tournaments in what will hopefully be my best form.  Those who will be interested, I shall be participating in the Masters preliminaries on the Friday, and should I fail to qualify for the finals (hopefully this won't be the case) then I shall be joining up with Goris and thegreatblah for the 3 Commanders team tournament on the Sunday.

I have picked a couple of the seminars on the Saturday in what will hopefully be a slightly more relaxed gap in the competitive tournament play, but that will not stop me from attacking the Iron Arena in my free time, especially if any new Retribution goodies are available early at the PP Store.

For the longest time I agonised for months about if I would take Trollbloods or Retribution to not only Lock and Load, but the other major tournaments for me this year (Welsh Open and UK Masters).  Eventually I settled on taking the angry elves, though if the Storm Troll and Sons of Bragg were already available then more than likely I would have taken the Trollbloods instead.

The Welsh Open is viewed as the main warm up tournament for the UK Masters, though due to the Masters being held one week early (due to the Queen's Jubilee) lists had to be submitted the day before the Welsh Open started so any last minute changes were impossible.  Regrettably I didn't have one of my better tournaments, in fact the 33rd place (out of 62) finish was my lowest tournament finish in years, though I made some basic schoolboy errors that ultimately cost me my opening two matches, mistakes that hopefully I have learned from and will not repeat on the big stage at the Masters.

Anyways this was originally a simple blog post to announce that I will be at Lock and Load and has turned into something a little bigger so I will end it here.  Hopefully I shall see you in Seattle!  Just look for the guy in the tacky orange bowler shirt with long hair and a funny accent and you won't go far wrong :)