Eleven hardy teams turned out to play, showing a great deal of diverstity in their construction and tactics (not to mention cheesyness ... errr, I mean levels of competitiveness). We even managed to get another new guy involved and he did pretty well as you will see.

The first round got underway, eventually after what seemed a long wait, and new guy Paul Crosby was the unlucky player to be stuck with a 1st round bye. Howver, he wasn't too disappointed as he thought this would give him an opporuntity to see other people's teams and tactics before he played his first competitive game.

I, with my "Taskmaster Strikes Again!" Team was drawn to play Martin and his "Yami Inc" boys and girls. Martin struck first and took out some of Ares' support, most notably Taskmaster and then Tk'ed Wonder Woman in to face Ares. Martin was very unfortunate to miss with a Fuel Tank thrown from range by Juggernaut after another cunning TK to try to flank Ares support. After Outwitting Wonder Woman's damage reduction Ares put the boot in and left her badly hurt so his companions could finish her off. As Dr. MidNight healed Ares back up to full health Martin realised his best chance had gone as he would struggle to hit/damage the 19 defence plus Impervious God now. It was only a matter of time before the rest of Martin's team fell before the God of War and the game ended in my favour.

Alec Barrett had been paired with Paul Brown for round one and hopefully this wasn't a game watched by Paul Crosby. In another example of a thrilling game of Sleepyclix neither Alec nor Paul managed to KO any of their opponents figures despite playing for a full 50 minutes. How does this happen? Could someone please explain it to me? I'd rather lose than snooze. Due to their respective build totals, Paul Brown collected the win as he had a lower point build total. The long winter evenings must just fly by!

Dave Smith had gone with a mighty hard team boasting a Pulse Wave/Nova Blast combo, a TK'er, Outwit, Probability Control, Ghost Widow for Support and Mystic-like team ability and a kitchen sink! Poor Parry's JLA upstarts didn't stand a chance, which was a shame because it was a nice looking team showing off Batman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Superman and Wonder Woman. Nice team Parry! Inevitably Dave won comfortably, but Parry did at least take out a couple of figures on his way to the casualty department and picked up 102 points. It was a surprise to see Dave use a mixed universe team, but it was certainly very effective and had apparantly been a long time in the development stage.

Phil Grinstead had travelled from Durham to play again and had come with a tasty theme team. KC Green Lantern and KC Flash (fitted out with the lastest fashion in the world of Feats) were supported by no less than nine Rookie Green Flames playing the part of Green Lantern constructs ... nice! Phil's aptly named "Green Lantern and Constructs" was drawn against Paul Wastell's nameless Hive hoard, this week supporting Lord Recluse, Ghost Widow and an Experienced Green Lantern. Phil's suped up powerhouses proved too much for Paul to handle and it was only the time that it took to wade through the Hive that stood between Phil and his first win of the day. As we all know, time stands still for no man and Paul was eventually destroyed. Well his team was, as far as I know Paul retained consciousness after his team had gone the journey.

The last first round tie was between James Phoenix's "Flying Squad" and Stephen Hunt's "Alpha Flight Assemble!". It has to be said that on paper this certainly looked to be one of Mr. Hunt's less ruthless teams, but after 50 minutes of game play I am not sure that JP would have agreed. Toploaded with heavilly priced figures and not much in the way of support. JP's team consisted of Sentry, Vet Iron Man, Vet Banshee and LE Gremlin. Whilst all good figures, the lack of any supporting cast and the ability to spread their actions (6 actions per turn between four figures doesn't really go) was their downfall. Dimond Lil and Marina were lost to Mr Hunt (and why he was even using either of them in the first place is anybody's guess), but 97 points of KOs was a very slight blemish on an otherwise very professional performance. Score one for Alpha Flight and Canada!

Another impressive turnout for the Saturday Mega Day Event at Middlesbrough Gamers Club

Phil's Green Lantern Constructs in all their glory!

The players work hard to try to get into the top four, totally unaware of what the top four players will be faced with should they reach the final, Mwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!

Due to my unplanned stupidity in winning my first game fairly well I was rewarded with a seat at table two against Phil's mighty Green Lantern and his beautiful constructs. Talk about a headache. Taking on KC GL with Trick Shot, Protected and Life Model Decoy, KC Flash and Armor Piercing, Nanobots and Protected was head popping material. The constructs were cool though. To be fair to Phil, he seemed to be cranially challenged by how to take down Ares just as much as my perplexing puzzle so it was quite an intense game. Although I picked up the win, I have to admit that this mostly came down to Phil's abysmal dice rolling. He missed Blue Devil on nine consecutive attempts needing a seven (ahhh ... he was playing me, I infected his dice) but worst of all his KC GL missed an easy kill on Hawkeye. This enabled me to heal Hawkeye and Running Shot Flash making him use his Protected Card and move to the pushed position. Ares then killed Flash off with a second hit that he couldn't avoid. I am ashamed that the God of War then had to run like a girl (WARNING: Lack of politically correctness) but otherwise he may have been GL pickings. Anyway it was a tight game and I shall now ensure that I never play Phil again so I can always say I won the last game we played.

Paul Brown's "The Fantastic League" from sleepy sleepy land entertained Paul Wastell on table three. For some reason Paul Wastell was looking strangely depressed as he played through this round. I can honestly say that it is the first time I have seen a man try to bite through his own wrists. Just kidding, he had a blunt spoon and was trying to gouge out his own eyes. No honestly he wasn't self harming at all ... he was offering money for people to harm him. Undeterred by the (snail's) pace of the game Paul Brown set about dishing out some hurt. Upon realising that the majority of Hive & Co. needed 10+ to get a hit on any of his team, Paul B. bravely (in the manner of Brave Sir Robin that is) moved outside of his starting area and dished some punishment on the poor defenceless (well as good as) Hive. Paul Brown got some KO's and so did Paul W, so it was a darn site more thrilling than the first round match. More importantly Paul Brown picked up another win to go 2 and 0 and alas cosigned Paul W to 0 and 2. When will the Hive start to buzz we all wonder.

Martin wasn't doing any better in his second round game than in his first either. In fact he was doing considerably worse. Parry's JLA themed team showed no mercy to "Yami Inc." making it look as if the Inc. stood for Incapable or Incompetent. The JLA managed to KO Martin's whole team without any of their's being lost, which is a mighty impressive feat in a 600 point game. Parry certainly moved up the rankings with this score, whilst poor Martin was stuck dead last and had to tale the third round bye after this disappointing display.

The last game of the second round was between Paul Crosby using his "Girl Power" all female team and playing his first match in a tournament and Alec's "Nebula and Gemini" with a heavy dose of the mercurial Quicksilver (get it), four of him to be precise (one each of the REV and LE). The Hypersonic Speed factor proved to be a little too much for Paul to handle. In another very close game, Paul managed to just get pipped to the post as he picked up 593 points to Alec's 605 ... now that's a tight finish.

James Phoenix, thanks to his first round massacre collected a win and 598 points for the second round bye to move out of the bottom spot.

After a particularly tough second round game, the last thing I needed in round three was to face Dave's thuggish hoard. Alas that's what I got and with my energy sapped I found myself losing the will to live, which was useful as I wasn't going to live. Two tough games is more than this weak Judge can now take and I limped out of the tournament finishing just out of the top 4 in 5th place.

Here we see the Hive (plus Special Guest Stars) doing exactly what they do best and trying to swarm the opposition, here being Prometheus. At a guess I would say he was facing Paul Brown here

What they lack in orininality, they make up for in speed. It's the Quicksilver quartet of roadrunners!

Table two boasted the also undefeated Paul Brown who met his match in Phil's Green Lantern and his lovable constructs. Paul struggled to think of what to do in this match as the Invisible Girl was taken out early and the result was a drop in Defence Values for pretty much his entire team. Who's laughing now? .... Mwhahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa! (that would be me then). Taking out a few constructs isn't too much of an effort, but managing to get rid of GL or Flash requires a Herculean effort (or an unlucky dice roll from Phil) and Paul was doomed to stall in his efforts to conquer all. Phil came back well from his earlier defeat and in retrospect may have been grateful to have missed Hawkeye and thus avoided Dave's monstrocity ... I don't think the constructs would have survived long against a Nova Blast! But as it was Phil was having the last laugh as he took out most of Paul's force, collected 933 points and eased into second place to guarantee a spot in the four player final. Well done Phil, nice team and well played.

Ste 'The Huntmeister" Hunt having suffered badly at the hands of the Dave "Destruction" Smith was handed a tame third round match against Parry. On paper at least Parry had a couple of nice figures, but the final scorecard didn't reflect this. Huntmeister wiped out poor Parry allowing only 101 points of KO's in return, thus the JLA were vanquished from the tournament in favour of Alpha Flight and Canada won out over the USA ... queue Canadian National Anthem (O Canada! ... that's about as much of it as I know but if anyone is interested you can read or hear it here). Oh and Paul, this does NOT mean I will be posting a link to the Russian National Anthem next time ... unless you do well with a pack of Rocket Reds maybe. As we shall read later (well you shall, I shall type later) Huntmeister managed to reach the final due to this third round win, but his team selection was not Vindicated (Vindicated, get it!).

Paul Crosby, fresh from his first competitive game was playing James Phoenix at another table. Both players only win so far had come from a bye so something had to give this game. James again struggled to get his team to work due to its lack of numbers and Paul took the initiative. The weight of numbers proved telling with 6 actions per turn and Paul pressed home his advantage taking out most of JP's team before time was called. JP on the other hand could only scratch the surface of Paul's clix removing only 74 points (Misty Knight and Starfire?) in the same period. Paul Crosby picks up his first actual played win at an Approved Play event and wins big. In fact, so big is the win that his score is boosted to a proportion where he squeezes me out of the fourth and last final place by 74 points. 74 points again eh, Spooky!

Paul Wastell's Hive army didn't manage to stave off a third sucessive defeat, this time at the hands of Alec's Quicksilver based speed demons. Oh dear, that leaves Paul bottom. But they would be near the top of the table in the best looking and most colour co-ordinated team table today. Martin managed to avoid finishing last by virtue of his third round bye. I am sure we will see him improve on this in the coming events (especially as I am writing this report retrospectively so I know the next few event results!)

Apha Flight await the impending destruction of a Nova Blast Pulse Wave. Their wait is not in vain!

The most testing game I can remember as this 'headmasher' against Phil's KC Green Lantern, KC Flash and a host of Green Lantern Constructs made me think about my actions from beginning to end

This time the Hive face the Quicksilver quadruplets darting through the shopping mall like its 5.25pm on Christmas Eve and they had forgot to get any present up until now.

Having used the opportunity of not qualifying for the last four to get some Battlestar Galactica CCG demos in, I can't give a very detailed account of what happened in the lengthy final but I can give some brief snippets.

Mr. Hunt's team didn't stand a snowball in hell's chance of doing much and in fact only managed to damage Spectre through a powered up Deli Worker if I hear correctly.

The main threats were posed by Dave and Phil, in that order and with Spectre trying to evenly distibute his attacks, and the Angry Spirits seeming more like Bored Housewives and just standing around watching mostly, Dave easilly did the most damage against old 'green 'n whitey'. The four players enjoyed the final and it was something a bit different, especially watching Judge Ste lift Spectre's cloak to turn the dial at the back and thinking he looked like a bit of a dirty perv. Things will be back to normality (well as normal as we get) next time and Spectre will go back to his box until someone else deserves to face ... "The Spirit of Vengeance!".

The final placings after the Swiss Rounds were ...

Thanks to everyone who turned up to play in the "Special Showdown", we hope you enjoyed it!

The Spectre begins to seek Vengeance on the four finalists for the way they disposed of their opponents. Well apart from Hunt, he just ignores that lack of a threat entirely

Judge for the day, Ste Date presides over the Spectre's first appearance in Middlesbrough and quite possibly his first appearance in the UK after he had somewhat splashed out on an eBay purchase