The newcomers, looking very thoughful before Dave pounces to claim a win.

A disappointing turnout today leaves the judge assuming their must be a lot of hangovers in Teesside today. He doesn't have one as he was in Loughborough for the Armor Wars Prerelease & WWHCI Qualifier and incidentally it was his birthday too!

In typical fashion the fickle finger of fate looks down upon the random first round pairings and decides that once again their should be a "Battle of the Ste's" in Swiss Round One. As they now bore me, here is a picture of Craig Woulnough's X-Men™ getting a good hiding from Dave Smith's Batman™ Enemies lead by the very random Legacy® Joker™ and the new Icons® Ra's al-Ghul™. It wasn't pretty and was a taste of things to come for poor Craig.

Stephen "Theme Team" Hunt makes a new friend (NOT!) when he selects an outdoor map with only one set of stairs to the roof. Dave's big rookie mistake was not noticing this and picking the starting side farthest away from the steps. Mr. Hunt's Marauders team took full advantage by immediately running onto the roof in wait for the flightless Batman™ Enemies. Needless to say the Joker™ was not amused and the Marauders moved to 2 and 0 with a hard fought victory.

"Why won't Mr. Sinister™ die? Die damn you, die!" ... Ra's al-Ghul™.

Come join me on the roof - and die horribly Mwwhhhaaaaaaa!

In the meantime Craig continues his theme of losing horribly by taking a sound beating in Central Park from a selection of Teen Titans™. On the plus side he gets a nomination for the Fellowship award for pointing out to his opponent that Raven™ is within range of Arsenal™ and can use probability control after making him reroll and miss with Black Cat (masquerading as an X-man). Raven™ obliges and Arsenal™ duly rolls a critical hit! At least this fine piece of sportsmanship ended up netting Craig a Kurt Wagner™ LE from Fantastic Forces®.

Predictably, two 100% records are maintained in the third Swiss Round as the Marauders take on and defeat the lacklustre X-Men™. It was closer than we might have imagined but Craig was perplexed by his poor showing and went down to a less than impressive third consecutive defeat (not counting all of yesterdays hammerings that is of course). Even worse all the sugar in his tea had settled in the bottom of the cup as it hadn't been stirred properly!

On a table not too far away, master took on apprentice in an all DC© match too close to call. It proved to be that the circle is not yet complete, as the apprentice was cut down to size by the tyrannical Darth Date. Not a lightsabre in sight but Steve's dice were buzzing as he claimed the second final spot with a relatively convincing win.

The defeated challengers are resigned to the statistical anonymity of also-rans but are not downhearted. They console themselves with a 500 point face off using a selection of the Armor Wars® figures gathered from yesterdays Prerelease. Whilst House of M Magneto™ was still looking pretty tasty, he wasnt as deadly in this constructed environment as yesterdays sealed booster games and went down fighting with Craig desperate to actually pick up a win.

Ste D - using Pepsi Max to try to stay awake!

 Here we go again. In a repeat rematch of our previous final the two Ste's, now sick of the sight of each other, sit opposite each other one last time today. The Swiss round was tight, with only 8 points separating winner from loser, so its anyone's game in the final.

Seemingly suffering less from sleep-deprivation than his opponent Ste H struck first and hard. Rolling high with pretty much every attack, attrition and lack of sleep took its toll on Mr. Date and mistakes crept into his game. He realised it was all over and lost like a real man - kicking, punching, biting, spitting, sceaming and hurling personal insults at his opponent (LOL just kidding - or am I?).

As a noble and galant gesture the winner, once again Ste H, gave the LE prize to his defeated opponent as he already had one in his collection.

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