@bill
So, I think part of the reason the wagons were, um, rallied, is that, whether it was intended to be that way or not, many of the posts throughout the GOWK debate were "well, you didn't place at Gencon, so your opinion doesn't matter". Now, as you pointed out, GenCon isn't feasible for many of us (being originally from the Midwest/having spent 22 years of my life there, GenCon is the Big Thing out there, but moving out here, wow, we're small freaking fish dude), and as a dorkfest on the whole, PAX/ComicCon tends to crush it.
Alas, our only cross-reference (besides me watching games on Vassal) is Shinja, who usually likes to play in our tournaments with not necessarily Tier 1 squads (I've faced him twice I think, Cando Cannon vs Atton Cannon, and Mandos? vs Clones, we've split those matches). Besides the fact we all love Shinja and wish he'd show up more in Bellevue (he can't complain too much about the drive, I think I live closer to him then I do Bellevue) so we can all gush over his adorably cute kid (
), we don't really have any frame of reference for other tiers of play.
We've been slowly getting people on VASSAL. Though I personally believe playing in person is different at least with regards to mid-tier play. (Psych'ing out, seeing realization in a player's eye of what you may have just done wrong, etc) Hopefully we'll catch you guys online at some point. Minis is a really social thing for us, so it never really bothered us to get onto Vassal to play games; many of the players live very close to each other, and can get games whenever.
@ Lobo: ooo I wish I could have taken that job.
We are expecting somewhere around 30-60 for regionals, if we get the regular crew + portland/other areas. We probably have 26-30 Seattle area players (the pre-releases have hit that, and may get higher now that school is out), and I don't know about the rest of the areas. So yeah, we (Omnus especially) have been working on building our local group up. Usually anyone who walks into the LGS even looking at minis ends up as a regular at our tournaments.