The Shamrock Cup

The fabled Shamrock Cup is steeped in tradition.  A "best of 3" match series face-off contested by Comrade James and I, it is now in its 10th year! Rumoured to be have swallowed by in a warp portal when a Skaven mage stole the trophy from the opposing team's locker room, it turns out that this lost treasure was simply misplaced under a giant stack of smelly cheese.  Its now been rinsed out and is ready to be recontested!

It all came about when after a major drought of gaming, the Comrade and I found that our programs would have us in Hong Kong for a few days at the same time.  Arrangements were made, components were packed and we met up in this jewel of the Orient to play (horrendously hung-over, it must be said) .  Now fortunately we had been wandering the Kowloon markets beforehand and found this wonderful cup which from that moment on was revered and cherished.  So that's the cup - why the name Shamrock?  The Hotel we stayed was the Shamrock Hotel, and its logo (cut from a box of matches) proudly adorns said trophy to this day.

But most mysteriously....why does it have a small red pepper glued to it?  Well, despite all our preparations, we forgot to pack a ball.  That's right, thousands of miles from home and we had a board, two teams, plastic templates, rulebooks....and no ball!  A minor setback of course - this small ornamental garnish was 'procured' (and was conveniently able to be wedged between the legs of any model) and thus was used for the inaugural three match tournament.  To commemorate this wonderful bit of ingenuity, it too was glued to the cup and remains there to this day.

And what of the tournies themselves?  We play resurrection style games to a point limit (which changes each series) and each time I have taken my Skaven and James has taken his Reikland Reavers.  There is no love lost between these two teams.

The Skaven took out the initial tourney back in 2000 with a 2 games to nil drubbing, winning the first game 4-3 and the second game 2-1.  Most amusing injury of the series was the death of Skaven star Hakflem Scuttlespike in the last seconds of the final game.  The most amusing play of the series was a stinkbomb launched by the Reavers which scattered and took out 2 Skaven and Zug, allowing gutter runners to pour through the gap and score!  Good times indeed.

The Reavers hit back in the 2004 series (its an Olympiad event - in fact we played the 2000 tourney while watching the Sydney Olympics.  Ironic really that we both lived in Sydney at the time and missed the entire thing!) and took out the cup in a closely contested 2 wins to 1.  The first match was a high scoring 6:2 Skaven victory with the Humans narrowly taking out Game two with 3 touchdowns to 2.  The final match saw some serious grinding up of players but the Humans scored twice against the Skaven's single TD - their worst performance in any Shamrock Cup match.

The projected 2008 series was postponed because of a serious case of long distance separation (2 states in fact) and all attempts to reshedule have so far proven fruitless.  It is hoped that the Man Cave will host the next event, potentially in early 2011.  Will the Skaven retake their beloved Cup or will the Humans retain the title? Or will a new team be included this time?

The competition will be tough, beer will be drunk and laughs will be had.  Bring it on!