Iron Gauntlet

Rules are up - http://privateerpress.com/files/Iron%20Gauntlet%202013_0.pdf

They are going to have a qualifier at Cancon. I have little to no inclination to travel to the US for the finals but 2 lists from any faction seems fun as do specialists so I may sign up. It's been interesting to see the community reaction to iron gauntlet. The initial reaction was

but everyone seems to have calmed down by now. That said there seems to be very little enthusiasm behind iron gauntlet and I think that's due to poor scheduling. The major US cons have a problem with too many players wanting to play masters so that scheduling the Iron Gauntlet qualifier at the same time as the masters qualifier seems to have been a good idea, you get two large tournaments rather than one 200+ player tournament and no one is turned away, however for the UK qualifier they are still scheduling Iron Gauntlet at the same time as other events and it doesn't seem to be working. So far it looks like players are sticking with masters events and that Iron Gauntlet is losing out. Hopefully this is all sorted out soon. PP seems to have put a fair amount of effort into it and I'd hate to see it fail (even if I'm not 100% sold on the format). Could also be that people are waiting to see what happens at lock and load before they sign up.

Edit: another thought on this topic, Arcanon in Victoria which was previously much bigger than CANCON and on the same weekend is the tournament that had all the rankings drama last time around. With Iron Gauntlet in Canberra that's going to take even more players away from Arcanon. Will be interesting to see how the numbers fall but I'm not worried about the Australian qualifier, all events at CANCON sold out well in advance last time, I expect similar results next year. Arcanon I am not so confident about, still should be everyone who can't be bothered travelling so it should still get some basic numbers.