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So I was looking around trying to pick a successor and going 'Hm' a lot.

For various reasons I'm very picky about what AARs and writers are like. They have to make a very strong impact on me - whether it's humor like Merrick's Re-uniting Gondwanaland (EU3), powerful narratives like frogbeastegg's The Machiavellian Adventures of Princess Eleanor (CK - and approaching immortality for duration), history book style tales like volksmarschall's The Presidents: Clay to Smith (Vic)... (all three are must reads)

... or simply one man's epic battle with an unreasonable AI.

I was stunned to see that Storey hasn't been nominated in 4 1/2 years. I cant say enough about him, whether it's relatively serious genre fiction (like Who Killed Cologne) or simply trying to survive, he's entertained us for longer than I've been in AARland.

His current effort (Venice against the Ottomans - FtG) has seemingly not gone according to plan ... though part of the fun of his tales is that it so rarely does. He's able to convey his own humanity, interjecting tales about his home life and hinting at his own frustration as he winds up in ten wars at once, with humor and wit that few ever master. I know I haven't.

So, Storey, c'mon over and tell us another tale.
 
Congratulations !
 
Congratulations Storey! :)
 
Congratulations :)
 
Congratulations, Joe! Once again. :D I think I've lost count of how many times you've been awarded here, but the truth is there aren't enough weeks in the year to give you as many as you deserve.

Your only problem is you live too far away for your fans to come to your house, chain you to the computer and, um, help you produce enough to satisfy us. :eek:;)

Of course, 'She Who Will Not Be Denied' already has you in her net and none of us are strong enough to face her wrath. So I suppose we'll have to be content with what you can offer us.

Sincerely, though - congratulations. Well deserved!

"Drinks at the baar are on Storey!"
 
Great choice. A very well deserving award
Congratulations Storey :)
 
No prior WritAAR of the Week for Storey? That's hard to believe: the man's an institution unto himself. One of the hallowed veterans from days of yore, when the Paradox forums comprised two whopping sub-fora: EU and EU2. He's been regaling us with tall tales since back when the 2000s were still in their infancy (and, you know, looked like they could be a good decade), when a gallon of gas cost about $1.25 in the US (oh, and the Dollar was actually worth something) and no-one had yet heard of American Idol. Such innocent times, so very long gone...

And Storery was already there, playing games of EU and offering his unique brand of AAR-writing. Was it his dogged determination never to submit to the AI, no matter the odds; or his prediliction for 'I-didn't-think-this-through-but-it-looked-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time' rash decisions that earned him his legions of loyal fans? Maybe it was his tendency to wax lyrical with epic stories from his childhood that, while never explicitly dated, sounded like they took place in the 1940s or 1950s...

Seeing how long Storey's been around, it's really hard to fathom how he was not selected as WoW before. Perhaps it's because he's been raking up all those other awards (Fan of the Weeks, the OscAARs, in years of yore when they ran...).

Anyway, it's fitting that this giant of a forumite, with his breadth and depth of experience, and his wisdom of the ages, is finally awarded this particular feather for his cap.

Congratulations, good sir! Now come, regale us with another tale of men landing on the moon, of 10-cent-a-gallon gas, of Truman in the White House... :p
 
Thank you CatKnight I appreciate the nomination. I have been on an extended hiatus from doing an AAR and it took For The Glory to inspire me to try my hand at it once again.

As you know my AAR has a simple goal that any modest player with limited intellect, opposable thumbs and the ability to remain focused for longer than it takes to wipe your nose could achieve. (Having a cold does help) But then since I only meet 2 of the 3 requirements I’m forced to use any and every trick I can think of to make sure my readers never realize that they are being led along the garden path by a fool who never put in the time to really learn how to play the game. Hence my perchance to distract them with stories of personal triumphs, tales of woe and anything else I can think of to hide my latest screw up.

In my current AAR I set a very easy goal. Take Venice and destroy the Ottomans. It sounded plausible, easy even. But then never underestimate my ability to find a way make something easy and turn it into hard.

That reminds me of the time I went to my Uncle Clyde’s home for a visit. Uncle Clyde was a carpenter who I was eager (I was young then around 15 so the eagerness wasn’t beaten out of me yet) to get him to let me help him out in the shop. So we’re eating Breakfast and Aunt Nora, his wife, suggested that he let me help out. I was too dumb to ask questions and just nodded my head in enthusiasm. (That’s back when I also had enthusiasm) So Clyde agrees and we jumped in his truck and head away from his shop, which was the first hint that things were going terribly wrong. Sure enough we stopped in the middle of a vast field and we got out and I saw a number of shallow holes in the ground stretching out to the horizon. He handed me a posthole digger and said “Do as many as you can. I’ll be back to pick you up for dinner.” Did I mention the ground was solid clay with a just a sprinkling of melon sized stones?

This little story of woe is an example of how I would distract you from the game so that you wouldn’t notice that I managed to perform some kind of a bonehead maneuver that would make your jaw drop and hit the floor in wonder and awe that someone this dense could possible walk and talk at the same time. Come to think of it I’m not required to perform such a complicated task while sitting here am I?

Anyway thanks again CatKnight and I’m already looking around for the next WritAAR of the Week.

Joe
 
Congratulations!