white noise

Another four-day computer gaming pilgrimage to Louisville is in the books. It was a hectic run-up to this event – with frantically working on the DTS II (see DuctTapeServer.com) for several nights, and then dealing with some last minute car trouble. But it all fell into place and we rolled into the event around 1:00 on Thursday. Another large Team Boom Tape crew met up this time, 8 of us, not to mention our three ‘associate members’ who helped out with the Team Fortress 2 tournament.

Thursday is always the warm up day of sorts – getting set up, making the rounds and saying hello, and of course getting the first several hours of gaming on. There were no tournaments on Thursday so most of our attention (at least for those of us who don’t WOW) was on warming up for Friday’s TF2 tourney. At most times throughout the event there were at least 2 local TF2 servers running, and with the great network, my in-game ping was 5 or less..you can’t beat that! I think it was about 5am when I crashed out for about three hours.

Friday was a really crazy day. The roll call and bracket seeding for the TF2 5v5 tourney came around noon. There were ten teams and we drew an opening bye, but our first round match up was a tough one against Call For Blood’s “B” team, “Team Fuzzy Pants”. CFB is a well seasoned gaming group mostly from the East coast. They have been to several previous MMLs, but we never really crossed paths before. Our match was played on the Well map, first team to four points (or the highest score after 40 minutes) wins, with a point being a set of captures all the way across.

This map was our downfall in the third round of our previous tournament. In that loss, the other team got off to a fast start and did an amazing job of defensive turtling in their base to keep us from catching up. This time around we had some new ideas for getting off to a quick start. Sure enough, we rushed hard and scored the first point pretty impressively. Fuzzy Pants switched to tougher classes on the second push and withstood the rush and went on to score two straight points. We adjusted our attack, and evened the score at 2-2. At that point our team was pretty sure a server restart was imminent, let up our guard a little, and before we knew it Fuzzy Pants sneaked out another point. After the restart, Fuzzy Pants got conservative and dropped back on D, content to ride their one point lead into the time limit. With about a minute thirty remaining, we knew we had time for just one good push. We abandoned defense and all attacked the control points. While my teammates were gaining control of the third and forth CPs I was sneaking into the back base to be in position for the final CP. Luckily our guys got control over the forth CP and I hopped down from hiding on the second floor and captured the last remaining CP with only 8 seconds left to send the round into overtime. IT. WAS. AWESOME.

Fuzzy Pants regrouped and went on to win the sudden death point and knocked us out of the tournament, but it was still an adrenaline-filled blast that had us shaking for an hour afterward. The tournament director, Francopoli, said “[it was] one of the most exciting matches ever! For the first time in MML history, a team tournament went into overtime!” The championship came down to CFB’s other team and another polished team, Black Ops Squad, with BOS taking the title.

Later that night I tried my luck at the Wii Bowling tournament. They had a Wii connected to a projector aimed at a wall creating the biggest screen I’ve ever played anything on (and that’s saying something). Everyone bowled in a qualifying round and the top four scores moved on to the finals. Unfortunately, my typical score of 139 didn’t make the top four and I was knocked out of another event.

As if that wasn’t enough, Friday also included the ritualistic Duct Tape Wars! This year’s challenge was Forth of July inspired and pretty specific. We were tasked to build a rocket (as in a shaft with fins) that gets launched when you step on a bag of air of some sort. The rocket which sores the highest wins. We were given our single roll of tape and a hour and a half. This year’s team included the usual suspects (Gratch, Xomox, MinionX, and myself) plus some new extra hands (Zenny, Jouster, and Whipple). Heck, I even spent a few minutes on the phone with Boom validating our ideas. In some cases having too many people could really cause a meltdown, but it wasn’t a problem this time. Everyone was really good about jumping in when needed or stepping out when they weren’t. We spent a good 15-20 minutes planning and went to work. Some worked on the bag, others worked on the launch tube and rocket. In our usual form we worked right up until the last second.

Our biggest fear in building the thing was that upon stomping on the bag to launch the rocket, there’d be a blowout somewhere. Our second fear was that our bag/bellow was a little undersized and may not provide enough air for a remarkable flight. Turns out neither was a problem, but we did have a major downfall: the launch tube leading from the bag to the rocket was rather undersized. This prevented the air from leaving the bag as quickly as stomping would allow. The effect was a mediocre burst of air (something between a blast and slow leak) and worse yet, the bag became an ankle rolling apparatus. Xomox got the worst of it, but on one attempt it knocked Zenny off his feet, too. The result was a very par-for-the-course performance, maybe hitting 20 feet on it’s best attempt. The group TBC (from Wisconsin) crushed everyone as their better proportioned device could repeatedly launch their rocket into the very high ceiling.

Saturday was little more laid back and involved a little bit of everything. In addition to some more TF2, we played some matches of the new Trackmania, some of our respective MMO’s (LOTRO for me, WOW for everyone else), some Rock Band, and a few hours of Age of Empires III. I also took part in the Texas Hold’em tournament, which is a Lanwar trandition but my first time trying it. I only had one bunch of good cards (trip 7’s, beating two people with top pairs), and eventually the growing blinds drained me until finally my desperation all-in was beat by four 10’s! I finished that tournament 11th out of 36. Let’s hope I have better luck this weekend! The Case Mod contest was also held Saturday night. Out of around a dozen entries, Duct Tape Server II placed second, losing only to the sweet ass, remote controlled, R2D2 server.

Last but not least, Saturday was also the night for our Armagetron tournament. At about 3 in the morning we made an announcement and got the players (8 of them) into the server and started the twitch fest. Somehow I avoided getting knocked out of the first round like last time, and progressed into round 2 against Bobomo and two TBC guys. After another 15 matches, the finals came down one member from each clan, Dex from TBC and me from TBT. I got off to an early lead, but after a few more runs Dex started catching back up. On the 15th and final match I was up by one – but with the win in my grasp I twitched into his trial and sent us to an extra overtime round. This time I trapped him and took the title. Given that TBC won the Armagetron trophy last year and they blew us away in Duct Tape Wars this year, it seems we might have a nice rivalry on our hands.

After crashing from about 7 to 9, Sunday came altogether too soon. We all played a few more games, grabbed a few more files, and started packing up a little after 1:00. I even got in one more tournament, a last minute Trackmania tourney. Not being a game I play a lot, though, I made a first round exit. By 3:00 we were packed, the lights had come up, and the tables had come down. It was another awesome event, smaller than most MMLs (I think this one had maybe 450 attendees), but there was little to complain about. Team Boom Tape didn’t sail to many wins this time, but we made several impressions and still scored some loot (below). I friended up the CFB folks and will be playing with (and against) them online and I definitely look forward to our next match ups with TBC.