The annual four-day, computer gaming fest, MillionManLAN 8 has just wrapped up and it was another great event. These things seem to fly by faster and faster with each one I attend. Team Boom Tape had eight of us from Cincinnati in attendance and we were joined by some of the usual players for some tournaments. This time there were about 350 gamers in attendance. There have been past MML events with many more, but it was still about 2x a typical lanwar. As expected we saw a lot of familiar faces there. There was CFB Gaming who brought about 12 members from places ranging from New York to Tennessee. There was our friendly rival team TBC (Team Bok Choy) from Wisconsin and beyond. I also met new teams, like SOMAD from South Dakota who drove 13 hours to come to their first MML.
We rolled into Louisville about 12:30, signed in and set up, and got the Duct Tape Server online. Thursday is pretty laid back as far as formal events go since people arrive throughout the day. I did try my luck at the Wii Bowling tournament in the evening, but my ~165 didn’t make the top four scores for the finals. Nvidia and BFG had a booth set up showing off some huge monitors and even huger “Phobos” computers. Many of the stations were demoing their 3D technology on games like Left 4 Dead and Fear 2. The 3D gaming experience is really awesome – I can’t wait for prices on the 120Hz monitors to fall.
Friday started with the Team Fortress 2 tournament at noon. We got a first round bye, which is nice, but it skipped us past the map we were most prepared for. In the second round we played team SOMAD on the map Well, which is the same map that’s knocked us out of the competition three times before. This time was no different; we put up a long, hard fight, but lost 4-1. Then early evening was the first ever dodgeball tournament sponsored by Crucial Memory. I assembled a team and then realized we had one too many players and sat myself out. Our guys gave it a good go, but didn’t advance past the first match.
Feeling a little dejected we went into the late evening competition…Duct Tape Wars. We had our core team all back together – the team which started our run of greatness in 2006 – plus a couple newer members to help. We didn’t win the past two competitions so we felt we really had to make a comeback. In this year’s challenge we had about an hour and a half to build a structure to suspend a container over a couple bottles with CDs balanced on top. Then the container was loaded with poker chips until a CD was knocked off the bottles. The winner was the contraption holding the most chips before it collapses. Check out this video to see the action and our triumphant victory.
Saturday we played a lot more Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead. We made a last minute jump into the Left 4 Dead Tournament and got beat up in the first round pretty good. Reps from Nvidia and BFG did a presentation and Q&A; and gave out some schwag. Rock, Paper, Scissors was later that night. Jedi mind tricks weren’t working; I lost in the first round. Starting about midnight was the Texas Hold’em tournament. I wasn’t concentrating well and got knocked about half way through. Johnny Boom finished an impressive, but prize-less, 6th place.
We ran the annual Armagetron tournament in the morning, and as usual it was a battle between Team Boom Tape and Team Bok Choy. Gratch and Xomox played in the final head to head and Xomox took the title this year. A final few hours of gaming and leaching and before we knew it we were packing up at the last possible minute. By the time it was over I had logged over 24 hours on Team Fortress, over 16 on Left 4 Dead, and stuffed my hard drive with over 250GB.
Tags: Lanwar
