Another weekend of intense gaming has come and gone. Approximately 111 gamers descended on Louisville for about 28 straight hours of WSAD fun. The Lanwar staff is down to doing only 2 event per year (winter lan and the big summer MML), so we set off to make the most of every minute.
I got in an hour or so of Team Fortress 2 to start, then we moved on to Left for Dead 2 for a couple hours. Once Gratch settled in we got into Borderlands for a few hours and sped through many areas, quickly leveling up new characters.
A little later in the evening Gratch and I got into some Rock Band. We suffered through songs like “Sex Farm” by Spinal Tap, “Kung Fu Fighting”, and even some horrible piece of junk by the Dixie Chicks, before moving on to some more familar tunes.
Later in the evening it was time for a traditional round of Duct Tape Wars. The rules were about the same as always: one roll and one hour, but this edition included a plastic bottle cap. Our goal was to launch the furthest through some means of duct tape in which the kinetic energy we apply is not in the direction of the cap’s launch. We decided on a simple strap that would hold the cap in the center. By extending the strap with your hands to your each side, the cap is shoot through the air. Xomox had the thought to add an ogive over the cap to aid it’s flight. The curved ogive and the cap couldn’t be tapped together so they would separate at some point. As expected, the distance of the cap was highly dependent on when that separation occurred, but in any case it helped.
In the end, a few teams built a similar, simple device, but none hit nearly the same distance as ours. Except for one. That team built a very long strap assisted by three people, and pulled off the win. Our final attempt (it was best of 3), flew well, rolled beyond their mark, then curved and came to rest a couple feet short of it. Team Boom Tape had to settle for runner up this time.
EWWW…the guy explaining the event was wearing a Steelers jersey. Psh…