Frag Manchester (fragM)

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FragM #03 06th - 08th April 2007

Friday

Setup and arrival

As usual, we arrived at the venue at about 12ish. Ink was fashionably late and arrived a few hours after us. I can't complain though, as it meant I had the fun of putting the network cables down all to myself. Score ;)

First things first, unpacking the 100000000s of prizes our sponsors kindly donated. As you can probably guess, this wasn't the smallest of tasks:

Around 4pm, we were fully set to go. At this point, a refreshing beer set us up for the task ahead. The arrival of you lot :D

Games Master Meister Tourney

Another event, another Golden Joystick. This time, we revisted Bomberman after it's incredible popularity last event. In addition to the AMAZING Golden Joystick, Crucial kindly donated a gigabyte of Ballistix DDR ram. A perfect combo, I'm sure you'll agree ;)

The battle raged on for some time and eventually only Phate, Hypno, Dmack and Smile remained. Using his trusty and no doubt well-worn glove, Smile eventually managed to pummel the other three into submission, netting himself the G.Joystick and the ram.

Dbreed gets a little nippy...

Nobody knows why and even less people want to know why...but...

I will say no more on the subject and give you, the reader, a brief rest in which you may attempt to block this memory from ever resufacing.

Pizza, pizza, read all about it!

Okay, not much to read, but lots to eat. No LAN is complete without pizzas and fragM is no exception. 472 inches of hot pizza love was sent it's merry way to our willing mouths and devoured. Leave no survivors.

fragM Pub Quiz

We laughed, we cried, it changed our lives..

Some ridiculously hard questions, some ridiculously wrong answers, and a muchly contested win!

After an hour of heated debates, 'Team Beer FTW' actually walked away with the winning prize of a crate of beer with 46 points, and 'You Vil Lose' and 'Bear Calvalry' coming a joint 2nd with 34:P

Some of the more 'exotic' answers to the pub quiz:

Kiefer Sutherland, Dennis Haysbert, Elisha Cuthbert are all actors in what tv series? – Will & Grace - Lee, Alb, Rick

Who plays “Carmen Ibañez” in Starship Troopers? - h00x - Komodo, Method, Paradox, Raven, Phate

In Pulp Fiction who plays Marsellus Wallace ? - Ring Vhames - Helios, Boris, Gun5tar

Pro Evo Tournament

Things got underway a little late but they took off and were on time for the rest of the tournament. During the group stages there were a few upsets. Dbreed beating Method with Mexico in the first match was the biggest.

Apart from that it was a pretty much goal-lacking start of the tournament. There were lots of 1-0's or 1-1. The odd 3-0 and then Boris's only effort losing 9-0 to degle, scoring the second hat-trick of the tournament in his own net; his excuse being "I'm figuring out the controls".

Things got a bit more interesting in the knockout stages with matches getting more intense. The quality of all the goals being scored and the importance of them raised to the top of the bar, everyone was going all out.

The effort shown was second to none, with most of the matches going to penalties because of quality of defence and the chances taken were hitting woodwork left right and centre.

The final was nothing short of a goal fest. Degle could of scored alot more with his team of frenchies hitting them from everywhere inside the box and scoring early on in the game. Come the final whistle fayte had not replied and Degle won it 4-0.

Saturday

Counter-Strike:Source Part 1

The first day of CSS was a jam packed one with a total of 11 games played. Some of the expected teams winning and a few surprises. All in all, an interesting start to the tourney.

Dice went on a rampage - winning all their matches and getting to the final on the first day in only 3 matches. Pank, Trauma and Ded joined them in the second round while everyone else had just once chance left in the losers bracket.

In said losers bracket IL and DED made it to the final knockout stages after beating Wacken and V5 and finally facing up against each other. DED took the game and went on to face the losers of the deciding game in the winners bracket, Trauma.

Trauma and DED then squared off and battled to see what team had the mettle to beat the other and get into the finals on sunday.

Continued...

Savage Pizza Tourney

After playing through the initial stages of CSS, it was time for the most important tournament of the LAN. This tournament would seperate the men from the beasts (literally) and also, perhaps more importantly, seperate those who had to pay £3 for a pizza from those who had to pay £6.50 ;)

After a few up and down warm up games, the final was a frought battle between beast, man and hunger. Though they fought bravely, eventually the combined might of Hypno's summoners and behemoths managed to beat the humans into submission....with giant tree trunks. Here's the final score:

Soldat Tourney FTW

Soldat made it's return for fragM #3. It's an incredibly fast-paced retro shooter - Though only a 2d game, the inclusion of rocket launchers and jet packs instantly gives it a permanent spot on my hard drive.

This match lived up to the incredible frag-fest expectations that we have of Soldat and after a long and intense battle, Hypno pulled way ahead and took the winning position. To the victor go the spoils which in this case took the form of the Razer Krait Gaming Mouse. Wp Hypno :)

C&C Generals: Zero Hour

This intense RTS tourney took off with two free for all games. Playing were dbreed, smile, gun3tar, helios, hypnogerm, boris, raven, paradox, and pickle. The six folk left standing after two hours of crazy army action were: gun3tar, helios, hypnogerm, raven, paradox, and phate! Stay tuned as they battle it out in a armed fight to the death on Sunday in the final!

All-night Poker Tourney

Despite all efforts to the contrary, it seems that we've had some master dealers sneak into our poker games. This was made clear when LyNX and Boris both managed to deal flushes into the community cards on several occasions. In a row ;)

It was a match of many ups and downs, but eventually l0c0 took home everyone's chips and managed to net himself the Saitek GH50 headset. Second place went to pHate, who took home the Speedlink Voice 'n' Video webcam. Well played to all who made it and well slept to those that didn't :p

Sunday

CSS Final

C&C Generals: Zero Hour Final

On Sunday the C&C ZH tourney final began. Having winnowed out the less experienced players the finalists were able to agree on no super-weapon rules. Random team selection brought everyone a Chinese army, with hypno, paradox, phate and helios trouping along with Chinese Infantry, and Raven and Gun3tar mechanizing it up with the Chinese Tank general. From the get-go gun3tar and helios showed their stuff by establishing themselves more quickly than everyone else. Poor sekret suffered from an attack from both hypno and gun3tar, bringing him quickly to his knees. Sekret was quickly followed by phate and Raven, who were trounced by Gun3tar and Helios respectively to show that they really meant business. Helios also pounded hypno into the ground, but unbeknownst to him, hypno had snuck a base into Ravens old territory and re-established himself. Hypno then kept a low profile for the next 10 minutes before being re-discovered by helios who then finished the job. The hypno killing job.

Whilst all this was going on, gun3tar had been consolidating and managed to bring out dragon tanks. Gun3tar and Helios then traded waves for 20 minutes, and just as it seemed that we were heading for a stalemate Helios brought out 4 assault troop transports. Using these he annihilated Gun3tar's defence, and kicked his sorry ass out'o there. Game over, Helios the winn!.

Good rl friends, gun3tar took his defeat to helios well, leaving helios to be crowned RTS master and presented with a Saitek Programmer command unit.

FEAR Tourney

Despite several technical problems for some people, we eventually managed to roll FEAR out of the door for an intense (dare I say, "FEARsome"? Probably not...) deathmatch on the Facility level. Suited to shotguns and assault rifles, the leaders quickly distanced themselves from the rest of the pack. It was close, but eventually Hypno managed to pull ahead and hit the score limit. To him went the Medusa 5.1 Headset. I'm not sure how he was planning on carrying all his prizes home.

TrackMania Tourney

Well, what an intense battle this one was!

After some crazy close times, JeMZ' eventually took second place to Komodo. Many more details are here, courtesy of LyNX :)

As the winner, Komodo had the choice of the S-500 Headset or the Xbox360 control pad. Planning to further his victories in future TM:N tourneys, he chose the pad, meaning that JemZ took the S-500s home with him.

The Raffle...

Here at fragM we don't believe in people leaving our events without some sort of prize. Be it a top of the line set of Medusas or a box of pens, everyone gets something :)

Some of the highlights:

Dbreed and Method had the (mis?)fortune of being drawn first in the raffle. This netted them the stylish Speedlink tshirt, sweat band and baseball cap set. We then gave them the choice of dressing in the suave clothing we'd provided and possibly winning another prize, or staying as they were. Of course, they couldn't resist the tasty little red numbers:

Some prizes were loved:

Others, less so, despite the furriness:

But if anyone had any problems, the SPEEDLINK KR3W were always on hand to help out:

And to stick thousands of Speed Link stickers on unsuspecting monitors:

Final words

I just wanted to say thanks from the organisers to all of you for making this the best LAN yet. Without you guys, we'd just be a couple of blokes sitting around in a big hall with lots of tables. Keep up the amazing atmosphere and we'll make fragM #4 even more amazing than this one. Nice one everyone :)