FragM #02 14th - 16th December 2006

Friday

Setup and Arrival

Well...The day started with perfect lan weather - dull and rainy. No screenglare for us!

After a sleepless night filled with dreams of having a lan with no tables (odd and boring, I know), we rolled out of bed at about 9.30 and started loading up the multitude of cars. The important thing about transporting lan stuff is to do it safely; That's why we had Ian carrying his 21" CRT monitor on his lap and stuff piled so high that Flib couldn't see anything behind him. It adds a sense of danger to it all...

So, arrived at about 12ish and started moving out all the tables and setting up the network. This is the BEST part of the lan - carrying all the heavy tables and taping 50 network cables to chairs/switches.

By about 3 we were fully setup and got to sit down for a minute whilst waiting for people to arrive. We started to fill up by about 5.30ish and I fired up a couple of random games to pass the time until the first tourney. That was in between the whole Meet & Greet and showing people where they sit. It's a rock and roll lifestyle, being a lan organiser.

Games Master Meister Tourney

First up, the competition for the coveted Golden Joystick (and that secondary prize, the rocking: Everglide S-500 Headset. Obviously this doesn't compare to the Golden Joystick, but it's a nice bonus prize.

First up we had the knock-out Mario Kart 64 rounds. As golden an oldie as it is, MK64 is still uber fast paced (as some found out on the skyscraper leve...) and as hectic as uv when he can't find his 'hawk wax in the morning. This led onto the 4-way Goldeneye final where Dmack walked away with the game. This was to be the theme for the lan, as you'll see ;)

Pizza Time!

We took a break to order pizza. 25 13.5" Domino's pizzas, to be precise. Along with all the side orders this came to just £200 and a 40 minute phone call confirming the order with the manager of the store. Not bad for about £500 worth of stuff ;)

Wind down and random gaming...

Being the first night, we spent some time playing random games and getting to meet people. This included Lunch Money, propping up the bar and discovery of GIANT Jenga blocks.

h00x also showed uv that he r0x0rz at Sonic:

We ended the night with a poker session or two, where uv got two aces in his first ever hand...Damn him!

Saturday

Morning Sickness

This seemed to be a problem for most people and to be fair, I didn't exactly feel amazing at 10.30am when I rolled out of bed and grabbed a shower. We had to delay tourneys slightly whilst people woke up and started dosing themselves up on caffeine for the day. But hey, things got going eventually ;)

CSS Round Stage

Well the day started out with each team squaring off to each other team, and in line with the lan, Dmack's team #dfiance quickly showed themselves as seed #1 winning all their group matches. #Inspire.css was a close second, losing only to the team of the lan #dfiance. Still prop's to I<3CSS who won one of their matches and I still think Wacken, who lost all their matches should have left with the Crucial Memory Hoggz... or at least have them thrown at them.

Savage

The fight for half-price half-price (you heard it right) pizza was on. We had several warmup games so people could get to grips with the game and the giant funking Behemoths. The Humans seemed to hold the advantage for most of the games but this turned around in the final with the Beasts taking home the gold after a massive Behemoth rush. Reaching the crest of a hill to see 5 Behemoths stomping towards you was certainly an eye opener :o

So, the Beast team took home £3 large Domino's pizzas. Nice one, guys!

Bomberman Tourney

...I'm still waiting on details on the finalists as I had to deal with the pizza order during the final minutes.

From what I hear, though, the final match was incredibly intense with the deciding round ending in a draw. The rematch saw Inserity win through and take home the Crucial RAM. Lucky barst :)

The pizza guy likes Gears of War...

On ordering the pizzas on Saturday night, I received an unusual request from the manager of the store - he wanted to come and watch. Upon finding out that we had Gears of War he seeemed even more pro the idea and headed along to show us how it was done. I'm not sure who won but the game does look pretty awesome. I'm looking forward to the upcoming Unreal Engine based games even more now. (Can you say "Bioshock"?) First match he won me FT... then I came back and showed him how us FragM Organisers do it - h00x

Soldat

Well, this time we decided to NOT use the smallest possible map in the game for our giant FFA.

It was an intense match with eventually (you guessed it) Dmack pulling off a win (at least, he was closest after yours truly ran away with it) ;) Another prize (Razer Krait Gaming Mouse) to Dmack. The word "buckaroo" springs to mind...

Quake 3: Rocket Arena

An oldie but still an incredible frag-fest.

The game started off with Smile and JemZ ripping up the competition...and continued in the same vein until they took the gold. I think we need to get a bit more practice on this one...and have longer rounds...and break the fingers of JemZ and Smile ;)

Giant Poker Match

Sunday

CSS Final

Well it all came down to #dfiance amd Team #Inspire.css in the final of the CSS team tournament.

#dfiance won the coin toss and opted to play their map de_contra first. They started out as CT and dominated the game with the first half ending 13-2, after the team swap and restart it was over quickly with them winning the first 3 rounds.

The game then shifted to de_dust 2, Team #Inspire.css pick. One of Team #Inspire.css players had PC problems and had to drop out of the tournament; their replacement was Fireshot who went straight in and won the first round for them.

#dfiance quickly regrouped after losing the first few rounds and went straight on through the team swap to win the game and the tournament in a very overpowering way.

Their prize - £50 cash to winning team, 5x Icemat Qck Mouse Mats, 5x Icemat Mouse Cord Holders and 5x squeezey pigs.

Also due to pure...anger chaos Dbreed attacked his Dell XPS Laptop with his iCEMAT Sibera Headset. Only one may win this fight of pc hardware gaming goodness... Sadly it was the £50 headset and not the £2000 laptop. GG Dbreed. Dbreed, if you'd like the title "Monitor Smasher" then PM me - FT

Trackmania Nations

After a full weekend of intense competition, the Trackmania scores were frozen at 2pm on Sunday. The winner: JemZ'

First place went back and forth throughout the weekend with some surprise competition from Hypnogerm and others. Eventually though, nobody could quite match JemZ' and hence he took home the shiny Razer Pro Mouse

FEAR

We opted to have two large FFA games with the top 4 from each going to the final. It was close - especially around the 2nd-4th places but eventually JemZ' and Smile managed to pull through for 1st and 2nd place, respectively. JemZ' took home the Razer Pro Mousemat, which went nicely with his matching mouse won in the earlier TrackMania competition ;)

Prize Ceremony and Giant Raffle

At the end of the LAN we came to the [i]horrible[/i] realisation that we had too many prizes left over. So, what to do? Give them away of course...

Everyone got a ticket and everyone took something home...

There were tears of sadness....

and joy...

and at the end of the day everyone got something....

This was all commentated by your friendly hobo overlord FrenchTart due to everyone else not having got 8 hours sleep the night before...

And the rest, as they say, is history....

Another absolutely rocking lan under the belt. I hope you all had a great time and will be there for FragM #3 when we improve on things again in the only way we know how - MORE PIZZA!