Columns Purity 2004-now

From QuakeWorld Wiki

[edit] Introduction

The columns that Purity wrote for Smackdown from 2004 until this day are in this file, the earlier columns can be found in Columns Purity since wiki doesn't allow a file size large enough to contain all columns.

[edit] Columns

[edit] 2004

[edit] Day By Day

It has been ages, when I was sitting here for the last time, sitting back, thinking, evaluating, smoking, talking and writing about this game, a game to which some of us dedicated their whole or half their lives. Now I'm here once again, having some spare time, and doing the same as ever...

(This artical comes in two parts, note that it was too long for the database)

Many things have happened in the last eight months since the last update, that much that I won't talk about everything because or, everybody knows about it, or don't want to know about it, or will never know about it. This is probably the worst first alinea ever written in any sort of writing, what means that I can better start with that, which this is all about: QuakeWorld.


There wasn't much left of the season at the moment the last update went online. The playoffs were on the point to start and the division winners were all determined, seems. There weren't many surprises in the first round of the NQR playoffs. We saw cmf facing campbusters in those quarter finals. Few saw campbusters as favourites but of course everybody was cheering for haGGe to take some magic tricks out of his busted backpack. cMF was playing quite easy on Dm2 not having much trouble with Camp until hagge (who else) took over the map by himself and tried to make enough frags for his whole team to win. Too bad that he didn't had his day and Shiva was owning like always, resulting in a 25 frag win for cMF. The second map, cMF's choice, was quite entertaining though Campwas never able to gain a real control over the map and thus closing the gap or pulling of from cMFwasn't possible.

The second game was SR vs EGO-AQ who did a pretty well job in the group games and it looked like their teamplay was growing much stronger the longer the season lasted, though it wasn't very likely that they would stand a chance when playing Slackers. It turned out to be quite another story, AQcould give a proper fight on dm3 and lost with 55 frags. Dm2 was up, this, must have been the best Dm2 I've seen so far from AQ.Slackers had their usual fullstart keeping their name for the infamous SRLUCK. They took a good advantage of their fullstart and were leading with 125-10 after 10 minutes and everybody thought it the game was over and the scores would rise to something like 400 - -10 after 20 minutes. But then Lohjan Dag and Sandyman came in action, AQ took over and spawnfragged twice as fast as SR did and they equaled the game a mere five minutes later. Then God (or Sandymans internet-provider) realised that it wasn't supposed to be that way and sandy timed out. Just before that Diki killed two SR rl's at quad, almost killing goljat who was able to escape with one rock... He killed the timing Sandy (who had armor+rl) and SR took over and won the game. What can I say, SR luck strikes again?

Firing Squad met EarthQuake on their way to the half finals. It was supposed to be an easy game because eQ was mainly a cmt4/e2m2 clan during the season and not known for their outstanding skill on tb3 though they were very well able to win games on those (dm3 vs =X= too easy), which is quite hard if tb3 is only allowed in the playoffs.
FS wasn't able or simply didn't play with their best lineup (reppie, razor, blixem, Drejfus) as Imperator took Drejfus spot for the game. First map was e1m2 where it looked like only Xantom was able to do some harm to FS, the gap between the clans was 60 frags, I think we can conclude that eQplayed well. Second map was dm3 and it seemed that is was a formality that they played 20 minutes. FS was just doing their thing in a pretty relaxed pace while eQ wasn't able to break their ranks the whole game, FS winning 240-60.

The last game, and I thought this would be most interesting of the quarter finals in my last column, was Disorder - Clan-X. X was inactive and not doing well at all at the start of the season but it got way better in the end when the almighty Haj came back to help the guys out. They were able to field a star player team of Haj, Javve, Xerial and Phil (Casper/Vladde)]]. The other two active players in X were Ztorm and Angua, in this game, Angua played because Javve wasn't there. I don't want to say that Angua is a bad player at all but Javve just seems to be better, that's why I was quite disappointed by that, though Angua always was a good e1m2 player. Now e1m2 came up, DS' choice, as always. And I think X surprised friend and enemy by giving DS a very, very close game. Though in some way DS just couldn't lose e1m2. We saw them having overtime when playing Campbusters (but maybe they agreed on that to cheat the fragrank) and still won and now this game... Which DS took away with an impressive three frags. Second map was Dm2 and DS just played it out, very easy (259-37).

With that we have the four semi-finalists of this fifth edition of NQR, cMF, FS, SR and DS. Look at those clans and the others that competed, what else can I say than, boring? It was so obvious which clans would be there as the last four, just like in NQR4. Then, look back a little further when we had LA, SR, cMF, FS, HF, tVS, ToT and RE being the top 8 of Europe and HGC who was challenging all top clans on Dm2. It was a lot more exciting than it was now, in my humble opinion. But let's not whine all the time, about the semi's. Firing Squad was facing Slackers once again and I hope by now that everybody knows that FS always had the biggest trouble with SR and were never able to win of them and just like always 90% of the people were just hoping to see FS pulling off a good game vs them for once. Thus the other semi was cMF-DS and that was a good game even before it was played, two top teams, both seemed to be quite well in shape (DS had some weird results though, but maybe we can blame it on non-serious playing or something likewise).

SR-FS turned out to be just another SR-FS where FS wasn't able to make a fist to SR and they were able to take away the match with, for a semi-final, a lot of ease. Only on e1m2 FS was able to make it quite a close game but then Hib came in and made sure they they didn't play more than the minimum of three maps. Little to say actually, let's hope dat FS will get over their SR problem. But we'll see that later on.
Second game was way closer than this one. The first map was e1m2 where cMF had a long time of control. But after some while Nabbe probably thought: Hey I'm not going to lose from SHIVA! So he got his skills rolling and won the game 1on4. Ok of course he was only able to play that well because he has a great team that did good backup. Second map was dm3, it didn't look very special it was cMF just showing their routine of superb teamplay on dm3 outclassing DS here with 75 frags, but of course it wasn't as easy as it looked. Then Dm2 was to be played to complete tb3, DS was on the better side in this game and was able to take away the victory with some good playing. If you ask me Dm2 is still a map that can go either way with the good clans, this time DS had the better cards and took the map home with 80 frags. Then dm3 came up again where cMF did the same trick as before, played very well, timed pents, kept control and just fragged to a 200-63 victory. The decider, e1m2, both clans good on the map but still DS had the better odds of winning. The game was close, exciting, good to watch with nice actions and DS was able to win with 40 frags.

So the final brought us DS-SR. I don't want to tell much about it, everybody has probably seen it, everybody has probably heard the whine and personally I think that Disorder should have won but well nothing to do about it. Slackers is walking away with the victory again, this time with 6 frags on the deciding map in the final, with ping advantage, winning two maps while 1 of DS' players is lagging like hell (mrlame) and one sick DS player (riker) on the other three.


ClanBase was quite disappointing if you ask me. In the shadow of div1 the other divisions went inactive and too many playoff games weren't played. The division three playoffs were finished on QhLan (I'll have to talk about the lan itself a bit later), in the div2 only one was played while div1 was completed in the way it was supposed to be, only cMF-tVS was a WO in the first round.

Div three. We saw Zoo playing Fudoh2 in the quarter finals where Zoo made some tasty meat balls of Fudoh2 on e1m2 and Dm2 winning with large scores, T-Moe was really on a roll. Then on the second e1m2 fudoh2 was playing way stronger than before when Drugs-Bunny replaced Phanter. They won it with 10 frags. The fourth map, Dm2 again (dm3 avoiding?) was a piece of cake for Zoo going into the semi's of the div3 playoffs! (what an excitement)
The second game was between GoH and JRQ. The games were quite even but it turned out that JRQ had a more solid team and was able to take the series home 3-0 proceeding to the next round where they faced Billy's Burgers (a bit misplaced clan?).

The first half final was Zoo vs T. T didn't have trouble with Zoo on Dm2 and dm3 only on e1m2 Zoo was able to make it a fair fight but still lost with 12 frags. The match BB vs JRQ was ridiculous 3on3 and was easy for BB.
After that it took about two months before the final was played, Billy's Burgers was already dead by then and all their members had other clans (Billy was back in HGC, FlePser went to HP and so on) but during QHlan (where FlePser was too) the final got finally played. It was a true thrilling 5 map game out of which BB got victorious with a 5-10 frag win on the deciding dm3. Congrats BB on winning div3 of CB.

It's too bad that division two wasn't played, only BWL vs ZAK but that can't be recalled as the best game ever so I guess we just move on to the next division, division one.

In the first round cMF got a walkover on tVS, in the other quarter final game Disorder took out Campbusters. Semi-finals were cMF-FS and SR-DS. SR - DS was a quite easy game for SR, it looked like DS would rather have played with nabbe/riker/akke/slime, they didn't field that team once in this semi, only able to win e1m2 losing three other maps bringing SR to the finals.
In the other semi cMF got the better start on dm3 and totally owned FS on it. Then FS was able to take home the second map, Dm2 with 70 frags. It kind of looked like FS had lost their ammo then as they lost the following e1m2 and Dm2 with quite big numbers.

In the final cMF was able to close in a frag or 50-70 twice on dm3 but lost Dm2 with 100. Though they did a very good job on e1m2 where they took SR down too easy ;-)


Enough about last season let's see what happened in between!

[edit] QhLan 6

The most important thing was that QhLan took place once again and that it was a stunning succes, at least if you ask most gamers I think they will say that. We had the best 4on4 tournament ever on a lan, fielding clans like Lege Artis, Slackers, Firing Squad, Clan MalFunction, Tribe of Tjernobyl, X, The Divines, Griffins Tappra Gossar, EarthQuake, Campbusters, Fragomatic, The Axe Men and so on, almost every div1 team was there and a lot of top duelers made the trip too. It was great to see that many people attending and having such a strong playing field. There were eight people from Holland (of which five played), Pericles from Spain was there (Go Peri!! xD) and quite some finish top players (cMF, Xamp, Goljat and Gamer). I don't really know where to start on covering QhLan and if I should take it to the part of the socializing, the games or both. There where that many games in such a short time that it would take about ten pages to talk about all the games that have been played there, and then I'm only talking about the officials and haven't started on the other games.

Now about the LAN, it was quite hard to decide how to make the review of this lan but I'm just going to make it as good as possible with both personal and overall views of it. Wish me luck...


The competitions started with the 2on2 tournament and there were some surprises there. The biggest surprise to me was that two members of Assasins took out whole cMF in round two and three of the tournament but then got their ass kicked in round four (by sphere/inter). Though the fact that cMF lost of Daan and Callen was a sign for me that they weren't in a good shape, wasn't much impressed after the 2on2's but I was fully aware that they just had an exhausting trip from Finland. Though nothing really special happened I guess, we saw almost only teams that we expected there in the last stages like Dag/Space, Mrlame/Griffin, Gamer/Goljat, Sphere/Interceptor, Paradoks/Xamp, reppie/razor and so on. And as always it was Griffin&Mrlame vs Dag&Space. Like most of the other gamers I watched the final downstairs in the spec-room and Dag&Space were outclassed by Griffin&Mrlame with very small margins. The Dm6 ended 48-40 and the result of Dm4 was 48-41 so GTG had a hard time keeping them down though showed to be the better teams by winning them four maps in a row. Another game that has to be mentioned that was very close was the losers bracket final of Dag&Space vs Gamer&Goljat. G&G won Dm6 62-60 while Dag and Space took Dm2 44-37 and Dm4 59-56.


That must've been enough 2on2 for some time. The 1on1 tournament featured a lot of good duelers and some of the games were so close, this would've been one of the best 1on1 tournaments to watch in ages I guess.

In group 1 there weren't a lot of surprises. In the second round we saw reppie taking down xamp in two maps and fifi kicking out gamer 2-1. After that reppie lost 2-0 of Dag without having a chance of winning a map while fifi won sphere without too much trouble. In the group final dag won fifi 9-8 and 18-9 on Dm6. For the record, the best four players of each group were going to the playoffs, that makes Dag, Fifi, reppie and Sphere from this group.

The second group was a bit closer but I guess we had a little less top duelers in it. In the second round Mutilator won blixem 13-8 on Dm4 and 8-1 on Dm6. At the same time Seese was playing LocKtar: Dm4 11-15, Dm2 11-7 and Dm6 7-10 in favour of LocKtar. That while xterm was stunting versus Space winning the deciding map Dm2 2-0 and with that proceeding to the playoffs. We saw xterm rolling on while playing Goljat 18-8 on Dm6 and humiliating him on Dm2 5 - -1, the other game showed us muti vs LocKtar where LocKtar won Dm2 very close but didn't stand a chance on Dm4 and Dm6. Though xterm wasn't done yet with showing off his duel skills. In the group game final he won Dm4 of Mutilator with 11-6 then lost Dm2 8-2 but was able to win the deciding Dm6 with 9-5. We can say that it was quite surprising to see xterm taking down all the big gamers in this group, first starplayer sassa and after that space, goljat and mutilator. This brought Xterm, Mutilator, Goljat and LocKtar to the playoffs.

Group three, we saw razor, Inter, Janne and the oldskool ZetoR player Mazer here taking away the playoff spots. In the second round we saw razor winning his teammate Drejfus in two maps and Mazer won of Camp-nEpra in three Dm4's. Most surprising (to me) was Mazer giving such a close game to Janne in the round after while I only saw him playing again about two weeks before Qhlan after inactivity since NQR2 or something. In his game with Janne he lost Dm4 twice but quite close 14-7 and 10-6. Inter won his semi final of razor 2-1 and gave a WO to Janne in the final (I don't know why that was).

Finally the last group, there weren't many real surprises only some weird outcomes on maps. Griffin was playing in this group, and so was Fix who showed how good he can duel on Mindtrek lan last year, can't forget the other stars but they'll come in next lines. In the first round we saw Hamorai beating the famous Sandyman 17-15 on Dm4 and 10-4 on Dm6, the other first round games were not interesting as usual. Though one round later we saw haGGe playing Griffin and against all odds, he lost 2-0! Circle was playing Fix, I was watching the game and I was like: Circle is going to take down Fix so easy! But then fix came back very well on Dm2 and was able to win the map 8-6, on the second map Circle totally crushed him (50-8), then on Dm6 circle looked to be on the better hand but I guess he had some bad luck/spawns after which he couldn't come that close again, entertaining game. Nabbe won hamorai 21-18 on Dm4, Dm6 was easy. riker won his game is sqz without any problem. After that Nabbe-riker showdown, now give me one better game please? They played Dm4 twice and I can recommend the demo's, maybe not the best tactical/aim demo's but it was so close, riker showed he was really superior and won both the maps with ONE frag.
Griffin played Fix. On Dm4 fix took Griffin down 33-17 (??? !!), which was very impressive. But after that Griffin won Dm6 20-7 and Dm2 13-1, I didn't really understand how Griffin could play that Dm6 well while he played real bad Dm6's later, but I'll come to that in some alinea's more. After that Griffin didn't have too much problems with riker, this group: Griffin, Fix, riker and Nabbe to the playoffs.


In the first round of the playoffs FS two WO's were given, Griffin got a WO over sphere and inter one over LocKtar. Fix won riker 2-0 with Dm4 being close (19-16) while he won Dm6 with 20 frags difference. Janne took out Goljat on Dm2/Dm4 without too much trouble while mutilator kicked razor to the losers brackets with 2x Dm2. Fifi won of Mazer in two easy maps while nabbe stopped xterm's winning streak by taking him down 2-0; 20-2 on Dm6 and 11-9 on Dm4.
Of course there is one game left in the first round and everybody knows which game that is: dag - reppie. Dag already won of reppie in their group where we were shown that reppie had a lot of problems when facing Dag's ultimate CS style while he's as attacking as it can be. The game started with Dm6 which Dag won with 4-1. Then Dm4 was up, reppie was going crazy and won the map 20-6. Then the decider.... Dm2, it felt like the qhlan finals were being played at that moment, the end was so tense, reppie was able to take him down to 5-3 at last. Dag escaped sometimes with <10h leaving reppie dead or in need of health/armor.

After Dag lost he was whining about the fact that he met reppie in the first round while they met each other in the group, which was ridiculous indeed and I don't understand where it was good for, and he stopped playing 1on1, giving WO in the losers bracket.
About some other first round losers bracket games, riker got wo over sphere and it was mazer who wo'ed dag. In the meanwhile razor humiliated Goljat winning Dm6 33-11 and Dm4 36-9 taking his spot in the next round, the other game that was played was xterm vs locktar where xterm was on a roll again winning Dm6 45 - -5 (!) and taking Dm2 home with 10-2.

In the WB second round Griffin raped Fix on Dm4 with 36-0 (while he lost hopeless in their groupgame??) after that Fix won Dm6 with 26-0 (while he lost hopeless in their groupgame??) and damn the decider was close, didn't really get a good view of Griffin's superiority in the tournament yet as he won 4-3. Then Janne - Mutilator, I must say that it was a good game but Mutilator had some flaws in his game which was very sad, would've liked to see what would've happened then in later stages of the tourney. Janne won Dm4 9-7 and Dm2 4-1. reppie seemed on a natural high as he won Fifi without any problem (Dm4 30-12 and Dm6 20-4). Last second round game is the-interceptor playing nabbe, who won of xterm in the first round (which was quite good looking at his previous results). Though inter turned out to be one bridge too far as inter won 17-8 on Dm6 and 13-8 on Dm4.

Ah it takes so much space to review a double elimination 1on1 tournament, we're up to the lb round 2.5 where where fifi won riker 2-0 (easy Dm4, close Dm6). razor faced nabbe and crushed him on the first dm4, 50-19 but the second was as equal as it can be (with still having a difference in frags!): 23-22. Fix got a wo over mazer, who thought he didn't belong to be this far in the 1on1 playoffs because he got some wo's (of dag the round before). Then mutilator showed his strength by taking out xterm dm4 7-3 and Dm6 22 - -1 (his 45% lg lies fresh in my memory).

Half finals wb, Griffin meeting Janne, 2x dm4, 2x Griffin taking them home both not having loads of trouble. On the other hand reppie who met the interceptor seemed to have lost some of his magic power and crawled through the eye of the needle winning dm4 10-9 and Dm6 9-6. In the lb fifi took out razor 2-0 and mutilator raped fix, not just raped but really raped, maybe Fix was drunk but Muti won dm4 80 - -1 and Dm6 40 - -1.
In the next round of the losers brackets Janne met Fifi where Fifi turned out to be the better player winning 2-0 in quite winning Dm6/Dm2 with 6/7 frags. Mutilator met the Interceptor, both lost a close game a bit unfortunate in the winners bracket and this time Muttan lost at least as ridiculous of Inter, losing dm4 11-12 and Dm6 5-9, Inter making good use of tactical flaws.

We are coming closer to the finals with every word when reppie and Griffin play the winners bracket final where reppie won 20-14 and 39-13 (twice dm4), something that the many Swedish gamers attending to the lan did not like at all. In the losers brackets fifi lost dm4 of inter 34-14 but he bounced back on Dm6 taking it home 12-6 and after that winning the decider Dm2 6-4. After that it was Griffins turn to play Fifi. dm4 was 31-18 in favour of Griffin, Dm6 was 40-2 for Fifi and the deciding Dm2 20-0 for Griffin.

Then the final, because reppie won the winners bracket final he had to win one game (best of three) and Griffin two games to take the title home. The game started with dm4 which reppie won 29-13. After that reppie had the upper hand in the second dm4 but lost it 16-12 (some gay spawns? Don't exactly remember) and the first game decider was 21-7 for Griffin. I can't really say that this was played Griffin style. The games looked somewhat like reppie - Dag on dm4, Griffin wasn't playing as attacking as he normally does, though reppie did. Where I'm going, sometimes I still hear people (especially Swedes) saying that Griffin is the most attacking duel player there is. What I advise, and what most of you probably even seen yourselves, is watch this final. Then you can conclude Griffin ain't the most attacking player out there, in several occasions he was simply cs'ing what was most of the time being called 'playing smart' (so it's justified if Griffin does it and not if dag plays like that? Retards still exist).
Back to the game, I had some talks with reppie before the game and he was like 'If I lose the first best of three then it's over, because it will feel like he already won and I can't anymore', sorry if I quoted you wrong there rep, but I guess it was something like that and it turned out to be that way. In the second match Griffin won 11-2 and 14-5 on all dm4 games again, would have liked to see Dm6 and Dm2.
That was the 1on1 tournament again! Had some surprises, guess reppie surprised a lot of people (everybody I talked with before the tournament thought that he would be like koopa, big fuss and not coming far) by winning of both Dag and Griffin. Xterm won of some good and established players, Dag gave up and so on!


I'll come back with a small report of my view of the lan after I finished covering the tournaments, seems to be a bit easier. As most of you might have understood we got to the last, but not even close to leas, the 4on4 tournament. Let's try to give a quick overview over the the whole tournament not wasting too much time on useless information.
There were eight groups with 3 or 4 clans in them each, of all the groups the first clans went to the big playoffs and the second clan got a spot in the B-playoffs. The eight clans making the main playoffs (listed from winner group 1 - 8) were: FS, SR, =X=, GTG, cMF, Diva, LA and ToT. The clans going to the B playoffs (again listed in order): Campbusters, Axe.se, Hope, hips, ass, F0M, ToTb and eQ. As you see in the B-playoffs more div1 clans than other ones. To give some of the lineups which were very different than those in online playing: GTG with Griffin, mrlame, dakoth and ermac, cMF with fix/fifi/janne/siv, ToT with their (compared with who they field online these days) oldskool lineup of Slabby, Psycho Dad, White, and Oddjob who played very well and beat some top clans (which they wouldn't beat online with other people and different connections). Of course there was SR who had Xamp instead of Hib and LA for who Space played instead of their Striker who would've completed their most used (and best) lineup of dag/nabbe/riker/striker. There was Campbusters with the core Hagge, Eta-Beta and Broning, while Nepra was their fourth player. He tried to smash with keyboard as hard as possible everytime something went wrong, I think he was placing buttons back in somewhere during the third day...
Axe.se had Janozh, Final, Nikke and Xterm, Fom with Manu, Grisling, Offbreed and Molle, eQ fielded Jezaja, Bps, BOOSter, FireHoppir and Strife while there were two teams who were just formed for this occasion making the playoffs (we even sat next to each other): ToT B and a Dutch Hope like team. ToT B had Slime, Freddo, Seese and starplayer Sassa while Dutch Hope had FlePser, Springs, some newb named Purity and the oldskool owner Joint in the group games (really check the demo's this guy is the shit, he was a lot of fun to play with :-) ) and Mazer from ZR in playoffs.

That was more than enough useless information for now I guess, let's talk a bit about the games starting with the B-playoffs. In the first round the four div1 clans won, eQ, Fom, Campbusters and axe took their games home, all had problem with their enemys on dm3 but not much on the other maps. In the second round Fom won 2-0 of eQ winning dm3 with 25 and e1m2 with 100 frags. At the same time Axe Sweden kicked xAmpbusters to the losers brackets. In the first round LB ass won a close dm3 of hips. The other game was pretty funny because ToTb and hope were sitting right next to each other what gave some funny shouts over and back, ToTb winning that dm3 with about 100 frags. It seemed like ToTb grew into the tournament because in the next round they kicked out eQ with 200-90 on Dm2 while Campbusters won of ass.

The winners bracket final was a true thriller with Fom playing axe. It was insane how tight the game was, the first map Dm2. The last five minutes were so close clans not getting out of a five frag difference from another, in this time Fom had control of tele/water but died every time when attacking low-rl. At that point in the game that the game should be decided Fom took over ra-mh (with one minute left?) and was able to win 168-162. After that e1m2, Xterm got the first RL + MH while grisling got Q, Xterm went to quad with RL and got killed by gris who got his pack too. Though Axe had a 20 frag lead in the first 10 minutes and was able to build it out to 40 frags, but then, Fom took over, equaled, and kept it equal to the last seconds of the game when they won 195-191. Demos sure worth downloading for sure.

After ToTb kicked eQ out of the tournament they met Campbusterson dm3. Slime got to play better and better the longer the tournament lasted and it showed off again. At the end of the game sassa said: haha we win! On which Eta-Beta answered wisely: No, slime wins. In the losers bracket finals ToTb faced Axe.se on Dm2. Axe got the better start and had control of tele/water for most of the time but ToTb didn't have too much trouble with staying in touch with them, axe was leading 20-40 frags the whole game and ToTb was able to takeover with three minutes left though unfortunate enough not in control of low-rl/ra-mh so they weren't able to close the gap fast enough.

This gave us a B-playoffs final of Fom vs axe. This time axe won dm3 with a small 40 frags, Fom on e1m2 with only 20 and took the deciding Dm2 home with 90 frags making Fom NQR 4on4 B Champion, congratulations!



There we are, left with the 4on4 playoffs, most of the best teams of Europe, on LAN!
The clan that is the underdog in every tournament, who else than Slackers, met the legendary clan-X in the first round. Surprising everybody, SR WON 2-0! Who could've thought that (GG Goljat/Gamer)!

Second game fs-diva. First map was Dm2, both teams got one rl, diva taking low-rl/sec-ra and FS got high-rl and quad. Because diva's rl got killed by sg's FS was able to settle a bit control in the first minutes but diva didn't wait long with taking over, equaled the scores after 6 minutes and were in control for a very long time after that. It seemed to be game over for fs, they were able to keep the gap not too large for a long time but after 15 minutes the scores were 150- 90 for diva, with only three minutes left FS made the takeover having razor and Drejfus with rl's, scores being 160-105. With two minutes left it was 162-120 and it seemed like diva had won this map. One minute left, FS four rl's and diva slowspawning and hiding, 21 frags lead for diva ... thirty seconds left: diva 162 - FS 152. Seven seconds to go: 162-162, end game diva 162 - FS 165. Damn sick?
On e1m2 diva got a fullstart with Quad, RL and YA and were leading 45-15 after two minutes! Talking about fast fragging. They kept that lead for quite a long time but FS gained more frags along the game, reppie and blixem (go holland!) did a very good job and turned the map around. Diva wasn't outplayed totally and did pretty well keeping the scores close but reppie seemed to be the outclassing factor in the end as FS won 231-188.


cMF-ToT was up next, didn't have a very good impression of cMF yet while ToT did well with their 'old' lineup (slabby, oddjob, white, psycho_dad). On the dm3, Janne got pent, Fix RL and oddjob Quad but he was killed in a few seconds. The only one who got something was Slabby, he managed to get ra and lg but wasn't able to hold cMF away for a long time because they got the second quad and invaded RA with two rl's, White killed one of them and at that moment it was only Janne taking out the enemies while ToT was collection weapons. A few minutes later Oddjob got ra/rl but was killed by two enemies with rl/lg. With that cMF could settle the control, with second pent fifi controlled ya giving a full maplock. cMF was leading with 80 frags when everybody forgot about the third pent, so Psycho_Dad could take it without armor/weapon, Oddjob bored for him but he couldn't break the resistance at ra. Fifi tried to clear pent but was stopped by three ToT players, white ran away with it and cMF retreated to YA which Slabby cleaned with the next quad. ToT was 150 frags behind at that moment so the game was already played. Though they were able to make the scores look better during those last five minutes, making some easy frags. Game ended 216-101.

The next map was e1m2 and I'm writing another book already on those playoffs, way to go. Siv got rl/mh while ToT's Q was killed early by GL. cMF took YA control right away and was leading with 30 frags after five minutes not able to get a full lock with heavy pressure of ToT. ToT had two rl's walking around at any time it seemed but they couldn't take Q's and takeover ya/gl for longer periods. Even when Dad and Vit cleaned YA after 7-8 minutes there were too many enemies to gain control. After 9 minutes nobody had RL and the game was open with cMF leading with 40 frags. Fifi was the first one to get an rl without dying straight away with 10 minutes left, Psycho dad got the next one but wasn't able to attack quad with it, thus cMF still being in control of YA. From the 8 minute mark untill the end of the game ToT was in control of YA for about 90% of the time but they couldn't lock the map to catch cMF and lost the game with 60 frags.

The last but far from and least quarter final game: LA vs GTG. GTG with a way stronger lineup than their online team with mrlame, Griffin, ermac and dakoth, not only stronger than online because of mrlame being there but too because they had 13ms for a change instead mrlame's and Griffins lagging connections where they are used to. LA fielding Dag, Nabbe, riker and Space. On e1m2 Mrlame got rl/mh, Nabbe quad and Space ya/gl. All were killed in the first minute while Griffin took the second RL with which he settled the control for GTG. Control shifting from time to time after that while GTG stayed in the lead, 80-70 with 13 minutes to go, Griffin running quad. It was insane how fast Griffin (plus whole both teams) were fragging, Griffin having 50 frags after ten minutes and the scores were 120-90 GTG still leading while LA had ya control. A few minutes later GTG turned sides again and LA was found on MH, GTG on YA/Q and Griffin even cleaned that after 14 minutes.
Insane fragging was shown by Mrlame and Griffin running Quad after eachother, being stopped by LA from time to time. When one died the other took over in most of the cases. In the meanwhile LA was desperate (and succeeded sometimes) to get people with rl and armor, but were teased by ermac and dakoth constantly at ga/rl. GTG got A LOT of quads in the final part of the game but couldn't be as controlling as before, not having many rl's in team, nor did LA. GTG was in a 3- frag lead for a very long time and the game ended 217-185 with Griffin scoring 83 frags (rank 54) with Mrlame being second with 61 (16), talking about a team focussed and supporting two players ;-)

Second map was dm3 and as we know, this ain't Mrlame's best map. GTG Fullstarted deluxe with rl, pent and quad, LA got the first two LG's. But GTG's RL's were killed by riker (ra/lg) and Dag sneaked with the third RL to pent and took over RA. They held this control, had four players on 2nd pent and took it (score 70-30 at that point). Scores being 140-50 after ten minutes where Nabbe got pent and killed 2-3 enemy rl's at ya after pent ran out. Dag played a great game and showed his skills once again, seemed to own GTG by himself at some points. But then Mrlame got the two quads before pent and killed almost all LA rl's, leaving only Nabbe alive, but he died at pent facing both Mrlame and Griffin with amors and rl/lg. Thus Mrlame got pent and Griffin took RA control (scores 190-90). GTG's control seemed to be safe but LA took over again a few minutes later, not getting the tight grip on them like before, but they could make some frags. Mrlame still running quads, he did quite well, was just killed a bit too often to get LA under. LA won the map 231-121 Dag running away with 81 frags and an astonishing 91.3% effi, guess his backup was good :P


The deciding map, Dm2. riker got low-rl and sec-ra but was killed by Dakoth who got the other RL and quad. GTG got a 45-5 lead when Nabbe got Q and killed almost the whole other team. After the Q it was Mrlame/Griffin vs Dag/riker with RL's. Mrlame got quad while dag and riker could do nothing/little with their rl's. After seven minutes (78-36) LA took control and after 10 minutes the scores were 98-87 still GTG in the lead. After 11 minutes LA took the lead and were still in control. But after a great team effort of GTG they took over, LA probably not being aware enough, LA was leading with 20 frags and griffin got Q while ermac and dakoth saved tele. GTG was leading with ten frags after fifteen minutes, the game was still open for anything. Griffin did some quadruns and the others the hard work, with two minutes left GTG was leading with 60 frags, which ment losers brackets for LA. The game ended with a 216-149 score and Griffin with 80 frags.

This was probably the biggest surprise on the lan. I can only conclude two things from this game: Griffin and Mrlame are two of the best 4on4 players out there with 13ms and "Vi saknar dig Juan".


In the semi-finals FS faced SR. As we know FS always has the biggest trouble with SR and couldn't win any official confrontation between the clans.
On Dm2 SR fullstarted with Gamer getting low-rl/sec-ra and Paradoks taking high-rl/quad. They had a tight grip on ya/water/quad for 8 minutes, but then [fs] all got rl and killed every single SR player, taking over the the map, SR was leading with 75-18 after 8 minutes. After that FS started to frag fast and after twelve minutes they tied the game 83-83. Though with six minutes left SR made their strike back, drej being without rocks, reppie and blixem were on low health and razor was at low rl, Gamer took his chance, took Q and took over. It seemed to be a settled control, but reppie did very good rj'ing to tele-exit from bigroom, taking out two SR rl's, giving teamys the packs, saved tele and blixem got next quad. With three minutes left in the game FS was leading with 50 frags and they won 183-121.

Dm3, Goljat RL, reppie pent and blixem Quad. It looked like FS was going to settle control but Goljat carried his rl to sng and took ra control. Even though SR had ra control FS had more rl's and almost all the quads. FS was in the lead in those first minutes, it looked like the second pent would decide who would get control as FS took over RA just before it, the score was 50-38 at that point, when Xamp got pent with 5h no armor and no weapon, Goljat bored but left no rockets though gamer had 10, Xamp got to ra but reppie killed him when pent ran out. FS had ra control for the next 7 and a half minute, Drejfus got the 10min pent without weapon, then SR took ra over, until last pent, in the five minutes that were to decide the game the control of ra shifted every thirty seconds it seemed. Slackers gave great pressure on quad during the whole match and the game stayed inside 10-20 frags, though FS was able to keep the lead all the time, I think some of us remember this situation in the SD5 playoffs were FS lost their lead in the last minute on both Dm2 and dm3, this time it didn't happen, they could even increase their lead in the last few minutes and won it 164-135! I think this was another surprise because FS never won SR before, then on the other hand is SR not favorite for any match, so it shouldn't have been this surprising.


Then the other semi, GTG-cMF. Mrlame and Griffin showed some awesome skill in their last game when facing LA and everybody was watching to see if they could pull off another stunt like that.
e1m2, ermac got a late rl (nobody spawned it) and Janne took ya/quad. cMF was leading the whole game while GTG was pushing quad from mh/ga, they did pretty well but were not able to take over YA longer than a minute, mrlame just fragging on like always but not being able to make the difference, cMF won 260-165.

Dm3 Siv got first rl, Griffin got pent and mrlame quad. GTG got ra though couldn't run and take out cMF's rl's at YA. GTG was leading with four frags and ra/q control after five minutes when mrlame decided to take quad/ring with 200/200 rl instead of going for pent, thus jarrex got pent, took over RA and YA; a minute later GTG was without rl's, game tied. Halfway the game cMF was leading with 42 frags when Griffin came from YA with rl/lg, took pent/quad and cleared ra. The problem was that cMF was able to keep three weapons in their team and got ra back again 2.5 minutes after pent but couldn't settle it under their control as ermac did the job for gtg. cMF had increased their lead to 63 frags after 15 minutes, mrlame got pent, quad and rl but Fix was at ra-top with eyes and killed him. Control went from side to side in the end, 188-125.


I didn't spend a single word on the losers-brackets yet where one map decides who wins the game. In the first round LB games DIVA won of =X= on Dm2 with about 100 frags. The other game was LA-ToT. LA got fullstart control deluxe on dm3 and were leading 70-7 when ToT took over with second pent and after 10 minutes ToT was still in RA control, they got the third pent scores LA 90 ToT 75. ToT closed in to 10 frags but then riker took over RA when Slabby and White were shouting at each other. Three minutes later Oddjob took the last pent, brought it to ra, got RA/RL but then faced two LA lg's and it was game over, LA won with almost 100 frags.

In the second round LB's LA met SR on dm3. SR got RL, Pent and LG and LA got Quad. It looked like SR luck owned it again but Dag and riker took out all SR rl's with their shaft's. Dag was unlucky killing Xamp at second quad without getting his rl nor the quad which champ got half a second before he died. After five minutes the scores 37-28 for LA and Dag got pent with GL. Things were looking bright for LA at this point in the game. They had three rl's, pent and SR had no weapons, but then the tables turned (SR LUCK?). Champ killed nabbe at YA he got killed right after, then Paradoks spawned Nabbe's pack, killed both riker and Space and ran away with 11h, gg, la was leading with 20 frags at this point. Dag took over RA with a Q-run a few minutes later but when he tried to clean YA he was a bit unlucky that all SR rocks full hitted him (oh sorry, that is of course skill only). SR was leading after nine minutes in the game and got the third pent too, SR was just cruising because LA couldn't get frags, finally LA got Q/RL, got killed by a grenade in the back. After 15 minutes SR was leading with 35 frags Xamp had Quad and SR had ya under control, Dag was waiting at lifts, then Xamp came up and killed Dag with a few cells in the last second that his Quad lasted. Paradoks took the pent and SR didn't face much resistance in the last five minutes, oh well LA took out all SR rl's when riker gave away his pack to Goljat who got RA and settled SR control. SR won 198-130.

The other game here was GTG vs Diva. Everybody wondered how good GTG would be able to do after winning LA and losing cMF. Diva threw out e1m2 and GTG discarded dm3 leaving Dm2 to play. Mrlame got low-rl+sec-ra, Dakoth got high-rl+tele-ya and circle ran away with Quad, though he couldn't run very far as Dakoth killed him. GTG used their start well and were leading 52-6 after three minutes. Halfway the game Diva placed their takeover, GTG was leading with 60 frags at this point. Diva closed in and were about to take the lead when gtg kept fragging, two minutes long the game was inside three frags and all the time gtg was leading. In the last two minutes of the game GTG did what they had to with some good Q-runs from Griffin, taking home the game with 149-131.

It was time for one of the last games in the tournament, GTG-SR, only four clans were left at this stage, those two in the LB and cMF and FS in the WB. Paradoks got low rl and RA while ermac took quad, high-rl (with Q-trick) and killed Para making the start pretty well. After seven minutes SR took over (score 70-25) and five minutes later they equaled the scores 90-90, and increased theirs constantly. GTG's score was still stuck at 90 after 16 minutes while SR (xamp) were (was) just fragging along and they won 206-129.

The winners bracket final brought us the game cMF-FS, FS surprised everybody by taking out SR against who they normally don't stand a chance while cMF won GTG in the semis who caused another upset by taking out LA.
The game started with Dm2 where Silver got low-rl and with that sec-ra and quad because nobody went through tele, about five people were trying to do a quadhop. But razor went through finally, got ya/rl and let silver kill his rl. After that cMF was in a good position, got 3-4 rl's with at that point reppie and blixem putting pressure on them.
After four minutes FS took the control while they were about 25 frags behind and tied the game after eight minutes. Then when ten minutes of the map had been played FS was without rl's and cMF got four, locking the map (including low -rl for a short time). With five minutes left it looked like FS would gain control (they were 40 frags behind), short after drej almost bored his quad, the minute after reppie took quad, had three rl's in their team, only reppie without one; he died when entering low-rl. Next minute reppie did have rl and shot his way into ra-mh. One minute left 154-138 in favour of cMF when drej and raz died at low, cMF four rl's FS two. reppie killed Siv giving razor rl. Thirty seconds left, cMF 156-145 FS. razor quad, goes to path, meets Janne with rl and decides to go via big, eats some rockets from low goes back to plats and eats a rock again then dies by Fix rocket. cMF took a close game home 159-148.

Dm3, razor spawned lift, sg'ed fifi, who spawned ya, in-air and snatched pent. Silver got the first rl and drej ran away with ring/quad/ra. Silved died by blixem's ssg at ya right away. Things are looking good for FS as they have the only two weapons in the game, razor with rl and reppie with lg, reppie is being sg'ed to death and razor can't get quad, Janne steals it and razor bored at ra-low. But then when two minutes were passed by, FS has three rl's at the ra side of the map with reppie taking quad. Almost all the players were at second pent, reppie was able to take it and got Drejfus to bore for him when he tried to safe ya in which he didn't succeed. At that point it was blixm holding ra and running quads while the others tried to get and hold a weapon and armor at the same time. At half-time FS was leading with 57 frags, FS got two rl's, blixem at ra and razor at ya, cMF had one, fifi at lifst, fifi bored at rep and rep spawned the pack but was unfortunate because razor got pent and killed both him and an enemy. At that point things turned around, blixm died because fifi could steal a rl, cMF got quad and FS was without weapons when reppie got killed at sng.

With seven minutes to go FS was leading with fifty frags while cMF got a total maplock. At last pent Janne was keeping lifts, reppie jumped out of window with mh/rl, JX mid-aired him, hit him at the ground again and took pent. The lead of FS decreased to 28 frags at this point so they really needed that pent to get back in the game. cMF got the lead with three minutes left, were running quad and had both ra and ya safe. FS got some weapons in those last minutes but couldn't do enough to take ra or quad, cMF took it away with 172-153 with blixem having the best efficiency (he was doing ra for like 10 minutes).


That gave us th final of cMF vs SR where they played dm3 as first map. Goljat got the first RL, Fix delayed and took pent while Silver got quad. Fix killed Goljat's rl with some help of his team entered ra but was surprised there by a 50% LG of Xamp who had ra/mh/lg. Paradoks got the third rl. Things were looking good for SR, Paradoks with rl/ra, Xamp ra/lg and Goljat ya/lg but then four cMF players went for quad where only paradoks was of SR, fix got it, Q ssg'ed Goljat at ya, took his RL pack and cleared RA. That was the start of the Fix show. It was like the inhuman skills he pulled off on Mindtrek were back for this game, the fast paced game, almost looking to be too nervous (not being able to stand still) playing style and good aim showed off. cMF was in control of the map, Fix running quads raking up the frags. He only died once due to Xamp's shaft until the game was halfway where he died at window while Fifi got pent. cMFwas leading with 66 frags at the time. When there were only five minutes to go cMFwas leading 172-55. Fix got the last pent, it was rather weird as he was standing on paradoks and fifi's heads when he got it, anyway fifi bored for him and they just went fragging on.
The last minute was funny, cMFdecided to enjoy the sauna at pent, when Goljat joined them until Xamp came in with Q/LG, first he was looking around to see what to do, then shooting three cMF'ers with something like 4 cells, final score 219-83.

Second map was e1m2, Paradoks got RL and MH, Goljat Quad but was killed and Janne took YA and with that the second RL, killing Paradoks at YA and taking the next quad. cMF got the early YA control with that. After five minutes the score was 63-32 and cMF was still in control of YA, SR was putting pressure on them, especially on quad but they couldn't get there yet. Though a minute later Goljat got a YA killed a cMFrl at start and took the next RL that spawned. Though in the minutes after neither of the teams could either decrease cMF's lead of increase it. cMF was leading 30-50 frags the whole game and it ended like that, 200-153 for cMF. Taking away the QhLan6 4ON4 tournament.
I really looked forward to this tournament, for months actually, and I can't say it let me down. Might've been nice to see LA with Striker and SR with Hib, but the competition wasn't any worse without them. Really great games were played there.


Now I'll go and tell some of my own experiences of the LAN. I agreed with FlePser and Springs to go QHlan, which was rather extraordinary because how nerdish are you to go and drive from The Netherlands to Sweden to visit a QW lan. I surprised myself here and we actually did it. The plan was to drive to Kopenhagen the first day to visit the city, going out there and sleeping well for the last time before the hard grounds of the lan. Things turned out a bit different.

First FlePser and Springs were delayed a bit, then I crashed our car (just the way it should be) and we got a way bigger car, in which we could even sleep, some hours later and that while I only had to pay 136 euro, now how much better does it get. That meant we finally left at 18:00 the day before the doors would open with a trip of 1200 km in front of us.
The trip itself was rather well, the worst thing was that it was snowing all time in Germany, the only country where we could've driven faster than 120km/h. It was rather funny that was drove the wrong way, we were planning and driving into Denmark from Germany and then taking the bridge from Kopenhagen to Sweden, when we thought we should have entered Denmark already we suddenly drove into a place where a ferry went from Germany to Denmark. In the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, three Dutch guys in t-shirt were looking at a map where they were, walked back and stood in the line between the cars to pay their tickets. Oh my ^_^
The boat turned out to be rather luxe, there was even restauration where we bought some food and we thought Paradoks brother was behind working there aswel because he looked a lot like him, msg me if it was really him Paradoks, he said he never heard of someone called Paradoks tough so I fear the worst.

We drove on to Kopenhagen and went over the bridge. Just when we thought we entered Sweden safely some people with fluoresce yellow shirts jumped on the road and stopped us, we were caught by the douane!
We had to unpack the entire car and while they were looking what kind of boxers we brought with us, we were lead away to some other rooms where we got stripped. Springs and FlePser had to go first, I think they had something with underwear because they had to undress until they only were wearing that. I was rather lucky I suppose, wearing my boxer over my pants so I didn't have to drop them. It was alright, only fucked up that we had to pack the whole car again, they could've at least done thát in return for us stripping in front of them.
Anyway enough crazy things! We just drove on from then through the badlands of Sweden in the darkest hours of the night. I think we saw Stockholm at 8 in the morning, I got the last nightly driving turn and wasn't able to sleep in the car (my god I spoiled myself in the past years) so I was pretty bad already when we found the Galaxen halls. We knocked sometimes on the front door but nobody heard us, walked some rounds around the building, threw some snowballs, I smoked some cigarettes while trying to stay awake and then we decided to go and drink something in the very nice coffeeshop (unfortunate enough not a Dutch one) where we woke up a bit. An hour or maybe a small two hours later we got inside.

When we arrived we thought we would be the first to be there, expect for the crew of course. Though it turned out that razor, reppie, blixem, Rappie, Cure, SideFX and Pericles already arrived there a few days earlier. Oh, of course I can't forget another one that was there already: LINK. So with us being there all non-Finnish foreigners arrived. I must say, I haven't followed all the tournaments too well as I was more socializing, smoking and having fun than playing QW, I think I played two maps in the first two days.

It really was great to meet a lot of the people you are normally talking with or playing against, I think I've missed many though because I didn't get to talk with everybody who I wanted to talk with at all. That was quite a shame, so next year please make QhLan7 seven days long! Thanks already :p
About the lan itself, I must say, if you ask me the organisation was done very well, of course there were flaws and most of them were the same as those in earlier events, but I know that those will be helped out of the world, sooner or later.

The venue was nice, there were enough eating places inside 100 metres and you could buy some food and drinks on the lan itself. I remember White said he wouldn't come if he had to sit on the places near the toilets but I think those were the best because it wasn't very noisy there, you had more space and especially it wasn't as hot as inside the big room.
About the people, one of the first things was that I thought that Pericles looks like Raúl, yes the soccer player, and I even heard more people thinking that, despite his somewhat clumsy english he was understandable and a very nice person. I sat next to Manu (from Fom) in the hall at first, well didn't really because I was never playing but my pc was parked there, when I found out that Link and Sandyman's screaming was too loud to handle so when the 4on4 tourney started, or actually before it, I moved my pc to the toilets where all the ToT guys were sitting, just like Springs and FlePser. The ToT guys were a story apart like they always have been, but nevertheless as fun as always. Of course there was Slabby who screamed even louder than Link and Sandyman together and then of course the replies of White, Oddjob and Psycho_dad which was good to watch :-)

Can't forget Sassa of whom I always had somewhat of a distorted view because of his stupid commentary on games (you know, sixth map in NQR finals and Secret RL on Dm2) but when meeting him on lan he turned out to be great, always fun when doing things with him.
We had the LA guys he missed Striker for sure, we had Hellfire who didn't team together, there were the SR guys of which only the headadmin of QW Paradoks himself could speak english, and he did a good job on that I must say.
Besides those there was an Iranian invasion with players like Xerial, Past, Vortex and of course our own Springs (there were way more btw). We saw mrlame laming around like he should, griffin with his clean cfg, fov 90 r_drawviewmodel 1, reppie surprising most swedes with winning of Dag playing with some crap 15” monitor. Drejfus who had the best computer ever, with a virus, it took two or three hours to get a clean install which delayed the 4on4 tourney for ages, but it was np!

I forgot loads of people, we couldn't have missed Panic who brought entertainment here and there and Hagge who sat behind his pc with a grumpy face all lan, Nepra who tried to break his keyboard in two because camp lost all their 4on4 games, raket who tried to find some ping whine but that turned out to be rather hard and I can't forget our dear 4on4 teammates Mazer and Joint. You guys probably think who the **** is Joint, well Joint guys, didn't play qw for 5 years, played with SM in the old days and had the biggest trouble finding his way on the maps, but he was a great guy, we lot's of laughs with him :-)

Anyway, let's move on a bit. I can't exactly remember when the 2on2 tournament was played I only remember that I was sleeping during both the 2on2 and 1on1 sign-ups. But I think 2on2 was the first day and 1on1 the second.
One of the best things was that we went to Stockholm. I agreed with the guys from ToT (Slabby, Psycho_Dad, Oddjob and White) to go out on the first night, after that some guys of f0m and diva said they would come too and Sassa agreed with the IRAN owners that they would go with him. Though instead of 30 people only 8 went, but it wasn't less fun :-)
We were there with Sassa, Springs, FlePser, Pericles, Rappie and SideFX and drove with two cars to Stockholm. I haven't got a clue anymore how why came where but I believe we were just walking around a bit and went into a random club to drink beer ^_^ which is always good of course. I heard later that it was a club for people who live in Stockholm and speak at least two languages fluent, anyone except Swedish. You understand, it was a high-class place. It was very good to be there at least, finally a couch, beer, cigarettes, friends and women, what else can a man wish. Talking about cigarettes remember us getting them Sassa? Sorry just a personal note here, was a funny moment there :-))

I haven't got a clue what I've done the second day, I think I was just at the lan sleeping through the 1on1 signups, talking with people and smoking with ToT and reppie outside, almost like another day on irc but then facing one another. Can't say it was bad though, the third day was almost the same, next time I'll go a week or two to Sweden to go out more and see if there are good clubs and women, sounds like a plan to me.

In the last night after the 4on4's I went to hang some in the spectator room where we watched some demo's with Drejfus, Mutilator, blixem and Sassa commenting live. I must say that was the best commenting I ever heard of Sassa, it was great, I laughed my ass off for ages while we were watching how Griffin was playing Lege Artis duel style owning them on e1m2 and Dm2.
In the end it was time to pack the car and drive home again but we were all so tired, I socialized all lan, FlePser became the King of QhLan6 because he didn't play for about 10 hours (sleep) on the entire lan and Springs was somewhere in between. Because of that we decided to take Sassa home and slept at his place as returning favour and man we needed that sleep. After the lan FlePser stayed a day of four with me to have a QHlan afterparty and that wasn't bad either.

At least I can look back at a good time of winter fun and I hope everybody feels the same.



Once again the update of my column took way too long, maybe I should push myself on making one every one or two months that would be so much better than this, there are loads of tournaments played in since I updated for the last time in the end of november last year. I think that I will not talk about every tournament as much as about another because the update will be a page or fifty then and nobody will read it, except for the few maniacs that really love the game and have too much time.

Let's start with the usual things. Akke, slime and dag decided to put up a ladder because Link's project Team/Up is delayed for ages due to an incompetent designer. The activity was huge and there were quite some nice games played until aKKe said 'Quakeworld is dead.' and killed the league.

Then there were two national leagues, TTDML as a follower of the famous UKCL and GeQL, going in the footsteps of DECL.

After the first week of TTDML, two of the div1 UK clans went inactive, numeric and gauntlet, they were replaced by Dutch hope and the german clan Porn. The league was played on one UK map per match, the mappool was: ukclDm2, e2m7, ukcldm6, punish, ukpak2, e2m2 and in the 4v4v4v4 final qffldm2. Turned out that porn was rather inactive and didn't win a game, Dutch hope on the other hand did a rather good job beating porn twice, winning 4k on ukpak2 which was unexpected and lost of them on e2m7 because Serox owned. JAMS put them back in their place on ukcldm6 but then hope struck back on e2m2 taking control from start and raking up the frags, especially murdoc.

In the other games 4k didn't have much trouble with their opponents, got two wo's from porn, took down jams on ukcldm2 and had a very nice game vs jams on punish which they only won with 35 frags. When the final arrived 4k was leading with 16 points, jams with 12, hope with 11 and porn with a rather disappointing 3 points.
It looked like 4k had already won the league because the last team in the 4v4v4v4 final would still receive one point. The final turned out to be a very close ffa game, hope won with 304 frags followed by jams with 276 and with a single frag less 4k in third, porn was last once again with 275.

After the game the admins were very generous towards hope and let them play porn on ukcldm2, if they'd win the game they would have 18 points, just like 4k, and in case winning with more than 102 frags they would be champions on frag stats. Hope took the map home 265-39 which was enough to win the tournament what can be called surprising.

In div2 we saw fips, ts, dh and a2k fighting for a good ranking. It turned out that fips totally dominated the season took home the maximal 22 points. They didn't have trouble in any game except for one, when they were facing the rtcw clan of crit who almost won them on e2m7.
Tortured Soles and DH were in a great battle for the second spot, their game on ukcldm6 was only won on four frags by DH but TS won e2m2 pretty easy. When the final was coming up both clans had 12 points so the final would decide who would get the second place. The final turned out to be a bit different than expected, fips won, that wasn't the unexpected part. Though, a2k became second, TS took the third spot and DH was last with only three people playing, giving TS the second spot in div2 with 14 points, DH got 13 and a2k ended with 8.


The other tournament was GeQL which was rather great. We saw three legendary German clans coming back, SK, iBh and TDI. The form was a ladder with fourteen clans. iBh dominated the league winning all their games 2-0 with 9719 frags for and 2767 against. The 'final' of the league was iBh-TDI, iBh with reppie, ayv, 123 and mae and TDI with blixem, darkwarrior, raptor, uig (on Dm6) and duce (on Dm2). The Dm6 was very close with iBh taking a small lead from the start while TDI was fighting very well during the whole game keeping the scores close while iBh had the upper hand, scores iBh 370 - 350 TDI. Then on Dm2, TDI's choice, Dark spawned water, went through tele which an iBh player opened, took high-rl, quad and killed the low-rl spawned iBh player who just came out of secret ra giving TDI control. After about ten minutes Maestro from iBh took Quad and made a takeover, from that point the game became really tense with iBh coming out as the winner with 179-158 not losing a single map during the whole tournament.

Many other things were played, like International Bot Challenge where we could enjoy the LG skill vs a frogbot from people all over the world. It was refreshing, the interceptor won, thumpa from the us was second and react from austalia became third. You can find three south american, one south american and two north american people in the top ten, shows the world wide aspect of the tournament, good to see the skill of some players from outside europe if you ask me.

In the American 1on1 tournament that was held by the qw.nu crew was that exactly the same thing. Quite some of those games were very exciting and really good. We saw some top duelers like Def, KovaaK, fiend and yogic enter the tournament. For me the highlights here were the games kovaak-yogic, kovaak-fiend and fiend-def. High class qw was shown in more than one game, definatly worth checking out demo's from. Can't forget, Def won the tournament winning fiend in the final, while kovaak/squeeze were the semi-final losers. Quite some people would've liked to see kovaak in the final instead of fiend because of his great Dm6 play but he couldn't get past yogic in the semi's, won Dm6 9-6, lost Aerowalk 12-14 and dm4 7-15.

[edit] Survival (second part of Day by day)

Date: 11/07/2004

We saw <a href="http://www.quakeworld.ru/" target="_blank">qw.ru</a> organising a 1on1 tournament with eight players, all from another country, with reppie, avenger and arnette taking the three highest spots. Arnette won Avenger 3-1 after which he met reppie in the final and actually won him there 3-2, reppie was lagging but didn't feel like playing on another day. About a week later the Grand Final was played and that time reppie didn't lag and took the tournament home, arn won dm4 18-6 after which rep won aerowalk (31-5), dm6 (25-2) and ztndm3 (15-9).
The idea behind this is nice and the <a href="http://doom3r.qhlan.org/2on2/2on2.html" target="_blank">2on2</a> tournament which is running at the moment with top teams like griffin/mrlame and goljat/gamer in it.

There were some smaller tournaments held in the meanwhile, one of the more entertaining and in the picture ones was <a href="http://www.quakeworld.nu/index.php?page=news&id=429" target="_blank">Povdmm4</a> where some of the finest pov players fought for the title. UL, Xamp and Inter we invited while others tried to take the fourth spot in the main event. The last four in the qualifying rounds were Dag, Xerial, Vladde and Mirage. After Dag won of Mirage and Xerial showed off when playing Vladde Xerial (surprisingly?) took out Dag and claimed the last spot in the tourney.
There it turned out that Xamp had an off-day (or should we say he couldn't cope with the level of playing? Who knows) and didn't win a single map. Xerial was surprising though, he won Xamp (like they all did), had very close games with Inter (he lost with 1 and 2 frags) and even won a map of UL. The best games were UL-Inter where UL won 2-1 every map decided on a single frag, it definatly is something to be repeated with more competitors, I expected the second part of this tournament quite some time ago but nothing has been mentioned about it yet, arrange that please :-)

Have to mention here that there has been an <a href="http://www.the-endif.tk/" target="_blank">endif tournament</a>. The idea was nice but the groups were pretty weird divided. In bracket A we saw Camel winning 2-1 of Xantom in the final while in bracket B UL took out Molle 2-0 in one semi while Inter won Arnette 2-0 in the other. After that UL took Inter out 2-0 kicking him out of the tournament. In Bracket C Kzuu won the final 2-0 of Fausto giving a final of UL, Kzuu and Fausto. The final wasn't very hard for UL, he won both his games 3-0, Camel and kzuu didn't even play their game.

Not to forget, a dm2 duel tournament took place with some big names like Kippo (!), Shiva, Billy and UL. After some good dm2 action UL won the tournament. The same crew organised a dm2dmm4 tournament (where Insane showed his insane skills) and a <a href="http://www.students.tut.fi/~leppan36/bracket.html" target="_blank">dm2 2on2 tourney</a> which is still running at the moment but heavily delayed due to summer. In the 2on2 tournament we see loads of good teams.

In the Second round Paradoks and Xamp were surprised by Diki and T-Moe (Matinkylän MILTON and Lohjan DAG) who beat them 2-0, though they couldn't keep it up when they lost the round after of Xantom and Booster. ToT (Psycho_Dad and Oddjob) and FS (reppie and Razor) made their quarter finals in their part of the brackets but FS got a WO, loads of WO's were given because of the inactivity, which is pretty sad. After that we saw HGC (Insane and Billy) taking a WO on Sandyman and Havz and another one on FS what earned them a spot in the winners bracket final. Before those two WO's they won their games of Hagge & Zhin and XN & Slam.
In the other half of the winners bracket Shiva and Fifi won of Slash/Mja, Griffin/Slugfest, Masai/Boome and Nikke/Xalibur before entering the WB semi's. Nikke and Xalibur were looking good before facing those two by giving Stalin & Pusling and Cougar & Harvester a ticket for the losers brackets.

Xantom and Booster were having a fine tournament, they won of Mazer & Hixo and Diki & T-Moe who took out Paradoks and Xamp. Their opponents in the next round were Gamer and Goljat. They played their games with Apokalypze/Dakoth and Mega/Zarrow, after those games Xantom/Booster were the next victims of this duo.
This leaves two games in the winners brackets, Game and Goljat vs Shiva and Fifi and after that the winner vs Insane and Billy, both should be high class games. In the losers brackets we've got Xantom/Booster, Cougar/Harvester, Nikke/Xalibur, Milamber/Orion (who came the whole way in the LB, losing their first game of Gaara/Bastard), Oddjob/Psycho_Dad, XN/Slam and reppie/Razor left. Still ten games have to be played here before the winner of the LB is decided. Let's hope every game will be played and that no WO's will be given.

The Trickery crew that organises TTDML is running a <a href="http://tdc.daddied.com/" target="_blank">duel tournament</a> too with dm2, dm4 and dm6 as only maps allowed. Some good duelers attended like LocKtar, Xalibur and Oddjob. LocKtar didn't have much problems in his games. Only Predsr gave him a hard time (with 20ms better ping though), dm2 was rather easy but dm4 ended 16-15 in favour of Predsr and dm6 12-11 for LocKtar. Oddjob was doing well by taking out Xalibur 2-0, 14-4 on dm6 and 13-9 and dm2, but then lost to Ender in the semi's 2-1. On dm2 Oddjob didn't lag yet and he won 16-3, on the later maps he got some nasty PL which might have cost him the win, dm4 21-17 and dm6 18-12. The WB final was LocKtar-Ender, LocKtar won dm2 22-12 and dm6 22-13.

In the meanwhile uiG was storming through the losers brackets, after he lost of LocKtar in round two, where he beat oosi, canius, snake, sae and grind to put himself in the last four of the tournament. Just like uiG, Xalibur lost in the second round (of Oddjod). He met Gaz in his first LB game who didn't give him too much trouble. His next opponent turned out to be Predsr who lost his deciding map of LocKtar with one frag. Predsr once again got some nice ping advantage (maybe the admins favoured English servers whenever an English player was on because the league is English, or the other players are just fine with a worse ping) won dm4 14-10 but couldn't keep up with Xalibur on dm2 and dm6, losing respectively 8-5 and 13-8. Xalibur was going on with winning Unicorn and he got a rematch vs Oddjob, who was lagging once again and won dm6 pretty easy 28-9. Even though Oddjob had this lag he could put up a great fight on dm2 which went in double overtime after which Xalibur could secure his victory.

This meant that the last game before the LB final was played between two guys who came all the way from round 2 in the LB. uiG-Xalibur, the game started with dm4 where uiG was able to play some impressive quake and won 14-10 but Xalibur didn't let him bother that and cruised to the LB finals when he won dm6 18-7 and dm2 20-7. Now in the LB final Xalibur had to play Ender, the game wasn't as close as you might expect when there are only three players left in a tournament but Xalibur was able to win 18-5 and 21-2 on dm6/dm4.
The final Xalibur vs LocKtar is still to be played, go and watch it when the Trickery crew puts up some cams, it should be a nice showdown between two good duelers.



It looks like I really have to start with the part I'm looking up to most of all, <a href="http://www.nqr.nu/" target="_blank">NQR</a>. Once again I should have done a mid-season update but it didn't come to it. I hope I am able to write some about everything. I promise you guys, next season I will write more often and especially when the playoffs are going on (at least if Smakdown will be on track again!).

Working from bottom to top seems to be the best way once again, here comes in division five!
When the season just got underway Veni Vidi Vici and Batida Swing, from Holland and Belgium, were looking very strong, by winning all their games they were the two biggest candidates to win the division. When they had to play BS wasn't able to field their whole first team but VVV played very well. Dm2 was a prey for BS after which VVV won cmt4 and e1m2 with solid teamplay. About halfway the season BS became pretty inactive and wasn't able to play all their games, their best player, Crusader (ex-4k Tryso) only played one match in the whole season.

Later on Oblivion went active after some years of inactivity, yes Oblivion, the clan with e3m2 as homemap, the one where Dreejfus used to play. They were playing very well in the groupgames and were able to win the division, only losing of VVV and BS. They had one point more than VVV who lost of Danube and Boeg. The game vs Boeg was rather weird, all players had ping 40+ only Stax of Boeg had 26. Boeg won e2m2tdm with 6 frags (174-168), with Stax making 60 and dm3 150-123 with Stax scoring 55.

Going on two division four. We saw quite some former division seven teams here, Assasins, FIPS and POFF. Assisins showed last season that division seven wasn't the right division for them at all and they proved themselves worthy in division four. Though the top squad here was Jihad Warriors with Fausto who signed some top players for his team, making it more like a division two clan than division four. The polish players Ecto (ex-BAD div3) and Docent (ex-HGC div1) were with them, together with evil_b and Springs (ex-hope div1) and last but not least optimizer (hope now). I think this should say enough about the strength of their team. This wasn't even their whole squad, they had Blu, Mixu and Envi too, when these three were playing together with Fausto, then they would have had a division four team. They even managed to lose a match (of Osams) because only one of their good players was in there (Optimizer), sided by Envi, Fausto and Blu.

The fight for the second place was a tight call, Assasins ended with 34 points while Osams and Jägarna had 32. hHh was a candidate for winning the division in my opinion but they didn't field their best team (Slash, Jogi, Tib, Duce, Dopeskills) every game so they lost some here and there. Respect goes out to GoH, the oldskool clan which clearly had trouble playing in this division, playing 11 games and losing all, light points for them were winning e1m2 of ZR and SM.

Talking about ZetoR, of course they made their comeback this season, there was little left of the team that rocked NQR2 and Villains1 but it was good to see others playing again. The guys that were playing for ZR in the old days that we liked playing episode maps in 4on4 were back to kill once again. Jaguar was there leading the team together with old mates like Mad, Perza, Trug, Geuzer and Hude who every oldskool player remembers. Great to see them back in action, keep it that way guys!

In division three we saw about the same situation as in division four with one clan that is placed wrong totally. Here it was SKK who fielded a division two team with Case, Molle, Persuader and Pepin. They only lost three maps in regular season, e2m2tdm of Hippusnik (with Barbro instead of Molle), cmt4 of Zoo (with Barbro instead of Case) and dm3 of AG (with Euphoria instead of Case).

Enough about misplaced clans. Behind this clan the fight for the top spots was close, very close. Zoo and Qand played very well, Qand without Vana and Fix was degraded to division three. They lost two games this season, one of SKK and one (surprisingly) of JAMS, where Grind played very well for jams. The actual 'final' of this division was seen as Qand-Zoo. Though, both teams didn't have their best players online. Nevertheless the game was good to watch and pretty close with Qand taking cmt4 138-123, which Zoo probably didn't expect. Then Zoo surprised Qand on their turn by winning e1m2 196-162 with T-Moe and Jkova making the frags for them. The decider (e2m2tdm) was great to see, Zoo took the early control and were leading with about 75 frags but Qand got a great takeover and were able to overcome Zoo just before the game ended and won 168-156.

In the end Zoo got the second place, Qand in third (with two games less played), JAMS got the fourth spot and AG walked home with nr.5.


Division two, or should I saw division one-two. It looked like the division two tried to get more division one players than division one itself. We saw Fappers with Fifi, Jester, Mooniz and Vore; NRU with Silver, Havz and Sandyman; CN with Jerry, Exile, Forsberg, Crazymac and Blau, then Reverend (Valla/Whajna), Avenger, Milton, Wigorf, Haj and UL in different clans.

Probably because of those great lineups none of the teams was able to dominate the division. CN won it while they lost three games (Kala, BWL and Hope), with Paranoids following them on four points, they had a real solid season taking the second spot, but they lost even five games. Zero and Milamber did loads of hard work for Paranoids with Aken, Crash, Orion and Uncie to support them. We saw them doing some sick things together, and even <a href="http://www.nqr.nu/battles.php?id=378" target="_blank">alone</a>. Team Freedom became third with Valla doing some crazy things throughout the season, he played really well and showed that once again when Free won Slackers in AM on dm3 with Valla leading his team to victory. Just like Paranoids they lost five games in the regular season.

In fourth came the brace Russians of Bored with life who had the, maybe, most earned <a href="http://www.nqr.nu/battles.php?id=474" target="_blank">victory</a> of division two by taking out Fired with an average ping of 76. I thought BWL would fall back when Killis left them halfway the season, but after he left they showed their power and played just as well and maybe better than with him.
In fifth place came Dutch Hope who had a <a href="http://www.nqr.nu/battles.php?id=444" target="_blank">thrilling game</a> versus ONE (Avenger's clan). They won e2m2tdm easy, lost dm2 on 8 and won the deciding e1m2 with a mere four frags, ONE hiding on dm2 and Hope hiding on e1m2.
Hope was just mid-div2 early in the season with wins of ONE, SSC and MNY and losses to Fappers, Freedom and Paranoids but because Akira and Little Horn went inactive two extra players were needed, which turned out to add something to the division one level in div2 with Wigorf and Haj with who every game went to 2-0.

The last two clans taking a gold playoff spot were NRU and Fappers who didn't play every game with their best lineup at all. Behind those two Fired, GTG, SSC and Kala claimed silver playoff spots. Kala turned out to go up and down with winning of <a href="http://www.nqr.nu/battles.php?id=381" target="_blank">CN</a> ánd <a href="http://www.nqr.nu/battles.php?id=373" target="_blank">Freedom</a> which was very impressive but then losing eight games of lower placed clans!


Division One, playoffs coming in sight!
What can I say, it looked like the better clans only aim was getting in the playoffs and then be in shape and play with their best team. We saw some new clans this season and some others leave. cMF who didn't lose a single game in NQR5's group games wasn't able to field a team this season. Neither did we see Axe, Qandrane, Clan X or Disorder back this season. For some time it looked like cMF and HF would play but sad enough they didn't come to it. Disorder and Lege artis even became more alike because Shiva and Slime joined LA.I hoped to see Dag/aKKe/Nabbe/Riker/Striker active. Remember Dag/Nabbe/Riker/Striker who only lost two maps together in about 45 games and the fact that LA before last NQR/QhLan only lost two matches out of 52 officials, the SD4 quarter final of HF when Pietro had bad lag and the SD5 final without Dag.

Where I was heading, LA had Dag, Riker, Striker and Shiva active this season and not Nabbe and aKKe. Then we saw some revivals. The Viper Squad returned (!) with Ihminen, Blaze, Mirage, Maga and Snoop who played DD and more great old Finnish clans. With Xamp and Hib being in SR their first team was Ihminen, Blaze, Mirage and Maga, they did great. Then we saw Divines, before entering NQR their team was sphere, circle, phaze and darklord, with Inter as backup, which was very strong but it didn't last because sphere and phaze went inactive at the moment that Xerial and Javve of =X= joined.

Another new clan was BGSR, formed by Link because he had some internal trouble in Axe, he took LocKtar with him and mrlame who was going to play with HF but he couldn't get on teamspeak because of his bad connection so he ran away mad to go and play BGSR, while angua and ztorm came from the disbanded clan X.

There were loads of surprising results starting with Firing Squad winning of Lege Artis and with that they were being tipped by loads of people being the winner of the season. Actually FS stayed undefeated on tb3 with reppie/Blixem/Razor/Spoink for weeks, until they met Divines who surprised friend and enemy in this game. The first map was cmt4, not fs favourite for sure, where Diva won 160-155 (ok Diva had ping 28 and fs 42). FS had bad pings but they showed how the game is played on dm2, 319-92 with e1m2 as decider where fs went down 232-155. After that game FS lost of SR (as always, except on qhlan WB!), this time with 5 frags on dm2 while being left hopeless on dm3 after an SR start.

The game that was best to watch this season was BGSR versus SR if you ask me. BGSR demanded equal pings and even got 1ms advantage according to SR. Now, the game took off with dm3 where SR got control after three minutes and just increased their lead more and more during the game, winning it 242-82. The second map was e1m2 where SR got an early lead with a maximum of ~45 frags but BGSR was closing in slowly. Without about 8 minutes left the scores were as good as tied and it stayed like that till the last minute when BGSR won 194-170. Then the deciding map cmt4, this was so close, the biggest difference between both clans was 12 frags until the last minute. When BGSR got a small grip on the game and were able to win it 156-137.

Slackers lost another game, of tVS, with again cmt4 as decider. Slackers won dm3 219-128 while tVS bounced back on dm2 and showed why they had the name of being unbeatable on the map winning it 204-144 after taking over SR control. The decider cmt4 went up and down tVS got the better start but suddenly SR totally owned them, tVS couldn't score a frag for 2 minutes, in the total time there SR got 65 frags and tVS 10, the score going from 30-60 to 95-70, then tVS found it and got a 60 frag lead with a few minutes left with SR coming a bit closer in the end, but it was too bad for them, but it was too late; tVS w