Columns Purity
Introduction
The columns that Purity wrote for Smackdown from 2002 and 2003 are in this file, the later columns can be found in Columns Purity 2004-now since wiki doesn't allow a file size large enough to contain all columns.
Columns
2002
Predictions on the playoffs
Date: 02/05/2002
I’m fucked. I wanted to post a review of the group games and a prediction on the playoffs Monday. Now, I haven’t had much time to write it as I have only been going out, playing golf and having, well, I didn’t got my rest at night. Then, I had finally written a piece, what do you think, I delete it… OMG! AM I STUPID?! Yes, I am. That is why is has took this long and this is why I am not writing the review again now, it will come later. Don’t judge me on mistakes please as I got under the table last night…
Eights finals
As HangTime has already posted a column on those games, I won’t get really deep in this. Though, my opinion follows next. One interesting thing is that I have made some predictions before the season (posted on the clanbase site mentioned in my previous post) and it didn’t work out because clans were inactive, sad thing to see.
[+] - TeC
As HT mentioned, this war is probably going to be laggy, no more words on that, it’s just not very nice to see that the outcome of wars is affected by lag, especially in the playoffs. ThE Criminals surprised me by winning DM2 of |L|, and yes, |L| did lag and they did not had their first team playing, but still, they won. Firstaid has pracced played quite much and they’ve shown their skill for sure. I think they will both pick DM2 and Aid might win both if they don’t have a ping disadvantage of ~60ms like |L| had. I think that, if, other maps are picked, Firstaid will win them for sure, but I doubt that Aid will pick another map than DM2. So, that makes it 2-0 for + but if their pings suck and TEC get’s good starts it might be 2-1.
HF - LA
Hellfire against Lege Artis. E1M2 lovers against a pact of the best players of Europe. Like I said, Hellfire will take E1M2, they sure have got a good one but after I’ve seen LA, or better, Nabbe, playing E1M2… hmm, what makes me think that Hellfire won’t win this? On the other hand, I don’t expect Lege Artis losing the map they pick, no matter that one will be. Maybe a lot of people are looking forward to see this match, but I’m not (well, maybe quake just hasn’t excited me ever :>), I’ve seen Lege Artis playing SR, FS and L sometimes and I don’t see them losing too much frags in this game. Maybe I’m wrong and it will be attractive, but I don’t think so. Btw, I didn’t expect Redux to win over HF in their group. As I joined the server just before the match I thought: ‘Ai, Redux is gonna have a hard time against LA.’ And look now. Anyway, 2-0 for LA.
FS - ToT
Well, I would like to see Firings Squad playing E1M2 against ToT. Firing Squad should have DM3 in it’s pocket and E1M2 might be nice in case ToT plays on LAN and has some nice MM3 action. Still, we have all know that FS was the clan that won a map over FF in SD2 (yes, that was long ago), E1M2. The team has changed and FS’ Castle has become an Abandoned Base. Though, they will win over ToT with a large margin. But, yes, there is a but, in case ToT is wise and takes DM2, I don’t know and I don’t expect it. Even if they do, FS will probably win. 2-0 Firing Squad. <bs>
Para – DT!
This match might be one worth watching. Dodge This! Is probably going to take E1M2 and Para DM6. The last should be pretty sure for Para but I don’t know how close E1M2 is going to be. Though, in some way or another it’s very unpredictable what Paranoia is going to do and how they are going to play. Maybe they’ll lose e1m2 but on the other hand, they might win with a large margin. They showed us how to play dm3 against FS in past seasons playoffs, losing by very little frags. It will be or 2-0 or 2-1 for Para.
Fu - L
Both clans have lost good players. Since last season L lost Effie (@), Riker, Shiva (both ZR) and Nabbe (LA) (that were three finalists of SD3) and got Exile and DARKL0RD in return. I don’t know if Baby_Roo will be managing L alive very long because Exile has practiced a some with LA and I don’t know, maybe he’ll join them and DL doesn’t plays a lot QW anymore too. Now, the only map where FU might do some hurt is DM2 and even if they win it from |L| they will lose the other maps. That gives us a 2-0 win for Lithium.
Re – C6
Redux is a clan that contains good players from the biggest part DN, DIE and EA. Their dm2 is very good it’s likely that they pick, play and win that map. Clan C6 got strengthened with ex-head player Stickle, he sure has a lot of talent. E1M2 is their base and they might be able to win it, but it’ll be a hard fight against blitz-, gibbs and silver. Redux though has shown that they are very good at dm3 too and dn’s e2m2 was not bad and even if they lose e1m2, they will get trough, I place my bets on a 2-0 win with a close e1m2 for Redux, might be nice watching.
Koff - SR
What to say on this one. Koff knows how to play dm3, that’s one true thing, though, Slackers has become better there and you can’t really talk of a very week spot in their play op dm3. In case koff gets a good start they might be able to win dm3 but then, Slackers will outclass them on dm2, e1m2 and dm6 not mentioning e2m2. So, watch dm3 and the rest shouldn’t be too much trouble for SR, too bad for Koff because they ain’t bad at all. Slackers comes, plays, takes and wins.
CMF - TVS
What a match in the first round of the playoffs. Replay of the quarter finals of sd3, clan MalFunction has played quite a lot since and the Viper Squad quite little. CMF showed that they can actually play dm3 by beating fs in NQR in some close games. TVS will very likely still be the best on dm2. The question is, which map will cMF take, I think they will just play dm3 because they have played that very, very often in wars and practice the past months. As HT wants to send them back to e1m2 where they are very good too, I don’t know what is best to do, and I’m happy I don’t have to know. They know it themselves way better then I do and it shouldn’t be different. Both e1m2 and dm3 have uncertain outcomes if you ask me. I can’t really tell what will happen on both maps. The start will once again be very important, and the fact if which of the clans will be on lan and which not. Unless they haven’t played as much as their opponents I give the victory to tVS, it might be a two mapper but whatever the outcome will be, it’s worth watching.
Well folks, that was it for today. Predictions on the matches that will follow further on in the playoffs will follow and so will the review of the season. Maybe the review will come really after everything but I think I’ll write one on the groupgames first and then on the playoffs/whole tourney.
Review on first round playoffs and preview on the second
Date: 18/05/2002
I’ve been quite busy with things more and things less useful lately but I didn’t took the time to write a review of the groupgames. Never mind, it will follow, maybe even after the tournament, but it will be there.
It’s time for the quarterfinals. Tonight the first games are going to be played and it’s always nice to make a prediction before matches are played. We start with a review on the first round of the playoffs to see how everyone got here. -> Firstaid <-
Firstaid played The Criminals in the first round of the playoffs. First of all, the game was very laggy. Fristaid played dm3 as their homemap and they won by ~60 frags. Next up was the dm2 of TeC which they won with about the same margin. Now the decider was on it’s way and The Criminals (if my sources are right) wanted to play dm3 again, even though they had lost the first time. Firstaid won the last map convincingly. No surprises in the first game. -> The Criminals <-
Hellfire against Lege Artis. I don’t know what to say of this. I haven’t seen the game live, only the demo’s, there have been many discussions on this game so I don’t think it’s up to me to write a whole story down here. The fact is that Hellfire won 2 out of 3 maps of LA. It was a weird game, Pietro instead of pushing the team and making them score good, lagging bad, and yes, he has been quite inactive. He had 28 frags on ‘his’ dm3, says enough if you ask me. Hellfire showed that they know how to play this game. Still, I wonder if this means that the old ff guys ain’t the best of Europe anymore. If this really was as good as la should be, well, then there would be a dozen clans able to beat la, as a dozen have beaten hf. I won’t get on with this topic, Hellfire goes trough and we’ll see if Lege Artis has the touch in SD5 or NQR3 maybe. -> Hellfire <-
In the third game Firing Squad played ToT. I expected little trouble for fs but it on the first dm3 it turned out to be pretty hard to beat our Swedish friends. As I haven’t seen the game live, neither the demo’s I can’t say much of it. First dm3 was 176-107 for fs and the second was easier with 230-75. ->Firing Squad<-
The Viper Squad had to win over Paranoia to reach the next round and it wasn’t quite easy. tVS chose (as always) dm2, which turned out to be a pretty good game. The score was 175-126 for tVS. Second was dm6, para’s homemap this season. It was quite close until about 5 minutes were left, after that tVS took off. Xamp had a nice game here topping the scoreboard. -> The Viper Squad <-
LiTHiUM met FU in the first round. I was surprised by seeing an inactive Darklord playing, and playing well. L chose dm3 and won it quite easy with something like 230-60. FU came up with something totaly new: e1m2. They scored twice as much frags on this map but it wasn’t enough (they only came 160 frags short). -> LiTHiUM <-
This was one of the games of which I expected some excitement. Redux was to play Clan C6. Re took dm2 and imo, this was a pretty boring round. Silver played well and C6 couldn’t do what they had to with Q. E1M2 was very close. Redux managed to come out victorious by only 10 frags thanks to (again, who’s gonna stop this guy?!) Silver. Blitz and Gore have agreed that it was the worst match of both clans ever, well, they shouldn’t be such an achievement from Re (this was the worst out of 5 officials? :P). -> Redux <-
Okay, Koff surprised me, and I think the rest of the qw scene with me, by winning Slackers map dm2. As I had written in my preview, it wasn’t expected that Koff would win dm2 at all. Koff took the lead at the begin, lost it twice, and took their victory in the last five minutes. After the won dm2 Koff had a chance of making it to the next round if they would win their own map, dm3. As allways, Koff had a good start, they had the lead in the first 10 minutes, took it back 2 later, and lost it with about four to go, I was sitting on the front of my chair watching for Koff to stunt and take the map, but it couldn’t be, nerves came up and Slackers locked total in the last minutes. They scored 75 frags in the last 8 minutes and Koff about 15… Decider (picked by backoffice?) e1m2. Just Slackers, it was over after 2 or 3 minutes. Koff said goodbye to the crowd in style this season. -> Slackers <-
Last game, Dodge This! Against cMF. DT! couldn’t get four players online so it was played 3v3 as cMF still knows what the word sportive means. cMF took dm3 and Hixen showed that he is a very fine player still. Though, that wasn’t enough to take out cMF here. Second map was dm6 and that was just total ownage by cMF. The final scores were about 400-100. -> Clan MalFunction <-
Coming up next: predictions on the quarter finals of Smackdown’s season four.
First game: Hellfire meats Firstaid. Hellfire will choose e1m2 and they seem to be one of the best of Europe there atm. I don’t know which map + is going to take but I think they’ll go for the weakness of HF: dm3. Don’t think that + can win it, but yes, they have a chance. It will probably a 2-0 win for HF here, but who knows what kinda show Aid is going to deliver us. Hellfire/
Firing Squad against The Viper Squad, a match of which I expect quite much. tVS will pick dm2 and they’ll win, never the less, FS has improved a lot on dm2 lately and it might even be enough to beat the masters of dm2. After that e1m2 will be picked by [fs] because it is, as they call it, the weakness of tVS. Firing Squad has to win this map to stay in the tournament and I think they can but tVS ain’t bad at e1m2 at all. Dm3 will bring the decision if needed. FS has played a lot of pracs and officials there and therefor I place FS on top of this game. Very exciting and a must see. Firing Squad/
Lithium and redux face eachother in this game where L will pick, if they are smart, e1m2 and win. Redux will go for dm2 and I don’t know who is going to win that. In case dm3 has to bring the decision, it will probably be a close match again. I can’t say much of this game as I just don’t know what the outcome will be. As the names in L are bigger, I do expect them to win. LiTHiUM/
The last game in the quarter finals. Slackers and cmf clash here. Slackers will choose dm2. They will own it because dm2 ain’t cmf’s strongest point (well, it wasn’t koff’s best too). It’s just very likely that Slackers will win the first map. Then Clan MalFunction will probably pick dm3, they have played it a really lot times now, in and outside pracs. Still I don’t know if it will be enough to take out SR. Sr will probably win 2-0 but if they lose dm3 they will win the decider, so, then it is 2-1. Slackers/
I'm gonna watch tVS-FS now, cya
I'm back
Date: 27/05/2002
After some time of being busy in real life things, here I am to do some update again. A lot of things happend lately and I was one of the lucky few to see most of the nice matches played lately (I don't believe I've done much more online than speccing 4 games past weeks). I'll only post some general quakenews now, predictions, reviews will follow later as L-cMF has been delayed anyway.
First of all, Zetor became NQR winner after putting fireworks on in the final. Hellfire got totaly outclassed by ZR that had, even though I haven't seen them praccing for a long time, good teamplay. Securing YA's at E1M2, Hib taking them, runs away, get Q and showing leet skills.
Dm3 was played first. Zetor won their own pick (not very strange as dm3 ain't HF's best map) with quite a big margin. Then E1M2 was up and as far as I knew Hib had some ownage skills there but I doubted if they could stand a chance against a team like HF as they have shown e1m2 more often. Nevertheless Zetor ran away with 100 frags differ in the end.
There is even more general quake news as my attention was drawn by some message in irc: 'Any clan war for QWTP now!?!?' or something like that. So, you might have guessed, QWTP is the name. Don't know for sure if registration is still open (don't think so) but I believe that those guys are happy with every newb contender that enters. The leage is ment for clans that didn't made NQR or SD4 playoffs, to have the not so good clans in Europe still making fun in the game (one of the teams is even called Play For Fun) what imo is a very good thing (as you might know that I always say: "Remember why we started this game people, FOR FUN FFS."). They might even get better in there. Channel #qw-cup in quakenet (wicked) and the site is here.
Review on quarter finals and preview on half
Date: 27/05/2002
I’ll start with a quick review on the quarter finals.
Hellfire Aid didn’t show us many surprises. Nothing more than that j0n was playing and that Mutilator seemed to have some problems with activity, even his ping couldn’t set it right this time. But Aid was beaten and little special happend.
Second game was FS – tVS, don’t start on it please. I haven’t seen a better game in years… like I said somewhere in a comment (wtf, elec comment at 05:00, time ain’t really right there), I said something like: “The adrenaline still rushed through my veins when I took my first beer at the disco at 00:00 and toasted on FS ; ).” First, FS wins DM2 (!), I was astonished by that, okay, they pracced RE that afternoon and played quite nice, but prac ain’t like war and RE ain’t like tVS… After that tVS won FS’s homemap (for the moment again) with which HT lost his job at SD, we’re happy that we’ve only got few matches left hangtime, rofl :>
And then… the decider… fuck it, first time dm3, Firing Squad gets fullstart (wtf, not tVS?) no, not tVS, so, the (qizmo?) server tVS was on crashed as it couldn’t be. Restart, tVS gets the better start now but neither of the teams could get control. Don’t need to put a match report here as I think that everybody has read HT’s report or has seen demo’s. Anyway, one frag for FS in the end… As ploppie said later (in translation): “There would have been a problem if it would have ended a tie. Overtime was off.” Nice thinking guys. Anyway, after this classic game, FS came out victorious.
Lithium faced Redux and I promised to keep the review short so this one wont be too long. L played with their (supposed) four best players and Darklord showed that his inactivity causes some trouble, but the margin was still 60 frags in favour of L. Next was dm2, this didn’t cause huge trouble for L either.
The last quarter final game is SR-cMF. Hmm, it was fun to watch, that’s for sure. Though, I didn’t expect this kind of match. Same as in tVS-FS, I assume that everybody has seen it so let’s not go on with it. Dm3 was won by cMF with some nice play from both sides. E1M2 went to Slackers, but not with the greatest ease. Dm2 had to bring the decision. Zhin came in and cMF put up some show to take away the chances of victory from last years winners. Well done cMF.
Striker immediately took consequences and left SR when they lost another map the next day. He joined LA and Slackers found a new member in form of Gamer (ex-KOFF). I wonder what Koff is going to do about the loss of one their core members. Well, I wish all good luck with and without their new/old members.
I've took some time to think over the half final matches. They are imo very hard to predict but I'll give it a shot.
Let's start with the 1/2 final in the upper half of the tree. FS (took out tVS) meets HF (took out LA) in a match which could turn out to be very attractive.
The game is probably played on EA, Tiscali or a server like that will give pings around 50 for the teams. Not optimal but playable. As DM3 doesn't seems to be Hellfire stongest point and it is FS's homemap these days, it's gonna be picked by FS. I don't see HF winning it soon but I won't say anything like HT did on the e1m2 in fs-tvs... way to go HT! :> -[DM3 [fs]]-
And then, e1m2 is coming up, I've got the feeling that HF is gonna fight hard for their win of this match. It's gonna be hard for FS to take it and if they're as nervous as they played against tvs on e1m2... It's hard to predict who's gonna win the whole match. The losing of e1m2 in the NQR final can't have been good for HF confidence. If FS get's a fullstart and is able to secure ya/quad, they'd have a good shot at winning, don't know how hard a comeback is gonna be. And yes, we don't know how nervous HF is gonna be. Btw, same accounts for dm3, but I think that FS has a better chance at taking over DM3 then e1m2, still everything can happen as Muttan didn't seem to be in his best shape against Aid. -]e1m2 HF[-
The decider would be DM2, FS showed that they can beat the best there as tVS was beaten 100 frags. Hellfire though has beaten cMF and LA on dm2. This map is going to be won by the bad or good play of an individual player, the start, luck, the moments when the pc of a player loads and even if the players have pets or not ; ). Rofl, all I want make clear is it’s hard to say who’s going to win this. Both teams have good chances but luck might be a fatal factor.
Maybe Mutilator is in form again tonight, let’s hope so, that would give an extra factor to game. Now, as some players are kind of inactive and Hellfire hasn’t showed their best play last time, I give FS the benefit of the doubt on all maps. Dm3 is probably in for FS (you’ll see, HF wins with some fullstart and total ownage) and e1m2 is going to be closed, though, it’s gonna be hard to take fs down; if the decider has to be played, Firing Squad will sneak away with victory. –[Firing Squad]-
Second game. This might even be harder to predict as it are teams that play weird sometimes. Lithium fights it out with clan MalFunction, the other final place is at stake. Clan MalFunction seems to be one of the strongest clans in Eu on dm3. They’ve played it a hack of a lot and practice is the magic word in this Smackdown season (can’t say that in general as Zetor throws in m4d sk1llz without practice) as some of the (supposed) best teams of Europe are already (LA, SR, tVS). So, dm3, as some L players are not playing too much cMF is definitely top seed for this map. One about the team cMF… it’s a clan that is good at three maps, they have a nice e1m2 and dm2 and an even better dm2. When I look back at the games they played last, a thing that comes out is that they just win every map except when playing a good clans specialty, doesn’t matters which clan it is. I mean that they are good on the three maps, above the average of good clans but worse when it’s the good clans best map, if you see what I mean :>. Lithium was very, very good at dm3 in sd3 and they were able to beat everybody. I don’t know how good they are now at all. They have played little and they are like cMF, good on dm3, dm2 and e1m2, but imo little worse. Lithium will probably pick e1m2, it’s just the question if L will win it, maybe if they take the time to put up proper tp and let the inactive guys practice some to get in shape, otherwise, I wouldn’t bet on them to win the whole match at all. As cMF is in great shape they are favorites to win this match. Especially now they’ve beaten SR in the last round. Maybe L can make a fist at all maps, or maybe L won’t be at all. It depends on start, activity, nerves (with these guys that have played all the great games?) and luck (once again) if L can win but don’t count on it. –[Clan MalFunction]-
Bla
Date: 06/06/2002
f you guys want a preview on the final, put it in a comment. If you don't want it, put it in a comment, cause I ain't gonna write it if nobody reads it. So, cya tomorrow, I'll see if what I do is liked or not.
btw, thanks for all the feedback on the shit I wrote before
Both teams had a long and hard way coming here into the finals, though, it’s even the question if it’s gonna be played at all. Maybe it’ll be postponed or maybe the admins will give clan malfunction a walkover as it seems that hellfire can’t field their first team now.
Anyway, besides those problems. Hellfire had some trouble in their group as all the clans wanted to play them as last. This didn’t turned out positive for them as they lost their game against redux (who played very good). This meant that they had to face lege artis in the first round of the playoffs. For many people LA was a finalist for sure (just as SR). But things turned out different. As LA played with an injured player and HF formed a good collective, they managed to win the two maps that had to be won. After that they met Aid which didn’t cause big threat. Half finals were there. Firing Squad was there. FS had just played tVS in the round before in a game that was a classic before it was over. As FS managed to beat tVS up on dm2, they surprised everybody, Hellfire was warned. And HF played well. Dm3 was won by FS, but close. E1m2 was won by Hellfire, with a big margin. Then, the decider, of course, dm2, was up. I gave both teams about equal chances, especially after the match of FS… But Hellfire did what they had to do and they won.
Now, cMF. They didn’t had much trouble in their group. They won every game and (how strange) went as first of their group to the playoffs. They met Dodge This and they didn’t had enough players, cmf was the sportive one and played a 3v3 and owned (dm6 was total haxoring from cmf’s side). Second round… This was a very exciting match: SR v cMF. Both teams got good chances from me but I think that most people expected SR to win. But the lack of playing with four base players and prac as much as cMF did broke SR. cMF lost e1m2 but won both dm3 and the deciding map dm2. It was really tense… well not like fs-tvs, but it was a good game though.
cMF’s half final enemy was LiTHiUM. I believe that they are, except from Zetor, the clan that pracs least. They are good on all the maps but they didn’t had that final touch of routine. Though, they made a worthy opponent for cMF that had to fight for their win in both e1m2 and dm3.
This brings us to the actual final game.
They have agreed to play the three ‘oldskool’ maps, dm3, e1m2 and dm2 first. As dm3 ain’t HF’s strongest map and it is cMF’s strongest, it’s to be expected that cMF will walk away with that one. As cMF has won dm3 over a lot of good clans in both wars and pracs, it’s very unlikely that they are going to lose it because Hellfire has lost it of a lot of good clans :>
Then, e1m2, The Caste of Hellfire. They have beaten almost every clan there, though Zetor showed them their sexy asses in the NQR final. In case there has to be a weak map selected from the ‘big three’ from cMF’s side, it would be e1m2 for sure. The only ‘weak’ link on e1m2 should be mt, but that doesn’t matters at all because they even won it of FS with a big margin.
For the next map, this could be a close one. But yet again, Hellfire is good, but I expect cMF to be better. After all, Clan Malfunction has challenged big clans in the competition and Hellfire… well, they beated LA, but that wasn’t 4v4 and they beated FS. That game was kind of lucky for them, as their worst level is FS’ best and their second best level is FS worst… anyway, the dm2 should be won by cMF as they have excellent teamplay.
Scores: 2 cMF – 1 HF
The deciding maps will probably come from the big three. If they don’t and Dm6 and E2m2 will be played cMF has, imo, the best chances of winning. If you look at the dm6 cMF played in the first round of the playoffs they should have to win. Then, when you take a look at the style of both clans cMF should win e2m2 also as HF is just running on TP and a lot of XP, on e1m2 especially. CMF on the other hand has very, very good individual players who should be able to outfrag HF there.
Concerning further play on dm2, dm3 and/or e1m2, the Clan Malfunction will turn out as first winner of 3 maps.
Winner SD4: Clan Malfunction!
Just some other spinning of the mind
Date: 24/09/2002
It seemed, after three month of idling, time to update my column once more. In this time, since the SD4 should-be-final that was, not too much has happened those days.
Tough, there did happen things which have to mentioned:
First QHLAN took place from which LA got away with most of the prices, only Space and Striker messed up and lost the 2v2 final :-). They won an impressive final of team g0ld (Riker, Paradoks, Razor and Xalibur), the first map was e1m2 which was won by gold (riker showed quite some mad fragging) with only 188-170. Then dm3 was owned by la 219-63 and the decider dm2 was with 320-154 a prey for la also. The 2v2 had a lot of great teams in it like razor&riker, para&xali, striker&space, griffin&mrlame, pietro&exile and _|anne with dag.
The final played between LA (striker, space) and HF (griffin and mrlame) after LA knocked out riker&razor and pietro&exile and HF after owning xali¶ on two dm6’s and beating dag&janne in a very close match. Finally it turned out that the LAN-skills of Griffin and Mrlame were better than those of Striker and Space’s, or maybe they were just lucky ;-)
The duel tournament turned out to give some surprises too like kamse beating xalibur and keeping him out of the playoffs that way. Locktar kicked Rikers butt and Paradoks got outclassed but jupe. In the further stages pietro lost of dag, sod of _|anne, jupe of griffin and locktar of mrlame. In the halves griffin played against Janne and won it in three maps, mrlame got outclassed by dag in only two and scoring just as much frags. Now, the final. Griffin vs. Dag, replay of last Qhlans final. Griffin played a really good dm4 and won it with 25-2, the next map was dm6 which dag won quite comfortable with 17-2. The last map was dm2. The game was close all the way and it was with pretty few frags (as happens more often on dm2? ;-)). In the end it took a long while to get the game decided and it was 3-1 for dag in the end.
Now only has to be mentioned that Riker won the RMR ffa tournament.
It’s good to see that the activity is so big again. After the successful second season of nqr a third will be kicking off this week I guess. Smackdown has opened registrations and clans are flowing in nicely.
One thing I wanted to do before the season starts: a view on some member shifts.
I’ll start with the inactivity or disband of ZR and L. Of those clans Riker (who was FS for some time too) went to HF, Shiva plays with p0s, exile went inactive and Darklord plays q3 if he does what he said he would. I don’t know what became of all the Zetor guys but Hib went back to tVS and I the rest is not playing much anymore. Another thing is that Mirage has got a good (uberleet) connection now (but went to army) and Xamp joined them after the 1/8 final game that paranoia played vs tVS.
Then, KoFF has some trouble fielding players, Miser left them because he thought they were not active enough and joined FS where inactivity has been big since SD4. Another core player of KoFF has left them, as most of us might know now, Gamer. He joined SR to try his luck there, SR had a player short because Striker left after they lost another map the day after the SD4 loss to cMF. Now Striker followed space to LA and they are together again (after DIE and SR).
It seems that Jarrex or Janne has quit qw finally. First he promised to throw away his computer after SD3, but he couldn’t because he got kicked out of the tourney in the first playoff round (with aq, lost of sr). So he stayed one more season and said: “When I’ve won this smackdown with cmf, I’ll throw away my pc.” And so it has happened.
Last things that have to be mentioned are the new clan The Forsakens, which contains people of former clans Firstaid and dodge this. In Bloom is revived, they hadn’t played anymore since sd3 where they put up quite good games but not enough to make it to the playoffs. There is an interview on the nqr site with cara. Other new clans of which we can expect quite some performance are p0s (white, shiva, haj and phil) and fatcat.
These were the mayor changes that have taken part since the beginning of the summer.
Now, both NQR and SD5 have started last weekend so it seems time for some predictions, they won’t be too large because several other people have made them before me.
Group A
I doubt if there will be trouble for The Viper Squad to become the winner of this group. I’ve seen other people thinking that HF will win, but I don’t. tVS got Hib back and he can be a valiant worth for the team. To predict the hf-tvs match right away: e1m2 is probably for hf, dm2 for tVS and even with Riker I don’t think HF is capable of winning dm3 of tVS. Hellfire, we saw them lose of Redux in their group last year too, but I don’t expect them to lose more then the tVS match this year; a player of whom I won’t post his nick here of 4K said that they could beat HF on dm2 and dm3 but … I will be very surprised if they do that. I doubt that the second spot will be for Koff as they have lost both Gamer and Miser and don’t seem to be very active, on the other hand HGC is very and 4K seems to prac on regular base too. My bet: 1: tVS 2: HF 3: HGC 4: Koff
Group B
This group is easy for Slackers, the only ones that might have the potency to do some damage to them are the Forsakens. Thought, they will have to prac a lot and I don’t think they have done. Vis Mortis is a new clan here which is German with the Dutch leader Spoque, they have Venture but I haven’t seen him play more than once or twice in the past months. The group is not very easy to predict because it seems like there are some clans of equal level in it.
1: SR 2: -tf- 3: Trsh 4: VM (if they practice they could take the third spot, but I’ve only seen spoq, spoink and flow praccing a lot in the past weeks. If Venture and jogi come back in full strength their dm2 will be very, very good)
Group C
The only clans fighting for the first spot in this group are actually Lege artis and Firing Squad. Nevertheless I don’t think Firing Squad will stand a chance against the reigning champions of Qhlan. Lege artis has added Striker too their forces, that is about all that changed. I don’t believe they have practiced a lot lately, I at least know that Space was inactive for about three weeks and I didn’t see any of them playing a lot under their own nicks (but that might mean nothing).
Still it is the clan of which, I believe, is most expected for this season. They have got both a lot of experience and talent. Everybody reminds the match they lost last season of HF and many hope they won’t do such things again this season. What even more hope for is a classic (? Teams are not like FF and E anymore :-/) final: SR-LA. And here I agree with blitz and have got to quote: “I was disappointed that SR didn't have a team to try and hold their title at QHlan4, I think everyone would have loved to see an LA vs SR LAN final.. maybe this seasons finals could be held at the next QHlan in January? :)”
Concerning Firing Squad on the other hand Crit went inactive, he was a strong link in their teamplay. On the other hand Blixem has showed some activity again after the starting of his study and Miser has took a place on the fs couches. Another remarkable thing is that it seems that Gemini (core player in SD2) seems to have made a comeback but he doesn’t seem to have reached his old level, yet his teamplay seems to be good. Miser surprised me several times this weekend when he played some games in the Netherlands (ping 80-90) and played very good. I didn’t thought he was someone that would bring a lot of skill to fs when I first heard he was at trial, but it seems that he might just be what fs needed. Though, they are not in very great shape yet as I’ve seen cMF, tVS and SR beating them on dm3 with scores like 240-60. But who knows what teamplay they manage to build up in the coming months with both nqr and sd running.
Now to the prediction. In case FS gets a lot of practice with the same team and get to build up some nice teamplay _and_ get their e1m2 like it was during sd2 again, they might beat LA. It should at least be a thriller if it’s played late and both clans have had enough wars. Then, the other teams in the group won’t be able to be a threat to both of the teams as I saw FS raping both AQ and CB lately. Those are the ones that should take the remaining playoff spots, or Daltons have to come back in the best shape they have been.
1: LA 2: FS 3: CB 4: AQ
Group D
Called the Group of Death(tm) by both my college predictors, let’s stick with it. If I have to tell you the truth, I was happy with the comebacks of both uQe (a dutch (newb) clan) and In Bloom (which I best remembered from the fs-ib game in which cara played a massiv e1m2). But after seeing the group drawings, I feared the worst. The first spot should go to the hurt cMF (janne, we still love you, gives us your sexy moving ass!=) ) and p0s looks strong enough to grab second, we only miss Riker in p0s to complete the party. Then we’ve got left for the other two places:
Redux, ended first in their group after beating Hellfire (which became LegeArtis` Bane) and have shown to have skill on all maps.
In Bloom, coming back with some old and some members of C6. Don’t look bad but might just be too light to survive in this group.
Paranoia, making the playoffs the past two seasons but being kicked out in the first round twice by FS and tVS. Have got some new members (Ale, Cougar and Puzler), faith/anac got a connection again and jupe has shown great form (beating para at qhlan) and they are praccing quite a lot, but I don't know how good they are compared to the other clans in this division at the moment, we will find out soon enough.
And off course Tribe of Tjernobyl, they are also some season found playing the playoffs, remember them playing FF back in sd2... They have got TCO as a new member and that might give them the extra thing they need to get to the playoffs, a few more pracs might help too.
It’s a shame to see that at least two clans that are on playoff level are going to be left out in this group. On the other hand, the idea of larger groups was to make sure that the groupgames wouldn’t turnout deadboring, and it seems that at least in group death that won’t be the matter. The outcome will be largely influenced by factors as luck and nerves. As it all got longer then I meant once more: predictions
1: cMF 2: p0s 3: redux 4: tot 5: ib
With this last group, I end this update (it’s been some time) again. I don’t think I’ve added up something really new but if I did, I was glad to do it. Just one thing that’s got to be mentioned, I spoke to sphere last week and he has moved in with his nephew the interceptor, he said that their cable would get fixed soon, if that will (or already has) happen(ed) it will mean that two very good players have the opportunity to come back, that would be a great thing for qw.
P.S. Let’s just hope that Hagge won’t post even more demo’s of his pov and add more comments on them if CB makes the playoffs! : )
The Next Level
Date: 12/11/2002
The activity that we saw at the beginning of the seasons of both NQR and SD seems to become less. It’s not nice to see it, but it always shows up, glad that it’s not really bad yet.
After the start of the season several clans and wars have caused a different look at it. The first surprise in SD was that IB lost e1m2 with only 6 frags from cmf. Another outcome that stirred up some was that FS won straight 2-0 over cmf who didn’t seem to be close to the level they had been in last season, missing Janne? But cmf came back. They pracced quite some and were to be the clan that came closest to LA , losing dm3 with 11 and e1m2 with only 7 frags differ; Fix was topfragger on both maps, we couldn’t expect anything else from an ex-p0s’er. So cMF is like, back in shape. About LA, what can I say, they look better then ever winning all their matches in both nqr and sd with 2-0. Under those were cmf, sr, hf and fs; not the worst clans, we’ll come to that soon. This gives them 5 wins in sd and 8 in nqr, maybe they are going to make a double?
Another clan who took advantage of cmf’s slow start was a renewed ToT who took tco and slime with them by the time and won dm3 of them. Though, after p0s died the legendary white joined their forces and the new ones fill in three of first four spots in their team, and they are not doing bad at all. First thing they did was win over FS (who looked so strong after beating cmf) with 2-0. Yes, fs played with Kry, not a first teamer, but he did well and the day after FS lost again in prac, now with a first lineup. So ToT is on a roll, good to see them with the top teams of Europe again, as I had the idea that after SD2 ToT never reached the superelite again.
P0S, I mentioned them a few times before. Only a few days after the start of NQR they died because of a member problem. The rumours that LA would die were going around at the time too, and Dag and Nabbe joined cMF for a very short while, just as long as Fix was in p0s… This caused some trouble after which p0s disbanded, LA stayed alive and dag and nabbe went back (but everybody knows this already). Regarding p0s: Fix went back to cMF, White went to ToT (and he is playing really well there, being their topfragger in a lot of games), Phil to CB, Haj joined HF and some weeks after Shiva was allowed calling himself FS.
ToT wasn’t the only clan which has surprised me in the past weeks, another one was (as I mentioned before) In Bloom. I know about their play in the last season but I didn’t expect them to play this good right away. As they just had their revival (they died somewhere after SD2) they showed great tp e1m2 especially. They lost with only 6 of cMF and put up some more good results… They won over ToT (without Slime) in three maps, losing dm3 and winning both e1m2 and dm2 with respectively 50 and 30 frags. This makes me see them as a serious contender for playoff spots in both sd and nqr, but they didn’t really believe in that, we’ll see. This was underlined by the SD game they played vs Paranoia last night, they won 2-1. E1m2 was with 50 for IB, dm3 was closer and went with 24 to para and the decider dm2, which was one of para’s best maps went thanks to Cara to IB, 157-150. Their best player atm seems to be Cara who played very good verses both ToT, TF (of whom they lost 2-1, winning e1m2 again and losing a quite exciting decider dm2), and of course Para. Now I already mentioned TF, they lost the first game in nqr of FS with a quite big margin and another of KoFF (primus played, but he has quit active qw again…) who ain’t in the best shape they have been in after losing Gamer (sr) and Miser (fs). They are not as strong as I (and maybe many other) had expected but they are doing quite well. They lost 2-0 of HF last Sunday in two pretty close games but I have to say, HF was playing with ping 106 Griffin. Not losing a game yet in SD, the problem might be that they play with too many people so they haven’t got (didn’t have a team, in the beginning) a team that knows itself very well. Maybe they will figure that out later on and have a routine team in the playoffs. They won of both VM and Trash here who are imho the clans that should take the third and fourth spot in group B. Trash is looking pretty good. Winning dm3 comfortable of tf and they even won dm2 from sr in nqr with 80 frags. Though, VM on the other hand does not look very strong yet. They got two new members: mur and dopeskills but I wonder if they will help them out to take the third of fourth spot in their group. They didn’t only lose badly of TF and SR in SD but also of PFF (no, they are not in SD or NQR), but I’ll write about that later. As they already lost with a big margin of both sr and tf… Let’s hope they will finally start picking their map, dm2, as they told me it really is their home and not dm6 which they have picked in every game yet. With four of spnk/vent/jogi/flow/floc they should be able to win a lot.
Speaking of SR, they were looking very strong at the start of the season, owning IB and HGC and they won from tVS with 2-1 in a pretty close match which tVS could have decided to their favour on e1m2, but not everything went right. Then came the what should on of the hardest quake nights for SR. They first played HF, they had control on dm3 but HF took over and won it. Hellfire played with their new member Haj (from p0s) and they won e1m2 with ~40 frags. Next was imho the nr1 favourite for both titles LA. First map was dm2, SR had a small lead in the first minutes but LA locked down after three minutes. In the next 7 minutes LA scored about 135 frags and SR 5. Then with little less then 10 minutes left SR came back in the game but they didn’t have enough time to close the gap of 120 frags in the second half of the it, ending 52 frags behind. Second map e1m2, what can I say, LA had the start but they couldn’t lock down, on the other hand, they didn’t lose the lead a moment. In the first ten minutes the margin was never larger then 25 frags, only with about 2,5 minute to go it was 50 and when SR then made some sprint (in the last ~2 minutes SR scored 40-5) it was too late again. Anyway, SR still hasn’t lost in their group in SR and don’t expect that to happen either. The only question is, how strong will they be when the playoff starts, but that’s a thing we’d like to know of more clans.
The Viper Squad, they seemed to have trouble in starting the season properly, didn’t play games in the first 2 (?) weeks. They have only played one game in SD, it was vs Polish owners NN. First map was dm3, pings: NN 27 – tVS 48 gg? NN won with about 100 frags, but tVS won both other maps quite easy. They played NN with fair pings on dm3 in NQR later and that was easy… quite sad to see laggy wars against HGC and NN of other clans too. In NQR they are going quite well, having a 6-2 record, only losing of SR and in 2 close maps of CMF who seemed to be back on track by that time. They got a new member, Puzler. It seemed like he couldn’t decide where to go because he first joined Paranoia, but didn’t like that, left, played some pracs with SR (vs FS) and ended up with tVS in the end of only 2 weeks. Riker, got a wannabee? Well, I don’t think they will win of HF in SD, they aren’t as strong as I expected them too be, they lost with 300-25 of a mix (3 or 4 p0s members, not really a mix) team and didn’t do quite well in pracs. But hey, what are pracs, officials count. Let’s just hope they will do good in PO’s.
We’re still missing some clans here and one of them is FS. They had (as always) an inactivity problem in summer. As Crit said he’s quit and Blixem went to college and was even less on QW then he was before there were some empty spots to fill. First Crit made up his mind and started to play again (with some problems, but he started), the Miser joining and last but not least Shiva joining them they seemed to be loaded of activity. There was even a internal prac! (with Gemini and Krazy, the founder of FS, a Q3’er now. Both seemed to get active) That’s weird with FS, as they traditionally have got inactivity trouble. Well, it went quite nice for some time, but then ToT had to be played and some weeks later HGC… We saw Razor owning some games with heavy lag, but when it’s unstable he can’t play. They are leading poule C but have to meet LA, they have played them in NQR and put up a good fight on dm3 losing with 12 frags, but got ran over on e1m2 with 130. They pracced quite good vs. SR several times, but as SR seems not capable to beat the best… Though, the dm2 has improved very much. We saw that in the legendary fs-tvs but in those pracs also and in the NRQ game verses cMF where they won dm2 too. Well, looking forward to the games against SR, HF and IB, can’t say what we can expect from them. Maybe they will win of everybody, maybe they will lose all. Time will tell.
Other contenders for the playoffs in group C are AQ, BC and D. AQ looks very strong, winning in three maps of CB. CB got Phil of p0s, but Phil (said he) quit QW on the third this month, that should be a great loss for them as they really need him. CB won e1m2 (Hagge owned *cough* :-)) and lost dm2? GG, another game with strange outcome. Dm3 was like a walk in the park for AQ (another clan which went down for PFF). Daltons is another clan that could make the playoffs in this group. Though, they only won of trash yet in a regular game in NQR and lost eight games. Though, CB, AQ and D are able to win of the others, games that are all unpredictable.
Think I missed HF but they are mentioned in almost every part. They are leading Group A with a 4-0 record. They haven’t lost a single map in SD yet, winning of the contenders for third and fourth spots koff, HGC and BWL. Their new member, Haj (p0s, all mentioned earlier) is doing very well, earning himself a first team place right away. They won in NQR of IB (close e1m2), SR (report before) and TF (same) being good clans. Though, they lost badly of LA, especially on dm3. Just over a week ago they lost of cMF too. The difference wasn’t very close. On dm3 it were 70 frags and on e1m2 50. Though, I think HF will be able to put up some good quake to win of some other big clans, the showed they are able to do that in the last season.
Now, the last group in SD… D. Clan Malfunction is leading it. They have a 7-0 (!) record already in this killing group and they have only lost one map, a dm3 from ToT. Some surprised came from them in the past time but I have mentioned a lot before. They didn’t looked very strong at the start of the season, they only won e1m2 of IB with 6 frags and lost 2-0 of FS. Then, they grew stronger and won of ToT and IB in their group and in NQR from playoff candidates in sd/nqr koff, again 2-1 vs ToT, tVS, D and HF. The HF match, there happened something I didn’t expect _at all_. _Ianne played, I really thought he had quit QW and put his pc outside with the garbage. Though, a loss besides the one to FS was added. The closest to defeat LA has been was caused by cMF. One of the games I started this time with was this match. To very close games with Fix, who is in superb form the past weeks, owning both maps. So they have their playoff in SD secured, we shouldn’t expect from the reigning champion, and it seems there can go little wrong in NQR as they are currently ranked second with 9-2 and 26 points, but 13 (!) points behind LA with their flawless record. Though, they have one topclan left, SR, and three who are just behind the title favourites, sd groupmates RE and para and the oldschool clan TF. Though, they should win quite easy from para and tf as it is as it looks now. Redux and Slackers should both be able to make trouble with them.
As I expect that the renewed ToT will take the second place in this group redux will take the third. They showed that they are in quite good shape when they played vs paranoia. They’ve got a new member, Retic (Pumbaa) the Master of Pickups, always hanging around on tn. They were pretty inactive when the season took off but they recovered very nice. They lost of ToT in SD but didn’t play the other playoff candidates para, cmf or ib and have won three other games vs dream, tfp and dt. The last played they added was gibbs? Kinda surprising to me as he was playing every game last season.
Paranoia was desperately seeking active and lpb members at the start of the season. They got them, in the figure of Puzler, Ale and Cougar. Puzler didn’t like the fins and decided to take the trip to para’s rivals tVS. Cougar was laming in a prac vs cMF in which para looked very good, even winning dm2 and then the guys were still active, para didn’t like that so he went to AQ. Faith got a connection again but didn’t got really active yet. Faith and Jupe seem to be playing like twice a month and making it officials right away. I expected them to go and own like they never did before when I saw them winning that map of cMF and have close ones after, but, what is one map, and cmf turned out to be really out of shape. Paranoia got like inactive again and the only one who is playing regularly seems to be Vore (correct me if I’m wrong). I thought that they would take one of the playoff spots in NQR but I doubt about that right now. I actually thought that la, sr, cmf, tvs, fs, hf, para and tot would go through but both redux and maybe In Bloom are on their way to a place right now.
Now I’ve told about everything I wanted what leaves me only one topic left, PFF. I saw the pff-vm which was ~220-60 playing with space/striker/lou/phil, so I wondered what they really are. I found out they played in QWTP getting WO’d in 1/8’t finals, then louis/kippo/mooseman/pumbaa and I think not in QWTP playing (?) space/circle/sphere/cara were with them. Then they subscribed for NQR2 with sphere/phaze/circle/louis/black, but phaze let them remove because they were inactive, if la would have disbanded I think they would have played with striker/space/lou/phil/sphere or something, would have been nice to see them play. Well, it doesn’t seems to be very serious, got to see if something really comes out of this. Members besides the ones mentioned before are razor/cara/xamp; maybe they will compete in qwtp2, who knows. I’ve got no idea if anyone was interested in the last piece of information but I thought it might be for the few someone’s who wonder wtf pff is, now you know.
I guess this was it for now and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
And ít's going on
Date: 06/12/2002
Playoffs are here again. It’s good to see that the activity hasn’t been drained as bad as I expected, it is less then in the beginning but it’s not horrible. Maybe it’s nice to have a little look back on the group stages of the past weeks.
Let’s take on NQR first. Sunday will be the last day to play any group games as everybody probably knows. It’s good to see that for the first time in the whole season the eight best clans are on the eight first spots. HGC stood a long time in the top8 where they don’t belong imo. Yes, they are quite good and have won of cMF, HF, ToT and IB in fair games and of FS in a weird one, but they are still not better then a RE or ToT overall.
The best matches I’ve seen since my last update where LA-tVS and HF-ToT. Sure, LA-tVS was a thriller on dm2 and too many words have been said about it. I was astonished by the way tVS managed to takeover, lockdown and spawnfrag, didn’t expect that to happen, everybody knows tVS can do that but I didn’t saw it happen versus LA. Now I did. After that, their match with FS was interesting too. Hib again with his beloved PL and maga played… I mean, imo both FS and tVS have six people that are good enough to play in their best lineup, for fs: reppie, razor, shiva, blixem, crit, miser and for tvs: ihminen, blaze, xamp, hib, elec, mirage. As FS started with four of those and tVS with three and one of them with PL 10~20 they seemed to have a disadvantage. Though, Hib turned out to be one of the finest lagplayers there are as he both owned dm3 and e1m2. Now, tVS still lost 2-1, winning dm3 and then losing dm2 and e1m2. With FS winning another dm2 of a top clan, they sure seem to be on a roll on their former weakest map.
The other match I mentioned as nice before was HF-ToT. It sure was good to watch but most good clans take the early stages of NQR just as prac so this outcome might not be really reliable. First was dm3 with an excellent performance of both ToT and mrlame. ToT showed they can win of big clans and mrlame showed that he’s still very good at water area and discharging, now seriously, drejfus saved HF’s honour by scoring most frags, quite nice. Then e1m2 was for HF (as always) but this time it was Slime showing his skills and he even scored 10 more then HF’s top scorer here and 30 then his best teamy. Seems like ToT is going strong. Deciding dm2 was an easy victory for HF.
These were the best games to see, the only thing I have to add: thumbs up for Redux and their good show in the cMF game. The dm3 was already nice, close round for all players except Fix who got to 77 frags as the other seven players were between 21 and 48. Then it came to Re’s CS map e3m6 on which they made scores like 85-60 when playing good clans (when both losing or winning) but this time they won with 267-8, nice going; dm2 was rape in cMF’s favour.
Coming back to SD, which most clans see as the mayor tourney, some strange things happened. As the deadline of the groups was approaching clans could claim WO’s. Now, about 100 have been claimed and I must say, I’m kind of surprised by what Apo is saying in his prediction (btw, seems kind of weird, putting a personal view on the front page) that BWL were successful by making the playoffs. Yea Right. Whatever?!?! They had five wins of which were… FOUR WO! GG… maybe they would’ve won by playing too but it seems really strange as I’d rather seen koff in their place playing LA.
Beside that surprising thing not many strange things happened. Only group b had a strange outcome with FU playing trash and tf on the last day, and winning of both! Though, still VM should’ve been in the playoffs as they won more games then FU did but VM couldn’t come up with two screens of their match with GoH so they didn’t make it because apo didn’t except them after the deadline, completely according the rules.
Now, when comparing the results with my predictions (leaving p0s out) I had 14/16 right, and if VM would’ve got those screens in time even 15 out of 16. Now, they weren’t too hard to predict so let’s not act too nice about it.
Same with the first round playoffs, the outcomes were so easy that I didn’t even took the time (which I can use better) to write something about it. Though, predicting what maps there would be picked was harder as I didn’t expect HGC to take DM6 as they have playing so good on dm2 in the past time. Nor did I expect BWL to pick dm6, e2m2 seemed to be logical because they played it before as their map and LA is good on all common maps and they didn’t rape 2ND when they played them on e2m2 (the only time whole season). Campbusters surprised friend and enemy (do they have them?) by losing with only two frags on dm2 from HF. They could’ve won if Phil wouldn’t have quit qw for about a month! Well, nothing to do about that, would’ve been fun to see CB win that map :>
About the other games, the to WO’s, well done. Then the Finnish games didn’t bring anything surprising. Nor did FS-HGC besides the map choice of HGC, dm6 instead of dm2. I guess HGC would have stood a better chance on dm2 without fullstart then at dm6 at all. As everybody knows, dm6 was the first homemap of FS and it’s still the map that is standard on half the public servers in NL. So the score was like 500-280.
Now, the later stage of SD5 is here. It’s good to see that we have the eight best qw clans of the moment taking the eight last spots in this tournament and it looks like it will (at least it should) be those eight making the last eight in NQR3.
The four matches that are coming up are going to be exciting, at least three of them will.
And again Apollyon surprised me, just this time with his predictions. Now, it seems to me that the best clan of the moment is LA, numbers 2-6 are FS, cMF, tVS, SR and HF (not in this order) and 7 and 8 are ToT and RE. The numbers 2-6 can beat all the others when having a good day, or when the enemy has a bad day of course.
Now, about HF-ToT. I spoke of this game before but then the NQR match. Don’t know if both took it serious (guess so) and it should show how the powers lie. ToT is able to beat HF on dm3/dm2 but they will need a very good day to manage that (or HF a bad one). Though, without getting a good start and when muti is playing dm3 for mrlame, or mrlame plays serious like in fs-hf last season, the odds will be leaning over heavily. HF wins 2-1
Firing Squad – Slackers is a great showdown. Both can win, no doubt, and anybody who says that FS hasn’t got as much skills as SR has is talking shit. They have pracced together quite some times and SR has won more maps, ok, but the maps they won were 9/10 inside 25 frags. This means, if FS will play as good as they have done on dm2/dm3 over the past weeks, they will win. Considering we saw SR losing of LA, HF, cMF and only winning with a small margin of tVS who weren’t in good shape at the time we should think of the shape SR is in atm. FS wins 2-1
This game shouldn’t be too hard for LA. As they haven’t lost a single map yet (Striker: “only pure luck”) and they have played every good clan in Europe in the past two month, so why should RE be the one to win a map. It could be a walk in the park for LA and Apollyon said about RE’s dm3 that it was so good… dm2 and e1m2 have always been their better maps, has always been their weakest, look at IB-RE for a recent example of it, dm3 isn’t IB’s best map. Even Retic can’t make Redux good on dm3 (ok drej, I guess you were right after all, as always :-/). Now, especially Silver, then Blitz and as third Serox are keeping Redux with the best clans of europe but it seems they aren’t able to win of them on the oldskool maps (just the tVS game was a close one, but tVS wasn’t playing their best quake at the start of the season). And as FS raped RE last weekend too in some prac on dm3 with ~300-35 I don’t think dm3 should be too hard for LA. Maybe LA will even pick dm3 themselves because it’s RE’s weakest, and RE taking dm2; who knows, it’s probably going to be e1m2 anyway (LA’s pick then). LA wins 2-0
Damn, you can’t make me predict this one. It’s just… impossible? Both teams are playing in the top since SD1, both making half finals every time (cMF missed it in SD3, losing from… tVS and tVS didn’t made it last season in the game vs FS, losing on 1 frag). Now, cMF didn’t lost a single map in SD5 yet, just like in SD3, now meeting tVS in the quarters. Fix carried cMF through a lot of tough games in the whole season and he he’s going with owning it, in the RE game again on dm3. tVS didn’t play very good whole season. They weren’t title candidates imo, of course they were good, but not good enough. Now, the fact that xamp has sound now and is actually playing seems to help and the fact that they prac sometimes. The game against LA showed that they can win of any clan on dm2, even without getting their fullstart. Let cMF be warned. They met about three weeks ago on LAN and then it was a 2-0 victory for cMF, but then tVS didn’t got their best lineup. Now cMF doesn’t have it as fifi lost his connection, too bad to see that happen :-/
Doesn’t matter what map will be played, all could be close. The outcome of this game will rely a lot on nerves, teamplay, luck and Hibs lag. cMF wins 2-1
That was it again, I didn’t have the time to write everything I wanted in the past three weeks so I’ve another update waiting, don’t know how long it will take before that one is going to be online for sure. I’m already happy that I could find the time to write this one!
Thanks for reading
2003
Another year in the Quake World
Date: 12/04/2003
Quake has changed… again.
And it never is going to be like it was before.
Where are we now? It’s December ’01.
The legendary Flaming Fist disbanded after the second season of Smackdown, the members are divided in two clans, Enslaved (with Pietro, Exile and Forsberg) and in Orkney Clan (having Dag, aKKe and Primus). Orkney Clan looks the stronger of the two, with Brutal as fourth player (he was shortly in SR).
E disbanded too, their most important players formed SR, Vana, Paradoks, DARKL0RD and Goljat. They added Xalibur and Brutal (ex OC and CAPS) but Brut went to OC as written two lines before. The other members (Hixen, Gemma, Pingvin, Riker) were inactive and/or didn’t manage to set up a decent team. Riker played in Lithium and Hixen tried to give E another try with the other old guys Gemma and Pingvin added with jOn, Stiker and BaRRe. But as they didn’t went active Stiker played this season with DIE (Da Imperial Executers). There isn’t one clan we can pick and say off: they are going to win season three.
Half finals of SD3. Slackers is facing tVS. It promises to be a great battle. Slackers took out AntiQuad, with Nice, Diki, Harvester and JX (who came from NS), in the first round with a straight 2-0 with a quite close e1m2. I expected a closer match as AQ showed they were really good with JarreX in their ranks but they couldn’t get more out of it. Then they faced Divines in the second, they played them before AQ because Diva was on LAN that weekend and SR was sure they would win of AQ, it was quite a weird situation as you can understand. Diva (with Circle (from CAPS), Razor (now FS), Phaze and Sphere) took home e2m2 but lost dm2 and a close dm3 after that. TVS faced The Twats in the first round, a spot where Denial should’ve been but due to a mistake (no overtime on in their game, and a failure in the points system, wasn’t it?) Twats went through. It was rape of the kind we seldom see in SD Playoffs. I didn’t expect this to happen either. The Twats were in group D with FS, DIE and IB and they hadn’t lost a single game without making a good score. With them it was fun to see some old players of L with them, Dakoth, Swenzon and Multi were and even Lice, Plura and Catalism who are friends of Baby Roo (leader of L). Well, the rape did happen as they couldn’t field their best team when facing tVS, too bad, it might have been a better fight with them.
Then we had a classic on. In the first two seasons of Smackdown the four semifinalist were FF, E, cMF and tVS. Now, cMF and tVS had to play a game head to head to reach the half finals. As tVS was sheer unbeatable on dm2 in those days (only FF managed so?) it would be a hard nut for cMF to crack. Too hard, it turned out. The pressure was really on now as cMF had to win both maps coming up to go on. They chose dm3, e1m2 is tVS’s weak map but it wasn’t cMF’s best either. And wow, I haven’t seen much this tense games after, it really was a thriller which tVS managed to take with a ‘comfortable’ five frags, this was one of the last (the last?) important game(s) where Carna was playing.
Now the half final, tVS-SR. Finding a server was one thing, but after that, the game starts, dm2 is tVS` map and they are favorites on it. They make it true and win it with 100 frags. Second is e1m2 and it goes in a tense game with 40 frags to SR.
Then, something everybody remembers… Apollyon was cheering for tVS all game. tVS wanted dm3 as decider and SR didn’t. Apo uses Backoffice to decide the map and it’s… dm3. The whole season long the bot in #smackdown was used to pick the maps but the rules said Backoffice can be used to get a decider map. A whole row is what follows, SR and with them a lot of other people went crazy. An hour later the game resumes… SR played the map (which was really dm3) and won it with a mere 20 frags.
The other half was between Orkney Clan and Lithium. Lithium took out OMG without too much troubles in the first round and faced FS in second (they won of Para). The chances seemed quite equal as both had won in pracs, first map was dm2, chosen by L. This had been FS` weakest map for ages and it turned out that way too, ending 340-100 with 108 frags by Nabbe. Second, e1m2, still a hard one to take FS down. Too hard, it turned out, FS did what they had to do and won with 35 frags. Deciding happened on dm3. Both teams had the chance of winning here but while Reppie is timing pent it gets stolen by an L guy. L has the start, FS puts up a good fight but L wins with more then 100 frags.
Orkney Clan had their troubles making half finals, as they faced the Germans from iBh in the first PO round, winning dm3 but losing dm6. Just taking away the decider e2m2 quite easy. Second was Enslaved, the other clan with ex-FF guys, it didn’t seem hard to predict that OC was going to win but ED has (in many ppl’s eyes) EU #1 Pietro (he turned the quarter final game around by taking over e1m2 on his own when facing DIE. It was more 1v4 then 4v4 in the first 10 minutes there) added up with Exile and one of the few ‘unbreakable’ couples: Reverend and Znappe. It starts with e1m2 which OC wins quite easy after having a superb start. Then, dm3, ED’s choice. The game was close, really close. ED gets the start and keeps the lead the first half of the game. Dag then takes Pent/Quad and ties, from that moment it stays close, ED gets away with only four frags in the end, hiding. Dm2 was the last map, ED got the start again but OC takes over pretty soon. In the end the scores look fine for OC (100 more) but they only got the whole map just before the end.
The second half final, OC-L was coming up. Primus isn’t available to play for OC, a shame, he’s replaced by Piglet and Thug. Dm3 is OC’s choice and Dag shows how it’s to be played. OC wins it quite easy with more then 100 frags in front of L. The second was dm2, a long time it was locked by L and they take it with 200. E1m2, another thriller (there was some fine quake in those days). Nabbe goes crazy once in a while, busier fragging than reporting on mm3. White times out just before the end but L takes it away with 25.
The battle Slackers won it of Lithium who were able to field an impressive team of Nabbe, Riker, White and Effie. Slackers had about the same team they have these days: Paradoks, Xalibur, Goljat and Vana. The castle of Vana was SR’s choice. Vana gave the specs an e1m2 show again. The first four minutes the game was close but then SR controlled Quad, took the lead and never gave it away. Second map was dm3, they won it of SR in the group too so they already showed their skills versus SR on it. The start was equal (in frags), after some minutes SR got the lead and didn’t gave it away very easy, second pent was taken by L (together with some rl’s) but SR still had the lead. It wasn’t until the fourth pent came up and L took the lead and didn’t gave it away. Third of the big three was dm2. L got the lead and fragged to 90-45 when there was 10 minutes left. At that moment SR took over and showed how to takeover, lockdown and spawnfrag here. They made 150 and L 4 frags after that moment, great play by Paradoks, has to be mentioned. It was L’s pick now and I think everybody expected they would take dm3, though, they thought back on last round, had a chance of winning there and decided to take it again. Now SR got the start and the lead, Goljat played very good. L took over after five minutes and it looked like they would stunt, they leaded when the game was haflway but SR got packed up again, took the lead back about 30 seconds later and didn’t lose it. It ended up 3-1 for Slackers.
Now, the first weekend of 2002. Qhlan3 is here. Lithium, Okney Clan, The Viper Squad, Slackers and Divines were attending. They didn’t have their best lineup (none of them I guess) but the expectations on tVS were very high (Ihmn, Blaze, Rock and Mirage). HF (Mrlame, Drejfus, Madmax and Mutilator) put up a great fight in the group when facing SR (with Paradoks, Space, Striker and Xalibur). HF winning e1m2 with four and SR dm3 with five, dm2 was easy for SR. Diva (with Nikke, SoD!, Razor and Case) were in the group with those two and couldn’t make a fist against those two. In the playoffs HF won of tVS, L and faced SR, who won of ED (without their best players) and OC (with only Dag of their first team) very easy (Striker 100% on dm3), dm2 was rape with all SR guys (except Para, 97) making 100, OC wasn’t that serious; in the finals. When looking at the match in the group you’d expect a close game. E1m2 was a good match, SR took the lead after four minutes and didn’t let it go, HF got more frags towards the end but they couldn’t catch SR (on 14). Dm2, SR’s map, HF got the start and SR didn’t manage to make more then five frags in the first minutes. Then they took off, made more frags then HF all the time, got their score at ~13 and won it with 70 frags.
About the 1on1 and 2on2, there is not going to be a long report on it, Space&Striker won the final of Mrlame&Griffin after three maps. On the one on one, Paradoks lost of Griffin in the semi final after which he (Grf) won the final with 2-1 of Dag, who took out Mutilator in the half final.
On 15 march 2002 SD4 and NQR2 started. After a year the NQR crew decided to get the league rolling again. After a successful first season with clans like Koff, NS, HF, cMF, L and FF in the playoffs it turned out to be very good. The only thing that was little less nice is that the final never got played (no, the on the nqr site is not the final but a groupgame, final would’ve been best of five too, so even if it was played at the time when the final should be played it wouldn’t be the right one). Now, there are a lot of new clans formed. We find aKKe, Dag and Pietro from the old FF, together with Nabbe (L) and Space (SR) in Lege Artis, they are in many eyes the best team around. Another one is Libidus Animalis with the oldskool guys Sectopod, Webser and Legi (Game Over) and TCO (AW) and effie (L). Other old clans which were revived, something I really liked, were Z, ZR and EA. Though, it was too bad not all the old members of them were active playing again. Zetor had them, with Hib, Rock, Acid, Mazer. EA and Z didn’t manage to get their old core players back. Left are FirstAid, fielding Ruffnux/Ani/Grisling/KrazyMac in the group and jOn in the playoffs; Headcharge (Stickle, Cara, Case, sandy, phaze, xorcist) and C6 (Janozh, Final, Nightman, ljug, ringo, gore).
Apollyon decided to quit QW after last season. He got a lot of critic after the Backoffice action in SR-tVS. It really was a shame he left. New headadmin became Crit, the Fs’er. The crew decided to make eight small groups, with five or six clans each. This made the groupstage even less interesting then normally. Though, this wasn’t the think that got most criticized but the fact that MQWCL wasn’t allowed did. We saw a flamewar going on about this without any result concerning div_eu, something that the decision of not allowing it did have was that there was no SD in the USA this season, not willing to play without their beloved MQWCL.
About the group stage. Not all clans of who everybody thought they would go through really did. As there was some trouble in group A concerning the activity of Zetor and EA. Zetor didn’t even play a single match, the few games that they did play during their revival were all in NQR. EA couldn’t field a decent team in SD, neither could they prac enough with it to get some good results. As Venture and Vega weren’t playing here (SD) they had to field Kippo, Koopa and Ewdafa in the two games that they did play; the ones versus FirstAid and FU, both losing them 2-0.
Another clan that didn’t play a single game was HeadCharge, I thought they would take second place in their group (behing Lithium) and proceed to the playoffs but they died and (one of) their best players, Stickle, went to help C6 out.
One of the new clans surprised us though. Redux, formed with ex-DN members won the last game there had to be played in their group of HF with 2-1 and making the playoffs with one other game won and three WO’s (the rest was kinda inactive). The only quite interesting group was the one with fs, koff, @ and Z. One of the best games sure was @-Z. Taking three maps to decide that @ was the better team, winning the deciding dm3 with only three frags (Z won dm2 and @ won e1m2). It was nice to see Cable and Spetnaz playing there again. The koff-z game was a good one too. Though, a quite new Z team was brought up as we saw Dii, Focu, Luny and Dedi playing, we only saw Cable and Spetnaz back in one game (not this one vs koff); haven’t spotted Blitzer, Crunchy and Perkele at all . Koff won dm3 easy and Z won dm2 with 10 frags. The deciding e1m2 was a close one. Z got the start and the lead but soon enough Koff came back and took the whole map over. Z didn’t feel like losing this round too at all and made another comeback. The problem was that the quadruns didn’t turn out very well and they couldn’t catch koffs score soon enough to win the round, losing with 20. I think Z could’ve made the playoffs if they had some of the old guys playing active again, but well, what’s in ‘what if’.
The first thing that happened in the playoffs was Lege Artis losing of Hellfire while fielding a heavy lagging Pietro. Imo it wasn’t a good game. LA won dm3 and lost e1m2 and dm2 after. As they only had one other member, aKKe, and he lives at the same place as Pietro does it wouldn’t have cared if he had played then. Still, a weird outcome. Then Koff won dm2 of SR. Andy said on it: “It seemed as if Slackers´ thoughts already were focussed on the next map, which they knew wouldn´t turn out to be an easy task either. KOFF, who usually would have serious problems beating the -13 frags against _Kelvin in a 1on4, have managed to take down the current champion on dm2 by 161-116.” The dm3 after sure was a hard task for SR but they won it after all, so they did on e1m2 with miser owning it and making about half of Koffs frags. Koff was disappointed as they could’ve won dm3 for sure.
Then, match of the season for me, FS-tVS. First map was dm2, still tVS` map and still FS weakest one. Though, Blixem did the impossible, owned tele and put Reppie and Razor in position to run quads, and they won. Second map was e1m2, Hangtime said before the map that he would give up his job at smackdown if FS would lose that (he took over the headadmin job of Crit as he was on a vacation when the groups ended) one as it was tVS` worst map for a long time. Now, it sure was a show, though, the things of which most people would’ve thought they would didn’t. Mirage ran quad for tVS and I don’t know, but what he did there was just crazy. When he died, he managed to get quad after all, time after time, sure exciting to see. When FS was closing in at tVS and they got control of ya/gl/quad Elec did a ninja move at ya, killed the FS guy there, owned gl/ya for some minutes and took the next two quads making very much frags in a short time. So, FS couldn’t stop tVS as they were fighting hard to stay in the tournament as they won e1m2 with forty frags. Decider was dm3, a map which FS could’ve chosen as theirs as they took is as homemap very, very often before in both SD as NQR. First time, FS gets fullstart… wtf tVS fullstartinen clan… something isn’t right… server goes down after two minutes. How could it have been different. So, restart, and damn, what a game. In the beginning the difference between the teams is 19 but it hasn’t been more then ten for the ~sixteen minutes that came after. Think that was for the first time since long I could really enjoy watching quake and felt the adrenaline all over the place, just like I was playing myself. It ended… 166-165 for FS… Mirage taking the frags (54) and reppie having the efficiency by 5% (and second in frags with 49). Must say, Mirage and Elec had skills that I didn’t expect to see in this game. They played very good on both e1m2 and dm3 while I expected that Ihmn and Blaze would have to pull them through. Though, Mirage wouldn’t have got those quads without the teams help. Just, such impressive play by two top teams.
cMF made the second round after they won of Dodge This! Another team with oldskool players who tried it once more. Too bad that DT! Only had three members available, so nice that cMF agreed on playing 3-3. DT wasn’t so active after all as they made the playoffs by winning of Damagers (who didn’t manage to play a SD game with four people either) 3-3 and a WO vs ARD. So, DT! played with Hixen (E), Primus (FF) and Stalin (GO), seems like a very good lineup but I think they didn’t have enough practice to put up a real good fight. On dm3 cMF got the start, controlled the first ten minutes and then DT! took over. cMF got very little frags from that point but DT! simply didn’t frag as much as cMF did before. 112-71 for cMF and Hixen making 35 of DT!`s frags. Second map was dm6 and cMF simply raped them on it… 383-101.
Next clan that cMF faced was SR (who almost got kicked out by koff) and it promised to be a great game as cMF specialized on dm3 this season. First map, dm3, cMF gets a Finnish fullstart but the rl got discharged. cMF had the lead about all the time while Zhin and Fifi think they are playing FFA.. shooting everybody ;-) Though, cMF played well and outclassed SR overall, even though they could never get away very far, they won it with 40 frags. Then e1m2, the castle of Vana. Xalibur (who did a good job on dm3 for SR) went out and Goljat replaced him to play SR’s map, e1m2. CMF is taking the start again but aren’t able to take full control (thanks to Goljat who did MH). They are leading and running quad the first ten minutes with SR attacking from mega. When two third of the match had passed S(triker)R got the control again after a nice attack at YA (from water). And they sure did frag faster then cMF, cMF fought hard and stole some quads of SR but they had the map closed and fragged on until they had twenty frags more then cMF after twenty minutes.
The last of the ‘big three’ gave us a winner. Fix went out and Zhin came in for cMF and this time Striker could leave to let Xalibur play again. To keep things clear, Para and Vana played all three maps, dm3 with Xali and Striker, e1m2 with Goljat and Striker and dm2 with Xali and Goljat. SR got quad and cMF low-rl. Though, cMF takes the control of tele/quad early and seem the have vital positions. While Goljat is camping ra-mega Paradoks and Vana are trying to take quads doing enough damage. Weird enough the Slackers have the lead while cMF has tele, Janne even takes over low-rl a few times. At a point Vana takes over Golle’s job and Paradoks and Goljat start attacking quad. Now SR takes over but they can’t get rid of cMF totally as they keep fragging. SR tries to defend the lead they had at ra-mega but get overrun with four minutes to go (they had the lead all the time), losing with 16 frags.
When losing another map the day after, StrikeR decides to leave SR.
The other quarter final on this side of the brackets was Lithium versus Redux. RE met C6 in the first round where they won dm2 easily but about the e1m2 both teams said it was the worst they ever played. Can’t say anything different on it then that it was unbelievable messy. Though, RE came out victorious thanks to the individual skill of Silver and were facing L, who won of FU in two maps (e1m2, dm3). A memorable moment from L’s side in this version of Smackdown was that they played vs the Polish The Criminals with Exile, White and the oldskoolers antne and Baby Roo! The last two, both almost (or complete?) inactive, were a surprise to see playing again. Baby roo could play quite well with the other two but Antne suffered clearly from his inactivity and bad ping.
Redux chose (as always) dm2 as their map but they didn’t stand a chance against Riker, White, DarkLord and Exile. L locked down the map quite early but they didn’t manage to get it whole, maybe because of several quadbores (still love those) of the L players. Redux couldn’t do much about it until the game was in the second half. They couldn’t get total control but they managed to frag more towards the end. E1m2, it was quite even, though, as L had the control most of the time they were able to get more frags and RE wondered around MH quite often. It seemed like DL didn’t feel like fragging a lot this time, weird, as he had most in the FU game.
The half finals were coming up, though, cMF-L wasn’t sure to happen as Lithium was inactive and didn’t seem to be able to get a squad playing before the last day games could be played, and Hangtime was very strict to those. Happily enough four players were available after all, namely Riker, White, DarkLord and Shiva. On the other side _|anne, Fix, Dare and Fifi were playing. It was quite certain that the two maps played would be dm3 and e1m2.
Dm3 off course picked by cMF as they seem to be able to beat every clan on it this season.
L got a Finnish fullstart (White pent, DARKL Quad/Ring) and Shiva (had RL) started to frag like a madman in the first minutes. While Shiva was running quads L kept are one by one but cMF came in every time again. The pressure of cMF was big. At the time of the second pent neither of the clans had control and it was not clear that one had gained the upper hand in his game. Then, when Jus got pent the control of RA was settled by Fix, looking back Shiva should have jumped out of the window to take pent with his 180/150 RL but he went for quad and even left that for Jus to take. The resistance of L was good and cMF had pressure on them all the time while they attacked from YA. It was Fix who went crazy now and he did a very good job for cMF. Then at the third pent, L really needed it to be able to win this game, they weren’t that much behind in frags but despite L’s efforts to take it Jus took it again! A very nice shafting on Shiva who jumped out of window with 150/100 RL was what we saw. When cMF got the last pent too they got total control and L couldn’t do anything against their loss.
The second map was e1m2. L got the start again with Shiva quad+ya but L wasn’t able to secure YA for long again as it was guarded by DL with 7 health and no weapon. cMF took over and it looked like the game was over in the early minutes. YA was guarded professionally by them and they held it during the whole game despite L making a lot of frags while attacking from Mega which cMF wasn’t able to secure. DARKL0RD played a very good game for L and made a lot of frags. L had the chance to take YA over at the moment Janne had quad and only 23 health left but one L guy missed four sg shots in a row. In the last five minutes cMF managed to get full control, just as the dm3, and L wasn’t a problem anymore. This was like it was expected. The L team, as it played today, hadn’t played in a single official yet. Both L and cMF are good on all maps (cMF less on e1m2 and more on dm3) but cMF was just better overall. Even if L won e1m2 cMF would’ve took dm2 home. Still very nice to see an old player as DARKL0RD back in action again on a high level. It seemed that he was out of form in their game vs Redux, but it maybe he just had an off-day. This game gave us the first finalist of this tournament, and a good one for sure after taking out both SR and L.
The other half final went between HF and FS. After the game vs. tVS FS were my favorites. E1m2 is HF’s map and dm3 is FS’s. Dm3 kicks off. FS gets the lead early on but they are not able to take total control and spawnfrag around. This was quite awkward as HF never played very well on dm3 and FS was in great shape on it halfway the season. Like I said, FS can’t pull off but stay in the lead all the time, though HF is able to take some quads here and there. At the time Mutilator timed (~two minutes left) HF takes the lead… play more often 3v4? Though, making up thirty frags in two minutes, on dm3, playing a good clan, 3-4, if they would’ve done that :-)
After the game Reppie said he played with rate 5000 (handy) and Mrlame claims that it was his effort for HF playing so good because this time he really played and didn’t only stay in the water and discharge teammates, must admit, they put up a great fight and only lost with thirteen frags.
Then, e1m2, HF seemed to be unbeatable on it the whole season and FS’ e1m2 only went down after SD2, HF just showed their weakness two days before when facing Zetor in NQR2, but they didn’t play with Muttan but with Madmax.
The start was equal. In the first few minutes we neither of the teams could take the overhand. Then, HF got the control of ya and it was done. Their incredible mm3 comes up once again and in no time all the HF guys get their armor and weapons, FS players running around desperately to find out where that damn quad is! So, HellFire, with MrLame as best player here, taught FS a lesson on e1m2, and that while FS didn’t even suck 100% (they got 140 frags, hf 215).
Hellfire was warned. The decider, dm2, was up. It gave both teams equal chances, especially after the match of FS…
HF got a Finnish start and fragged to an easy thirty frag lead. They kept control until we saw a nice quadbore by HF. FS could tie the score and HF got the control again making another forty frags (30-70 now). But, FS is taking it on again with Crit taking out some HF rl’s (three at water?) and they manage to lock ya/water/quad for some time and frag to 55-70 when Razor moves to low-rl and fs loses the control of the whole map for the rest of the game. HF couldn’t lock it completely but they never lost quad and were able to spawnfrag quite easy. 120 frags they led when the time stopped, bringing them to the final of SD4.
So, two clans in the final that we haven’t seen there before, just like the season before, the difference is that we saw three Slackers, Goljat, Vana and Paradoks, that played in previous` ones with Euthanasia. Though… the sad story about this time (spring editions just own) is that the date was set… though HellFire couldn’t field a decent team. Having three players online (not even three from their first team), they played one dm3 3v3. But it was clear that HF didn’t want to succeed playing like this. So, another season without a final. Mutilators pc CPU broke and someone else had a wedding, but the date they agreed on was about the last day before summer and as it had been postponed for weeks cMF didn’t feel like playing on another day at all. It has happened enough times that teams couldn’t play with their best players or with their best lineup (omg, FF-tVS sd2 just pops up from some dark place in my head) and teams were forced to play. Or with people disconnecting and the game won’t be replayed; the reason that I want that game admins can pause the game or that the players can just vote ‘pause’ in the same way as break, it will help a lot (just not if the team with four is lame enough not to vote :>) to make things end fairer. So, HT decided to let SD itself in it’s worth and give cMF the WO. Of course, it’s not nice but he didn’t want to postpone it again just to please the masses (nor could he because cMF didn’t want it).
So, that’s how SD4 ended leaving us with the summer.
Happily enough I’ve still got NQR2 left to tell something about before the summer comes in.
At the first sight it looked like it was going to be a league with the best teams competing (except for LA). As Slackers, Lithium, Clan MalFunction, Firing Squad, Zetor and Tribe of Tjernobil signed in. Besides those there were Orkney Clan (now without aKKe and Dag but still with players like Brutal, Primus, Piglet, Thug and Bizz), Paranoia and Euthanasia (with HiXen, jOn, Stan, Dexter, Shiva and Wader). The unlucky thing was that most of those clans never got to play a single game at all. Slackers, Lithium, ToT, Euthanasia and OC didn’t play a single game. Paranoia did, but they didn’t play enough to make the playoffs, inactivity struck here too, only playing five matches and beating some clans that did make the playoffs.
During the season we saw HeadCharge, The Axe Men and Hard Guns Crew taking the top spots but when FS got active they won 20 games in row only taking three weeks. Riker seemed to be a good help in their team, he played a lot maps. Though, he didn’t play in Smackdown with them as he was in Lithium (yes, the team that took out FS in SD3 quarters).
Anyway, hgc, axe and head seemed to avoid the big names a little and played the (~50) less good clans more. But when Head faced Zetor, damn they pulled out a good fight. The dm3 was close enough with Stickle of head showing his dm3 skills for sure, only leaving hib with one single frag more in front of him, ZR won it with forty frags. Then the e1m2. True art if you’d ask me. ZR lined hib/acid/rock/hazard, almost their best lineup, just MazeróHazard though, they were quite played in well with hzrd as he even played more maps then Mazer did. So, e1m2… Stickle owned this map too… leading his team to a great score, he made seventy frags followed by Xorcist who stayed on a respectful distance with fifty. Hib and Acid tried hard enough to do something but they couldn’t win it anymore. As Case left (he and Cara were the other two of Head playing) sANDYMAn came in to play the deciding dm2. Well, Zetor didn’t feel good about the loss of the map before (they were still unbeaten in games) so they learned them what dm2 is about. Head got run over badly, losing it 325-75.
Another game on which HGC remembered others of quite often was FS-HGC. What can I say, not much people knew HGC by those days as they hadn’t appeared in that form in European tournaments before.
At the end of FS’ three week activity they faced HGC for the second time. In the first game they didn’t have too much trouble with HGC even though Crit and Eriq had ping over 100 and the teams` average was about 20 higher. It was twice dm3 and fs won both with ~100 frags more. Have to mention that it was hgc’s second match of the season so they might have been in bad shape. Now, they played again. We have seen in it the last season too, the fs guys all have good individual skills but at the moment they change something in their lineup for just one game they the teamplay is ruined, and we haven’t only seen that with fs. Now, they played the first dm3 with Blixem, Crit from the active squad and Kry, Eriq from the less active/skilled. Pings fs-hgc 65-45, blixem owns it but hgc takes the win away with nine frags. The dm2 (their map) went quite easily to fs with eighty frags as Eriq was replaced by razor he brought some tp back. On the second dm3 then HGC showed some nice play again and only lost it with four little frags. Weird, concerning they won of cMF in an all dm3 game, and they weren’t the least and in two maps of HF, e1m2/dm3 were we saw Maso back in action (he played a nice e1m2). Best moment for fs in group stage imo was when they played one of the other two dutch clans Damagers on e2m5. Winning it with the old 100% nl SD3 team of Crit (owning it), Reppie, Plop (Rogue) and Blixem. Btw, blixem was fragging sickly fast in those days. Then, FS` activity went down a lot (they only played two more matches in the five weeks untill the playoffs) and other clans took over the head position. We saw GamBlers as one of the most active teams of the season together with Gods of Hellfire who suffered a 21 game losing streak only winning their first MAP in their fourteenth war. That is what I call love for the game, no whining and just having fun while playing (ok, winning isn’t a bad thing, but they were even happier after the first one now J).
I really looked forward to the games the old, and now revived clans, would play: Zetor and Empire of Azeroth. It was cool to see that ZR was able to field almost the exact same team as they did back in 1999, only missing out Jaguar (who was inactive and kina fed up with quake). EA on the other hand wasn’t able to field all their core players (especially missing Ser) so their first team here was Venture, DarkWarrior, Raptor and Vega; with a backup of Kippo and Ewdafa. One of the best moments of EA was that they played dm2 vs AMD winning it 106-0. Too bad they couldn’t fulfill the expectations on them which were pretty high. They started quite well with five wins (of which C6 and AMD) but then lost three times in a row and couldn’t play enough games to get into the playoffs. Same as Denial of who I expected more then what they did now too. And QuadAver, they got Znappe, Reverend and Clawfinger playing with them for the season and managed to win of DN, AMD and 4K (twice even) but didn’t play more then eight games too…
Another clan of which I thought they would show us some nice results was the german Quadaver. With help of the not so German Znappe and Reverend they won quite some interesting matches, and yet again… a clan that wasn’t active enough to be a serious candidate for the playoffs. Very sad to see that this many good clans didn’t make, pure due to lack of activity.
As most of the better clans HF saw the qualifying stage more like prac then as serious officials. Still, they only lost three games of which they played one with their best lineup (vs cMF). Zetor did their best to play as little as possible and they succeeded in that for sure. They only played nine games, about no pracs and won all officials. Just, about the clans they played… the only good one was HellFire (and HeadCharge as mentioned before) but they fielded a team of Mrlame, Wigorf, Javve and Maso. Still winning e1m2 on which from the ZR side only Hib played well. Dm3 was won by ZR with ease (300-35) and the decider e2m2 gave another 140~150 frags advantage to ZR.
When coming into the playoff stage we see to our surprise that GamBlers has qualified, on the other side, it wasn’t such a surprise as they played so many games (thirty) they got out victorious out of thirteen, isn’t a very impressive result. Still, it is very nice to see that new players, new clans are coming up and take away playoff spots. Their had specialized on e1m6 and e2m2. A smart choice as most known clans think they are quite familiar with e2m2 as it had been allowed in SD for some seasons. This resulted that beside their wins of clans like The Suspected, Warhammer and GOH they won of Trash, AMD and CB, winning e1m6, losing their map (most times raped) and then won e2m2. What do say of AMD in this season. Is just seemed that they weren’t able to find their turn on the episode maps. They had trouble against the worst clans sometimes while raping them on e1m2. Though, they still got enough wins to take a top-16 spot and go through.
Just before the playoffs started we saw one interesting game. This was cMF-FS, FS had played one official in the month before, which was trash winning it 2-0 with a hard time on dm2 (179-158); but, nice thing that ploppie played another match.
About cMF-FS. First map, cmf fields JX, Fifi, Fix and Zhin and fs.se have Riker, Razor, Sphere and the foreigner Reppie, think he’s from Germany or something :P. So, the game starts and FS makes a fullstart and locks the map down. cMF couldn’t do too much about it; they wanted to cancel the game first because Dare couldn’t play (schoolwork); but Fifi came in and was brave enough to try and play under the worst conditions. Fifi played with an old cpu (his other one broke when playing Kalevala earlier that day), a bad mouse and a bad ping. Taking over 3v4 against a good clan on dm3 is very hard. Dare had finished his homework and was ready to play. They moved to another server where the pings for the fins were a little better (and overall equaled; note, Sphere and Reppie lagged bad ping ~85 and Riker/Razor had ~35). cMF takes the lead early and they seem going to have an easy win. Though, FS fights hard and when time is running out especially Riker is having nice actions all over the place for the FS guys. The cMF lead is shrinking every minute we are getting close towards the end. cMF can do nothing else then hide, CS and do sneaky actions, and they are good at it. As Zhin manages to kill the fs quad in the last two minutes they can’t take over the lead. CMF wins 148-135.
So, another three times dm3 match between fs and cmf. FS get’s the start and it seemed like they were going to take control and wouldn’t give it out of hands anymore. They fragged on until the second pent came and Janne took it away. From that moment on it was a true thriller. Neither team could lock the map down and the score stayed even for a long time. Fix got the third pent without weapon so janne gave him an rl what ended up in some frenzy in which about all fs/rl guys were killed. Still cmf couldn’t lock the map down and finish the game in their favor, it stayed that way until there was about four minutes to go, after that Riker discharged himself and two teammates. FS got two RL-guys at SNG but then at they seemed to be scared of the power of Janne as he both took them out. Think that was the last moment FS could give any resist. 162-145 for cMF.
Now, the playoffs took off, at the same time SD4 started. We saw ZR getting a WO over the Norwegian clan Axe. Can’t say the first round playoff games were exciting or surprising enough to report them all. We saw koff-cmf which was nice, with cmf winning dm3 with Fix taking first RL and having 100% effi for sixteen minutes long when he got killed by Zygot. CMF had the control for almost the entire game just forgetting second pent but Koff didn’t do much with it. Koff was going nice with pent as they got the last too and after that cMF wasn’t able to keep their lock. This meant that only the last five minutes were quite even but cMF had already secured their victory. Then, koff taking e1m6 once more. This should be an interesting game as the two had player their before ending 135-133 in favor of cMF with Gamer making 60 frags (second had 44) and they didn’t even have their best team as Nicam was playing instead of Scenic.
The game started, cMF got a good start and controlled the rl/ya. KOFF came back soon enough and from that moment the area switched from time to time. Only near the end of the game KOFF got a some control of it. They had a comfortable lead with only three minutes to go so I thought it was over for cMF after their quadrunner died. But no! With two minutes to go they got RL under control. The only thing against them was time, losing it 150-158.
The decider. Omg, it really was good to watch. Things were looking bad for cMF. The game wasn’t even a minute old when Janne timed out and KOFF got a good control over RA. CMF couldn’t do anything against it. As soon as Janne came back (after about for minutes) cMF started to frag again, the only problem was that they didn’t have a single rl and KOFF had four. Though, they did it very good gaining control of RA and hunting down KOFF everywhere. When they would’ve needed 1~2 minutes to take over the lead again KOFF took over and expanded their lead to ~40 frags. But as you might have guessed, cMF took the control over again and didn’t have any trouble anymore winning it with 45 frags. One more note, Janne even got most frags (50) but was followed close by Zhin (49) and Gamer (49, very nice for losing team).
In the second round we did see some nice games, Zetor-4K for instance. The dm3 was true impressive play by ZR. They got the start with pent and rl. Pent secured RA and at the time of second quad Rock owns YA too, with Hib running quad. Then at the four minute mark Slash gets his hands on a quad and takes out Rock there. It didn’t took long though because ZR killed Slash and took YA back very soon after that. The second pent was a huge fight. Zetor gets outnumbered by the 4K guys (who couldn’t be anywhere else anyway) but ZR has a nice action with taking it away in front of about the whole 4K team, still love those actions, especially when the clan your playing does it :E
From that moment ZR locks the map down tight, they have all positions (ya, ra, quad, bridge) and just spawnfrag 4K away taking all pents. The first time that 4K could do one thing was taking quad with six minutes to go and they even took over RA! And the 4K quad got gibbed at ring again. Last minutes were locked again and Hib did a great job on quad, 86 of ZR’s 234 frags were his, 4K left with 29.
It almost seemed like the old times revived in which 4K was one of the ‘clans to beat’. It felt really good on 4K’s map dm2. ZR takes low-rl and quad but 4K takes next quad, killed almost immediately. ZR has all vital positions and 4K is putting up an attack platform on ra/mega. They attack when the clock says 15 minutes remaining and as they all have ra/rl they are fighting hard, and winning. Even though the quad dies quick they have hopes and go back to ra/mega and get next quad as well, and it dies quick again! Zetor is still having tele/water/quad and once again 4K retreats to ra/mega. They are waiting for the ZR quadrunner to come there… he shoots some rocks around the corner… no response… he jumps around… and got ripped into 1000 pieces by 4K. ZR now knew that they had to bag up their guy with armor/rl quick before 4K would launch their attack on quad/water. And it comes. 4K strikes back hard with the ZR guys desperately trying to defend their positions but what is left of them is killed by Slash who got quad. He moves to low-rl trying to frag fast as they were down 104-40 before the Q. They control ya/water and frag some spawning ZR guys. It just can’t be quick enough, 4K really wanted to win it (who wouldn’t). Every resistance that ZR puts up is killed by 4K. The Four Kings are just running over them, ZR even has the biggest trouble to keep their last stronghold… ra/mega. But 4K didn’t frag fast enough! ZR is still having the lead with ~19 frags as there is only one minute remaining. 4K’s grip on the map has loosened a little in the last minute as they tried to take over ra/mega and they must get this last quad to be able to win the game. Then… Zetor attacks quad, 4K tries to defend. A great battle is going on and both teams are fighting like their lives depend on it to take the last Q… and ZR runs away with it. After all the mess they win the map with 172-158. I really didn’t expect such fireworks from the 4K side, it’s good to see them play so good again after such time.
ZR had to fight hard for their skins and their 2-0 victory, but, they managed to do it after all, taking it away in a very close match.
A game of which I expected quite much was Head-cMF. Though, Head didn’t field their best team with Stickle, Cara, Case and Xorcist but lesser gods were playing and they didn’t succeed in building up resistance against cMF. I thought it would’ve been more after their games in the groups (and their win on e1m2 vs ZR).
Two clans which I didn’t expect to see here with the last eight were HGC and Kalevala. They took out respectively Daltons and Trash who imho both could’ve won of those two if they were able to play under normal conditions with their best lineup. Though, Trash missed their star player Hangtime, who won the dm3 vs C6 almost on his own, making more then half of Trashes frags. This resulted in a 2-0 loss of trash and the hgc-d game was just such a drama with D having trouble with pings and they couldn’t even finish the second dm2 because Vert timed out and another player had ping 600 or something.
I didn’t know what to expect of the game. It was clear that HGC would take dm2 as their map and they did. It wasn’t hard for them to take control/lead/quads everything. Not a very interesting game but sure nice to see how Kosa made over 100 frags and Balt did his quadruns (ended 300-50). Second map was e3m3, we knew that before too. I thought this would be an easy one for K as they chose it every time. But no, HGC had some practice on it or they just have a natural teamplay. It took about half the game before K could lock it down and just frag on (175-100). Both teams agreed to play dm3 as decider. Neither of them could take control in the first quarter of the game but after that HGC took the important areas as theirs. K was never able to get enough rl/amor to take over. HGC won it with ~90 frags.
Now, the last quarter final game, maybe the only one in which two clans played that were at the top of Europe at that time. We saw FS winning of HF before, but that wasn’t a game worth mentioning as a ‘real’ because HF played with only two of their first team members.
This time they did. And FS didn’t. Or okay, it were first team members, but now ones that were played in together quite well. We saw Riker, Sphere, Crit and Reppie trying to take HF down… Maybe if Blixem would still have been active by that time he could have turned things around but it’s the –if– factor again. It started with FS’ map, dm3. Together with cMF they were raking up most frags on it during the season, very often in prac too but as ever… it seems that the teamplay from fs` side is very reliable on the same people playing, one change can screw it up quite often.
HellFire got the early lead in it and they kept it for a very long time controlling quad/ring/ra. FS kept YA but they couldn’t get quads and takeover the map. Who would’ve thought that. Then the HF quadrunner gets teamkilled and they are able to take over the map a little, taking quad here and there trying to win it badly but Reppie is lagging and it seems like he can’t handle it. But how often have we seen it, time is running out and HF wins it 160-100.
So, HF even won this one. Then they took e1m2, HF might have been the best clan on it by that time, they almost never lost it when playing there with their best team, such smooth mm3 teamplay, very impressive to watch.
And it looked like it would be such a game again. They got the start with muti and drej running some quads, controlling ya/gl/quad. Even though Sphere is lagging like hell FS doesn’t want to give up at all. Razor takes quad and makes it a one man show as he took over YA. With about five minutes to go FS has all the important areas under control and it seem that if they are able to spawnfrag super fast they can still win it. A great fight at quad which goes to HF makes their dream fall apart. HF get control again and even increase their lead to 236-161 when time is up.
This leaves us with four clans, Zetor, Hard Guns Crew (Poland!), HellFire and Clan MalFunction.
The match between ZR and HGC should be an easy one for ZR because they all had loads of experience in big tournaments and playing good clans and HGC didn’t have those people. Still, I was quite surprised about the level of playing HGC could take on. Just one argument that we hear over and over again ‘the hpw clans are familiar with playing with bad pings’, and then they always come up with the argument that they ping 19 on their home server so that it is bullshit. Alright, maybe they do ping 19 on their home server BUT the fact is that as soon as they have an official game they ALWAYS have to play with a bad ping (55-80) and the other clans might play such games, maybe twice a season. This means that the non-Scandinavian and especially the polish clans/players play most of their games with a good ping, nevertheless they play every single official with a high one.
Back to the game, Zetor and HGC. It was quite clear that fi-pol doesn’t give nice connections, a server was found on which it was ~80-60 in favor of HGC. Though, they couldn’t take advantage of it as ZR won both dm3 and dm2 quite easy, the maps weren’t very exiting and well… I hate lagging wars (who doesn’t). Mazer had very clear trouble with his inactivity and lag so he couldn’t score very much. It seemed that Hib had the same problem as Mazer even though he didn’t lag as bad as his teammate, he wasn’t as good as he was throughout the rest of the season. ZR won dm3 ~170-90 and dm2 ~245-75.
Concerning the other side of the playoff brackets. Imho there were here way more good clans represented then on the other one. Okay, they are good on the other one too, but not in the way they were here. Look at the clans, this side had Koff, HeAd, FS, cMF and HF and the other had not a single clan that made the second round of the playoffs in SD4.
Now about the cMF-HF, it promised to be good game but I didn’t thought it would be as good as it was. First map was dm3, cMF’s. What to say about it, I thought it would be an easy win for cMF but well what was certain after fs-hf. HF got pent and rl while cMF had to do it with quad. As the HF rl bored cMF got the better one. HF got second quad and controlled RA but they couldn’t keep it for long. CMF controlled it most and it turned out to be one of the most important positions again. HF attacked it several times and took it over but they couldn’t control it long. The game stayed even all the way and the moment on which was decided who would win was at last pent. And cMF got away with it increasing their lead from 20 to 40 in the last five minutes (yep, is was close). 164-125 for cMF with Drejfus and Wigorf scoring 90 of HFs frags.
This e1m2 might be one of the closest and most intense (played by good clans) which I’ve ever seen. CMF got the better start with Quad and RL and with those taking control of YA. HF was pushed back to MH but cMF couldn’t frag much as HF did strong attacks on every single quad and taking some of them. HF attacked YA with it but couldn’t take it over, a minute after they tried to take quad with three man and still didn’t succeed. CMF is just leading with less then ten frags all the time! HF is still attacking quad over and over again and with it killing enough of the cMF boys, and having MH to stay close with them. With ten minutes to go cMF leads with seven frags (it was four after four minutes) and it stays like this until the moment that HF attacks YA and takes it over! OMFG What a mess it is! Both teams making suicidal attacks at Quad to take it away and win it, there is three minutes to go, nobody has lock and the score is equal! Damn. Neither team can pull off a lead nor get control of more areas, HF wins it with last quad 178-172! Wigorf making most, 63, frags while Dare was second with 49 and the next HF guy was only fifth in frags. Sure a nice one : )
The deciding dm2 was just as nice, HF taking the early lead with both Rl’s and killing the cMF quad before he could do something with it. Then, when it seems like HF is going to take the control and will get the start for real cMF takes second quad and secure ya/water. HF goes back to low-rl, ra/mega and can’t do anything. Then Drejfus comes in and makes a super quadrun taking out cMF at quad/water and giving them the time to build up control there. But cMF isn’t to give up. cMF fights it’s way back in the game and in no time the control was in cMFs hands again. Trying to decide the map right away cMF moves to low rl but isn’t taking enough care at the other side of the map while doing that so HF is able to destroy cMF’s lead! The chaos breaks out now and the game is as close as it can be, with a minute to go cMF leads with a mere two (!) frags! HF takes the last quad and the victory with even fourteen frags (162-148). What a game…
cMF and HGC were to play for the third and fourth place. It seemed to me that it shouldn’t be too hard for cMF to take this one in case playing with their first team. Though, it even was an interesting game. cMF fielded a nice team of Janne, Fifi, Fix and Mooniz. Not really a first lineup, especially when realizing that JX had ping 115. Though, cMF was very strong on dm3 and dm2 in the whole season. It was nothing special on dm3. CMF got an early lead, controlled from the start and never got threatened too bad during the whole game. The battles at pent were most interesting to watch of the whole map, both teams trying very hard to take them. HGC could never get something that looked like control, steeling a quad here and there but not able to back it up and really take the control. Solid play by cMF, note, Janne got 58 frags even though his lag (Fifi second with 40, and yes, frags say nothing but it sure was good hpw play), map ends 172-80.
As always HGC chose their beloved dm2. I thought this would be more exciting as I told before, cMF didn’t play under the best conditions. Still, cMF got the first quad, controlled the map for a long time. HGC trying to get back every time but they were not able to take the control. Though, they did manage to frag quite some because cMF couldn’t lock the entire map. Then, HGC got some rl’s and armor, entering quad/tele/water from all sides and taking over the whole map! Though, there was only a minute or six remaining so they had to frag fast and not let cMF CS the game out, they led with sixty frags. And so they did. We saw furious quadruns, cMF being hunted on every single spot of the map, HGC fragging all around. Though, this isn’t good for your status, the low-rl HGC guy weakened and got killed. cMF got a few rl’s, placed an attack on quad/water/tele and again, the beloved chaos broke out! Dead and living people flying all over the place, everybody dying and cMF taking quad, moving down to water/tele and had a nice bore J. In the last minute cMF was still leading but with less then five frags. HGC tried hard and in the last second Knight equaled the game! For once overtime was on and HGC had the best situation to win it, and so they did with only six frags. Another exciting map.
Both teams agreed to play e1m2 as decider, cMF got an early control, again… HGC clearly didn’t want to give up and attacked, attacked and charged. CMF’s lead was pretty big though and in the short moments HGC got control they weren’t able to make enough frags to win the game. Still, HGC did a very good job on this map too, but cMF takes it away with 178-133.
This means we’ve got bronze winner here, cMF, and an unpredicted fourth place imo, HGC.
Then, just a single match left in this tournament. HF-ZR. I thought that it would come down to dm2 with HF taking e1m2 and ZR dm3, HellFire looked strong in the games before, taking down both FS and cMF, absolutely not the worst clans around. A disadvantage they had now was that they had to play with nosound-Madmax instead of Mutilator. Zetor on the other hand had the somewhat lighter side of the playoffs, facing the oldies 4K and the Poles HGC.
They agreed to play Zetors map first, dm3. The start went to Zetor as they took everything except pent but HF couldn’t do anything with it. Nor could Zetor with quad. The most important thing at the start was that the ZR rl guy secured RA. The second rl is for HF but it is taken out by a ya/lg guy on ya. One spawns at ya and kills the weakened Zetor player. The second quad is for HellFire too. It’s a boomstick only guy but he’s boomsticking his way nice into RA killing the rl guy that was standing there. The game is tied and HF is on ra and zetor had to draw back to ya. HellFire seems to take somewhat of a control as they kill three Zetor players that are at the third quad (one of those even got it but gets killed). Just a minute before the second pent is going to spawn. Zetor pulls out some mad skills out of their pockets and mow down about the whole HF team. Even though the whole ZR team has nice weapons they are nót able to take the pent away for a nice non-rl HF guy. As he hasn’t got one he can’t do much damage and Zetor has all chances on surviving. At next quad there is a huge fight but I believe it was Rock who got it and took out whole HF and with that they have the possibility to lock down the map. It had to be different, as ra is weak ya is left unguarded for HF and with that position they take the next quad. As the quad/shaftguy is going to and is killed there without much trouble they put a man on ya again and it seems like a done cause, at least for the moment. The third pent is on it’s way, half the game played, Zetor leading with thirty of fourty frags. Then, HellFire turns on it’s turbo, takes quad, pent, ring and the map. They control it without a lot of trouble for some minutes but a ZR-rl guy sneaked his way to ra and secured it! Another Zetor man is taking quad with rl and has a nice quadrun. HF really needs to take pent to stunt again like they did at the pent before. Though, it wasn’t like that, ZR takes it easy with only one HF player attacking pent. Then, in the last half of the game Zetor shows how dm3 should be locked, and Hib showed how quad has to be run. One – Nil for Zetor, 244-108, the fragging really went fast in the last seven minutes.
Who would’ve thought the second map would be another then e1m2. HellFire took out some great clans on during the whole season and seemed really strong on it with a nice mm3 play, just got to see if Madmax is able to fill up the gap that is there because Mutilator is not playing.
The start goes to Zetor as they take the first rocketlauncher and mega. HellFire has quad but it is killed very soon. Now the way for the ZR-rl guy was free to get ya and a nice 200/150 status this early in the game. Zetor locks down right away, Hib running quads (omg), and his teammates guarding gl/ya to deliver him and each other some nice armors. HellFire keeps pushing and attacking quad as they were packing on ga and mega. They succeed in it from time to time but as soon as they entered gl or ya it got killed as it was so weakened before one could take quad. After the first ten minutes it was total domination by Zetor. A lot of people gave such a lot credits to Hib, and yes, he did do a great job but you know all that he wouldn’t have been able to run such Q’s without the help of his teammates controlling the rest of the map. Looking back, HellFire didn’t stand chance on their own map, too bad Muttan wasn’t around. Now! We’ve got ourselves some winner in the form of the good oldies of Zetor! :D
Very good for quake to see that an old clan comes back and owns the establishment somewhat. To give an impression on how they did in their short living revival (they stopped playing together again after this season, not even playing SD5, they didn’t even have enough time to prac, how could they play another leage?), they had an 12-0 record. Not being able to have played less games I think. They went into the playoffs as number sixteen, the last, and even got a walkover on the Axemen in the first round of the playoffs (that would make it 13-0).
SUMMER! :>
Always a nice thing and always ruining quake skills of everybody!
Ok, not of Hagge… as he seems to be the only one that does play 24/7/4/12, hm, like the whole year :)
One thing to do before the season starts: a view on the member shifts.
First thing was the inactivity or disband of ZR and L. Of those clans Riker (who was FS for some time too) went to HF, Shiva plays with p0s, exile went inactive and Darklord plays Q3 with N4 these days. What became of all the Zetor guys: Hib went back to tVS and I the rest is not playing much anymore. Rock is in his last year of school and he wants to graduate, Mazer quite QW as he is busy with real life (girls!), Hazard went to AQ and Acid, he hasn’t been online for ages. Another thing is that Mirage has got a good (überleet) connection now (but went to army) and Xamp joined them after the 1/8 final game that paranoia played vs tVS.
Then, KoFF has some trouble fielding players, Miser left them because he thought they were not active enough and joined FS where inactivity has been big since SD4. Another core player of KoFF has left them, as most of us might know now, Gamer. He joined SR to try his luck there, SR had a player short because Striker left after they lost another map the day after the SD4 loss to cMF. Now Striker followed space to LA and they are together again (after DIE and SR).
It seemed that Jarrex or Janne quit qw finally. First he promised to throw away his computer after SD3, but he couldn’t because he got kicked out of the tourney in the first playoff round (with aq, lost of sr). So he stayed one more season and said: “When I’ve won this smackdown with cmf, I’ll throw away my pc.” And that is what happened.
Last things that have to be mentioned are the new clan The Forsakens, which contains people of former clans Firstaid and dodge this. In Bloom is revived, they hadn’t played anymore since sd3 where they put up quite good games but not enough to make it to the playoffs. There is an interview on the nqr site with cara. Other new clans of which we can expect quite some performance are p0s (white, shiva, haj and phil) and fatcat (seems a little inactive though) and VisMortis, with the golden oldies Flowie and Flocutus of iBH and Venture and Jogi of EA added up with a new star Spoink who is former Porn.
These were the mayor changes that have took part since the beginning of the summer.
QhLan 4
Well, the first thing that took place in the new season was that QHLAN Four was up. This time Lege Artis was present and Slackers didn’t have a team fielded. The best teams around were LA, team G0ld (Paradoks, Xalibur, Riker, Razor) and I thought Paranoia (with Janne) would be able to do quite some damage too. Some other known names competing in the tournament were HellFire (with mrlame, dreeyfus, griffin and madmax), ToT and IB. Though, Lege Artis and g0ld ran through their games like maniacs slaughtering all enemy they were facing. I expected that HellFire would show us quite some nice games as they stunted versus Slackers in last QHLan but they weren’t able to do much crazy things this time. Paranoia was taken out without any problems too in the half finals, I was quite surprised about that. Though, not really surprising if you realize that they played versus Lege Artis, still, it was clear that Lege Artis was in a good form.
Good to see beside the competition were the pracs that LA played. Pietro, Exile, Dag and Striker sure was great to see playing together. Now, the final was to be the great game.
It started with g0ld’s pick, e1m2. Both teams tried hard, areas changing of master, quadruns all over the place, just a great e1m2 by two great teams. Eventually g0ld got the longest straw and won it with 188-70. The other two maps, dm2 and dm3, were no problem for LA. Still, g0ld tried hard (who wouldn’t), got some frags, got quads, but couldn’t take LA down. (dm3 219-63 and dm2 320-154). The other competitions, both 1on1 and 2on2, starred many good players and good games. The last four in duel were Janne, Griffin, Dag and Mrlame. Dag had an easy one on Mrlame but the Griffin-Janne game was most exciting. A good three mapper came out of it with Griffin ending on top. And here we had a replay of the final of the last QhLan, Dag-Griffin. Griffin played a really good dm4 and won it with 25-2, the next map was dm6 which dag won quite comfortable with 17-2. The last map was dm2. The game was close all the way and it was with pretty few frags (as happens more often on dm2? ;-)). In the end it took a long while to get the game decided and it was 3-1 for dag in the end. Especially the last action of Griffin is well remembered. Dag was at gl-mega while Griffin hunted him down. With only very few minutes left Griffin attack, he jumped up to gl-mega, killed dag… and bored.
In the 2on2 we saw a lot good teams walking around. My favorites were Dag&Janne and Striker&Space, thought those two would be the finalist. Other teams in it were razor&riker, para&xali, griffin&mrlame, pietro&exile. In the playoffs Space and Striker knocked out riker&razor and pietro&exile. Griffin and Mrlame first won of Paradoks&Xalibur on two dm6s winning them with large margins, didn’t expect that at all. The next team they faced was Dag&Janne. OMG what a game. Two very, very close maps and in both Griffin and Mrlame were the team with most frags. Now, a most entertaining game followed which Griffin and Mrlame won in 2-1.
Seems like LA had a very good qhlan as they won the 4on4 and 1on1, only getting the second place in the 2on2… Sure some nice domination, though, has to be said, we’re still waiting for a qhlan were SR, cMF, tVS, FS and all those others are presented too.
Now, the new season is starting again. NQR and SD5 started at the same weekend (21/22-9). Very good to see that NQR is going on after quite a long break since the first season.
The group drawings in SD5 gave an outcome nobody thought there would be. Three groups of which it was rather easy to see who would do well and go through (group A: HF, tVS, HGC. B: SR, -tf-, trash. C: LA, FS, CB, AQ). But then the fourth. Having cMF, P0S, Paranoia, ToT, In Bloom ánd redux. Six teams that are playoff worthy! It was called the Group of Death very soon. Too bad the ‘solution’ for the ‘problem’ came up. P0S disbanded and 95% of the Paranoia players decided to go inactive exáctly in the weekend that the tournaments started. GG, as they won pracs of both tVS and cMF I expected some nice quake from their side. This made even this group quite predictable. Well, in the groups itself we saw quite little surprises, to none. Just IB was strong on e1m2 at the start of the season and ToT did better then most expected. During the season ToT grew really strong. Adding White to their line-up, who made a short stay at P0S, was a very important thing. It was a good thing to see ToT back at the top but a little worse to see that they needed three newcomers for it, White, Slime and TCO. Only Oddjob had a first team spot, Slabby and Psycho_Dad played some at the start of the season but the further we came the less they played. Still, IB did a good job on e1m2 a couple of times but couldn’t make it to the absolute top of the scene. The matches that would be most interesting in this version of Smackdown were tVS-HF in group A, FS-LA in group C and ToT-cMF in group D. The first wasn’t played, in the second FS didn’t play with their first lineup and only the third really was a good game that ended in a 2-1 on dm3’s for cMF. They did a good job in the group as they won all their games, losing only one map (of ToT).
The only real surprise for me was that BWL made the playoffs. Didn’t think they were able to make it that far, doing a great job with winning of 4K and getting four walkovers. Weird that so little games were played. I thought that Koff would make the playoffs instead of them, but they were very weakened after Gamer (SR) and Miser (FS) left them and Zygot and Epic were inactive. This wasn’t very good for their teamplay nor for the achievements.
The first round of the playoffs didn’t give any strange outcomes. Just too bad that re-tf and sr-ib gave walkovers. Would’ve liked to see both games. The first could’ve been quite close if The Forsakens were active the whole season and In Bloom was having a nice season too. A funny thing was that one quarter of the playoff scheme was whole Finnish. Having cMF, tVS, AQ and FU, and with that one sure half final! Like that is nice… Would rather have seen them spread, but it wasn’t to be like that. So the first round didn’t give any surprise but the second had really nice games. Like HF-ToT. ToT with three new people was facing an established team of HF. With only one season experience together they put up some real nice teamplay. The first map they played was e1m2. As we know, HF’s map. Everybody thought they would win it, and hey, how weird, they did. Nevertheless ToT put up a good resistance against the force of HF, though Mrlame played very well and demolished any chance of winning for ToT. The second map was dm3, not more surprising then HF’s choice. It was way closer then I thought it would be. HF hasn’t got a good reputation on it, it has been their worst map for quite some time, but they have showed more often that they really cán play good on it (SD4 vs. FS in the halves for instance), and they showed it once again. After an intense game ToT did come out as the winner with special thanks to Slime and White.
The decider was dm2 and it wasn’t clear who was going to be the strongest on that for a lot of people. ToT managed to take control early and HF couldn’t break it. Heard things like ‘HF
underestimated ToT on it’ and other things like that, but I don’t know. ToT didn’t look like a bad team in the whole season. They won 2-0 of FS, had two close games when playing cMF (though, both at the start of the season when cMF wasn’t as strong as they were later), but still, underestimating isn’t something you should do with such a clan. And it showed, ToT won it with 345-60… Wow, what a numbers.
A game of which the outcome wasn’t sure was FS-SR. Slackers didn’t look very good in the eyes of many, but they were getting so much stronger the longer the season lasted. And it showed. The first map was dm3, the pick of SR. A thriller followed! FS got the start and with that the lead. They got control but the nearer the second pent came the better SR grew in the game. But, FS got it, mowed down the SR team, had a short control and SR came back near the third pent, taking the lead just before it. And FS got it, mowed down the SR team, had a short control and SR came back near the fourth pent, taking the lead just before it. And FS got it, mowed down the SR team, had a short control and SR came back again! As the clock was ticking thought, with very little minutes to go you saw the tension rise! Some of the players got even more nervous then before and SR did it again! They came back, took over a little, specs yelling for both teams, and neither of them had won yet! Then, with only a minute left on the clock SR took the lead and didn’t let it go, they had more rl’s and the FS’ers couldn’t stop them anymore from taking the map away. Paradoks did very nice take-overs for SR but their team just did an astonishing job, winning the map with the start and all pents against them.
The second map was to be dm2. FS chose it because they won it quite convincing the day before in the fs-sr NQR game. But it wasn’t meant to be. Slackers had the start but after only five minutes FS took the map over and took the control. Just before the ten minutes mark they took the lead too though, they couldn’t hold their right grip on the map. With six minutes left in the game SR started to frag again. They were only forty frags behind so they had all chance to take the map home. It was close, it was equal and fs held the lead all the time. They had a nice boost from the three-minute mark, took 18 frags advantage and seemed to get somewhat of a control and with that the map. Though, unless the hard efforts of FS SR did the impossible and owned those last two minutes in which they made 25 frags and FS –2. 156-146 here and 156-149 on dm3, omg. Both maps won by SR while taking the lead in frags only in the last minute twice.
Another important game was tVS-cMF in the Finnish quarter of the playoffs. Earlier in the season cMF looked to be the second best team in the field, behind LA, despite their loss to FS. tVS didn’t look very strong whole season, though, they grew much stronger the later it was. Xamp couldn’t play important games for a long time because his soundcard was broke (what can you do then with your 3000mHz), but he got a new one just about a week before the playoffs started, just in time.
As could be expected cMF chose dm3 as their homemap. tVS has showed in the past and in pracs that they are not bad on it at all. The game started, it stayed equal for a long time but cMF had extremely good tactics. They managed to make more frags all the time while tVS actually was handling the map good. Second map was dm2, cMF showed some serious ownage on it before but tVS still thought this was the map where to beat them, FS did it before. tVS couldn’t get their normal fullstart, maybe because they had other fins facing them. cMF had the first quad and with the second they were able to take control. They were playing really good taking out every attack tVS did on high-rl and quad. While cMF was raking up the frags really high and Zhin/Dare cleaning out low-rl with quad from time to time tVS didn’t seem to be in such great shape. Everybody was still waiting for the huge comeback of tVS but it only came late, with less than ten minutes remaining. They needed to control the whole map to be able to close the gap that cMF had slain. The control was there but low-rl and ra/mega was very well guarded by cMF as they kept an rl there at any time. The tVS quadrunners were killed at low/ra so the gap was too big to close. This ment the third half final place went to cMF. And they deserved it, just the better team this day.
The last quarter final game wasn’t really exciting as LA faced RE. Imo it was the clash between the first and the eighth team in the quarters. The first map they played was e1m2, the best map of LA. The first quad went to redux and it went to YA. Pity for them but they weren’t able to establish a control with it. The second Q went to LA and they did control the map after this. The vital positions of ya, gl and quad were secured and they were just laying back and driving some quads round the map, Dag did a very nice job. Redux tried to get a hold of MH to have a platform from which they could attack quad. This didn’t work in the beginning but somewhat later it did. Too bad for them that LA was running quad very nice and cleaned MH every time again. When there were a mere five minutes to go and the map was played RE got a little more breathing space. Taking some quads and making some frags. Happens quite often that a team has a mental click when the scores are so high that the other team can’t win anymore and it just takes over. As I said, it was too late and LA took it with 265-66.
Second map was dm2. As LA got both RL’s they were able to take out Redux quad immediately. The control was in their hands right away but Redux was packing at low to launch an attack. They took Quad and got a whole frag with it! LegeArtis was playing tactically a quite nice games as Redux got quads from time to time but weren’t able to do something with it or take over the vital areas for a longer time. The quads that they got bored or got killed. When RE had a small takeover of the map LA came back to set it right as soon as it could. It stayed like this for fifteen minutes when the game was already played. LA became rusty, boring quads, teamkilling at weird moments. It was too late for Redux, same thing as I mentioned at the e1m2 game, as the score of LA was high and they couldn’t take full advantage of the faults LA made. The 268-86 in favour of LA was a fact.
With this match there were only three games to be played. Those were all best of five and that is something that is most entertaining to spec as well to play. The first game that was played was ToT-SR.
ToT won to surprise of quite some people their quarter-final game of HellFire. They showed a nice form throughout the entire season and were not be underestimated. The map that was played first was to be dm3. Both teams showed they are very good on it and it might have been ToTs best map that season so SR was warned. Though, it might have been SRs best map too at the time as they showed good results on it in games/pracs versus FS, LA and cMF. Now, the game started. None of the teams was able to take an advantage at the start. It was dead equal and good quake in the first five minutes when the second pent was about to spawn. ToT was leading with about nine frags then but SR took quad and with that they got control. At the fourteen minute mark the map seemed locked and ToT wasn’t able to make a single frag for about two and a half minute. Then they put up some resistance and kept the gap ~30 frags until third pent. Halfway the game, this was an important moment for ToT, if they could snatch this one they would be able to take over the map and close the gap. And Slackers took the Pent with them once again! How nice, controlled the game quite good but ToT wasn’t to give up. They kept fighting and especially White had some very nice efforts to get his team in control. Some of those succeeded and ToT had some quads but they weren’t able to hold the vital areas for a longer time. When SR took the last pent too it seemed over, they led with sixty frags at the time. With three minutes to go ToT put up a final spurt and got some frags but they couldn’t hold it on longer than a minute. Final score 197-112.
Second up was dm2. ToT surprised HF on it but it didn’t seem to be their strongest map, nor of SR as they lost it several times, still, not the worst teams on it. The start went to SR but they were not able to take the control right away. ToT had some serious action going on during the first six minutes and the scores stayed close. Too bad SR already owned ya/water/quad so they had little chance of coming back in the game without a serious run to quad. They tried their best while building up an army at low, as usually. Most of the attacks didn’t succeed and they only held water for short times. Very little mistakes by SR here, it was like we were back quite some days. The few times ToT did take over SR flashed away the flaw soon enough. With 283-70 we can say that SR did quite a good job.
When the Castle of Vana was played he was even allowed to play it! How nice of the SR guys, good to see him back in the team after quite a while of inactivity (or was he just not allowed to play?). ToT and especially Slime and White showed that they have mad skills on e1m2 so it could get quite close. Nor of the teams got extreme much frags at the start but SR got control over ya/gl/quad right away. ToT put up their camp on the other side of the map with ga/rl/mh. ToT pushed hard but SR had a great control over ya/gl. ToT got some quads but could only get control over YA once. This was set right by SR quick enough. The lead that SR had was not more than twenty/thirty frags for over twelve minutes but then they got a steady grip on the map and fragged to 231-129.
White and Slime were going nice as expected and Xalibur did nice things on both dm2 and e1m2, taking out nme-rl’s at important moments. Vana did a great job again and topped the leaderbord.
That gives us one finalist, the other was going to come out of LA and cMF. This game would be closer than the one we just saw as these two teams were the best during the regular season imo. The first map they were to play was dm3. I can’t do anything else than steal Apollyons report here as I can’t do it better, it was just so incredibly close, tense and exciting.
“Hangtime said that if dm3 gets played first it will set the tone for the rest of the series. As it turned out he was quite right but first things first. Dag got the first rl and went to red armor immedeatly while CMF got both quad and penta. Fifi who got the pentagram made some mistakes though, not picking up yellow armor on his way to rl and not getting the rl as well. Thus LA had the edge with Dag´s rl at RA and consequently they got the next quad as well as the following two. Both teams were palying very defensive so there were not many frags. Fix from CMF sneaked to the fourth quad though and with its help cleared red armor area. Then it is time for the next pentagram and despite CMF guarding it Dag manages to jump right on it and going to red armor immedeatly. He clears out sng area somewhat later but CMF are still leading by a few frags. Now Nabbe and Dag are taking turns in taking quads and with the 8 min quad Dag manages to clear yellow armor area from CMF players for the first time. But shortly later, after having 100% effie for almost ten minutes he gets fragged at ya. And it is CMF´s Dare who takes the third pent as well as the quad owning the LA players. CMF are down by about 20 frags at this moment and Dare takes the powerups to red armor giving control to CMF over that area for the first time. CMF continue to take the next quads as well as the next pent steadily decreasing the lead of LA. When Fifi takes the last quad CMF is down by only 2 frags. LA are playing very smart though hiding rls at sng area preparing to attack red armor which they eventually do and take over. However Fifi from CMF cleans it out with his next quad. Things ar gettign a bit hectic now. Fifi makes a teamkill at red armor and Riker (playing as Skeletor) takes the first quad for LA in a couple of minutes and tries to rack up some frags at rl but he gets fragged. Meanwhile his teammates have secured ra. Fifi takes the last quad, the match is extremely close with LA still leading and Fifi goes to yellow armor where he starts to frag LA players, evens the score and just when the last seconds tick down a LA player respawns in front of him, he is going to respawnfrag him but in this very moment LA-Striker jumps into the area fragging Fifi. LA wins by just one frag. WOW!”
What a game… The second map they were going to play was dm2. cMF got both high-rl and quad while Striker takes low rl and keeps it there. The cMF’er goes to low with quad but he can’t take Striker out as he moves to ra/mega. The game stayed like that for a long time, cMF running the quads and having both tele and ya secured while LA was staying at ra/mega where they tried to get some thing running. They took over halfway the game, Dag ran some quads and everybody thought LA had it locked now. They closed in a little and cMF’s control seemed gone for quite a long time. Then Fifi came up and killed Dag while he took Q. After that cMF took the control of ya/water again and kept running quads, they decided the map with that having a nice control, LA couldn’t do anything about it, 211-135.
The third map was LA’s best map, everybody thought this would be a quite easy one as LA is strong on it and it isn’t cMFs best map. LA got a good start with both ya and Quad. Nabbe is running Quad at first while cMF is still able to stay very close the first five minutes. LA has control of ya/gl and Nabbe is doing a nice job. Then after five more minutes Dag has a nice quadbore, Dare saves the pack, cMF takes over YA and the control with it. LA is trying for five more minutes to get back in the game but when Nabbe is killed while he has quad (about fifteen minutes gone) they decide to play it safe and try to CS their ~24 frag lead out for the remaining four minutes. Retreat to mega is what follows, as the specs don’t like Dags 1on1 style nor did they like this CS action and most of them wanted that cMF was going to win as the underdog. Still, it seemed the best way to play it as cMF had control and taking over would be very hard. cMF seemed to be frightened of LA as they barely tried to attack MH and take LA out for once and all, just with the last Q fifi goes there trying out his SG skills, fragging some LA guys but he should’ve tried that earlier, they lose it with 13 frags.
The fourth map was dm2 again, not a hard one for cMF before so they chose it again. The start goes to Striker as he takes the rl at low, takes quad with it and kills the cMF’er that took the rl at high. They manage to control tele for the next seven minutes while cMF is still making some frags in between. They attack Q at the time they had to, over and over again but LA played good enough to hold them off. Till Zhin is coming. They are down with over fifty, he grabs Q, boomsticks LA and cMF takes over tele. They keep this control for quite a long time and they are fragging fast like hell and LA can’t do much about it. When there is very little time left Zhin runs Q at low, has some nice actions and takes the lead for his team. From this moment the game stayed close. cMF is in the lead at the moment Fifi takes one of the last quads that will spawn in this game. He takes it to low where he is killed by an LA-sg after killing an rl. Then Zhins rl is taken by an LA’er at sec-ra while Fifi is killing Dag at low. Zhin takes the quad at two minutes, but he can’t do enough with it, cMF is till leading with less than five frags. At the same time Riker and Striker have great teamplay as they takeover the area around water, now Riker is taking the last quad. He’s moving to low-rl to make the frags they need to win. cMF has the lead with one or two frags at this moment while Riker comes over the plats. An cMF rl guards low and Riker falls between the plats! Almost everybody thought/wanted him to die but he came out! The cMF rl at low missed him when coming out of the lava and Riker stays there while shooting rockets to low, killing cMF people that spawn there. Then, he falls in AGAIN! And as before, he comes out, and now he even killed the cMF rl, omg. With this last quadrun and the control LA took in the last minute they were able to take an advantage of nineteen frags (!) when the game ended. The insane quadrun of Riker will probably remembered long, making a lot of frags, nine, falling between the plats twice, coming out just as often. With this LA takes the second spot in the final, this was the final a lot of people hoped for, it would be a ‘classic like FF-E’. Well, that would be if SR fields Paradoks, Goljat, Vana and Pingvin (all ex-E) and LA get’s Dag, aKKe, Pietro (ex-FF) and ex-E’er Riker playing but the chance on that was very small.
The final. SR had their first team playing, though, for some mysterious reason Dag didn’t feel like playing this match. As we saw during the season he was the key person in their teamplay and was the best player in Europe according to very much players.
Now Space had to fall in for him, he’s not a bad player at all but he hadn’t played much with the team and even was on a two weeks vacation just a week before the match…
It started with dm3, especially SR showed they were in very good shape on it in prac in the days before the match. LA got little more frags at the start but Gamer controlled RA. It was him that won the match for SR, SR took all pents except the first and after the second pent they secured somewhat of a control. Gamer was securing ra and running quad once in a while which were very nice. SR won it with 156-132.
The second map was dm2. LA got high-rl and he killed the SR quad, though the LA rl was killed too. Xalibur had low-rl and secret RA, with this he was able to secure tele for SR. They had the control now and just fragged away. Running quads all the time and nothing special happened at the time. LA wasn’t able to take over until there were seven minutes left. This take over lasted for a second forty when SR took over again. Then halfway the game LA really got control. SR was leading 117-40 when they got run over. LA fragged quick, secured both tele/water and low-rl, SR couldn’t manage to do that in their control. The game was locked and it seemed to be over as LA was still in control when there were less than five minutes to go, the score was only 140-118 in favour of SR. Those mere 22 frags would be made by LA in less than two minutes if it went on like this. Then Paradoks came, he took and rl, went silent to quad, took it and cleared tele. SR had somewhat of a control again and with Xalibur and Gamer taking the last two quads their victory here was set. 178-139 for SR, if Paradoks wouldn’t have managed to take Q the scores would’ve been the other way around, great action by a great player.
The third map was LA’s best map, e1m2. Though, with Dag they showed weird things on it with the skill that is great, they had Space now. It’s not space’s best map for sure and it seemed in earlier games that he wasn’t able to keep up with the great level of Dag, Riker, Nabbe and Striker on it. Now without Dag and with Space we have to see what they bring of it. Everybody expected that SR would bring in the legend Vana again here, after all, it is still his home. But he wanted to play all maps (not very weird for someone that is as good as he is and has made world-fame with his skills), but SR decided (don’t know who) that he could only play e1m2 (which is not weird too as he hadn’t played much with the team in official games during the season). So Vana decided not to play at all, I think he left them at that moment.
LA sure had the better start as they took the lead from the first seconds. Space took rl but he had to bore it for Riker who was almost screaming that he took GA. Quite annoying, it was clear that their teamplay was fucked with these kind of actions. They had somewhat of a control during fifteen minutes. The largest lead LA could build up was 105-35 after little more than seven minutes. From this moment SR made just as much frags as LA keeping their lead on sixty. Then, with five minutes left SR took over, controlled ya/gl and ran some quads. LA couldn’t stop them while they were attacking constantly and with little left they even decided to hide as their lead vanished as snow in the sun. It was enough, with only five little frags breathing space the game ended in 185-180 for LA.
It was up to LA to choose which map the next would be. Most people expected to see another e1m2 but that was damn close the last time and they might not have won it without the fullstart they had now. They made it dm3. From one side it was weird, they won e1m2 but Space couldn’t find his way on it (nor could Gamer btw), could’ve been dm2 but luck is a very important factor there from time to time. Then dm3, a good map for all the LA members but SR showed clearly that they were better on it earlier that night.
In the first game Paradoks timed a few times but that didn’t happen this time. He had the best start for sure as he took ring, quad, ra and then got lg. SR established a lock while running quad the first five minutes and keeping LA suffer at rl/ya. The second pent went to SR too and they expanded their lead with it. In some way LA was able to keep up with SR at any time. After four or five minutes the lead of SR was thirty-five frags and LA kept it there for the next ten minutes. Paradoks was going crazy here from time to time with quad. At more moments taking out the whole LA team while still staying alive. LA got the third pent but as the runner couldn’t get RL before 25 seconds of the pent were gone he couldn’t turn the map around. Before the fourth, and last, pent Striker got quad and secured RA with it. This could’ve been the swap in the map but just two mintes before this point SR increased their lead with twenty more frags so they were leading with 55. In case LA had rocket launchers they would’ve won the map but SR was playing just over two minutes to assure their lead would be enough to CS out while leading with 45 with three to go. LA tried to hunt them down but without the necessary RL’s it was no use. Final score: 161-135 for SR.
We’ve got a winner! And hell yea what can I say, this was probably the worst Smackdown final ever! Way to go!
Pff, sorry but I really hated it.
Now NQR. Must say, a good tournament. It was divided in three divisions and there were little surprises in Div1 nor did we miss top-teams there. The regular season showed some great games and little surprises. Most of the best teams (if not all) saw this as official practice for SmackDown that was still taken more serious. We saw this most with the dutchies (can we still call them?) of [fs] who let everybody play, really cool. Weird it was anyway as they asked for prac every day but at some officials they couldn’t even field a non-lagging team. After the last two seasons of SD ToT wasn’t seen as a very hard enemy (they lost in the 1/8 in both SD3 and SD4). With their new recruits they showed they were back on track. They won of FS and showed the day after it wasn’t luck. FS lost of HGC too where it was 3-4 because Razor had an unbelievable bad connection because his brother was downloading. Even an owning g00k couldn’t make FS win. Then, RE showed they were up for some serious quake and the quarter final they made in SD4 and their win of HF in the group wasn’t just luck. They had a very close game vs tVS (1-2 lost, all maps around 15 frags) early in the season and outplayed Paranoia so bad that they even dropped on dm2. Silver and Blitz sure did great damage. A team that would have made the playoffs, P0S, died, told before. They would have made the playoffs otherwise, no doubt. Now, LA showed everybody how the game was to be played as they didn’t lose a single map in sixteen groupgames, nor did they in SD btw. Several times they came close to defeat. cMF almost took them down on both dm3 and e1m2, but has to be said, dm3 was with a lagging Nabbe and e1m2 with a very rusty aKKe. Then Redux got them with their backs to the wall on e3m6 that ended 58-68. But the closest they were to defeat was in their game versus tVS. Just as cMF and SR they were going like a diesel. Starting slow and the more the season progressed the better they became. LA got a fullstart on the dm2 spawnfragging to a lead that was over 150 frags after ten minutes. It looked like it would end in 380-50 or something but then with a magnificent teamplay action tVS took over. They locked down the map completely and LA couldn’t stand a chance against it for a long time. Then with twenty seconds to go tVS is leading with a frag or five when Hib comes into play. He pines two teammates and kills himself with it, nerves? Another nice action came from Blaze who took quad, looked at the ground and killed himself. Think those two actions made tVS lose this map. It sure showed that LA wasn’t unbeatable during the season and tVS was back in shape for 100%.
The last game that was played in the NQR group was FS-SR. It promised to be an interesting match but when it came to playing FS couldn’t field a team. They had Blixem, Reppie and Crit on the server and Crit was lagging (about 90/10 ping/pl) because his dad was internetting too. Then FS decided to bring in the oldskool Billie! Who doesn’t know him. As an admin Paradoks was kind enough to accept Billie joining and added him to the playerlist of FS. The game could start. I was very content with this because it was for the first time since long that FS fielded a 100% Dutch team (one map vs -tf- in the first groupgame this season was 100% NL too and then SD3 I think). Looking at the influx of foreign players in FS it’s surprising that this even happens once in a while. FS thought let’s pick a nice episode map to surprise SR. They took e2m5. FS clearly knew it better and they outplayed SR very well. Billie showed he still knew how to play it. FS still knew it from the Dutch clan DTS that always took it in the time that reppie, crit, blixem and hoodlum formed Fx (Billie was in PNC there).
Second map was dm3, SR choice, and now the lag of Crit and Billie’s inactivity showed their problems. They still didn’t do very bad with a score of 192-126. Then, when the decider was up, Gem showed up! Billie already left and Gem was in when Shiva came around! That sure was a nice one. SR got a fullstart but they lost it a minute later when FS took over. They had the overhand the whole game long and SR couldn’t make enough frags to turn the scores around, FS won it with 198-148 while Reppie and Shiva took care of 138 of the FS frags.
So, FS won the game. Possibly to the surprise of many people, I can’t say anything else then that I enjoyed it till that point. Some time after the match it turned out that e2m5 was removed from the NQR maplist a season before (heard that Paradoks requested it because SR lost it of the Dutch not so good clan UqE). At that moment fingers pointed in the direction of Paradoks, he was the admin present and should have known that the map wasn’t allowed according to them. Then, Paradoks said that he wasn’t admin in that game, just a player. How the fuck could he have been the one to let Billie join FS for that game then?! Don’t understand how people can come up with such lousy arguments and get away with it. Still, FS was kind enough to play another map. It was their homemap after all and they chose dm3 again, as they weren’t under the best circumstances the first time. What happened was that Crit even stopped lagging and everything was perfect. Though, in the game Paradoks and Goljat owned it and took away the map for SR in a nice game with 168-132. Because they lost it Shiva was pretty angry and even didn’t want to play the day after when they had to face each other in the SD quarters, just when it was that far he had turned around a little and did play. I was quite surprised that SR would not just let the result stand there, the influence on their final standing, nor for FS, was none; but no, it was against the rules and things had to be set straight. With a most sportive team as FS against you, that’s no problem. It was a rather odd situation.
The playoffs gave us eight teams, the same as the last eight in SD: LA, SR, cMF, tVS, ToT, FS, HF and RE. The first quarter final was SR-ToT. The same as the half final in SD was going to be. ToT decided not to play with their first team here as they fielded White, TCO, Slabby and Psycho Dad. The first map was dm3 and while the first minutes stayed close in score as always SR had the control. It wasn’t until the second pent when ToT made their first frag in three minutes. At that moment the score was already 70-18 and minute or two later is was 95-21. The game seemed to be over for ToT but they managed to get some more frags later on in the game but a real comeback wasn’t in it for them this time. 209-98. Second map was e1m2. SR didn’t have Vana this time, they did have him three days later as I just told, but it was still their first team. ToT clearly had the better start and took the control. A less nice thing was that they weren’t able to lock the whole map, including mega down so SR had a good resistance and ToT never led with more than thirty frags. They had this lead during ten minutes when SR came back and closed the gap to a nice 5~15 frags for the next six minutes. Just at the moment it looked like ToT was going to make it and had a 18 frag lead SR took the control over (five and a halve minute to go) of ToT and just pulled off. In those last five minutes ToT made about seven more frags and SR got about eighty, 183-130 was the result. The first half finalist was here: SR.
The first map of the second quarter was most entertaining. The game was cMF-RE and Redux chose they golden oldie e3m6. When they met in the season this went with 300-8 to RE, an extraordinary high result on a CS map. This time cMF got their hands on RL and camped it for twelve minutes long. Re had RA, LA and Quad under their control but they couldn’t do enough with it to take over RL as cMF was camping there with four men. It looked like the final result would be 26-5 for cMF after twenty minutes when they lost an RL! It was gibbs or blitz who got it (was it a boring dare? Think so) and was able to take over the map after that with RL, RA and Q. From that moment cMF was shown how to use RL when you have it and they got to know all the places of the map once again. 96-19. On dm3 RE got a good start and it looked like they were able to stunt here. I would have found it cool to happen but it wasn’t logic that RE would be able to own the best further on and cMF had shown they could. Now, unless their better start it was clear RE couldn’t lock it down very well and spawnfrag fast. They stayed on a low tempo, as soon as cMF would be able to take over their lead build up in half a game would be undone in two minutes. And it kinda turned out like that. RE kept hanging on the ridge of keeping ra/quad during five minutes, kept little resistance during the three that followed and after that it was little more than spawnfragging to 218-76.
For the decider Retic came in. It was dm2 and after the last ten minutes of dm3 everybody thought cMF would win it easy. At the start an cMF guy got high rl and tried to jump to quad straight away in a hurry, he missed and quadtricking RE’s took it away. Too bad for them that cMF established a nice control after some minutes and the only in RE left willing or able to fight seemed Blitz who was running around with RL half of the time. Though, the fact that the score was 372-68 says enough.
The third game was LA-tVS. The game during the season gave the most exciting dm2 since long but many doubted if tVS could take home two maps of LA.
Five minutes before the game tVS had the idea of picking e3m7, at least, on of the players heard about it not longer then those five minutes so I guess it only came up in ones mind then. It was a sure thing that Ihminen and blAze would own it at least as it was tVS’ homemap for a long time when they started up. Who doesn’t remember [tVS]Dream’s skills on it, pure crazy. Well, the game started and LA played with a good lineup, just Space played instead of Striker, don’t know what would be better but it looked like LA is better with Striker during the whole season. But Striker was in a period he didn’t want to play. It was most of the time to other members: Nah, you play. I suck. Well, just his opinion, he said that too when he owned the first game of HF in the season in div2, zzz. To go on with the game. tVS got the upperhand, had better teamplay and it turned out Hib knew what he was doing very well too. They were able to get a lead and keep it till the end winning it with sixty frags. It was a great achievement of tVS already as there were the first to win a map of LA in a map or 50 and the first since QHLan4 when G0LD won an e1m2 of them in the finals.
The second was e1m2. LA’s best map for sure but as I said before not Space’s. It was way closer than I expected especially as I thought of the last e1m2 I had seen tVS playing in an official when the had the necessary trouble while playing FU. But this time everything went alright for them giving LA a sure run on their money. As Space timed out Striker had to come in and take it over from him but LA had a hard time fighting tVS. Their teamplay (tVS) was running very smooth and Hib and Ihminen did nice jobs on Quad and ya/gl. The control went over from side to side and it sure was a great match which imo both clans deserved to win. Can’t conclude anything else then that I haven’t seen an e1m2 in which a lot of frags were made by both teams, one team is not hard but this: 212-190.
I hoped for dm2 as the decider because of the earlier dm2 we saw them play and yes, it was played as the third map. Sorry for tVS but they were not able to make such a sick takeover on LA and almost take the map away this time. It wasn’t very easy for LA but they didn’t have the worst troubles you could image in such a game. 196-157 was the final result in favour of LA.
The only quarter left to play was FS-HF but as HF was inactive the WO for FS was already set and the halves would be LA-FS and SR-cMF.
The first half final was SR-cMF. The match they had before ended in rape on dm3 from the side of SR, a thrilling e1m2 which went with two frags to cMF while SR could’ve took the game home there and then rape from cMFs side on dm2, very good to watch.
This time it was different. The first map was dm3. Eh, well… this might have been as close as the FS-tVS in SD4. cMF took a minor lead in the early minutes, SR had it a minute and cMF took it over again. Well, took it over. Neither of the teams was able to get control and make a lot frags more than the other. Just at the time of the third pent it looked like SR was going to take a little advantage over cMF, so they did but they couldn’t hold it as cMF took the control when third pent was up, took the lead (SR was leading with about ten frags then, the largest lead there was in ten minutes) with 18 at a moment! SR wasn’t able to close this gap. With two minutes to go and cMF leading with 12 frags it seemed like they were going to win. But then SR cam into play and at a moment I thought they were going to do the same as in the FS games and win it in the last minute. cMF didn’t make a frag for over half a minute while SR fragged on and if it would go on like that SR would’ve won the map. But cMF recovered and made it with 151-148, wow.
Second was e1m2. SR had the start and had control the for about seven or eight minutes. Then cMF got back and equaled the scores. It was so weird. Just like the last map, the scores stayed like equal for the next seven or eight minutes when SR finally got the lead they wanted so badly. When having over 25 frags more and there was only a minute left cMF decided to placed their final offensive in too late. SR didn’t make a single frag here while cMF made about 18 closing the gap to ten frags when the bell ringed, 187-177 for SR.
The deciding map was dm2. SR controlled tele/quad about the whole game leading with over thirty frags. cMF were playing really good as they kept the score this close. Attacking all the time and keeping low-rl/mega safe. SR wasn’t able to clear it out more then once in a while. Then, with only five minutes left cMF took over, kept SR low, took the lead with two minutes left and at that moment SR came back. It was just running for frags and cMF seemed to be better at it. With a mere seven frags cMF placed a hand on their place in the final.
The same evening FS decided to be polite enough to play HF after all. Due to mysterious reasons Blixem didn’t want to play, just like Striker actually: I suck, you play. So Miser had to fill the team. I was talking before of the large number of foreign players that have joined FS. It showed here, Razor, Shiva, Miser and Reppie were playing with only the last being Dutch. Hmm. HF chose e1m2, they played with their old team Drejfus, Wigorf, Mrlame and Muti. FS was able to keep the game close for a long time, having the better start. Not strong enough to keep that advantage for a longer time. I really didn’t understand Blixems decision not to play as Miser didn’t fit in the FS teamplay perfect at the time and he still doesn’t, I was really surprised. In the end FS lost it with only eleven frags despite Razors good play, topping the scores (Miser last with 22, one to last was Muti with 35…). FS chose to surprise of no-one dm3. Drey and Haj switched positions here and I didn’t understand why that was either as Drey is a good dm3 player, he showed that even short before the match when playing ToT in one of the last regular games of NQR. Not much to say about the game itself. It was clear that FS was the better team here and all of the members did a good job here. The decider dm2 was another close one and this time Shiva had very good moments trying to win HF but he couldn’t do it. Nothing to Miser and his teamplay on itself is very well but I think FS expects that every new member adjusts as easy as Razor did at the time, and they don’t. They even had enough problems with a great player like Shiva. They lost the dm2 with thirteen frags. This was the third time in a row HF kicked out FS of an important tournament: NQR2, SD4, NQR3, while in especially the last two FS had all chances of winning but didn’t take it, well too bad.
Now the other half final was LA-HF. It took quite long before this was played, about two weeks later it became, when both clans were on Qhlan number 5. HF had some trouble with fielding their best team because Muttan decided to go out and eat something, has to happen too, so in prewar Space already teamed up with HF to be their fourth man. The team became a real HF Qhlan one in the form of Mrlame, Dreyfus, Madmax and Griffin. The dm3 that was LA’s choice wasn’t very hard for them but HF gave LA a good fight. On dm2 Dag went out and Riker came in (and Space, Striker and Nabbe is was then), where do we know this team from…
Dm2 was for HF and many specs wondered if Griffin would be able to play a good TP. What a question, who doesn’t remember HF-SR on Qhlan 3! Well, that sure was quite some time ago. Now the game started and LA got a good start. Taking control looking like there wasn’t a cloud on the sky. But as we have seem this LA team before it almost couldn’t end up right. HF placed there takover just in time and got control. With it they spawned quite fast and MrLame was showing nice skills here and there and the game ended with only a minor lead of seven frags for LA thanks to the last minute skills of Riker in 152-145.
There we have two finalists. The day after the final was played when LA was still on qhlan. When I was talking with fifi the day before the half final in SD, vs LA, I asked him if Janne was going to play. He said that they wouldn’t use their secret weapon and they didn’t, this time they (or JX himself) changed their minds and he played instead of Dare. The cMF team consisted Fifi, Fix and Zhin beside him and LA played with Dag, Riker, Nabbe, Striker and Space (no not all at the same time!).
The first map was dm3. Space got YA but Fix took pent so Space went to Quad and took it. Striker had ring when Space met Zhin, who had RL, on ya. Zhin bored himself on Space so LA clearly had the better start with this action. Space did a good job at the start and a few minutes later Dag started to own. He took the third quad and kept RA safe by walking through once in a while. He got the second pent as he jumped through three cMF guys and jumped right in it from lifts, an impressive pent-run was what followed. Fifi got some quads with 12 an thirteen minutes to go as Dag was saving RA and making a lot of there. Dag lost RA, Nabbe got Quad and cMF took over RA in the minute before third pent. But Dag saved the day and grabbed it. Striker and Space regained RA in the meanwhile. Dag kept running quads while cMF had more efforts to take him down and they succeeded in that sometimes. RA was for LA all the time, most secured by Striker and space. When the last pent was up space went for some ownage to high-bridge and Dag got pent again with sg and picked up an lg pack. Then LA had three more minutes of control when the game was already over. Janne took the quad with two minutes to go and took over RA with five nice LG cells and ssg, picking up RL and running the last quad. LA had pl 50 during the last thirty seconds.
The second map was e1m2. LA got a fullstart now with quad, rl and ya. They controlled ya and mega right away. But cMF gave it a try and Fix secured mega. From there the others were able to attack ya. Riker and Nabbe sure gave us a show of their e1m2 skills again. After five minutes Fix took over ya and fifi took quad, had rl and took ya. The takeover was done. LA retreated to mega and stole some quads from there in the minutes that left but were not able to get ya under their control again as Zhin was making some nice q-runs for cMF. LA only had ya twice for about ten or twenty seconds. But with nine minutes left Dag and Striker cleaned ya from rls and half a minute later Nabbe secured it. In some way LA was still leading by then. They had this control until there were only five minutes left and it seemed like nobody had an rl then, total mess. Then cMF had ya and quad/gl controlled and with three minutes to go LA decided to go and hide, they were leading with 51 frags. In some way there were players of LA on ya despite the CS of some of them. cMF searched for them but didn’t find enough, the game ended 198-179.
This was a 2-0 for LA, cMF had to win this map to stay in the game, it was dm2. Dag was partying already so he couldn’t play, not the best dm2 team for LA once again. Fifi got low-rl, hide-ra, quad and killed the LA high-rl (Nabbe) with it. They kept this control and were leading 86-12 after just four minutes, sick! Nabbe killed Zhin that ran quad for cMF when five minutes were gone and with that LA got some space to build up a small army of three rl guys at mh-mega. cMF still had control at that point in the match but didn’t build up a bigger lead. Nabbe took tele over for a second but he was so damaged that he couldn’t keep it. LA had more than one rl all the time but they couldn’t break through cMF’s wall. After eleven minutes of play Riker took over tele and held it. At the next Q, space took it while riker was shooting at him from high-rl (funny enough Riker didn’t aim very well). For a short period LA had tele, quad, low-rl ánd ra-mega controlled and held water for the rest of the game, closing in to a mere fifteen frags when the game ended, one map for cMF.
Fourth map was dm3 again, LA had the better start, Riker pent, Dag quad and Fifi took rl. LA was able to secure RA in those early minutes, after only three and a half minute cMF took RA over again and started to run quads. Both Dag and Striker were waiting at pent when Fix jumped in as only cMF member and took it away with shaft, got RL, and Zhin was securing RA. Zhin tried to run some quads but made some mistakes/had bad luck on it so those weren’t really successful. Then fix took it with RA and Dag nicely shafted him at SNG, killed cMF at RA, took a RL pack and secured RA for them. Half a minute later Fix comes in with 150/100 RL and Q and kills both Dag and Nabbe with a single rocket there with twelve minutes left. The next minute 0/200 RL Dag takes Q and kills Janne, Fifi and Zhin at RA, he made about eight frags on RA in that single run. He died and Striker secured it now with LG. Riker takes the third pent and the quad that was with it, Nabbe secures RA and Riker YA. But very soon Zhin took RA over again. LA is doing a good job, taking quad from time to time but not able to get RA back. Just before last pent Nabbe is the only one with RL, he’s on SNG and goes to pent but he’s shafted there by Janne who takes pent away. Striker was on RA for a second before JX took it back for cMF. Janne was playing a really good game, especially in the end, he was going crazy at RA. cMF wins again, this time with 180-116, keeping the control for the last six minutes.
The deciding map was e1m2 again were we saw a very nice play by both teams before. Riker got the first RL and Fix YA. Striker killed the quad Janne took with GL so the game was quite open but Riker got mega and secured YA. He took the second quad and made 17 frags in 1 minute 10. Dag and Nabbe found their RL’s took but Fifi secured YA and Striker took Q without RL. He got one and took YA over again. Then Riker got 100/170 RL Q and started owning again. After five minutes the score was 82-25 with 37 frags for Riker (will he make 150?). At the fourteen minute mark Zhin takes quad and cMF has control of YA now, but Dag took it back very soon after that. Riker and Dag ran quad one by one and YA was in LA’s hands all the time. They were leading with 100 frags when the nine minute mark popped up and LA only gained five more frags two minutes later. As Riker missed his RL for some minutes Dag seemed the only one that could keep his for a long time, and he did the right things with it, taking quads and ya’s. When he died Nabbe took his job over for a second but he wasn’t good enough at it. Jarrex took quad but got killed before he was able to take YA over. What happens next is total chaos. Everybody is spamming with sg and sng around the map and nobody has RL. Then Nabbe comes in again and secures YA for a sec. At the exact same moment Zhin takes quad as he found an RL too and decides to go to RL. LA now has YA and Mega under their control. Fix is at quad waiting for the next one with his RL but he got owned by Riker. Dag is going strong on YA for a moment when Zhin takes over. He is killed, Nabbe secures mega, then YA. Riker is making a lot of frags all the time and cMF is fighting so hard to win it but they are too far behind. LA wins it with 269-129 and a hell of a performance of Riker (91) and Dag (70). They had the best effi’s too, Riker 81% and Dag 68, what a game by Riker.
It looks like we had the right winner here. LA was playing very strong and as they beat cMF in SD too they were simply the best. I hoped that they would use Jarrex in SmackDown but they didn’t. I spoke with Fifi just before the cMF-LA in SD and he said that they might use their ‘secret weapon’ in the form of JX, and now they did. He played some magnificent quake, too bad for him and his team that is wasn’t enough. Though, it was cool enough to see him back in actions, winning, or losing.
QhLan 5
On Qhlan some mid-Europeans showed up. It was very good to see that they finally found their way to the even colder north. We saw Koopa and Blitz coming, and Blixem, Hoodlum, g00k, Yvez and JeZper from the Netherlands. I was quite sad about that because Blixem, Crit, Hoodlum and Billie would go initially. But at the moment Billie became sick Crit changed his plans for the weekend as he thought that they wouldn’t go at all (Hoodlum and Billie would drive). Then [fs] would’ve had a nice team of Blixem, Crit, Razor and Billie/Hoodlum added with Xalibur at the moment the playoffs were on. But it turned out otherwise. To the surprise of many HF didn’t play as one team. I thought they would as they had the best team there ever with Mrlame, Mutilator, Drejfus, Javve, Madmax and Griffin. Muttan made a team with Javve and his gang, Past, Vortex; and Mrlame and Drejfus teamed up with Razor and Xalibur and play as their old HPW clan Question.
The games Sassa mentioned in his report of qhlan CB-ToT were quite funny. ToT did their best to field as little first teamers as they could and it wasn’t 3-0 for CB but 2-1, so funny how someone can bend the truth. The 1on1 compo only gave a surprise in the form of Phantasy who won of Koopa of which most people thought he would come very far. Another player that surprised was Nabbe. I thought he would do good but when talking with people it turned out to be a surprise to many that he did so well. There were a lot good duelers after all, Striker, Mutilator, Space, Nabbe, Xalibur, Griffin and Dag were some of those. Can’t say very much about it. A lot games happened as they were expected and quite some were not predictable. Dag turned out to be the winner once again, beating Griffin in the final. They’ve really made a classic of it by now. Griffin seemed to be not as strong on dm4 as he has been before. I think I’ve seen about five players beating him there in those three days. That sure was something surprising for me as he was named the best dm4 player in EU by a lot of people (I never agreed on that btw, he’s been challenged often and everybody can’t beat another in the top on a good moment).
In the 2on2 the only upset was that Space played with Dag instead of his normal teamy Striker. Striker reacted very childish on this about two weeks before the Lan. It wasn’t such a surprise as Space promissed Dag on QHLan three that they would play together once and Striker said on QhLan four that it was his last Lan ever, and yes he was here again. Striker fell back on an old friend, Silver. Other 2on2 teams were Riker/Nabbe, Griffin/Mrlame, Razor/Xalibur and Blitz/Koopa played but they kinda flopped in the first round, but did better later in the tournament. During the normal rounds Griffin and Mrlame got kicked 2-0 by Dag and Space but they won the losers brackets while Dag and Space won the winner brackets in a final vs their teammates Nabbe and Riker. The final was very lame. Mrlame and Griffin agreed on a time to play but didn’t show up. Then when they were back, Dag had to go as his lift was there. Too much has been said about this issue, can’t blame more on it. This did mean that the 2on2 went to Griffin and MrLame by WalkOver, great game.
The 4on4 just had some weird subscriptions but the results were like they were expected. In the playoffs IB beat CB 2-1 (IB won dm3 and e1m2 and CB dm2), QUE played Maniacs on e1m2 easy and had a hard time on dm3 (they were behind after ten minutes, but won it quite easy with 88 frags). ToT-Meat was probably the most interesting game here as they played dm2 and dm3. The dm2 was an easy one for ToT while Meat (Siv, Dad, Blitz, Spets) gave a good fight on dm3, 155-119 for ToT. LA didn’t have any trouble with @*#%(@*# in their quarter game. The halves were quite nice too. Question – In Bloom was a good game from Questions side. IB gave some resistance on dm2 (losing it with seventy) but dm3 went to Que without much effort.
The other half final, LA-ToT, was one of two great clans during the season. ToT got kicked out of both NQR and SD playoffs by SR and I would like to see how they would do when facing LA. First map was dm3, LA played with Dag, Nabbe, Striker and Space and ToT had their normal lineup of Slime, White, Oddjob and TCO. It sure was close and LA only won the map with 35 frags. Second map was LA’s choice, e1m2. Space changed his place with Riker and the first (at least on e1m2) team was playing. Despite ToT’s good efforts LA ran over them and won the game with 227-132, almost the same score as ToT-SR on e1m2 which was 231-129.
About the final. LA was the favorite, I think everybody agreed on that. Question! looked quite rusty, especially in their game versus Maniacs (dm3). Once again LA decided not to play with their first team. I was really surprised about this. I thought they had learned something of the earlier games or maybe they aren’t playing so much for winning as it looks. On dm2 they left Dag at home (once again). This time everything did go good and they won the map without too much trouble with 229-146. Then dm3 was up and now Striker was placed on the bench. LA just owned from the start to the end and gave Question as little frags as they could, 208-46. Then e1m2 was up. It seemed like LA was going to take this one home easy, this was their strongest map and they won the other two without much trouble and even had their best team playing here (space specced). But Question was able to do it better than the dm3. The final score was 161-248.
After all this QhLan was a succes again, can’t say anything else. The only deception for me was that I hoped for IB, ToT, RE, FS, HF and LA in the 4on4 compo and for some 4on4’s of DIE. DIE had Striker, Silver, Space and Javve on the lan and those are all four great players, would’ve been very nice to see them play but it didn’t turn out like that. Redux had Silver, Blitz and Koopa there but didn’t field a team, because Crit wasn’t able to come FS didn’t play and HF didn’t play because they didn’t feel like it, I really found that a pity. Those clans would’ve almost gave the feeling of a NQR playoff on LAN, maybe next year, who knows!
The year is over. Smackdown and NQR showed us the best clans in the last eight both times. The best teams didn’t play very often. Not in ToT-SR in their NQR quarterfinal, that would probably not have changed the outcome. Not in FS-HF in their quarter NQR, FS would very likely won with Blixem instead of Miser and LA didn’t have their best team so often. They would have took the title in both tournaments otherwise.
When looking back on the history of SmackDown and NQR we see that SD had all the big teams playing in every version of their competition. NQR on the other hand missed E, tVS, ToT and quite some important clans more in their first season and missed ZR, LA, SR, ToT, RE, L and tVS in the second. From this we can conclude that this was the first time they had a really successful season running with all the big teams in it. Besides the FS-HF game that was strange, had all the games the correct outcome in my opinion.
Some glorious moments were that the old clan ZR was revived with their real members and that we saw some of the old players back in the EA revival. Other nice projects were FirstAid (KrazyMak, aNi, Ruffnux and Grisling), Dodge This (Stalin, Primus, Hixen, Nalle, Bizz and dexter), libidus animalis (sectopod, webser, legi, effie, tco) and last but not least a revival of Z. The bad thing about it was that none of them has survived longer than the one season they played in.
The scene has changed. The change that effects all things always has been in Quake too since the start. We saw fullbrights coming and we saw it excepted. There were I don’t know how much clients, Z, Qizmo, Cheapo and now mqwcl and fuhquake are taking over the scene. The old qwcl and qizmo combination isn’t even excepted anymore! What is happening here… time flies when people whine they say.
That is one thing the better gamers have seen now finally. Everybody started QW to have fun. In the past three years the whining about pings has took a flight that is unacceptable but it should be over inside next year as the connections have improved enough to make ping no problem. Remember the days in which we played with ping 140 and didn’t have any problem with it? Damn, what a lag do you have now when playing a Polish clan with ping 56. The thing is, everybody just wanted and still wants, to win. What is the problem with losing a match. And yes, it’s so nice to win and I always like to win too, but when losing, what is the problem. My problem is not that people in a competition are too competitive, that’s understandable. But the problem is that in every single game you want to start with more than four people takes at least 30 minutes. Pings not fair! That guy sucks, he won’t be MY teamy! He’s a mongol, kick him! Man… unbelievable how much there is too whine.
Coming to my point. Some of the better gamers have tasted or found the chance to go and enjoy real life, not playing very much anymore now NQR4 is up (SD decided very wisely to skip a spring season which didn’t have a final twice. The next season will probably be invite only as there are enough leages for everybody (NQR, CB, QWTP)). This caused the disband of LA, Dag quit QW and came back again to play with DS now, very nice. Space is working 24/7, Striker said he quit but came back as soon as cMF asked him and Nabbe and Riker are in DS too, while they took Shiva (fs) and Rokk_U (Nabbe’s brother) with them. HF, Muttan (HF2) had little time, Wigorf (FG) plays div5, Dreeyfus div4 (2B), Cara quit (partly because of lag) and only MrLame (Hyphen, first DS but he left because Dag was going to join) and Haj (DS) now play div1. ToT, Slime didn’t want to play with White and White didn’t want to play without Slime. TCO wanted to play with his friends in AXE and Oddjob wanted four hours QW in a week in div2. Then Slime went to DS, White inactive, Slabby to CB, Psycho_Dad to Lockup and when Lockup needed a member Oddjob followed Dad to div1 after all. Then thinking why ToT didn’t play with Slime, Slabby, Oddjob and Psycho_Dad but hey, there are back next season.
But that wasn’t it yet. tVS is having a season break too. Ihminen has trouble with his mouse, it hangs from time to time (can’t move it), he, Blaze and Xamp have lag all days except Saturday and Sunday, Hib went to SR and Elec joined FS this season and Maga and Acid are inactive. Mirage and Xamp joined Lockup but it’s sure that tVS is back next season, Xamp, Blaze and Ihminen are going to get ASDL for the days they lag, seems that Lockup will have a hard time fielding players then as they have that already.
Redux died as Silver joined cMF, Blitz FS, Gibbs Lockup and Serox joined MM while Corax is inactive. Rags just came back from inactivity and he joined div2 clan JAMS.
In Bloom died too because Cara went to HF and Case went inactive. Final-Exit was in Lockup when it just started but teamed together with another IB guy, Janozh, in AXE.
Paranoia fell apart, Faith and Jupe joined the NS revival. I hoped for the revival since they died but then with Zhin, Janne, Jackal, Milton, Cougar and Skisso. But Janne, Jackal and Skisso are not playing, at first NS looked good but the longer the season lives the worse I think of NS. It looks like they will stop with playing NQR as the results aren’t good and it isn’t looking like NS anymore. They added Niomic and Avenger to their lineup and Cougar left to AQ, this leaves only Zhin and Milton as original NS members and even they don’t play all the time. Flail and Zicol joined BLT and Vore is a member of HPR now while Magma joined MM. I would like to see them back in their old state, active, next season.
Paranoia will be back next season. As NS isn’t working very nice and I don’t see them living on like this. It looks like their team will be Jupe, Faith, Zicol, Foge and Lavos. Maybe Magma will come back to them? I don’t know, MM isn’t looking very strong. They miss Flail because he is in the army and Vore has departed to HPR and probably won't come back.
Some old players that came back are Hixen and Piglet. Piglet is in Lockup (said that before) but he doesn’t seem to be very active and Hixen revived E again, playing div3 (out of six) in NQR4 with a lot non-E members, just friends of him. Whole div3 contains old players like Stalin, Puzler, Mazer, Phantasy, Ruffnux. The few clans that are left out of the old top 10 are cMF, SR and FS. As DS is a sort of incarnation of LA now these are the four playoff clans. The only clan that might be able to come close is an active Lockup (with Mirage, xAmp, Oddjob, Psycho_Dad, Gibbs, Faust) but the chance that they will get active enough to make the playoffs is not very big.
I still miss the old times. With high pings and not such lame players around, and no, I don’t say _everybody_ is like that, but a lot are. I still look back on things as Villains, TGI and Fusion 99 with a warm hart, trying not to compare them with things that happen these days.
A thing that struck me most was that I tried to set up a league in ClanBase about five times, talking to half the admin crew there and they all told me that QW didn’t need another league and there would be attention for it. About eight months later a league IS running there, can’t come with any good argument that QW changed in favor of extra attention for a CB league. But I can’t put any blame on them. I wanted the thing in a complete other way, that is true, but still, weird action from their side.
I was speaking my disgust of Smackdown this season earlier. I couldn’t enjoy the final in any way, it was so stupid. In that way I had rather seen them not playing at all. Still don’t understand why Dag didn’t want to play and Space was in on all maps.
When looking back on the other season we saw the most thrilling final in the first version of this tournament when two legends clashed in the form of FF en E. In the second we saw that the final wasn’t played but two months later, they did. It was FF vs SR (the old E at the time) now and it was a good game. In both the four best teams imo made the half finals too, besides the two finalists cMF and tVS twice, dominating SD those first two seasons.
Something everybody that had something to do with Quake in those days knew about FF-tVS. The only thing that was around it was whine, FF couldn’t play with Dag and tVS couldn’t play on LAN before the date they were to play. The worst thing was even that Euthanasia in the other half of the playoff tree still had to play their eight’s final… But they played and FF won it convincingly, it was too late though to play the final before the season ended.
Then in the third SmackDown E went over in SR and the FF guys split to OC and ED. With OC, L, SR and tVS as half finalists we had four great teams. OC with three ex-FF’ers, SR with three ex-E’ers, L with Riker ex-E and three other great players (Riker and Nabbe later LA, added with White and Effie) and tVS. The half final tVS-SR was almost a repeat of tVS-FF the season before, this time tVS wanted another server because Xalibur had ping 14 and the other seven players 28. After a long time they played. Then the decider was up and Apollyon used the legendary backoffice to decide that dm3 was the decider, the map that tVS wanted (SR wanted to play dm6). SR didn’t want to play them as they thought it wasn’t true and Apollyon only said it because he was a tVS fan and hated SR (he was cheering for tVS all the time, not very handy), after another hour they did play dm3 and SR took it home because of strong play by Paradoks and Vana.
The final L-SR was a good one with the best team coming out as the winner. Personally I would have liked to see OC win of L in the half finals and have OC-SR in the final. In case OC would field Dag, aKKe, Brutal and Primus they would’ve had an oldskool team (Brutal was with SR when SD3 started and he was in CAPS during Villains Two, losing the final of FF) and a just as good final. This was the first time cMF didn’t make the half finals as they got kicked out by tVS in the quarters.
Then in SD4 tVS didn’t make the halves for the first time as they lost of FS in a thriller. HF won of LA as Pietro lagged badly. cMF took out SR because they pracced very little and the last teams were L, cMF, HF and FS. FS lost senseless of HF and cMF won logically of L (though they had ex-FF exile and ex-E DARKL0RD). The final wasn’t even played. One of the weirdest SD’s so I can’t say I was surprised that the final wasn’t played, it just wasn’t right. The last four teams should imo have been LA, SR, tVS and cMF, couldn’t be according to the playoff tree, L, FS and HF were doing very good too, HF’s best performance in SD before this second place was the eighths final in both SD2 and 3 while they ended last in their group in SD1.
Then in this SD the best eight teams sure made the quarters while cMF and tVS met each other again so one of them had to deny the other the half final. Last four were ToT (taking out HF), SR, LA and cMF. Good to see those teams there. Just to say this final was a CLASSIC. As in FF-E? Not a chance. Not a single ex-FF guy played for LA and only two ex-E for SR. I’ve heard people that agreed with me say things like: ‘The real E was Trinidy, Gemma, Pingvin and HiXen, were for gods sake are you talking about!’ Don’t want to push it into such extreme’s, Paradoks was there since V1.
Sorry for everybody that I’ve insulted, I didn’t mean to, just putting my view here because, after all, that is where a column is for.
And even if the people didn’t mean classic in the way that it are the same people playing but that it is comparable in the way that these are the only two teams having a chance on the title, or just the two best out there, they are wrong. FF and E were the only two having a chance on the title, and they were the two best teams out there. And now, SR is challenged by cMF, tVS and FS all the time. They even lost of cMF in the half final of NQR while playing with their best team. And we never saw FF and E playing if they didn’t háve to. When looking at LA and SR, I haven’t seen LA prac many clans _except_ SR. Both teams knew exactly what one another’s playing style, weak and strong points were when playing.
When looking at everything it has become so much closer since FF and E broke up. We have had a lot of title contenders in the last five big tournaments; SR, OC, L, LA, HF, cMF, tVS, FS to name some.
One thing seems clear. LA was the best team this year. They played 51 officials and lost two of them. Both while not playing under best circumstances, lagged/unplayable Pietro vs HF in SD4 and Dag speccing instead of playing during SD5. All the other games, they won, they won of every single div1 clan in NQR4. Who is then doubting about what the best clan was last year.
Now another era has come. The old players are almost all disappeared, vanished into real life or playing other games where we lose them out of our view. The laming should and might be over soon in case the people want to work on it. A great help would be good connections for everyone, and that sure is something that will come.
New players are still flowing in the mass that forms the scene of the QuakeWorld these days. Clans that normally play other games come and try it, the old players are fed up with it. They have played it very long and know dm2, dm3, dm4, dm6 and e1m2 by now. The CMT maps can’t keep them sticking with it. No new maps allowed in NQR2, not in NQR3 and still not in NQR4. And that while they have to name to bring new things. In SD the coming of new maps isn’t very likely anymore in case it will be invite only. It’s a great loss for the community that those people leave. They were forming the old friendly core of the play that happened years ago and is remember by few these days. If you ask a random person on a QW chan on QuakeNet who were playing in the Villains playoffs about one on ten knows what Villains is and one in thirty can name more than two clans…
A year and eighteen days
Date: 15/05/2003
A year and eighteen days ago I started this column, or better Jjonez opened it. I would like to thank him for it once again now. Can't say anything else than that I've enjoyed the writing a lot, didn't think it would be so nice.
Looking back on what I wrote in this first year... a lot of pre- and reviews on SD and NQR and that was about it. Did quite some lousy, and some less lousy, predictions. Quite some matches were unpredictable, that is from one side a good evolvement that took place since –ff- died, there isn’t one team left anymore that would be called the best clan around that nobody beats. Well, as I’ve said before, LA was imo with their 48-2 record, but they had a nice break now as three quarter of the European top this NQR season.
Happily enough everybody is coming back next season to enjoy us with their gorgeous quake! With some luck we will see LA, tVS, Para, HF, ToT and HGC back next season. That is quite something different than the four top-clans we saw this season. Even lockup was so inactive that they couldn’t make any fist to the playoff clans with their tVS, ToT and RE players…
Great to see a real top back again with at least eight clans that are worth of a playoff and as it seems that div1 will become ten clans, we’ll have ten good clans in it instead of four.
And then now at the end of this year I had the year overview done as a change on the things that came before. It just turned out a little long, don’t think a lot of people have read it through totally, but hey, there might be some of the few quakers that are left our here fanatic enough to read it all.
For those who didn’t feel like reading it, just read part Three of it, it’s not long and that might be seen as the real update of my column as part One and Two are just describing everything that happened.
Then I would like to thank Sassa, Jjonez and Apollyon for posting news articles on the overview, Paradoks for his great support and [fs] for giving me such a nice birthday present by winning the ClanBase Cup over cMF.
Last but not least, I would like to thank all you out there, everybody that has read some of my thoughts and views in the past year and something extra for the ones that gave feed-back, I found out that it’s very nice to get some response on the things written, thanks all!
Here we go for another year :-)
What is next
Date: 18/09/2003
Here I'm sitting. Not for the last time, no not that, but I'm sitting here with a very odd feeling.
When our last season was running and there was no SmackDown I saw that as a good sign. In the following way: half of the div1 clans took a break, and so did SD.
But now we are here. In the QWTP cup all big clans had subscribed and most of them have played. I had very good hopes for this season, I predicted the comeback of LA, [hf], tVS, ToT, HGC and paranoia.
Now it looks like we are left with only Paranoia and a tVS that has loads of trouble with their connections.
LA didn't come back. Yes, they were back, but only for about eight games. Dag quit qw, that is the reason for this. Now Striker went to [fs] and Nabbe and Riker have formed Disorder again.
The last member, Space, was always saying that he would come back when Dag did... let's hope he will after all.
I still can't understand what has happened. It looks like a snowball effect. Last season some good players decided to have a one season break to enjoy real life a bit, some forced, some not.
Causing a less interesting season, it's paying off now. The ones that were away can't or don't want to play more qw and some of the others are like: all competition is gone out of div1, there is no fun left.
[hf] didn't come together. Dreyfus joined FS' ranks too and it seems like they've got a great team atm, just need some more time to get the tp back in shape.
Mrlame is going to play with DS again and Muttan with hf2. The others, Cara is in paranoia with Buggy, Lavos, Vore with the new members Nepra and Goblin. Haj is back to his roots at =X=, they have a strong lineup with Javve, Phil, Ztorm, Havz and Xerial. Miser has played some games with them but he hasn't joined at them yet, maybe that will happen, time will tell.
And last but not least, Wigorf didn't join Haj at his ex-clan X but decided to stay on hf territory with Vet's.
Another clan that surprisingly didn't make it was ToT. The story is quite short, almost none of them plays qw anymore. Only Hamorai is found on the servers once in a while but that's it. Slime is back with DS as ToT was never an option again, maybe that they will play some games, but not active, looking like div2.
Then we have HGC. The Polish kurwa's of which I thought (and hoped) they'd come back. But it turned out that Insane wanted safety, just pracs, war, good time, no whine. So he ended up with Camp. This caused quite some trouble for other people.
Kosa seems inactive, Javve is with X, Eternal is in mm, Billy formed a new clan Billy's Burgers and the rest has no clan or is inactive.
The Viper Squad has whole other trouble though, but the same as last season. The university network where xamp, ihminen and blaze are connected with has heavy lag during weekends and every evening. This will make it very hard for them to prac, because 95% of the clans plays their games in those times.
They have got Mirage and Maga without lag, Elec inactive and Acid in the army. They would be able to field a team if Hib would come back and they would suffer less lag, but I don't see that happen very soon.
So it will probably be officials only, on weird times. The option of getting ADSL isn't in the picture either because they haven't got enough money to finance that, too bad :(
It is still, such a bad feeling. It's the last thing I ever expected to happen... half of the best clans gone, smackdown gone, nqr were you get three points for 2-1 so it's like tb3 only and clanbase tb3 only...
And that while we were waiting for invitational only SD and NQR tb3 and all cmt´s.
When you turn your head and look over your shoulder, you can see that we have set the first steps in a new qw era.
Things in qw go fast, the game, the scene, the clients, the rockets, the players, the damage and the clans. But this time, we can see open and clear how much oldskool people have left, and are still here.
The best clans that are here are the same as last season. SR, cMF, DS and FS. The only thing we can hope for is that Hyphen keeps playing so well, even without mrlame, and that X will prac enough to do good.
Then we have paranoia to cheer it all a little up and of course our good old AQ, axe and Camp to do the usual owning.
With that I´d like to start at the good points of this season, well, not in the form of leages, but in clans. As u understood, X is back, and so is paranoia.
Besides those, one of the best things is that Qandrane is revived. Fix is playing in it with four irl friends of him, plus some TF mates and vana. If Vana will be active they are definitly div1.
I´ve seen them in action and they play awesome with fix, ananas, vana, mel and pricq, at least for such a ´young´ clan.
Then there is a new mm. Last season they played with Insane, Javve, Magma, Primus, Cutter and Et, Kosa and Raket as backup. This season they are introducing a team of Spoque (he is the leader, just as last season), Sargon (oldschool Dutch player), Canius and Eternal. I wonder who will be their fifth player as they want one active player more, will it be one of the old players, Primus or Et (maybe even Kosa, Raket or Inex)? We'll find that out later, seems a good option to me.
We have only got some clans left that were in div2 last year. CN, who have forsberg, exile and blau active again and we are waiting for team9|jerry to show his face again.
With jerry they can do pretty good, but still, not even close to playoffs. Then there is 4K who have strengthened their force with old members Serox, Splif and new Avenger.
Added up with the usual crew they´ve got their old stabile, nice team.
Something that surprised me was that the Russian clan Death Team, or Bored With Life (same players these days) are in div1 of ClanBase and Qandrane is in div2, quite weird as I suppose that Qand would have little trouble to win of them.
Some other good things are that we will see FAPPERS active with a team containing Carna, jester, keeo, mooniz, niomic and past, quite impressive, a team that will do very well in div2 if they are active. Then we´ve got ZAK revived, the clan of Valla and Znappe with always the same members around them past years. They are inactive now and I think they won´t play more than their officials but it´s good to have them back, even if it´s only for the season.
FUDOH has pracced and grown a lot since last season too, just as Thangorodrim, who played div6 last NQR.
But there is more! There was Spice Girls, an Avengers project. So that is dead by now, and we´ve got Billy´s Burgers. He founded this new clan with Kender and the Dutch Tyrone and Flepser, later Maull (polish) and Mushi (Portugese) were added to have Captain Conan place them in div3 of ClanBase league... I´ve got the strange feeling they will win that without much trouble.
You can say I´ve had it for now, the downfall of SmackDown, who knows if they´ll rise, at least I will be one of those that will try to keep some life in it, the cmt maps importance reduced to zero, a lot of important clans really gone, damn... how can a normal man take this in it´s easy life.
Season lift off
Date: 06/10/2003
The seasons are on.
Another season without Challenge Smackdown had it's take off. It looked like it would be as empty as last, though, some non-expected things took place last week.
The first games look promising, if the trend will set on this might be a good season after all.
Fifty-two clans in Clanbase and Ninety-one in NQR, quite some games played and unexpected teams revived.
Saying that QW is dead doesn't seem to be on it's place right now, MQWCL will be updated, fuhquake is going on steadily, movies coming out, lans coming up and old clans came back, what else do we want!
When looking at SD5 only the old HellFire team is missing on the lineup, and Redux. Especially the last is not likely to come back anymore, Silver has his first place in cMF, Blitz is inactive at the moment but when he's here again he will play with Firing Squad. Then we have GiBBs and Corax, who quit active gaming, Rags in JAMS.
Four Kings added their old member Serox to their lineup again, just as the two poles Avenger and Eternal. Their team looks strong but crowded, if they get to play with the right four or five players their teamplay can rise to good heights, but I don't see that happen too soon as there are too much members that are active.
About HellFire. Mrlame joined up with Riker and Nabbe from LA and Slime from ToT to get Disorder back again Dreeyfus is in Firing Squad, Mutilator and Cara are playing in HellFire team two as the Paranoia revival failed. Then Wigorf is in Vets, Haj inactive but signed up with Clan X. You should say that it must've been possible to get a first team on the roll but the players were looking for something else and Muti and Wigorf weren't in for div1 playing anymore. Too bad as it is a team we can barely miss at the top of European quake.
Lege artis is 'active' again. Good effort, as they are just a month too late to sign up for the seasons, Dag and Space started to play 2on2 on qw.nu and that activity resulted in quite some 4on4 games with the old boys later on. Great to see those back in action, at least they will be playing on QhLan edition six, so we don't have to wait for ages to see their team striking again in officials.
Dag played some pracs with the Americans of American Gangsters of his friend Def, raking up the frags astonishing high vs hHh, 135 on e1m2. Superb to see him playing again, now we can only wait and see if they will still be active at the start of the next season and can field Dag, Nabbe, Riker, Striker and Space again forming the killing team from before. Even aKKe is signed up with Disorder in NQR, just doubt if he will play at all, would be good to see him playing again too. This even leaves a chance to see Pietro, Dag, aKKe, Nabbe, Riker, Striker and Space LA, just don't think that will happen. We'll see about that next season.
That what surprised me most is that Pietro is back! I don't think he will play active but he has played with CN in their first official of this season in NQR vs JAMS. CN is a real Flaming Fist resort now with Pietro, Exile, Jerry, Forsberg and Blau. The CN site says that Jerry quit QW totally but Jerry told me himself that he might play some games with CN if he's got time beside real life and his pro-CS career with team 9.
They belong in div1 with this lineup, even if they aren't as active as other div1 teams. A bit of a problem is that Paradoks was the driving factor behind making the divisions in NQR and let's say he's not 100% objective. Placing his friends eQ in div1 while they belong in div1 according to the rules (second place div3 last season) and CN in div3 while they won div2. Quite funny react when saying CN belongs in div1: ]SR[ParadokS: lol not. they r like div3-4 material. they dont have 1 div1 player
Ok, well done! Nothing to do about it now, there are more clans placed in the wrong division. Look at [E] now, Dag and Space joined them and with Hixen, Jebur and Panic they don't belong in div3. My opinion is still that it must be possible to switch clans in the first two weeks of the league, in case it is clear that soon they don't belong there and that another team doesn't belong a div higher they must both be active, shouldn't be a problem to get their games played before the end of the season, rules aren't made for that yet, a suggestion for later.
Something that is a quite bad, CMT is not accepted by the scene at all, well by eQ, they are in div1 for cmt4 only, but the rest of the teams and leagues don't like the maps at all. In NQR 2-1 gives three points, on of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen in an online competition, where the fuck are we heading for people?
Apo had just one thing in mind for the SD season that never happened, quite bad, we are sticking with tb3 for the full 100%, don't understand it. I had the feeling that people liked the idea of new maps at start, but when they are there, nobody is willing to play them, or better, nobody is willing to lose any points on those because they are new and 'noskill'. Please, come up with some new arguments.
The only league that might be a big up for the scene is the league that Link is going to run, called teamup with tb3, all cmt maps and some episode maps in it. Remember people, episode maps, we used to play those five years ago 4on4, and not only one. Remember e3m7? [tVS]Dream, what a hero that was, e3m1 with Teddybears, we had e2m2, e3m3, e2m5 all those maps that are gone now because they 'Don't fit for real skilled 4on4, they are no balanced enough'. All whine that there in this scene still surprises me. 'Oh! I can't play in UK vs American teams! My HPW times were over four years ago! Ping 50 is so high! Unplayable!' Yea right, look at the Americans, Fired playing with ping 110 and AG with 140, think normal, like they are used to those pings 'No! But they choose to play with those pings we are forced!' Opening up for something new is not possible at all. Well done.
Enough shit about our retarded scene. I like the clan activity, a lot more are back than it looked like three weeks ago. ToT played their first game in months with White, Slabby, Oddjob and Hamorai in NQR facing Qand with their first lineup of Fix, Vana, Mel and Ananas. ToT got the best start on both maps but because of the quality of Qand and the inactivity of ToT the game stayed close on both maps, on dm3 Qand tied the game just before last pent and forgot that, so lost the map with 40. Dm2 was a struggle for Qand not being able to takeover in time. Good to see those two clans in action, ToT at all and Qand with that team, very nice.
We can't forget tVS who have played their first game in ages too, at 1400 to avoid lag. They faced aQ and they didn't seem to have much trouble with them at all. Calling it all luck themselves but it wasn't going too bad for a first game in two months, let's hope they can get their teamplay back on line as it was before, then we've got on of the big teams back again, fantastic thing to see not the whole top has fallen apart yet.
One thing I must mention, the cMF - Hyphen match. Damn that was great. It was clear that cMF hasn't pracced enough to be as good as last season. Just ás last season they seem to have a hard time at the season start because of their inactivity in summer, and they miss Fix who's opinion was that 90% of the games wasn't interesting anyway, why not play with friends then? Can't say he hasn't got a point there. Game started with dm3 and damn, this was so damn close, cMF could only win it with a mere eight frags. Hyphen looked quite strong in pre-season because they could prac some while other big clans were still inactive, they have too much trouble with active players last two weeks so they can't prac at all, let's hope that that matter is fixed now and they will be active, I've heard HT say that it was even the question if they can play any games the way it looks now, can't use those things :-/
They played a great game at now at least, then e1m2 was up, Hyphens choice, probably because they beat cMF there last season in playoffs, have to mention that Mooniz played back then and wasn't doing as good as he can, but still, Hyphen managed to win again! With 22 frags they got cMF under and brought it to a decider: dm2. Now Shiva really began to feel at home as he dominated the map scoring 88 frags, the ones behind him (Rat and Fifi) could only make 43 as cMF got away with a sixty frag victory. Nice to see such a match at the start of the season.
Trouble in divisions of ClanBase, we've got Billy's Burgers totally humiliating the other clans in div3. It is quite sure they don't belong there but they haven't played the stronger teams there. Though they have Freddo and Nielz added, they look quite strong in their lineup. Still can't imagine that they will get any other place than number 1 in their group. Got the feeling that AG will have a hard time in div2 of NQR too as they are not active, maybe they will get active from now but they weren't active at all, and have a 100ms ping disadvantage in uk on most clans. When active they could claim a nice spot but it might even be hard to win some games now.
One of the last things I've got to say, it's great to see X back. Xerial is doing great while making his comeback and the teamplay with Phil, Javve and Ztorm still needs to be better but it's going great if you have in mind how long they have not played together. When Haj is active again they will be one of the best teams around. Can't forget about FU with their old Z members that are playing again, can't miss them in a season either.
It is not looking as bad as I expected because clans and players got more active than I thought they would, the only bad thing left is that GoH isn't in NQR, how can we miss our Belgian friends in a competition!
After all
Date: 27/11/2003
It's time again. It has been some while since my last update and a whole season took place since then.
Let's start with Clanbase. We have already landed at the playoffs here. It's a shame that not all games have been played, but that is something that always seems to happen.
In group A from the third league two clans went inactive, leaving only five behind. In this group Billy's Burgers had no problem with winning all their games 2-0. Second ended Zoo (Eläintarha). The other third league group was way more active with Thangorodrim coming out victorious with a clean 6-0 record, only losing two dm3's (of NRU and vR). Second there was JRQ and third NRU. Clanbase has a six clan playoff for each division, the groupwinners get a bye in the first round and thus only play semi's and the final if they win their semi of course.
Now, NRU was third but they were walked over in their last two games as they died so FUDOH2 will take their place in the playoffs and show if they can handle the level.
There were little surprises in the third league and the games weren't very exciting too, except that it was always a question to what monster score Billy would lead his team this time. The second 'division' was better though with FU winning all their games only losing e1m2 of Vets, one map out of 13, that is looking quite good if I may say. Vets did a great job winning e1m2 as that looks to be a strong map for FU. The fight for the second place was tense and Vets got it because they lost less maps than DT, with only a three map better 'map average' than the Russian Death Team while DT won of V in their game. I was quite surprised that MM didn't make the playoffs but it looks like they couldn't field their best teams during their CB games as they are doing well in NQR now with their new player Silence. Even though there has been a lot of whine about E they are not playing outstangdinly well because dag and space are not close to playing all the games. Without those two the team is not better than all others, so it turns out it isn't that much of a problem.
In group B of the second division FUDOH won all their six games, of which two were 2-1, losing dm3 of ZAK and dm2 of WX. I expected more of zak, they lost their first two games (fudoh, 2nd) but they had lack of activity back then and clawfinger was too rusty. After that they won all their games 2-0 (including a WO vs WX :-/ ) and took a hold of the second place in the group followed with FAPPERS on their heels ending up third.
First division time. As the season started it became soon clear that paranoia couldn't revive as well as they thought because nobody wanted to take the responsibility of leading the clan and thus taking on some more work. This resulted in them breaking up only a few weeks after they revived. I'm still hoping to see paranoia back, the only time when that could happen is when jupe and faith are coming back from the army and it would be really nice to see that as their old players are looking sexi now (vore at mindtrek was superb, but we come to that later).
Four kings have had a lot of trouble with activity too, and they still have. It is quite weird because at the start of the season it looked like they had eight active players making it very hard to prac with the same four every time and build up some good teamplay (I was concerned about that). Now they haven't got enough active members and can't even play all their games, in clanbase they played one game. It was the game vs Qandrane where they got raped by Fix, Vana, Mel and Ananas. In Group B we have X. They have been inactive the whole season, only starting to play their games two weeks before the end of the season in both CB and NQR. They had the biggest problem with playing in div1, they didn't want to play there themselves at all because they said they don't belong there. Now the Haj-Factor is back and they are owning like they always did.
On the games now. It was very good to see that all games got results (incl. WO's). tVS - DS was a very exciting match, on dm2 tVS took the early control and kept it for half the game, then DS took over and they could do very little. Blaze managed to take one Q but he got killed in ten seconds not being able to take tele/water over with it. Ihminen was playing a great game and was leading the scores for quite some time even after DS took the control. tVS sure surprised me there as they have been inactive for, eight months?, and still gave DS quite a match. Final score was 236-166 in favor of DS. One thing I can't forget to mention is that aKKe got really active, I didn't expect that at all but he is playing a lot of games now with DS and yes, that is great to see.
Second map was e1m2, DS pick of course. DS got the better start with Riker taking RL/MH and aKKe taking Quad. They held control for four minutes when Mirage got Quad and a bit later they were having control of YA. Halftime, DS still leading with 9 frags while tVS had YA control, but they are having a take-over now and frag tVS easy increasing their lead. But then the unexpected happened, three minutes left, thirty frags down, Ihminen grabs Quad and goes kinda crazy ending up at the top of the scoreboard and making tVS able to win the map. He comes in quad with two minutes to go as he needed those Q's to be able to win, and is Disordered by four of them. DS winning 175-151. I can say that was a great game from tVS' side.
DS won their game with AQ without a problem, and that while Lohjan Dag was playing for AQ! Quite an achievement that was :>
The DS-Qand match was more interesting. DS took Qand out 187-63 on dm3 but had a lot more trouble on e1m2. Qand was fielding Vana, Fix, Henri and Fortu, meaning that they missed their two core players Melody and Ananas. Fix and Vana controlled YA/GL for twelve minutes, leading the scoreboard. But Henri and Fortu couldn't keep up with them and were last. Qand was only leading with twenty or thirty frags at that moment. DS controlled it for four minutes and then Fix was able to take it over again for the last four minutes but DS fragged enough in those four minutes of control to win the map (and that while Qand had 16 minutes control :L). Though, it sure is the question if DS played very serious, but even if they didn't Vana and Fix are two of the best e1m2 players around, just too bad Vana is quite inactive these days.
DS won group A with these games. The second clan claiming a play-off spot here was Firing Squad. They are looking strong with Razor, Reppie, Blixem, Dreejfus and won without a problem of AntiQuad. FS-Qand was way closer though. This time two other Dutchies than Reppie and Blixem played with Razor and Dreej, it were Murdoc and Krytech. The dm3 was close but it looked more like FS-Fix than FS-Qand. In the second half of the game FS got a good grip on the map (especially with last pent) and they fragged their way to a 183-100 victory (Qand was missing Vana and Mel this time). On e1m2 it was a tight and very exciting game (FS sure missed Reppie and Blixem here, though it was fun this way). Vana joined now and replaced Fortu, giving us a team of Fix/Vana/Ananas/Henri. Fix did a great job with Vana and Ananas helping him out very well and Qand had the lead most of the time. With the on to last quad Mur settled things for FS and took out the whole team of Qand? Best to quote Razor here: "with 1.30 left i think they had 15 frag lead and we got 4 rl-lock.. and we hunted them.. they had 1 frag lead with 3 secs left i think.. but me (raz) spotted someone in water and drej got one at the same time at rl.. so we won." Great to watch.
The last playoff spot in this group is for tVS, they took out AQ in their first two maps in, like I said, probably eight months, maybe even longer. They won of [fs] too, but FS wasn't able to field their first squad and had to play with Imperator. He is a german played who used to be in iBh with 123, Slop, Atist, Flocutus, Flowie and Reppie, from which those two know each other. At the time the game was played Imperator still had his bad connection, thus he wasn't able to keep up with the other FS guys, he is looking quite strong now though. Anyway, FS tried hard but tVS showed they were the better team overall and took FS down in two maps, dm2 205-169 and on dm3 xAmp was playing very well (76 frags) and tVS took away the victory 211-109.
In group B we saw Slackers do their usual ownage. The best game that would have been here SR-cMF wasn't played as SR got a WO. SR didn't have much trouble with the other clans, only X and oeks gave them a fair fight. X lost dm3 with 13 frags in a good game where SR lost their luck in some occasions. X got the better start but couldn't keep the control. They equaled the game with like 1:30 left but SR got the upper hand and won it. And the e1m2 vs oeks was very close. Oeks got more frags in the first five making, leading with 5-10 all the time but then SR got a control of YA, established a 50 frag lead after about 8 minutes and it stayed 50 the rest of the match. Have to mention that Paradoks had some evil lag, 100/10, and still scored 80 frags on e1m2 (TCO was second with 58).
cMF took the second place with only three played games. Two of those were very good to watch, the one versus Campbusters and the other with Hyphen. Camp surprisingly won dm3. Or well, was it a surprise? They did very well in their NQR match with cMF too. On dm2 Camp got the best start but cMF took over right away and Camp was never able to take make a lockdown. On the deciding e1m2 the shiva-factor made cMF win. Though, it still prac for most big clans, regular season.
The third playoff spot is for Camp, they ended with the same stats as Hyphen but Camp won of Hyphen in their game.
About the playoffs. We will see the Finnish Classic cMF-tVS. As always tVS will pick dm2. It is in no way clear what clan will have the better chances there, it's not for nothing called the lotto map. It just depends on what clan gains control and when takeovers are placed, how much control one can again, too much factors to pick on team that will. Though, if I would have to I will go with cMF because tVS has been quite inactive and cMF has Shiva who has some special tricks every game. I think cMF is the better team on both dm3 and e1m2, but I've got the feeling that they will pick dm3, they have done that often this season. Their routine there show off clearly. We've seen on Mindtrek that tVS isn't quite in the shape they have been in, it would be good to see them really active again next season and not only playing officials like they do now, but well, on the other hand we should be happy that they play at all. I go with cMF here in 2-0, but it can always be 2-1.
The other quarter final is DS-Camp. What say about this, DS will pick e1m2 and win, Camp will play dm2 and very likely lose. As anything seems possible on dm2, and Camp will get a Finnish fullstart and win, DS will rape them on dm3. Very little to say here, it is only the question how serious DS will be playing. Disorder has great individual skill but it seems they can't win of cMF and SR. We will see how well they will play when facing camp.
The winner of cMF-tVS will be facing [fs] in the half final and the winner of DS-Camp will face SR. I think SR is stronger than any team in the league right now, only cMF who can make a fist against them. Or DS must get really active have killer-moods to take them down. I count on a cMF-SR final here, but who knows if FS/DS/tVS will bring us some surprises, that would be good for sure.
In the second league Zak, FU and Fudoh are looking way stronger than all the other teams. I think the best game will be the half final between zak and FU, at least if Zak is fielding their best players, then will win the season too. Then in the third league BB will rape JRQ or GoH in the semi's and T will win the other one giving us a final of T-BB. That sure will be a good game as BB will be very eager to win T this time, watch it!
Let's talk about some other things now, I've kinda had it with reviewing for the moment. I was talking with Jebur the other day about the clans-of-one-nation issue. He commented some things I said on the quakeworld.nu site but it would be better if put my own thoughts about it down here.
Let's say, it's more nostalgy for me than reality, as I'm like: this clan used to be fi only, and that uk only and look at it now, so on... What would be nice (not only for one nation clans) is to see LA back on the net after qhlan, hellfire, paranoia and zetor would be great to have back too. The current top is way too small. A lot of good players are spread through the different divisions and not teaming up together to get a good div1 clan running (reviving). At least we have Qand and X now looking good. X with Haj, Javve, Phil, Xerial, Ztorm and Havz who just came back from a long time of inactivity. They have been going strong in the past weeks and if they stick together they'll only get better and might become one of the best again.
But well, Jebur quoted me in the text , but I would have the clans a bit different if they would be from one nation. A bit more like the clans are now.
From Sweden:
LA: dag, nabbe, riker, striker, akke, space, pietro
A new clan: slime, memil, xalibur, silver, rokk_u. They could call it hElLBENder TurBuLEnce :P
[hf]: Muti, Dreejfus, Mrlame, Wigorf, Cara
DIVA: sphere, phaze, circle, razor, case (freddo?)
=X=: Haj, Javve, Phil, Xerial, Ztorm, Havz
ToT: Slabby, White, Oddjob, Psycho_Dad, Hamorai
fOm/tff: Manu, Ruffnux, Seeker, Offbreed, Molle (but fom isn't fom without crazymac)
Camp: Hagge, Broning, Eta-Beta, Nepra, SLB
Or keep CN: Pietro, Exile, Znappe, Valla, Foppa (hmmm, of what clan does that remind me.... eh maybe, [ED] from SD3?)
Or In Bloom: Cara, Case, Janozh, Final-Exit, Clean
One thing we all know, but will not happen, -ff-, now are/were in NQR: Dag, Pietro, aKKe, Exile, Jerry, Forsberg, Primus, Blau and Woodstock. That seems to be enough for a team. But not good to get a clan with such a name back before they would've pracced some times to be 'unbeatable again' (and I doubt if they will be if they come together right now).
One clan that I would always like to see again is Lithium, not even a revival, but just the old tag and Nabbe, Riker, Shiva and White playing together again, if they would be reviving with Slime. And yes, that looks a lot like DS last season, except that White didn't play and Dag/Haj/Lame did.
From Finland
cMF: Fix, Fifi, Dare, Zhin, Jarrex, Hlt
tVS: blAze, Ihminen, Mirage, xAmp, Elec, mAga
KOFF: Gamer, Scenic, Miser, Epic, Zygot
SR.fi: Goljat, Vana, Slebe, Lokki and maybe Hawwki
Para: Vore, Liper, Zicol, Lavos, Buggy, Magma with Faith and Jupe (when back from army)
ZR: Hib, Rock, Acid, Mazer, Hazard
AQ: Diki, Harvester, Nice, Cougar, Sandy
Daltons: Milton, Mate, Rat, Ananas, Boome, Some, Fortu, Ripa
Fappers: Mooniz, Jester, Carna, Melody, Keeo
There could even be (the real) Noskill again if JX and Jac get playing again with Zhin, Milton and Cougar. You might have noticed that Hib could've been placed with SR and tVS too but I'd rather see ZR back. And of course we could just have Qand with Fix, Vana, Melody and Ananas instead of them in cMF, SR, D and Fap.
But even more important is the fact that quake is dying outside sweden and finland. In all the other countries there are very few or none (good) clans of one nation as all the players are spread through the scene. And yes, in some coutries it would be very hard to get an elite clan running because the old good players stopped playing.
Like, we won't see [fs] back with blixem, reppie, crit, plop and gem. And it is very unlikely we will see iBh playing again with players like 123, Slop, Atist, Flowie, Flocutus, Imperator. What means that some things would be very hard to achieve even if the active players now would wish it. The only good news I have on [fs] is that crit played again and he might make a comeback. That would be a great thing to happen, time will tell us how far he will go, of course we hope all the way.
Though a top UK clan (like RE and 4k were) could be there:
serox, blitz, hangtime, rags, corax (RE/DN (sheep?)) and 4k could be uk only with serox, kryten, keyser, splif, sae.
HGC will be coming back, probably with a lineup of Insane, Billy, Kat, Iron, Kosa and Inex. This is a good thing as their dm2 was very strong. Let's hope they will get active soon and get their teamplay running again as good as it was.
What surprised me was that OEKS with the anti-swede Link himself got some swedes in their lineup, could be else when TiMMi comes back from the army. They could field TCO, Pre, TiMMi, Tr0ll, Naille and form a nice team.
But the fact is that a lot of players don't want to have such teams (which is quite logic). Look at the current season, some great players are in div3-7 just hanging a bit because they don't want to play div1 and a lot others are inactive or quit qw totally. What I've stated here would be more like a perfect situation and I 'forgot' to add quite some players because the chance that they will be back is very small.
There is so much to talk about, I should've made an update way earlier. Paradoks, Xerial and Sassa are doing a great job on commenting games these days. The quiz was very funny too, I was quite sad that I missed it, only heard it later it was very funny though :-)
Also the other projects that is being worked on give me good hopes. Paradoks said last night that he thought that they are trying to do too much things at the same time and that the quality will be worse because of that. But as all are trying their best to get things working properly it looks like everything are going well now.
iBh|123 is working an MQWCL these days, it would be great to see an update on it somewhere soon, but I haven't got a clue when that would start.
Mindtrek
We've had Mindtrek. A lot has been written and said about it already so I'll keep it short. We all know that the network lagged and that some good gamers left the lan because of that (Dare). I would've like to see SR play too but Hib came without a pc and Slebe got drunk with friends of him that live near to the lan, so that didn't work out quite well either. The 1on1 tournament had some surprises. First of all, Xamp didn't play, that was quite a surprise to me. Then, we saw Vore being in the best shape he's ever been in. He won of Gamer in the group games and we saw Milton domination group 2, sandy winning three and vert four. Too bad a lot of games weren't played (or reported). In the playoffs Vore beat Fifi in two maps and after that Milton and earowalk and dm4. Fix was playing awesome in 1on1, 2on2 ánd 4on4. In the groups he had a hard time beating Lavos, only winning the deciding dm2 with 13-10 (Fix won aero, Lavos dm6). His game with Gamer was hard too, winning Aero 18-11, losing dm6 22-8 and winning dm2 10-8. We had some pretty exciting playoffs, as I just said, Vore beat Fifi in the quarters 2-0, Milton had no problems with his clanmate Slaugh and Fix was able to beat Sandy on dm2 5-3 and was leading 28 - -1 (not sure anymore, I think Sandyman was on -1 at least Fix had 100% effi) after six minutes on Aerowalk when Sandyman decided that is was enough and dropped. In the last quarter final Ihminen took out Vertigo in again two maps. In the half finals Fix won dm2 18-11 of Ihminen and 36-4 on Aerowalk. I don't recall what scores Vore had when playing Milton, but Aerowalk was something like 29-14, and he won dm4 too giving us the two finalists Vore and Fix.
Before the final Fix had first played al lot of 2on2 games, then 4on4 playoffs and started right after the 4on4 final with his playoff games in the 1on1 tournament. He had a very long winning streak at that moment when they started with Vore's choice, dm4. Fix got the RA spawn at played like a robot according to some people so it wasn't looking too well for Vore. But he took over soon enough and fragged like a maniac in the rest of the match winning it with 51-5. Then Aerowalk was up which Fix won 20-10 in their groupgame (Vore won dm4 41-5 earlier). This time Fix had the upperhand again and took the victory away with 30-14. In their groupgame the decider was dm2 (Fix won 10-6) but Fix wanted to play Skull now, probably because Vore hadn't played it a lot and he had some prac on it already. Champ had the randommap pick and it was, out of dm2/dm6/skull, Skull. It was the last game played at the lan, everybody was speccing it, and it was, if I may say, quite boring to see Skull as decider. It was completely one sided and Fix won it without a problem, 29-5. Really well played by Fix during the whole tournament and I must say, WOW Vore, who expected him to win of Gamer, Fifi and Milton, superb, his dm4 was a crusher.
The 2on2. Group A had fix/fifi and gamer/goljat in it what made it quite clear what would be the best teams. They were heading the group without a problem. The game they played was close and nice to watch. The first map was Aerowalk which Fifi and Fix won 79-59, second up was dm2 which ended 52-41 in Gamer/Goljat's favor. The decider was very exciting, it was played on A2 and Fifi and Fix managed to win it 56-48. In group B Niomic/Carna and Champ/Zicol did a great job, at least, they got a lot of games played as the other teams were quite idle. xamp/zicol won of nio/carna 2-0 for the record. Group C was most active and seemed to host the best teams. We had Ihminen/Mirage, Milton/Slaughter, Mel/Vana, Cougar/Sandy, Mate/Vert and Keeo/Mooniz there. Milton and Slaughter (especially Milton) were on a rampage leaving all other teams in the dust, winning of Ihminen/Mirage (dm4 82-55. dm2 28-26), Mate/Vert (dm6 91-48. dm4 156(with 99 frags of Milton!)-27) and Vana/Mel 2-1 maps.
In the playoffs Champ and Zicol dm6 77-58 of Vert and Mate but the dm2 was so close, they were able to snatch the victory with 38-37. Sandyman and Cougar won 2-0 over Carna and Niomic. The match Gamer/Goljat vs Milton/Slaugh was great. Dm4 was SSC's pick and Milton tried really hard to win the game but Slaugh couldn't keep up with him and they lost 75-63 with Milton on top of the rankings. SR picked dm6 and it turned almost the same as the dm4 game, sr winning 66-52. Last 1/4 2on2 game was fix/fifi vs mel/vana, those four were playing as cMF for the occasion in the 4on4 tourney. Fix and Fifi turned out the be the better couple, 78-39 on A2 and 108-43 on dm6.
In the half finals Fix and Fifi met Gamer and Goljat again (as in their group). Fix and Fifi got on a run Aerowalk and won it 76-55 and this they were able to beat them on dm2 too with a mere two frags (46-44). I missed the other half final and couldn't find any screenshots yet but Champ and Zicol won 2-0 vs Sandy and Cougar. In the final Xamp and Zicol didn't stand a chance. Fifi and Fix won Aerowalk 87-37 and dm6 80-47. The way the finals turned out it looked more like the final was already played in the semi, fifi/fix - goljat/gamer. But very well played by Fix and Fifi, showing their routine and taking away the win.
This is leaving us with only one tournament, the 4on4. I actually hoped to see Vana/Fix/Mel/Henri play AQ and tVS in Clanbase as all three teams were there but I guess there wasn't any time for that. It was quite sad to see that not close to all games were played in the 4on4 tournament and I haven't seen all games as I wasn't online earlier that night, so I might have missed a lot of games that weren't reported. To get started, group A featured SR, cMF, SSC, FU and AQ. SR didn't get to play at all but I explained that before and cMF looked more like Qand with Fifi, Fix, Vana and Melody. cMF didn't have any problem with AQ on dm2 (300-50 or something). dm3 was a lot closer though with an almost 2on4 performance from Fifi and Fix winning it 165-130 as Sandyman and Scenic were playing very well from AQ's side. AQ won 2-0 of SSC with, as always, Milton being the head man of SSC. Dm3 was 165-106 and dm2 215-137. Both clans won of 'FU' who had Fukit, Mystery, Anza and Fiery, the fraggers weren't really united at Mindtrek, that might be clear. AQ won dm2 288-54 and dm3 250-8, and SSC won 2-0 too. This group was or very inactive or I just missed all games.
In group be we saw little more activity, Kala was very active here, the other clans were Paranoia (who only played some maps prac?), tVS, fappers and lost boyz. Kala fielded Ebloz, Boome, Masai and Logical, fappers mooniz, carna, keeo and niomic. In their game kala won dm2 176-160 and dm3 176-152, two nice and close games. Kala had an easy one on Lost Boyz on dm2 and dm3. Then, their game with tVS. On dm2, it was just slaughter from tVS' side, 276-93 with Ihminen going for the fragranks. But the dm3 was so close! I never thought kala would be able to give tVS such a fight but I guess tVS is a bit inactive and not used to the lag as they always have their ultraleet lanpings at home. Ihminen ran away with the fragrank again and tVS must've been happy with that because they were only able to win this map with 152-147, Boome doing a great job, like he is always doing. tVS was able to win Fappers 2-0 making tVS and kala the two clans coming from this group to the four clan playoff. Together with cMF and AQ from the other group the semi's were clear, cMF-kala and tVS-AQ. cMF showed some great teamplay when playing kala on dm3, not giving away anything and took it home with 227-46.On e1m2 Boome and Masai were able to disorder cMF's ranks but they couldn't make enough frags to win the map for kala. CMF took it away with 216-118 and I must say, Melody really impressed me this during this lan, he played well in this game too. Here again I missed an important game, the semifinal tVS-AQ but tVS took AQ out 2-0.
The final, the two best Finnish clans cMF and tVS facing each other. The first map was dm3, picked by cMF (or Qandrane+Fifi). I don't know what to say here, it looked even all the time but Fifi and Fix have played too much 2on2 I think because it looked like they were playing tVS 2on4 here with Vana and Melody only able to make some frags when really had the control settled in the last minutes. Fix was playing godlike sometimes taking out the whole tVS team who were never able to get a good lock because cMF was putting the presure on RA every time they lost it. You should really see the demo to see what I mean, it was like Fix half a year ago in cmf with his ping 13 online but the better version, quite incredible played by Fifi and Fix here, cMF took tVS down with 225-128.
tVS' map, what could it be but dm2. I thought tVS would win here as I've heard Fix say more often that he doesn't know what to do on dm2 quite some times when playing with Qand, Vana not being in the shape he's been in and Melody who hasn't been better than tVS either on dm2 leaving only Fifi to do something. It turned out the other way. I had the feeling I was watching Melody 70% of the game with autotrack, with tVS trying as hard as they can in their rusty shape and even having some bad luck, they were owned by Mel and Fifi. It was really good to see Mel playing such a game, I've seen him doing it before but those weren't finals of a tournament, nor when playing tVS. cMF won this dm2 with 227-127 making them the winners as all finals were best of three (probably because of time reasons, the 1on1 final ended around 06:45).
Fix won all tournaments, and when seeing him play you didn't have to wonder why. After all, it the the lan was quite succesfull, it was just a shame that there was lag, that SR didn't play, that Dare left home, that Dare, Champ and Jesteri didn't play 1on1, and so on, there were quite some minus-points but after all, at least all playoff games were played :>
Going back to regular season, whole NQR has to be viewed yet.
406 games have been completed, 69 games still to go!
Then I think, why haven't I made an update halfway the season.... so much to talk about now. I can't think of anything better than talk a bit about the lower divisions and go up.
Div7. We have seen The Assassins winning all their games there, losing only three maps yet. I've had the feeling that they didn't belong in the division from the start, looking at their lineup (antne, inferno, dirre, daan, ono, fedde, mystery), but well, let's not get into that again. At the moment the uk clan FIPS is leading with one more point than Ass because they've played two games more, losing two of them, but one 1-2 what gave them the extra point. The third place is for Hippusnik, those three clans were the best during the whole season without others being able to come close to them. Only QO with Snapcase might have had a chance but they haven't played enough games (six left) to get to the top of the division. Not much to say here, those three teams were just domination the others.
Div6 is a lot closer. There are like five clans just behind the, from origin Irish, Gauntlet. GT still has a clean record only losing one map with one game left. FNU is in the second place with 27 points, six behind GT, but they have played all their games. They got some reinforcements throughout the season with Sassa and Diablo. When those two were playing with Empezar FNU sure wasn't div6. Osams did a good job too with 25 points and one game left but they have to face SKK (21 points, three games left) who have the so div6 lineup of Case, Molle, Pepin and Barbro. If they had played with those four their closest game would probably have been 250-50 when playin GT. They were kind enough to lag Pepin to 350/20 though in their game vs GT and Molle wasn't playing with them, costing them the win. Jägarna has played pretty well too, 19 points in 9 matches, but weren't able to play their last three games yet. Almost forgot to mention Jägarna's impressive -146 on cmt1b when facing Osams.
This division was even to be called exciting to see who would snatch the victory. For a long time it looked like Armageddon or Ancient Gods would take the victory home, even without Champ AG is a very strong div5 team and they had the best chances if you ask me. The last two top team teams here were clan Code and Zoo. Though all those four clans lost three games making the end very exciting. I though AG wouldn't lose a single game but they lost of Code without Xamp, winning dm3 with 40 frags, then losing dm2 with 15 and losing the decider e1m2 with 30 frags. The second game they lost was from the German clan hHh. Again they missed Champ, losing with bigger numbers this time dm2 230 and dm3 150 vs 70. Though, there was still no cloud in the air as they would win the division even with two losses. But then it happened. They faced defs, the first map, dm3, is 3on4. AG wins it with 20 frags (84-64). On the second map (dm2) one of AG's players timed out after about five minutes and they lost it 2on4 177-67. Then the decider was e1m2 and Ares timed out after TWO minutes and Afrodite and Apollo tried what they could, but those Ancient Gods couldn't take the victory away, they lost, impressive though, 2on4 e1m2 with 111-85. This game cost them the victory of the div imo. Then, Armageddon left their chances because they lost of Code with a mere 21 frags on the deciding map, only making the deciding frags in the last two minutes. They lost of Zoo too, losing another deciding map (dm2 this time) again with 21 frags after the same maps as they played with Code, losing cmt3 and winning dm3. The third game they lost was 2-0 of AG with Champ.
The last two clans that made a chance were Code and Zoo. Code lost of the American clan Caped Crusaders, who were inactive but playing very strong (winning of Code and losing close 1-2 of Zoo) where the americans played quite superb. They lost of Zoo, dm2 won with 6 frags, cmt3 lost with 80 frags and lost dm3 with 6. The last game they lost was of hHh, who could've been strong if they had played all their games, and all with a good lineup (they could field a div2 team, gg). They won cmt3 with 40 frags and lost dm2 and dm3 big time. hHh had players like Slash (former 4k), Tib, Duce, Deep (all ex-trash), Dopeskillz, Pattah and Ponk. And Invert who came out of nowhere (an NQ player or faker maybe).
Then the winners of division five, and it was so close people, Eläintarha! And just like all the other clans, they lost three games. One of AG who didn't have Xamp playing. AG winning dm3 with 4 frags, losing cmt3 with 231-90 and winning the deciding dm2 with 168-166! Zoo got outtuned there but still were able to win almost all their other games. And they lost of hhH too, they won cmt3 without a problem (214-47), but lost dm2 on three frags (143-140) and the decider was again that close! hhH won the deciding dm3 with 119-109. Zoo had quite some trouble beating ARD but managed after all, that was quite nice as ARD was on a good streak, their dm3 is still superb and they kinda raped Zoo there with 213-69. Though, they weren't able to give Zoo enough trouble to make them lose another map. Surprisingly Zoo lost their third game of Shadow Minions. We all know by now that Zoo has cmt3 as homemap and they lost it 182-109 with a bit of a B team from their side (they missed JKova and Menth0l) and SM having their star players Terror and Psymorph. The last two could almost win e1m2, the map ended 175-167 in favor of Zoo. The decider dm2 turned out to be an easy prey for Terror taking the fragrank home with 114 frags followed crawling by Psymorph with 84 making the final score on the decider 285-70 for SM.
In division four Billy's Burgers had the strongest team by far at the strart of the season with Freddo, Billy, Flepser and Nielz. Though Freddo left to ToT after a few games and they had the bad luck that they hadn't faced the strongest teams yet in the division. The other team of which I though they would have a good chance of winning was Paranoids because they have played together for quite some time and thus a lot of routine, now that Freddo left BB they would have a chance of taking them down. It turned out that Thangorodrim and Hell Patrol had a good team too. Hell Patrol had the HGC star players Iron and Kat playing, together with Szugi, Ufosh and Storm they had one of the strongest teams in the division. The problem with HP was that those four couldn't play all games (by far) resulting in some losses that they couldn't afford. Iron and Szugi took out T without much trouble though and HP was able to win a dm3 of Para (109-97), losing one very close (118-120) and lost the deciding dm3 by large margins because Para was able to keep control whole game after a good start (174-48). T turned out not be strong enough to get enough points to threat the leading clans in the division though BB had won all their games 2-0 in both Clanbase as NQR untill they faced T.
On dm3 Nielz stole pent from lifts of the T-ya spawner but his RL got killed by first T-RL, Tyrone got quad/ra but didn't do much usefull with it. T had control of RA in those first five minutes but BB was able to frag quite some all the time. It looked like Nielz of BB was going to grab second pent but a 0/100 SG guy of T did the famous in-pent jump, though BB was able to take over RA for three minutes when pent ran out. They lost the control again just before the the 10-min pent which T took again and T held control of RA for the rest of the match. In some skilled way BB was still in the lead after 15 minutes when T took pent AGAIN and now settled things. It sure looked like BB was the better team here but they weren't able to take the pents which cost them the game. Beside that they didn't pressure RA enough, 3 minutes ra control for BB and 17 for T. T won 144-93, the second map was easy for BB, dm2, they won it 117-243. The e1m2 was kind of the same as dm3, BB was almost never in control of YA, though this time T got a fullstart with YA, RL and Quad. BB retreated to MH/GA but T was even able to control mega for some time. Zilch took out most resistance with his quadruns and T took the game home 206-92 giving BB both their first map and game loss.
The deciding game in this division was BB-Para. BB missed their fourth player, they played with hpw-kurwa-Kender-dm2-only now instead of dutchy-hpw-Tyrone-dm3-ya-plz which was quite bad because this game was three times dm3. It was clear that Kender couldn't do much with his lag and all dm3. Though it was good see that Billy, Nielz and Flepser got one win at least. To make clear the Kender isn't home dm3: he made 8, 17 and 4 frags. Might be clear that BB won the game where he had 17...
Paranoids won this division without a single game lost, I can't say that they have done anything wrong then. Of course 'if... if, but... when' yea whatever, BB would have win this divsion if they had Billy, Freddo, Nielz, Flepser and Tyrone but that wasn't the thing. Very well played by Para.
We're moving on to the somewhat higher divisions now. We're meeting the LA super stars Dag and Space here in Euthanasia, together with the old E stars Hixen and Pingvin not to forget IRAN vortex. The other clans might have been lucky that those weren't very active, E lost 6 games not making them on of the top clans in the div. Other clans of which I expected something in this division were Exist with Primus, Nightman and Dexter but Primus couldn't make it to activity, too bad. Then we had Kala with Boome, former Daltons, Masai and Ebloz as core. Then NMY the new formed clan with Pai (ex-koff), ]SR[Adler and wallu |))))))))))
Ok, for the newer under us, Adler wasn't in SR :P The fourth player was pkk, known for his good dueling.
The last clan that was looking strong is HF3 or =V= (they probably don't like to be called HF3). Their two best active players by far are Wigorf and Splash. The best players to fill them up would be Fugge (or Diggler) Narrow, X·Con and Speed.
One clan I can't forget to mention is BWL who ended up fourth, they have players like XN (unnamed), Killis, gorgoroth (gg), ay and bloody. They weren't able to take down any of the the better clans (V, NMY, Kala nor E) but did a good job in winning all the other games they played.
Because there were quite some good teams there weren't much surprises. A match which was very good and close was NMY-Vet's. V took home e1m2 and NMY e3m7, both were quite expected. They choose to played dm3 as deciding map and that was exciting untill the last seconds with NMY taking home the win with only five frags, being the only clan to win vet's. Though NMY lost one game too, they won Dag, space, mega, panic on e3m7 with Pai and Wallu leading their team. After that Dag thaught them a lesson 'how to play dm3' and E won the deciding dm2. Nmy wasn't able to win the division because they had three games unplayed. Those two turned out to be the best clans of the division together with kala. Though, kala couldn't play their last four games of which they had probably won all four, but they lost two games (vets, nmy) so they couldn't have won the division anyway.
When the division got up I thought the strongest team in div2 would be CN, [hf], f0m and Fappers. CN with exile, forsberg, znappe and blau. When the season was on it's way Pietro and Valla joined what made them, imo, the strongest team in this division, because the decider would always be tb3. [hf] has Mutilator, Cara, Xorcist and Dahmer, which was the first team (Sephy would've done good if he was active, but he wasn't at all) and I thought they wouldn't lose a single e1m2 (turned out different but we come to that later). f0m has Ruffnux, Crazymac, Manu, Seeker and Offbreed in their lineup and Molle was there at the start of the season. You can say they were somewhat like tff (foes).
I had the feeling that fappers (who were called cmf2 in their early days) would do a great job if their best players went active. It's quite sad that they didn't and they had quite some trouble with winning games at the start of the season. If everybody of them went active they would've had a nice first team of Jester, Carna, Past and Mooniz. Though Jester had some trouble with new tft and carna and past didn't play a single game. Fappers lost a lot of matches but when the ex-paranoia players Vore and Buggy joined their forces they grew a lot stronger.
CN and Hellfire did a great job when the season was about half way, both with a lot of wins and without losses. Though, CN lost of FU which was quite impressive (have to mention, FU had 3x 13ms and CN 2x 40ms). After that CN lost of [hf] too when they fielded the pro-cs player Jerry instead of Exile who apperently couldn't make it. They gave a good fight though losing e1m2 with fifty frags and winning dm3. The decider was 335-79 for HF. That was quite extreme but HF did a good job. Fragomatic didn't play much games at all. They played two when the season was about two weeks old but didn't play at all for the next two of three weeks. Then Vert joined and they got their games played. They lost their first game right away with Vert, losing of AMD. That wasn't what I can call good, because they did a great job after. Winning of FUDOH who turned out to be very good and they had a f0m-ownage in the last weekend of NQR. From there they won of the leaders of the division, CN and Hellfire. It was clear that they grew a lot during the season, always using mm3. It would be good to see them at qhlan and show what they can do when facing div1 clans.
Like I said, I didn't think that Hellfire would lose an e1m2 nor that CN would lose dm3. But both happened by the mighty hands of f0m, and FU. The first map in CN-F0M was e1m2. Jerry and Forsberg were doing quite a job for CN but weren't able to keep up for 20 minutes long as Manu was taking out the CN guys from time to time and fom won the map 245-163. Then CN's pick, what else than dm3. It turned out to be a very close game, extreme even and death-trilling on would win it, though fom took it 149-145. After all FUDOH turned out to be very strong on e3m7 and doing a good job on the other maps. They were able to grab the third place with two points more than CN because they lost 3 times 1-2 (because they won e3m7 100%) and CN lost two games 2-0 (fom, FU). Both American clans impressed me quite much. AG even ended in fifth place, Fired ended last though. The reason that they did was because Thumpa and Squeeze couldn't play anymore after about two weeks of NQR. That was too bad because they already showed their skill winning dm2 of Fragomatic while fom had a fullstart and the same with SSC. Then I joined them and Sniper, who hadn't played 4on4 in 9 months and has ping 175-185 in uk/nl. This quite disturbed the teamplay (and I sucked too much in our nqr games) and activity, four games left to play. Imo div2 looked strong with teams like misfitz and fraggers united ending up somewhere mid-div2 and I can't say those clans are the worst around. Of course I can't forget to mention SSC. The things I heard about this clan were very different, a few thought they should be in div1 and lot of others in div3. Now the season is over we can say that they did a great job ending on place nr. 6 winning e3m7 10 out of 13 plays (lost it of Crazymac, fom, and twice of fudoh) with a very impressive win of CN while they didn't have Milton! Can't say that the season was very good in div2. I think only E1 and Fired had trouble with fielding players as HLT and DMT left E1. HLT went to the mighty cMF but we'll come to that later.
Finally, the last division. We've seen a lot of surprises and close games here. At the start of the season =X= didn't play a single game, Javve even went to play with the div2 clan misfitz mid-season. In the meanwhile cMF took copyright on 2-1 wins, I think they had like 7 in a row and 3 more in Clanbase (pardon me if I'm wrong here). ToT even went a bit active in the first weeks with a somewhat old lineup of Slabby, White, Oddjob, Hamorai. Though they couldn't keep up and took Freddo of BB and Error of CTF. I can't say their teamplay got any better with them, at least they got a bit more active. I expected Qandrane to do a better job than they did now, but they weren't able to field Fix, Vana, Mel and Ananas now in most of their games. And beside that they picked dm3 a lot of times while imho e1m2 was a stronger map or at least just as strong and as all clans know dm3 very well (ok almost all) I thought e1m2 would've been a wiser decision to play but well they probably had a better view on it. They won one game and Campbusters was their prey, what can I say, you sure need some skill to take them down. I think they would've won 4k with their best team but that is all guessing and if. They were able to win dm3 of AQ with 8 frags but they lost their home map cmt4 with 20 and the tie-breaker dm2 107-147. The game in which they impressed me most was their game with =X=. The first map was dm2 which X took home without any trouble 314-80, the second map was dm3 and Qand won it 127-116. Both clans had their, imo, best lineup playing (qand fix/vana/mel/ananas x casper/javve/xerial/haj). They decider was e1m2 and Qand was so close to win this map. Though, the last quad decided the game, Qand wasn't able to CS enough to take the victory home as X won it 180-177 with Fix getting an amazing 74 frags (his next best teamy was on 39), we all love the Q-runners. I can't forget to mention that they gave eQ a very good fight on cmt4 while they had Henri playing instead of Vana. eQ is seen as (one of the) best clans on cmt4 but Qand was able to close them on two mere frags, 126-124 in favor of eQ.
A clan that surprised me even more was eQ. They have pracced a lot, showed good teamplay and proved that they are in the right place in div1 even making the playoffs without much trouble. The game that impressed me most was their 2-0 win vs =X=, they won e2m2 (not much of a surprise) but won dm3 without any problem where Booster probably had his best map of the season.
Hyphen had some trouble with getting active once the season started, they were looking very strong before the season, they were active then and pracced a lot but half-way the season some of their members went inactive and they never pracced weren't able to play their games and couldn't win enough to make the playoffs. I must say, I thought X would be one of the stronger clans in the division but they were so inactive the first month. They got some games played in one or two weeks and HAJ came back. That was one of the best things that happened this season. They were able to prac then and they showed very good games when playing cMF and Disorder. I would've liked to see them playing Slackers with Capser (Phil), Xerial (Opium), Haj and Javve and see what they could do. When playing cMF in Clanbase they were 30 behind with 2:30 left, got full control and won with about 20 frags, it was really extreme. In their NQR game =X= won the dm3 without any problem but then cMF brought in shiva for hlt on dm2. On the decider the control went over and forth with cMF on the upper hand though it looked like X missed Xerial here (ztorm was playing now, he did quite well actually) but Haj clearly had an off game though, he sure set a lot of pressure with his 90 deaths, cMF won 195-177.
cMF did a great job with winning all their games (five 2-0 and seven 2-1) and were the only clan to win DS on e1m2, it wasn't really convincing though as they won 158-155 and DS missed Nabbe. Still the Shiva factor was enough to take his formed clanmates down. Campbusters was dead close to a win on e1m2 vs DS bringing the game to overtime and then losing with 50. When speccing the game I had the feeling DS only started to play when it looked like they were going to lose, but they seem to do that more often. The match we have all been waiting for was cMF-SR. The first map was cmt1b where cMF fielded hlt and SR UL. I must say UL became a lot better on 4on4 when played with SR. SR was able to win 154-136, the second map was dm2 and UL's best maps are dm2 and dm3 and in this game UL showed and he sure cope with div0 action, though cMF was too strong for SR all together as they won 197-168. The decider came to e1m2 where the Mem factor came back in and just took on SR 1-4 cMF winning 214-181. We might see in the finals what the scores will look like when SR fields Gamer instead of UL as UL went back to his old clan GTG with Griffin.
As always Firing Squad had their trouble with Slackers, they got beaten 2-0 once again, it would be nice to see them missing that 'SR-problem' and give them a good fight for once. The last time they did was last SD in the 1/4 finals when they lost both dm2 and dm3 with about 10 frags when their team was Razor, Reppie, Blixem and Shiva. At the start of the season the team was almost the same, having Striker instead of Shiva. Though, Striker didn't play anymore after their first games and Drejfus replaced him as their fourth played and they had the oldskool German player ex-[iBh]Imperator as backup. He was pretty rusty when he played his first games with FS but he's got a new connection now and even got 100% effi when playing 4k on dm3. Another good point here is that there are some hopes on a comeback of Crit who clanned with Reppie and Blixem for about three years, their lineup in FS of Rep, Crit, Blix and Razor was doing very good. We will see what will happen in some months. FS was able to give cMF a fair fight while Reppie was playing with ping 75. They lost a close dm3 with about 20 frags, then won e1m2 273-119 and lost dm2 157-105. The start was quite even on dm2 but the cmf played that took low-rl was able to kill the high-rl guy of FS giving cMF the advantage and control for almost the whole match as FS was only able to take over tele once.
Disorder did quite a good job. They have pracced quite some which surprised me a bit because they don't seem to be very serious about this game (at least nabbe, riker and mrlame aren't) and that showed off a bit in the nqr games which they clearly saw as prac, not playing serious in quite some games and then all of a sudden owning the next, pretty weird. Let's hope they will play good in the playoffs and get Nabbe active again. If Nabbe, Riker, Slime and aKKe get to play some pracs together they should be able to do a good job, mrlame is having some trouble with keeping up with the rest from time to time because he's doing the dirty work pretty often with his hpw connection, but it's of course ridiculous to say that he's not good enough because he's played enough games very good. They weren't able to win of both cMF and SR but they did win of FS in two maps, the dm3 was close 145-130 but then akke and nabbe were going kinda crazy on e1m2 scoring 85 and 83 frags, DS winning 265-113.
The way it looks now we will see the following games in the playoffs cmf-camp, sr-aq, fs-eq and ds-x. I think people expect me to write somewhat of a prediction so I guess I will try my best.
cMF-Camp. Ok, some factors will be important here only regarding the players both teams will field. I think that if cMF fields Shiva and CB doesn't get a fullstart+lock on dm2 cMF will win 2-0 100% sure. Though, then it still depends on who camp will field, they've got quite some possibilities as they have Bro, Hagge, Eta, Insane, Cutter, Nepra and Cutter now on their lineup who could all play. Though I think Bro, Eta, Hagge and Slabby would work best with their experience together. Still don't think they will be able to win any other map than dm2, 2-0 if shiva is playing.
The next match is Slackers-AntiQuad. In their game in the group SR didn't have any problem with AQ but I'm not sure it will be the same in the playoffs. AQ had a very close dm3 vs DS (3 frags lost) but once again you can't really say how good a clan is recording to their results vs disorder. But still I think they are able to pull off some close fights on dm3 and on dm2 if they have a good start and are not running into the infamous SRLUCK. But well, even when they are able to win one map (which I doubt strong) they won't have a chance on e1m2 if SR fields Gamer, Goljat, Hib and Paradoks, I would go with 2-0 for SR here.
Third game Firing Squad - EarthQuake. In their groupgame FS didn't have a problem with with eQ on dm3 though the e2m2 was very close. The thing is, eQ is good on episode and cmt maps and showed in their game with X that they can play very well on dm3 too. We will see if they are heavy enough to do FS some damage in this game, it's already a whole prestation that they made the playoffs and I think we can say their season is a succes already even if they can't get close to FS. I'm counting on a 2-0 for FS here but eQ showed before that when they get control they don't give it away easily.
The last quarter final is DS-X. This should be the closest match but could turn out to be rapish too. I don't expect that, if X has a bit of luck they will be able to do a very good job in this game. When they played each other before X lost e1m2 with only 23 frags, and they have won both dm3 and dm2 of cMF this season (in clanbase and nqr). Though if DS has a good control it might just be that X can't do anything. Actually this game could go anywhere as dm2 is just lotto, X could win that and dm3 isn't the strongest map of DS (they actually cán play very good there but they don't do that always). Though if DS is playing serious and has Nabbe, I count on 2-0 for DS, but like I said, dm2 is a lotto map (if X picks it at least) so it could be 2-1 and who knows, X could give us a stunt here. Like I said, this can go all ways.
That was the NQR season, I wanna congratulate all the division winners, good jobs guys and say good luck to the clans that have to play playoffs.
Now something on the future. At the moment we are having an endif tournament where UL and Interceptor are competing in. It is too bad dare and casper couldn't play there games before the first round deadline. We might see some nice games in the coming days.
A competition that just ended was the death32c ffa competition by knast. It wasn't clear to all attendees when the games were to be played but it turned out as quite a succes anyway with Scenic as the winner.
At the moment QWNC started, and I think we'll get to see some good games in it. The game in the first round that would be best to watch is norway-germany, the other games will probably not be very exciting. I've got the feeling that the quarter final games will be very good if all the nations can get their best teams on the server at the same time which is quite hard, especially for nations with a rather small amount of players these days. The UK team had trials, as always, and already pracced with Norway. Let's hope all games will be played, though the final looks quite clear finland-sweden. Maybe this final can be played at qhlan if the fins will make it there, that would be great to see even if some of the fins have to play from their homes still a lot of the players on the LAN.
Now I'm mentioning Qhlan anyway, this should be the best QW lan ever regarding 4on4 and the attendees who are signed up at the moment. And when the Fins will come we will very likely have the following clans competing: LA, SR, cMF, FS, Oeks.no, Oeks.se, tff/f0m, =X=, Camp, eQ, ToT, IRAN, eXist, GTG and so on. All top clans coming to Qhlan, that would give us great action. I can't forget mentioning that Slime and Rokk_u will probably come too. Let's just hope cMF and SR can make it, then it would be the greatest lan. It would be great to see HF play with Mrlame, Cara, Wigorf and Mutilator (as Dreej will play with FS and Haj with X) though, I don't think that will happen.
The last thing I'd like to mention is the new league Team/Up that will open it's sign up on the first of december and it will be different with as maps tb3, 10 exmx and 5 cmt maps (some suprises too but let's not talk about that yet). As proxy are allowed qizmo+qwcl, mqwcl and fuhquake.
It was another long update, I'm really sorry that you guys have to read this much but I didn't intend on writing a long update this time.