The "Challenge" for Glory Is Over!

In my recent efforts to attain world peace, save the world and promote the TrueGamer's Invitational 1on1 Tournament. I've run across a few snags along the way. I've found that no matter what you write on a web site, you'll always piss people off. Okay, enough about the Q2 players. :)

Apparently, some of the things I've said, have irritated people in a far away land down under. In return, this civilization decided to send their greatest warrior to slay me and defend the rights of humanity as we know it.

I guess a couple of their greatest warriors were busy that day so they sent a umm.. lesser ranked warrior. He cometh by the name of   "Hoony". Now, don't let his silly name fool you. He is a wise, corrupt, unholy, old man that has destroyed many countries with the poison he has been quietly spreading for the past 1/100th of a century.

I was skeptical of this dark man when he sent a message asking to "check out some cool players". Well, even though he's from the other side of the world, he knew that it was 5 a.m. here and that the lazy people here have a bad habit of sleeping. I was assigned to the watch tower for North America that night so, I was awake and picked up his call immediately.

Since the rest of civilization was sleeping, Hoony made the ominous suggestion of "let's you and me play a bit". I could tell immediately that he was trying to sucker me into lowering my guard to his (obviously fake) friendly demeanor. Being the semi-skilled warrior I am, I took his "challenge" with the veracity of a cat having a bath. Did I mention that cat bathing should be considered a martial art? Oh, I digress.

This shifty character Hoony even went as far as letting me choose the server where the battle to the death would ensue. I chose the DeathRow server, fittingly named for the upcoming carnage. Hoony then gave me false hope by getting me to teach him how to enter a password for the server. Obviously, a warrior as sneaky as Hoony could not be trusted so, I faked an empathetic style and bowed to his cunning by training him on how to enter the server where he would perish that day. (Bwahahaha, my plan worked flawlessly)

When Hoony finally arrived on the server (he was purposely making me wait so that I would think about his impending charge), he had everything planned perfectly. He even had his fake ping set on 460ms. I knew this was only a trick but, he took me for a fool so, I played along with him.

My ping on the server was a mere 180ms but, when this evil man arrived, my ping jumped up to 250. He must have infiltrated the DeathRow server while I was waiting for him to arrive and setup a lag system of some sort. Obviously, it was a very high tech lag system as I was caught in it's power.

After deciding what level the battle would take shape, we ended up in a place called "The Dark Zone". Let me tell you, it was sCary in there but, I didn't let it show. He had originally asked me to go to "A Bad Place" but, my mother always told me to stay out of bad places.

3..2..1.. The battle began. OMG! As soon as the match started, his curses became more powerful. The lag pressure upon me was almost too hard to handle. But, being a warrior, I had to force myself to kill or be killed. The match was an intense technical battle of umm intelligence and umm lightning quick reflexes. When I found a rather large weapon that shot rockets, I used that as my primary weapon. Then Hoony put on his reflection cloak. Of the first 10 rockets I shot at him, all of them went sailing by him without so much as a scratch. His deflection shields were working well. He was truly a master.

Much to my dismay, he also found a rocket firing weapon. Then to my utter surprise, he started shooting at me. What kind of man was this? I finally had to admit that this Hoony was pure evil. Wanting to harm another human was against all codes of honor that I had come to know.

Just to flex his powers further, he put a hex on my spatial control device and jammed it so that it wouldn't let me look down to prey upon him. Many times I tried the special move, that very few know about, to enable me to vault up to protection and much needed armor without taking the steps but, the device wouldn't work. I damaged myself severely every time this occurred. Damn him! 

The battle grew intense. After 5 minutes, I succumbed to his fake 470 ping and he took a 1-0 lead. After the initial shock, I was able to gain momentum. I found another weapon with a pretty looking light coming out the end. I was able to destroy his armor and his self-worth twice within a short span. I was in control, nothing he could do would stop me. The end was near.

While covering the battle zone (stopping frequently to bash my 3 button control device on my battle station) I made sure I was hindering him from attaining ammunition supply. The rest was easy, it would only be a matter of time. Then the unthinkable happened. While being transported to the ammunitions supply. SCREEEEECH! I was dead. Forgetting the long standing rule that two opponents can not travel through the portal at the same time, only one can survive. To make matters worse, it happened again 2 minutes later. Surely this was the end.

With only 2 minutes left in the long battle (we were both exhausted after 18 minutes of shear carnage), I got an advantage on a precisely timed shot from far away. I rushed in for the kill, there was nothing he could do to stop me. It was now 3-3 with only a minute left in the battle. He was furiously trying to catch me and he almost did. When the match ended, I had 10 percent of my health left.

We were so exhausted that my evil opponent had to take medication to calm himself down. Where he comes from, they call their medication, "beer".

However, as violent as the carnage was, as exhausted as both warriors were, a victor had to be decided.

Hoony then forced me to play in a dark, sCary place with lots of lava and evil things on the walls. It was terrible, there were moving floors, lifts and this really sCary thing that looked like a big, blue Q. I'm guessing that both of us were a bit sCared of that Q because we both agreed never to go near it.

3..2..1.. Bang, the second match started. It was intense from start to finish. Both Hoony (the evil guy) and myself (the good guy) were using the same strategy, thus, we purposely chased each other around the map going in the same direction for about 10 minutes. Yes, I'm sure you can feel the intensity that was taking place.

I was doing very well. I had a full stock of ammunition, almost 200% health, all I needed was a bit more armor. Once I got to the shiny yellow armor, I was safe, Hoony couldn't harm me, nothing could touch me, nothing could...SPLAT!! I was squished to death by Hoony's evil power that could move walls. What evil was this? Also, if it weren't for some idiot (me) telling John Cash to put the squish killing credit into the battlezone... ah well, he now had a 1-0 lead.

The atmosphere was still tense. All of the spectators watching (1) were in awe. Hoony was faltering, he couldn't control himself enough to stand still on a platform that would take him to the grenade weapon. He blamed it on his fake 480 ping. I knew better, he was scared.

Then came problems that neither of us could control. The server started shaking very badly. We were both swept away into the lava. There was nothing we could do. After this, he got an unfair advantage. He killed me with a rocket to the head. It was a lucky shot, he hit me in the weak spot between my eyes.

I mounted a comeback, I controlled the level for the remainder of the game. I was able to kill him at will (once) and force him into the lava one more time. The match was coming to an end.

Finally, the match had ended. I was the clear victor with a massive one-sided victory. The final score was 0 to -1 in my favor. There was nothing Hoony could do, he just hung his head in shame and then went for more medication (beer). Hoony knew has had been bested even after all his cheating. The way he made my rockets go flying past him and into the wall was amazing.

There was only one thing left to do. Hoony had to acknowledge my greatness. He gave what some consider to be the greatest honor that can be bestowed on another. He typed the immortal phrase "GG". Nothing more needed to be said, it was a great moment in history.

If you wish, you can send your condolences to this evil man. His e-mail addy is hoony@challenge-au.com

The tourney that seems to have gotten lost with all the other tourneys going on is the [9] Vs UK match coming up the last week of February in London, England. After doing an informal poll (are they ever formal?) on a UK and Swedish irc channel to see what people think, I got some interesting results.

• 42% Never heard of the 9 vs UK matches
• 20% Heard of it but, didn't know any info about it.

When I asked the question "Who will win?", the results were 95% in favor of Clan 9 winning the matches. I am one of the people that agrees with [9] winning but, I hope it will be closer than people are saying.

The key to winning any clan match is teamwork. Clans should run like a well oiled machine. The analogy (huh huh, he said anal) I always use is that it should run like an 8 cylinder engine. Each player being 2 cylinders (offence and defense) and if one faulters, the others can pick up the slack.

When Clan 9 played DR, they were purring on all cylinders. I'm not sure if they'll be that way later this month as they haven't played any real matches in a while. When you have a few guys put together in a clan (like ClanUK), it's hard for them to gel without tons of practice and lots of good competition. Any new clan will tend to run on 4-6 cylinders because they don't know each other that well (as far as being together).

Let's hope both clans can be lean, mean machines by the time the matches come around. Good luck to both clans.

Okay, you Reload loving, Aussie Quake players, I get the point. You can stop sending me hate mail now. Actually, the Aussies are very polite about sending hate mail. Here's a typical sample...

Previous LOD was "Pretty Fly! (for a white guy)" by Canadian group "Offspring"