Feature
byGestalt
Co-Founder and former Editor-in-Chief
Published on
Index
Pre-Event Build-Up
2
Introduction
The Competitors
3
The Rules
Seeding Groups
Seeding Round
4
Commentary
Results
First Round
5
Commentary
Results
Second Round
6
Commentary
Results
Third Round
7
Timber vs Sky : Q3DM13
Hell vs Silent : Q3DM13
Luke vs Railor : ZTN3DM1
8
Rauper vs Requiem : Q3DM6
Rauper vs Phreaky : Q3DM6
Comatosed vs Hell : Q3DM6
Results
Quarter Finals
9
Blokey vs Mozilla : Q3DM13
Timber vs Veno : Q3DM13
Luke vs Silent : Q3DM6
10
Silent vs Dekkard : Q3Tourney4
Rauper vs Dekkard : Q3Tourney4
Comatosed vs Gen : Q3DM13
Comatosed vs Ranger : Q3DM13
11
Results
Semi Finals
12
Blokey vs Luke : Q3DM6
Luke vs Ranger : Q3DM6
13
Silent vs Requiem: Q3DM6
Results
Finals
14
Luke vs Requiem : Q3Tourney4
Blokey vs Timber : Q3DM13
15
Timber vs Luke : ZTN3DM1
Results
Grand Final
16
Timber vs Blokey : Q3Tourney4
Timber vs Blokey : Q3DM13
Wrap Up
17
Photo Gallery
18
Blokey interview
Timber interview
19
Event Round-Up
The CPL makes its first
move into Europe this summer with the debut
CPL-Europe event - the
"Scandinavian Open", taking place in Stockholm this August.
Once again the UK qualifier for the event is taking place in the
heart of London at The
Playing Fields, a mixture of bar and LAN gaming venue, with
twenty computers powered by AMD Athlon 800 processors and brand new
GeForce 2 GTS graphics cards ensuring excellent frame rates for the
competitors.
The winner of the qualifier will get flown out to Stockholm to take
part in the first Scandinavian Open, where $25,000 in cash prizes
will be up for grabs as some of the top players from around Europe
and the rest of the world descend on Sweden to frag it out in a
Quake III Arena duel tournament. He will also get £500
spending money to paint the town a light shade of pastel pink
during the tournament, as well as free accommodation.
There are also auto-berths for four more players from this
qualifier to take part in the Swedish event, but unfortunately they
will have to pay their own way - only the winner gets the
all-expenses paid trip. Second place man will still walk away with
£250 though, which should help to ease the pain. Third place
man gets £125, fourth earns £75, and fifth place takes
home £50.
The Competitors
We've picked out a few of the favourites who are in with the best
chance of winning this weekend...
Chris "Blokey" Hoare
Brighton's Blokey is definitely the favourite to take first prize
this weekend. He was a member of the UK Quake 2 Team which defeated
the French last November, and won the UK qualifier for the
Razer-CPL event earlier this year, going on to impress a lot of
people by placing in the top 24 at the massive Dallas tournament.
Luke Coulter
Scotsman Luke plays alongside Blokey in Clan UNR, but don't expect
him to give any quarter to his clanmate this weekend. He finished
second in the Razer-CPL qualifier, and is another former member of
the UK Quake 2 Team. Expect to see him walking home with a cash
prize again this weekend.
James "Billox" Page
Another former member of the UK Quake 2 Team (can you see the
pattern here?), Billox finished third at the CPL's last UK
qualifier, and he should finish in the top five again this weekend
if he is on form. Of course, whatever he does this weekend, we
won't let him forget that he went down 56 : -1 to Thresh at
Quakeadelica a couple of years ago!
Ian "Timber" Holder
A veteran of the QuakeWorld days and now a member of Clan 9, Timber
came an impressive third in the XSi tournament in Sweden earlier
this year, but at the Razer-CPL event just a few months later he
barely made it to the last 24. His play can be very erratic at
times, but if he is on form he may be able to challenge Blokey for
first place.
The Best Of The Rest
Silent of Clan 4K finished fourth at the last CPL qualifier event,
and could prove a challenge for the favourites if he is on form.
Dekkard is another wildcard who could do well - he won the duel
competition at EuroLAN back in April, narrowly beating Silent in
the semi-finals. Then there are DC.War18 and Veno, who finished
just inside the top eight at the last CPL qualifier and will no
doubt be looking to improve on that performance this weekend.
The Rules
If you want to
read the full rules, you can find them
here on the Playing Fields website. Otherwise, here's the
condensed version...
All of the players will be using the standard systems down at the
Playing Fields (GeForce 2 powered Athlons), including the mice and
keyboards installed. So no funky ergonomic keyboards and Razer
Boomslang mice I'm afraid. Headphones are also mandatory.
The 64 players have been split into eight groups, and each group
will play a free for all to determine the seedings for the main
section of the competition, which is one-on-one double elimination.
In other words, you are only out of the tournament once you have
been beaten twice.
The free for all matches will take place on Q3DM12. Duels will be
on Q3DM6, Q3DM13, and Q3Tourney4, with a custom map (Sten Uusvali's
ztn3dm1) also thrown into the mix to make things a little more
interesting. All of the Q3DM* maps have been edited to remove all
the powerups (quad damage etc) and adjust some of the item
placement to improve their playability in a one-on-one situation.
You can find the edited versions of the maps
here.
Seeding Groups
These are the initial groups of eight players for the free for all
round, which will determine the seedings for the rest of the
competition. When we first posted this list there were a number of
free spaces left, and although some of these filled up on the day
two seeding groups remained empty. Here's a list of everyone who
was registered when the first games kicked off, although not all of
them had actually turned up on the day...
Geoff Richards and Duellist after their match in the first round
Commentary
Group 1 -
Things were pretty tightly matched in group 1, with Mozilla from
old school clan Demonic Core leading the pack, with most of the
rest of the players staying close to the leader. Ice was acting as
fragbait, while Duellist was forced to bow out of the game early
due to a network hitch, and was moved to group 4 while the action
continued without him. In the end it was Mozilla who came through
with a healthy 65 frags, ten clear of his nearest rival NeoRanger,
with Razzo and Dr Mauve another ten behind him.
Group 2 -
Blokey got off to a dominant start, racking up frags twice as fast
as anybody else in his group could manage, with Comatosed working
his way up to second place. Later on the field started to close up
though, and even our very own web chimp Jay "N3uromancer" Adair
managed to frag Blokey a couple of times. Blokey was still 20 frags
clear of second place man Comatosed at the end of the game though,
with Jay lingering in 5th. Neither Dr Who or Error had bothered to
show up, so group 2 was down to six players before the game even
started.
Group 3 -
For some reason this match ended five minutes early, forcing it to
be replayed. Second time round, Railor and Veno took the early
lead, with the rest of the group close behind. Well, except for
EuroGamer's Geoff "The_Pope" Richards, who lingered on zero frags
for the first couple of minutes. Finally he scored, but before he
could finish celebrating he had been hit by a rail, stumbled off a
ledge and cratered. Nil point. Meanwhile Veno had lost the lead to
Pumpkin, and the two players were evenly matched until the last
minutes of the game, when Veno finally managed to pull ahead. In
the end he was nine frags up on 62, with Pumpkin in second, and
qmole, Railor and Spod another ten frags down.
Group 4 -
Duellist and Chainsaw looked strong early on, but before long
Requiem had pulled ahead and was soon dominating the game, with
Purity also doing fairly well, and the rest of the field serving as
cannon fodder. Within a few minutes Requiem had taken a commanding
twenty frag lead, and continued to build on it as the game went on.
In the end he had racked up an impressive 73 frags, with Chainsaw
on 42 and Duellist on 38.
Group 5 -
Timber's performance in group 5 was disappointing to say the least,
slumping to fourth by half time as his rail aim failed him. Silent
was having an even worse time of it, and relative non-entity Sky
was leading the game, with Dekkard chasing and Hell slowly falling
back from third. Timber started to come back in the last minutes of
the game, taking third place, as Silent recovered to fourth. The
last two minutes were frantic, as the players tried to frag their
way clear of the pack and the scores stayed close. In the end Sky
managed to hold on to his slim lead, with Silent pulling up to
second, and Hell, Dekkard and Timber all within a frag of each
other.
Group 6 -
Predictably enough Luke took the early lead, with Rauper in second
place. At the beginning it was quite close, and the top few players
all looked very evenly matched, but gradually Luke pulled ahead
with a slim lead. Meanwhile Rauper used Spor to give him a boost,
grenade jumping off the top of Spor's head. With ten minutes gone
Luke had already reached 50 frags, and had pulled ahead of the
chasing pack. Luke maintained his lead to the end of the game,
ending up on 67 frags with Shigs, Gen, Rauper and Kaine all close
together about 20 frags behind him.
The results were something of a surprise, with Requiem doing better
than we had expected, Timber playing disappointingly, and Billox
and DC.War18 failing to show up at all. Blokey's relatively low
seeding was probably thanks to him only having six players in his
group, leaving him with less targets to frag. Unfortunately this
wasn't compensated for in the seedings, so even though he got half
as many frags again as his nearest opponent he was still only
seeded sixth. There were also some intermittent network problems
which may have slightly affected some of the results, but nothing
too serious.
Commentary
Because only 44 people took part in the qualifier rather than
the 64 that had been expected, the top 20 seeds all got "byes" -
letting them get through to the second round without having to play
a game. The rest of the field had to do things the hard way
though...
Creeping Death got a particularly painful lesson in humility from
Erazer, who stomped him down 31 : 1, taking the lead early on and
never looking back. Catflap demolished Moo Man 20 : 0, Chainsaw
took Ferret down 24 : -1, while qmole embarrassed Ice by beating
him 22 : -2. Ouch.
Meanwhile EuroGamer writer Geoff Richards was playing our old
friend Duellist. The game looked close for the first few minutes,
but Duellist was soon on a railgun rampage, eventually taking the
score to 10 : 1. Duellist wouldn't be laughing for long though -
after the game had ended he discovered that his next opponent would
be Blokey. Say hello to the losers bracket.
Another EuroGamer peon headed for the slaughter was Jay
"N3uromancer" Adair, whose game against Varies finally got underway
after technical problems. The practice session was curtailed in
favour of getting the thing going, but Jay would later regret his
impatient attitude, as his lack of map knowledge showed through.
Some early tussling led to nothing of note, until a rocket
propelled down towards the red armour caught Jay, and a subsequent
shaft put Varies 2 : 0 up. A couple of unfortunate visits to the
lava god for Jay gave Varies a breather, but despite some defensive
play he managed to knock Jay from his perch into the lava
again, making the scores 2 : -3.
Varies rarely looked troubled, except when Jay almost took him down
after some frantic play centered around the megahealth. Scampering
away worriedly, Varies healed his wounds and came back with a
vengeance and a full load of rockets, pummelling Jay in the central
area and bringing the scores to 4 : -3, before forcing Jay into the
magma .. again. Once more Jay lost his footing and went down to the
molten rock below, but managed to recoup one of his lost frags in a
frenetic central area lightning gun duel. Final score 6 : -4.
Not all of the games were so one-sided though, with Gracken
sneaking through to a 5 : 4 victory over Spor.
Winners Bracket Results
Gracken
5
Spor
4
Dr Comatosed
19
Defiant
9
[Spod]
7
Cro
3
Erazer
31
CreepingDeath
1
qmole
22
Ice
-2
Duellist
10
The Pope
1
Catflap
20
Moo Man
0
Evil Sid
8
Herring
1
Chainsaw
24
Ferret
-1
Punty
10
The Chojin
6
Varies
6
N3uromancer
-4
Fearless MKO
5
[EOTB]Gimp
2
Commentary
With so many byes, some of the second round games were actually
played before the first round had been completed. Requiem was one
of the early winners, making short work of Grecken as he totally
dominated the game, showing just why he was number one seed. Final
score? 21 : 0.
Duellist took an expectedly early exit from the winners bracket as
he took on Blokey on Q3DM6. He was already into negative territory
by half time, as Blokey chased him down relentlessly with shaft,
plasma and rail. A battle by the red armour cost Duellist another
frag as he suicided under Blokey's rain of fire. Final score, 14 :
-2. It could have been a lot worse.
Meanwhile, in the losers bracket Jay was putting up a spirited
fight against Purity on Q3DM13. At one point he was 3 : 0 up, and
seemed to have the match, but Purity came back hard a few minutes
later to equalise on 2 : 2 after Jay blew himsef up with a rocket
launcher in a close quarters battle. Purity was on the chase now,
attacking hard with the rocket launcher and going 5 : 3 up before
Jay managed to get back into the game.
Within a minute the scores were equal again, with Jay catching
Purity with a rocket in the room with the bounce pad that leads up
to the ledge above the megahealth. Jay took the lead again,
rocketing Purity near the red armour. Purity wasn't going to let it
slide though, and eventually equalised after a long game of cat and
mouse, taking the match into a nerve-wracking sudden death extra
time. In the end it was Purity who took the final frag, making the
score 7 : 6 after a very close match.
EuroGamer's other resident loser, Geoff "The Pope" Richards, was up
against Erazer on ZTN3DM1. Geoff took down Erazer with a rocket
despite a bad spawn, before securing the red armour and some
health. Both players looked uncertain, running instead of fighting
more often than not. Geoff's use of the rocket launcher helped him,
but Erazer spotted him camping the red armour and taught him a
lesson in humility. With three minutes gone it was pretty tense,
with Geoff just hanging on, and even managing a crucial equalising
frag.
After a couple of impressive rockets from Erazer, Geoff was left
stumbling for health, and the two players lost sight of one another
again. With two and a half minutes left Geoff managed to force
Erazer down to 35 health, but a stunning attack broke through
Geoff's defense, making it 3 : 2. Fighting for his place in the
tournament, Geoff threw everything into attack, but it wasn't
enough, and he crashed out 5 : 2.
Winners Bracket Results
Requiem
21
Gracken
0
Rauper
8
Gen
2
Blokey
14
Duellist
-2
Dekkard
5
Dr.Comatosed
4
[nEo]Ranger
15
[Spod]
2
Sky
4
Erazer
2
Timber
25
qmole
7
MR.Muave
5
Kaine
4
Veno
9
Purity
1
DC.Mozilla
23
Varies
9
Dr.Shigs
18
Razzo
7
Pumpkin
15
Fearless MKO
1
4k^Silent
24
Catflap
2
Hell
14
Chainsaw
4
Railor
20
Phreaky
0
Luke
15
Herring
0
Losers Bracket Results
Duellist
10
Creeping Death
0
Purity
7
N3uromancer
6
qmole
13
Gimp
-1
[Spod]
18
Moo Man
-1
Herring
9
Spor
4
Defiant
23
Chainsaw
7
Catflap
18
Cro
5
Fearless MKO
9
Ice
2
Varies
24
The Chojin
-1
Erazer
5
The_Pope
2
Comatosed
30
Ferret
1
Gracken
6
EvilSid
2
Timber vs Sky : Q3DM13
Timber had a
surprisingly easy game against fifth seed Sky, hogging the red
armour and megahealth and picking up his first frag within the
first minute of the game. He soon picked up a second point,
shafting Sky near the lava. Timber spent almost the entire game
with health and armour on 100 or higher, and looked in strong
form after his poor performance in the seeding round.
With four minutes gone, Sky managed to get a megahealth,
dropping down from above only to find Timber in the little room
below him. After a short exchange of rockets Sky picked up his
first (and, as it turned out, last) frag of the game. Timber
soon came back to pick up his third, and went back to hoovering
up the health and armour. Sky seemed to have run off to hide in
the meantime, with only a few short skirmishes as the game
ground to a halt, and Timber turned to clanmate Xenon and
shrugged as he got yet another megahealth with no sign of Sky.
Another skirmish in the courtyard saw Timber plummeting into
the lava, but he managed to bunny hop out, rocket jumped up to
the red armour, dropped back down and through the teleporter,
and after a short dash down the corridor he was back at his
beloved megahealth. With just two minutes left the score was
still 3 : 1, and Sky was just too timid to pull back at this
late stage. Timber camped the teleporter for a while, coming
out in the last minute to take the final score to 5 : 1.
Hell vs Silent : Q3DM13
Silent took the initiative early on, pulling out a 10 : 3 lead
in the first half of the game as Hell struggled to keep up.
Hell pulled one back with the rocket launcher, but Silent
clearly had the upper hand. Both players managed to survive a
short sharp rocket launcher battle in the little teleporter
room by the lava pool, but eventually Hell tracked down Silent
and finished him off in the courtyard above with his rocket
launcher. With less than two minutes left though, the score was
11 : 5 to Silent.
After a quiet spell the game began to liven up again, with a
series of fierce rocket and grenade exchanges, but neither
player could make a frag. Hell charged down Silent, but after a
shaft and rocket battle Silent managed to blow him up, taking
the final score to 12 : 5.
Luke vs Railor : ZTN3DM1
Sten Uusvali's excellent custom map hadn't seen much action yet
today, but Luke was about to give it a baptism in fire. A
relatively slow start left him 2 : 0 up after two minutes.
Lurking by the megahealth, his rocket smashed into Railor as he
made a dash for the powerup, leaving Luke to pick up the
pieces. More frags soon followed as Luke began to dominate the
game, picking up a lovely long range rail in the main hall to
make it 6 : 0 at four minutes, escaping with just 6 health
himself.
Luke had soon got another couple of points, with the plasma gun
this time, taking it to 8 : 0 at half time as he picked up yet
another megahealth. Coming back to the megahealth a little
later, his grenades caught Railor just short of the popular
powerup .. again. As the game entered its last quarter, Luke
was 12 : 0 up, but Railor wasn't quite giving up. He finally
managed to get his first (and last) frag of the match, catching
Luke with a rocket in the main hall and stopping to type "yay!"
before Luke came back to take a few more frags out of him.
Railor threw his arms up in the air in despair as Luke took him
down again, cruising to a 16 : 1 victory.
Rauper vs Requiem : Q3DM6
Requiem was seeded first after a dazzling performance in the
FFA rounds, and his experience with the railgun showed through
in this encounter with EuroGamer's boy wonder Rupert "Rauper"
Loman. It took a full minute and a half for Requiem to break
through Rauper's defense, but once he did there was no looking
back, and thanks to some consolatory play from Requiem, and an
unfortunate suicide from Rauper, the score was 4 : -1 after
four minutes.
Showing a touch of the class he exhibited in the FFA rounds,
Rauper managed to pull himself back to a dignified zero, but as
half time ticked past Requiem went into a frenzy with his
railgun, making the score 7 : 0. Once again Rauper started to
look a little ropey, suffering at the hands of Requiem's rocket
launcher, and despite forcing him down to 17 health at one
point, Requiem scored again, perched atop a column, zooming in
to rail Rauper. 12 : 0.
With two minutes left there was little hope of a reprieve. The
most Rauper could manage in response was some indifferent
rocket launching, but just before the end his patience finally
paid off, and he salvaged a little pride with a punishing
shaft. Even so, he never looked like recovering, and Requiem
finished him off in the last minute to take the final score to
14 : 1. Requiem's railgun kills really were "blink and you miss
it stuff" - he may just prove himself in the latter stages of
the tournament.
Rauper vs Phreaky : Q3DM6
Rauper and Phreaky are clan mates by night, and it showed in
the closeness of this encounter. It took two minutes before
anything happened, and when it did it was Phreaky who showed
his inexperience with the map, plummeting to his death with a
yelp. Quick to seize upon this, Rauper leapt into action,
scoring a quick frag and maintaining his composure while
controlling the rocket launcher.
Two minutes later it was 3 : -1 after a tense battle atop the
pillars, and even though Rauper slipped to 3 health, he managed
to control the upper levels. Phreaky got a handle on the action
at this point though, bringing his tally up into the positives
at 4 : 1, but it was too little too late, and even a frag in
the final seconds wasn't enough. 4 : 2 it finished.
Comatosed vs Hell : Q3DM6
The field was narrowing down sufficiently for some of the
losers bracket matches to be really interesting, and this was a
perfect example. Early on the game was tight, with lots of
health and armour gathered by both parties as they survived the
intermittent railgun and rocket action, before Comatosed took
the lead, only to see it quashed within 15 seconds!
A minute later things went in Comatosed's favour, as Hell lost
his footing and cratered, but just before half time he regained
his composure and scored a vital rail kill. Some shafting in
the aftermath tilted the balance 3 : 1 in Hell's favour. It
took two minutes, but Comatosed managed to pull it back with a
sneaky rail kill through Hell's rocket trail. A bad respawn led
Hell to a quick rocket launcher death, equalising the score on
3 : 3.
Hell wasn't going to be so easily suppressed though, and fought
his way ahead using the lightning gun effectively. With 90
remaining seconds there was no sign of Hell, and as the final
minute counted down, Comatosed could only manage passing hits.
Hunting desperately for his opponent, Comatosed suddenly came
up against him. Blowing his chance to win the thing outright,
Hell missed with the railgun, only to see Comatosed overpower
him and level things at 4 : 4. It took a whole minute of tense
extra time before Hell made a vital mistake and cratered,
leaving Comatosed standing victorious.
Winners Bracket Results
Requiem
15
Rauper
1
Timber
4
Sky
1
[nEo]Ranger
11
Dekkard
2
Veno
12
MR.Muave
-2
Blokey
23
Pumpkin
3
4k^Silent
10
Hell
4
DC.Mozilla
22
Dr.Shigs
15
Luke
16
Railor
1
Losers Bracket Results
First Batch
Duellist
9
Fearless MKO
2
Phreaky
6
Herring
5
Defiant
32
Catflap
3
Razzo
3
Varies
2
Kaine
3
Punty
2
qmole
8
Erazer
2
Dr.Comatosed
18
[Spod]
-2
Gen
12
Gracken
-2
Second Batch
Rauper
4
Phreaky
2
Dekkard
23
Defiant
10
Sky
16
Duellist
2
Razzo
3
MR.Mauve
2
Dr.Shigs
9
Kaine
2
Pumpkin
6
qmole
4
Dr.Comatosed
4
Hell
3
Gen
2
Railor
0
Blokey vs Mozilla : Q3DM13
This game had to be
restarted after a minute, when with the score on 1 : 1 the
players realised that demos weren't being recorded. On the
restart both players went straight for the megahealth, with
Blokey arriving just ahead sparking a sharp little battle.
Both players escaped with their lives after exchanging
rockets, and a little later Blokey returned to pick up the
second megahealth.
Dropping down to the lava pool, Blokey spotted Mozilla on
the red armour ledge just above him and waited next to the
teleporter. His patience soon paid off, as a rocket caught
Mozilla full in the face as he gave chase. Mozilla managed
to blow himself up soon afterwards, and then Blokey shafted
him twice in quick succession to take the score to 3 : -1.
Mozilla managed to pull back to zero frags after a battle
in the bounce pad room next to the megahealth, but with
four minutes gone Blokey was 4 : 0 up.
Mozilla picked up another frag, but Blokey rocketed him
after respawning as he went for the megahealth. At half
time it was 5 : 1, and Blokey looked to be on dominant
form, picking up a frag a minute like clockwork throughout
the mid-game. A lightning gun battle in the courtyard saw
Blokey's shaft picking Mozilla out of mid-air, 6 : 1 at six
minutes. His rocket launcher made it 7 : 1 at seven
minutes. And then another rocket attack, this time in the
main courtyard, made it 8 : 1 at eight minutes.
It was all over for Mozilla, but he put in one last spurt
in the final minutes of the game as all hell broke loose.
Blokey misjudged his rocket jump in the courtyard, and
Mozilla swooped in to finish him off, but Blokey managed to
defend himself with his rocket launcher. Down to single
digit health, Blokey made a run to find some relief, only
to find Mozilla again a second later. Again Blokey
survives, but it was third time lucky for Mozilla as he
picked up his second frag of the game a minute from the
end. Try, try and try again...
Mozilla dropped like a stone into the molten rock in the
middle of the courtyard, and with a little helping rocket
from Blokey he incinerated himself. In the last seconds of
the game he got the frag back again, but the final score
was 10 : 2 to Blokey.
Download the demos:
Moziila's perspective (502k).Timber vs Veno : Q3DM13 Timber and Veno
were having a closely matched game praying to the lava god
on Q3DM13, taking the scores to an incredible -1 : -1
before Timber finally managed to claw his way back to zero
frags and into the lead. Unfortunately he then noticed that
his headphones weren't working properly, and requested a
restart. Timber then proceeded to play musical chairs,
trying out two or three different PCs before finding one he
was happy with.
The game finally got started, with Timber picking up the
megahealth, then getting the red armour .. and then going
back to get the second megahealth. Veno managed to pick up
the first frag though, taking Timber down with his rocket
launcher and then making himself scarce. Two minutes into
the game a battle broke out in the courtyard, with Timber
following through into the back corridor and equalising
with his rocket launcher. He was on a rampage now, taking
it to 3 : 1 by the third minute.
After a running shaft and rocket battle across half the
map, Timber finally earned himself another frag, taking it
to 5 : 1 at four minutes, then 6, then 7 by half time...
Veno was going down hard now, as Timber recovered his
confidence. Another battle broke out over the megahealth,
with Timber rocket jumping up out of the alcove to meet
Veno above and taking him down to make it 8 : 1 with four
minutes to go.
Timber was still chasing hard though, exchanging shotgun
blasts with Veno, taking him down but escaping with just 3
health. Veno was on the offensive now, chasing Timber down
to the lava pool, only to get a face full of rocket as
Timber span round and offloaded one from his launcher as he
backed through the teleporter. With two minutes left Veno
got another one back at last - a rocket and shaft battle in
the courtyard left Timber running for the red armour, only
to get depth charged by Veno from above.
Timber came right back at him with the machinegun though,
making it 13 : 2 with a minute to play. In the last seconds
Timber got another, spotting Veno scurrying towards the
teleporter far below his vantage point in the courtyard,
his snap rocket shot caught him perfectly. Final score, 14
: 2.
Luke vs Silent : Q3DM6
Sporting a lucky Sylvester and Tweety Pie mouse mat with
his 3M on top, Luke looked powerful from the start, taking
an early lead and fighting off the pressure of Silent's
impressive rail aim. Progressively beating off Silent with
all manner of implements, Luke managed to extend his lead
to a fairly comfortable 5 : 0, and although Silent pulled
one back atop the pillar structure, Luke kept pushing,
eventually finishing with only 4 health and the score 7 :
1.
Download the demos:
Luke's perspective (526k).
Silent's perspective (476k).
Silent vs Dekkard : Q3Tourney4
Meanwhile, back in the losers bracket... Silent and Dekkard
got off to a close start, matching each other frag for frag
on every rail monkey's favourite map. With three minutes
left though, Silent was starting to pull out a slim lead,
going 14 : 10 up. Dekkard wasn't about to give up though,
coming back hard and taking a trio of rail kills to make it
14 : 13 with just 20 seconds left.
Silent decided he had had enough of this game, not
bothering to respawn as it drew to a close. Eventually the
server forced him to respawn, but he spent the last five
seconds running like hell trying to avoid Dekkard. A
disappointing end to what had been a very exciting and
evenly matched game.
Download the demos:
Silent's perspective (579k).
Dekkard's perspective (642k).Rauper vs Dekkard : Q3Tourney4
A couple of quick rails put Rauper one frag ahead, and
within a minute he doubled his lead. It took only a few
seconds more for him to extend it by a further frag, but
Dekkard exercised his right to reply vehemently with a
ferocious rocket to the face. Rauper then blundered about
for a bit, missing a lot of rails and visibly losing
confidence. With three minutes gone it was 3 : 3.
Taking advantage of Rauper's diminished health, Dekkard
repeatedly put him down with the railgun and rocket
launcher, barely giving the EuroGamer lad time to breathe.
As half time came up he was 9 : 3 down, and thanks to a
mixture of bad spawns for Rauper and impressive rails for
Dekkard, he slumped, facing a 15 : 3 deficit.
The energy was all but gone from Rauper now, as he more or
less accepted his elimination from the tournament. Despite
yelping repeatedly, Rauper failed to force Dekkard to lose
his nerve or his control of the map, and although he got a
railgun kill with two minutes left, Dekkard maintained his
dominance and came home a comfortable 20 : 5 up.
Download the demos:
Rauper's perspective (560k).
Dekkard's perspective (517k).Comatosed vs Gen : Q3DM13
Comatosed seems to have got a lot further than many fancied
him to, not least thanks to Mugwum's Ratpad [that's enough,
Mugs - Ed]. Meanwhile Gen was knocked into the losers
bracket by Eurogamer's own Rauper.
A couple of quick tussles with the lightning gun and rocket
launcher saw Comatosed pull ahead; a lead he consolidated
after a couple of minutes, despite dropping to just 10
health at one point. Seeing Comatosed killing himself
accidentally, Gen seized the initiative and pulled one
back, but once Comatosed regained his composure it was one
way traffic again. At half time it was 7 : 1, and the frags
just kept coming.
With only two minutes left to play it was all over, the
score on 12 : 1 thanks to some deft handling of the
lightning gun. And while Gen managed a few machine gun
kills, he could only stay alive for a short time before
Comatosed suppressed him again. As the final seconds ticked
away, Comatosed closed the proceedings with a last second
kill, a fitting desecration of his opponent that left the
final score on 15 : 3.
Download the demos:
Comatosed's perspective (503k).
