Event: Monsterfrag 2 - LAN Party Event Date: 1/10/04 Written By: Warhawk Date Written:

Monsterfrag had probably the biggest turnout of Mowers members of any LAN we have attended. Naturally we all had extremely high hopes going into it.

From the time we walked in, the registration table seemed to be well organized and every one was checked in with no trouble. It was clear that the place was filling up fast and there may not be enough room for everyone. We managed to setup within relatively close proximity to one another, but not as close as originally hoped.

Almost immediately the power went out, and some of us had trouble getting on the network. These problems persisted for quite a few hours and was quite disheartening. As the network and power issues persisted, the party began to settle into a general malaise. Nothing seemed to be working right. Luckily the LAN staff was very helpful and did a great job. They were able to solve an amazing amount of problems considering there was only a couple of them. I was particularly impressed when we were trying to figure out why Manticore's computer wasn't booting and a monsterfrag tech guy came by, listened to the start up beeps and immediately declared "its the video card." Sure enough, that was the problem. After re-seating the video card it booted like a charm.

The party pressed on and the 4 on 4 clan tournaments began. We quickly rallied the troops and decided that we had enough members present for three teams of 4. We signed our teams up and awaited the first match up. The way the tournaments were setup, the team capitans of each team were supposed to meet and decide on what game to play. The winner would be determined by three rounds of play.

Mamenan's team (TMC-1) was first up against one of the AFU clan's two teams (apparently AFU is a primarily Unreal Tournament team). When I found out that the capitans agreed to play original unreal tournament I knew they were going to be in for a rough time, as this was AFU's strong game. On top of that AFU dictated the game settings as well. This meant the game ran at 150% speed. This did not bode well for TMC-1, and they were mercilessly slaughtered.

TMC-3, lead by Offspring, did not fare any better when they went up against metalslug's team "satanowns." They were on slightly more even ground because the game agreed upon was Call of Duty. Unfortunately TMC-3 was unable to get a rally going and quickly fell prey to the opposition.

Our last hope to avoid complete Clan humiliation was TMC-2. TMC-2's first match was against the Palma LAN Team (or plant, for short). The negotiations began, and CoD was decided upon. The match began and it was clear it was not going to be an easy battle. The score was neck and neck almost the entire time, but in the end TMC-2 won the first round by only a few points. During round two the staff member running the PA caught onto the action and noticed how close the game was. He began announcing play by play over the PA and showing the match on the projector screen. This added to the intensity and made it very exciting. Unfortunately TMC-2 lost the second round by a narrow margin, thereby forcing a third round to determine who would advance to the next tournament bracket. The third round started out with TMC-2 down by about 5 or more points. It wasn't looking good for a while, until we were finally able to rally and gain back points in the last 5 minutes of the round. It was neck and neck for the next few minutes as neither team was able to lead by more than one or two points for more than a few seconds. It came down to the final seconds of the match. I don't exactly remember what happened, I just know we were up by about one or two in the final seconds, and right before the time ran out, beebo and I were confronted with two enemies that could have killed us and evened out the game. Luckily we were able to dispatch them both and ensure a glorious Mowers victory. It was by far the most intense game I have ever played.

Next up, we were set to play one of the AFU teams. We knew right off the bat we weren't going to agree to play UT with them. After some negotiations we decided on Quake 3. It was time for a little substitution I thought, since I am terrible at Quake 3. The admin's and the opposing team agreed to this and we replaced myself with the mighty Quemine! Of course Quemine was his usual humble self, telling us not to expect much because he hasn't played Q3 in a long time. I'll just say that he did not disappoint, and was the most on-fire that I had ever seen him. Quemine opened up an even bigger can of whoop ass than when he won the Octane UT2k3 tournament by defeating the nearly unstoppable Zer. Manticore and I watched the Quake 3 match unfold on Quemine's screen and we saw so many amazing rail shots, gauntlet kills, multikills and just all out ownage that we had our jaws on the floor. The AFU team turned out to be no match for us and was wiped out in two rounds.

Next is when things got a little sticky. Apparently there was a mistake in the tournament ladder and we ended up with an un-even number of teams. This was a source of much confusion as many ideas were thrown around to try and come up with a solution. The three teams it came down to were TMC-2 (who had defeated two teams), Satanowns (who had also defeated two teams) and team BuFu (who had only defeated one team). We couldn't decide on a game we were all equally good at, so we decided to go with a game none of us were that good at. We decided on UT2k3, as the game none of us were good at, and proceeded to play a three way round to determine who would advance to the finals. As the round started, it quickly became apparent that the BuFu clan was quite good at UT2k3 and easily won the match, with satanowns coming in second and TMC-2 in third. We realized we had been tricked by BuFu when they said they were no good at it. This will be forever known as THE TREACHERY AT MONSTERFRAG.

Needless to say Bufu easily came away with the final victory, as they always seem to do in every clan competition. They will fall someday... someday...

In all it was a great LAN. There were lots of raffle prizes although some of the raffles were called while the tournament was in progress which made it impossible to check your raffle ticket, but most people came away with something.

I think the LAN organizers did a great job considering the power and network problems they had to overcome. No doubt the lessons learned at this lan will be implemented in the next Monsterfrag installment and it will be even bigger and better.