Power Gaming

Day 1 - Friday:
There isn't much to say about my journey from Cardiff to Enschede as it went pretty much as planned, except there were some delays landing at Amsterdam due to the weather, so I though that I'd miss the train I'd planned to catch. Luckily my bag was first off the aircraft and I managed to run to get it, which would mean I'd arrive in Enschede at just gone 10pm local time. I'd heard that there were delays, and when I got there there was still no sign of us playing any time soon. One of the first people I ran into was Mazarini who introduced me to Froster, and the 2 of us went to get some food from the pub next to the playing area who happened to do a good toastie. After that we joined the rest of the team who were waiting for Infinity Skills to play as we'd been told we would be playing after them. There was a pretty big crowd around them as a number of players thought that they had some illegal commands in their configs to reduce recoil, though they were unable to prove this. At about midnight we were told that we would be playing on a different set of PCs for our matches tonight, the first being against the American team Loaded who were a complete unknown in the group. They were already sat warming up ingame, whereas the team before us took their time getting off the PCs and we began to set up. Froster had some problems with his mouse as the computers were on windows 7, so he was forced to play on 125hertz as opposed to his regular 1000hz. We also had to play on non-Widescreen monitors, though our opponents also had that same problem. At 1230 Kleineman (the head admin) came over shouting that we had to start as we were being kicked out of the upstairs at Wzzrd in 30minutes, so we began the match. After losing the kniferound we began attacking on citystreets with a reasonable amount of spectators behind us including the Czechs from eSuba who were vocal with their support - its great that all the teams from the Czech Republic support eachother at International events. Taking an early lead, the first half was very convincing, with Froster racking up the kills to take us to an 8-4 lead at halftime. We never looked back from there, and took a 13-9 victory, despite Toxjee's PC dropping to 60FPS every time he moved his mouse. We were very disappointed to learn that some of the things that we were writing in teamchat during that match were published in a Cadred article as we never had any intention of insulting Loaded in any way, and especially annoyed that one thing was misquoted as us saying "best PCs for the best teams" refering to the FPS drops, and it being reported as us being arrogant and saying we were the best when we were refering to our opponent as the "best teams".
A change in schedule meant that we would play GFO before MCA, and both of these matches were to be on the same map that we faced Loaded on. GFO never troubled us as we won 13-4, although we had a poor start against MCA. We went down 4-2 before having to call a time out due to toxjees PC problems again, and that didn't help us recover as the half time score left us down 8-4 as we switched to defence. We traded the first 2 rounds making it 9-5, and then our recovery began, as we won consecutive rounds to take the match 13-9. After that match we went back to the hotel (via McDonalds which happened to be closed) where a couple of eSuba guys joined us in the hotelroom. Jan & Lubo chilled with them for a bit whilst I started writing this blog and then me & Maza went to bed.

Day 2 - Saturday:
The Czechs had talked about getting up early in order to go and support eSuba who were playing at 10, but as we didn't get to bed until 4am due to the late games we decided against that. We had to be at the venue at 12.30 so we skipped breakfast and had a lie in. As it happens we were able to watch eSuba come out on top in their group which was good because of delays, but that meant a lot more waiting for us. I can't rememeber much of our 2 final group games - first we played MouseFX who had a disappointing LAN - Froster's brother-in-law plays for them so we had hoped that they would manage to take 2nd in the group, but they were no challenge. We also played a German team who whilst never being a threat didn't fail as much as mTw (who prior to losing to Hostile Faction had said in an interview that we would fail at this event). After the groups we knew we were to have 1 more game today against PGS, however the bracket kept changing. One of the admins had told me the day before how the bracket would work (the way it turned out), however Cadred & Tek-9 kept reporting different brackets which would mean we faced h2k or fnatic in the 2nd round rather than YoYoTech. However when asking the admins we were told that was never the plan and that the coverage sites had made up brackets by themsleves. We didn't want to play Fnatic in the 2nd round as that bracket made NO sense at all (as to how it was derived) but that wasn't a problem in the end. Mr "Best Benelux" Toxjee did an interview for Tek-9 which we recorded in silence in Steven's car, but still came out in terrible quality. PGS weren't a problem either, despite one of their players uncanny resemblence to a sheep being a little distracting! We finished at a reasonable time, and we were told to be back at 9.30 in the morning, so some of us went to McDonalds and then the hotel before Lubo & para went back to get mazarini & froster who were watching the YoYotech match as we would play them tomorrow. We checked the internet and then went to bed.

Day 3 - Sunday:
An early start today, although it didn't need to be as early as it was. We were late leaving the hotel and I was quite concerned that there might be a problem with us arriving a few minutes late, even though I'd seen Yoyotech in breakfast and hadn't seen them leave the hotel. I arrived at the event first and there was no sign of them, and we were told that in order to shoutcast more matches that we didn't need to be there for over an hour. The rest of the guys arrived just after and as we didn't want to go back to the hotel again we decided to warm up instead, getting a good hour in before our game with YoYoTech, who turned up a few minutes later and did the same. We faced YoYoTech on Crossfire and Strike. I can't remember the match that well but it was a quite comfortable victory as they didn't seem to be on their usual form whilst we played well as I had expected a lot closer game as we rated them as one of the best teams. Paradox did an interview for a Czech website, and then it was time for another McDonalds trip before we were to play Reason in the 2nd Semi Final. On the way Luboshmir told me that it was possible to bet on the result of the event in the Czech Republic and before the event we were at 3.2 to win (the favourites) and 2.0 to come in the top3, and that he had told his father to bet on us and Fnatic to come in the top 3, so I hope that he enjoys his money! We picked Citystreets and they unsurprisingly took our worst map, Backlot. We expected to be going to the 3rd map. We won both knives and started attacking on Crossfire, but our performance wasn't at our usual level. There aren't any excuses for it as we played poorly by our standards, not taking enough rounds on attack, only leading 7-5 at half time. We kept trading rounds at the start and we couldn't really deal with duffers random rushing and spraying. It was quite disappointing to hear Reason players shouting abuse at us and unsurprisingly I haven't seen that reported anywhere! There were a couple of rounds which we really should have won but didn't that cost us, and we knew we were up against it going into Backlot. They picked it knowing that it was our worst map by far, which meant we had a small chance of taking it to a decider but it was never really on the cards. After the game finished a couple of us went to find out what was happening for 3rd place, when D1ablo walked past & said to me "What are you doing to lame us now?" and when I didn't reply continued with "That's what I thought, NOTHING". Its a shame that a couple of Reason have a serious attitude problem as they're obviously a talented team and don't need the attitude that the pair displayed throughout the event.
We were due to play Infinity Skills straight away for 3rd place, and its never easy to play straight away after a loss, especially in a match which on another day you would win, and when your opponent has had a few hours to reflect on their loss and has caused upsets in the tournament and has nothing to lose and €1500 to gain. Just as we were about to start, Reason began to set up next to us and one of them plugged in a USB key and short circuited the power for our row, causing an unnecessary delay of about an hour. When it returned we focused again on finishing on a high, which we did by not only winning Crossfire, but dominating Backlot also. This meant that we had to wait for the prize ceremony which would take place after the final, so off to McDonalds we went with Froster's parents and Toxjee's Father joining us. When we came back the final hadn't even started so we sat down with a beer to watch that. I won't go into the details of it but I was pleased to see Fnatic win, as whilst Reason had a harder bracket the Fnatic guys had acted really well all weekend and didn't seem to carry any egos which I half-expected them to do. Odyx and Stevy were really in a class of their own in the final and were great to watch. I went and congratulated Neil from Fnatic who was really pleased with their win, and then went to watch (and record, see youtube.com/thepowergaming) the prize ceremony. After saying our goodbyes to the admins, and to Toxjee and Froster who went home, we headed back to the hotel and did a quick interview, which I then uploaded whilst the players went to bed.

Day 4 - Monday:
I managed to sleep through my alarm, but fortunately only by 20 minutes. A taxi arrived just after 9 (I had reception order one earlier) dropping someone off, and I got in that to go to Enschede station. During the journey I'm sure the cabbie who was late coming for me rang him complaining he took his fare, but that serves him right for being late! The taxi driver I did have was the worst that I've ever come across, I think there are some pretty apt Dutch words that could be used to describe him but I probably shouldn't use here. On the way to the station he first detoured to pick up another passenger without even telling me he was doing it, which was ridiculous, and then going into the station he nearly crashed (would've been hilarious). I'm now sitting on the train to Schiphol to catch my flight, so hopefully I'll be back in the UK before long! I'll be uploading the first in my series of videoblogs at the same time that this blog is published, and in that I will be discussing my opinion of the event as a whole, our performance and plans for the team, so if you're intereted please check that out!

Finally I would like to thank our fans who have been supporting us at the event, and online on Facebook and Twitter, it means a lot to the players and its great to see!