WinterSmash 2009 Report at John Blade's Homepage

WinterSmash 2009 Report

Quote of the day “Can you check this monitor for me Web?” – Wilko, after crushing his beloved 24″ Dell LCD …

When: July 2009
Photos: http://www.lansmash.com/v/album/2009/WinterSmash2009/

Our first Winter LAN at our new home QSAC! Big props to the volunteers who helped setup on Friday afternoon, I think this is the first time we have had so many volunteers take the day off work to help setup on Friday.

Saturday filled the gaming seats with over 140 gamers walking through the door. Thanks to all gamers who were patiently waiting out the door as we processed everyone in. We’re looking into prepaid options in the future to help streamline the wait, but with out efficient girls at the door we managed to push everyone in under 30 minutes.

QGaming’s CounterStrike Source tournament rolled on smoothly with excellent coverage from GameStah’s Boomser and TobiWanKenobi. It’s a rariety for these tournaments to run on time, so props to QGaming and the CSS gamers for knowing their stuff.

There were lot’s of public games played through-out Saturday and a ton of linux iso sharing to boot. UT2004 made a brief comeback and reminded me just how poor I am at precision FPS games after years of no practice. It is as fun as it was five years ago though, so it was fantastic to give it a whirl. No doubt we’ll be bringing back the LS UT2004 Last Man Standing comps in the next Smash.

Even with a large chunk of the team off oversea’s to compete in Evo2k the Smash Bro boys had a decent tournament turn out!

Some might remember this as the ‘Swine Flu Smash’ however, as there have been numerous reports of gamers falling ill after the weekend passed. I’m sure it was just the awesomeness of the event overloading gamers immune systems.

Early Sunday morning was hard to get out of bed on a cold winters day and the numbers showed with only around 70 gamers filling the halls. No matter though, as there was plenty of gaming action through-out the day.

The Halo 3 2v2 started a little late with the tournament organiser issues but MasterCyl stepped in play to kick off the comp. Halo was jam packed full of gameplay and I am always surprised at how much Halo these gamers want to play. I think quite a few opted out of lunch just to cram in as much Halo they can!

TF2 3v3 Arena was the competitive tournament of the day for the PC side and boy was it fun. I think this format works best at the LAN rather then the traditional 6v6 style games played online. 3v3 allows for a much faster paced game and the team co-ordination is a lot simpler to run then a full on 6v6.

Oh yes, and MadMoose had a message to give all those that didn’t come to WinterSmash this time round.