Open 4v4

Friday night saw the event start out with a gruelling session of pool play for all new and unseeded teams coming into the competition. 36 teams competed in pools, with up to 8 series of Halo, testing the concentration of players as bedtime looked more and more appealing to some. But by the end, there were some clearly dominant teams showing good potential to contest all the way to pro level. Born Gifted, Prototype, AaO, sE, TT and SB all came out relatively unscathed from their pools.

With a few hours sleep under their belts, the top 16 teams from open pool play got ready to compete again in the open double bracket elimination.

Open Double Elimination Bracket Here

With highest seed, it looked like Born Gifted were to walk their way to the finals, instead battling through some epic matchups against Divine Timing and Team Feared before just losing to Prototype and placing 3rd behind AaO. A standout here is the matchup with Divine Timing:

CTF Heretic: 5-3 BG win
Narrows TS: 49- 50 DT win
Construct King: 229 - 250 DT win
Onslaught CTF: 4 -2 BG  win
Pit TS: 50-49 BG win

Prototype are now becoming a well established team, with a very diverse geographical lineup. With Shano in South East QLD, Monkz in Perth WA, the addition of Mantis in Adelaide and JJ in NZ, they are the ultimate online warriors. They seemed to walk through their bracket until they met Born Gifted, who seemed to scrap the objective where it counted and clutch some wins. Their series were just as tight, a real wake up call for PT that this competition wouldn't be a walkover.

CTF Heretic: 5-4 PT win
Narrows TS: 50-48 PT win
Construct King: 250-191 BG win
CTF Pit: 3-1 BG win
Heretic TS: 50-47 PT win

But the real story here comes from AaO, a last minute bunch of disorganised lads banding together. Apparently not a single member of AaO had a computer (?!?!) which resulted in a message to the admin team every 5 minutes from Mookie, who had no clue what was going on. After the first 50 questions free, and an agreed rate of 5 AUD per question therafter, Mookie kept them coming. Where did these guys come from to win it? A look at the bracket shows PT beating them convincingly 3-1. But from here AaO went to town. They cleaned up tough competitors in the losers bracket with ease, 3-0 ing three other NZ teams - Divine Timing, SB and Born Gifted. It seemed the addition of Man2t, of previous Sidewinder fame, and Taniwha the ultimate matchmaking hero, put all the pieces in place.

Then they re-met with Prototype in a continuation of their 3-1. This meant AaO were literally, Against All Odds. They had to win 5 games to claim the win, where PT had to win 3. Mind you, a look at PT's game history shows the lure of Ranked Griffball with the Pro Griffball player Voltage may have seen them come undone. So let's look at the games.

WB R3

Narrows CTF: 0-3 PT win
Pit TS: 50-41 AaO win (Man2t goes 27 and 4)
Heretic Ball: 128-250 PT win
Heretic CTF: 3-5 PT win

Grand Finals

Construct TS: 37-50 PT win
Onslaught CTF: 5-4 AaO win
Construct King: 175 - 250 PT win (at this point PT need only one more game to clinch it)
Pit CTF: 3-1 AaO win
Amp TS: 50 - 41 AaO win
Narrows TS: 50 - 26 AaO win
Heretic TS: 50 - 34 AaO win

Open Bracket Final Placings

1st Against All Odds
2nd Prototype
3rd Born Gifted
4th Strafing Bullets
5th Divine Timing
6th Team Feared
7th High Priority
8th Side Effect
9th TT
10th Rising Sun
11th Fourdown
12th Brand New
13th Nuke Wombats
14th Initial Concept
15th Revelation
16th 8 Max

So there you have it, an epic start to the 2010 season for the open system and a huge comeback for AaO. Interestingly, 4 out of the top 5 open teams hailed from NZ. Well done to Prototype for putting in the hard yards and all other teams that put in impressive performances, especially names like Team Feared and High Priority who were barely regarded in predictions.

Pro 4v4

Pro Pool Play

The top 8 teams, as seeded prior to the event, were thrown into Pro Pool Play on Saturday, playing each other pro team in a best of 3 series. This seeded the pro double elimination bracket for Sunday. Some expected, and unexpected results occurred. Fray iNC topped the pool play with the new BBR coming in 2nd. Many have doubted the new BBR lineup would compare to the likes of 08/09, with Adz, Docko, Hax & Killself proving almost unstoppable until the glory days were over at the hands of iNC for the 2009 Finals. So for Adz to rebuild with Junior, Halvo and Zero, and then perform so well was a shock for some. Another was TE seeding 6th, but with a substitute they hadn't practised with. The crazy rotation of players bwteen TE and 2N has had some baffled. For those not in the know, TE Benno played for 2N this competition, where they seeded 3rd in pool play. Why? Because Benno isn't attending Reloaded due to other commitments, and Hax is filling in for TE. To add to your confusion, Dark was unavailable for all of R1 and filled in for TE's pool play, and Benno played for 2N.

Pro Double Elimination Bracket

Having the seeding organised by the pro pool play, the rest of the field came from the top 8 from the open double elimination. Typically this has always been tough for the open teams to push on with their success, and this event was no different. The top 5 teams clearly dominated but there was a much greyer area for the lower placings.

Pro Double Elimination Backet HERE

Lets take a look at our 5th place entry, Break Even. After beating Divine Timing convincingly, they were matched up with Team Evolution, last year's runners up to Fray iNC. A tough matchup it was indeed, bE were no pushover, looking to trump TE early on. A look at the results show just how close it really was.

Pit CTF: 3-1 bE win
Heretic TS: 50-44 bE win
Construct King: 229-250 TE win
Heretic CTF: 4-5 TE win
Narrows TS 40-50 TE win

Being knocked into the losers bracket so early meant for a tough run, coming up against all the top open teams. But this proved easy for bE, knocking them down 3-0 at a time until they hit a speedbump that was BBR.

Narrows CTF: 1-3 BBR win
Amp TS: 50-48 bE win
Construct King: 250-237 bE win
Onslaught CTF: 2-5 BBR win
Pit TS: 48-50 BBR win

It's clear that bE have pushed their game since the 2009 finals, only narrowly missing the opportunity to push past both TE and BBR, having a 2-0 advantage over both teams. Break Even should NOT be underestimated in 2010.

So Team Evolution barely managed to stay alive in the winners bracket due to the likes of bE. Where to from there? It seems a narrow win to bE kicked them into gear and they knocked out Fray iNC. Wow. Lets look at the scores.

Onslaught CTF: 3-5 iNC win
Pit TS: 50-46 TE win (revenge?)
Heretic Ball: 250-190 TE win
Narrows CTF: 2-3 iNC win
Construct TS: 44-50 TE win

So where to from there? They've beaten the best team of 2009. They match up against 2N in WB Finals, who has their actual 4th (Benno) playing for them. A quick win to TE 5-3 on Heretic CTF is shortly outlived by 3 quick wins to 2N. Then TE drop to the losers bracket and get beaten convincingly in a continuation with iNC.

Now, the dark horses, Second Nature. They 3-0 their way to BBR and win, in an interesting fashion, with either BBR or 2N dominating the objective games.

Onslaught CTF: 1-5 BBR win
Heretic TS: 50-49 2N win
Heretic Ball: 250 - 145 2N win
Narrows CTF: 1-3 BBR win
Construct TS: 38-50 2N win

Then they knock TE to losers bracket. Now they must wait for the rigours of the losers bracket to unfold, a painful wait.

So what happened for Fray iNControl ? They got off to a very sloppy start to the competition. HeFF arrived late to see them forfeit a game to sE. Then in the same series they were 2-0 down in an onslaught flag to scrape through a win. This was all just in WBR1. Perhaps Slayer and Voltage were up all night playing Griffball? Excuses aside, they dropped games early on and fell to the losers bracket, something people weren't expecting. From here, though, they seemed to pull their finger out, beating BBR and TE convincingly before meeting up with 2N for the first time.

By this time, Fray were on a roll, taking momentum into the finals. Lets look at the games.


Grand Finals - iNC vs 2N

Narrows CTF: 3-0 iNC win
Amp TS: 48-50 2N win
Construct King: 250-124 iNC win
Onslaught CTF: 5-1 iNC win
Pit TS: 31-50 2N win
Heretic Ball: 195-224 2N win
Construct TS: 50-44 iNC win
Pit CTF: 3-1 iNC win
Heretic TS: 50-45 iNC win

Final Placings Here

Some teams in this competition did not compete in placement rounds. These are very important to the placings of points, and it must be understood that ignoring these rounds will result in a direct forfeit of your place. The people have cried out for more structure, and finally it is here. With that, of course comes more rules. We will need to police certain issues a lot harder for the next tournament, and be better organised for you guys. So in time, we will have a better system and smoothly run tournaments.

So there we have it, an interesting start to the 2010 season. Thanks to all that competed and good luck for the next event. Remember LAN events give you a full 100% of points, so we hope to see as many teams as we can supporting Reloaded.

Australia's first Halo circuit has BEGUN!!!