Australian Universal Soldiers *AUS*

Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 January, 2008

Members of *AUS* attended the Reloaded LAN, held in Woodville, Adelaide over the Australia Day long weekend. Around 500 people crammed into the much anticipated event.

Sklex, a new member to *AUS* took the initiative and signed up a team to compete in Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 4 competitions. Nothing serious - just a gathering of fellow *AUS* Adelaideans, most who hadn't met before.

In attendance were Sklex, Helo, Basefield, Redtracer, Greentracer and Extractor. Everybody arrived at 11am on Saturday and after two hours of setting up and meeting the guys face to face, everybody was well and truly ready to begin.

If only the could be said about the organisers - nobody knew what was happening or when. The network was absolutely screwed and basically unplayable. The table behind us was leeching and powered down completely early in the day. The admin's finally figured it was someone on that table, searched their computers and removed them.

Battlefield 2 (8v8 Pro Ladder Mod)

There were only three teams participating in the BF2 competition and because of this, the big wigs decided to withdraw 2nd and 3rd place prizes at the last minute... wankers.

And who did we play first? AusStoners - a mixed team including x5 and RF who certainly meant business. Needless to say we got smashed playing City of the Dead and before the gaming had started, it was over.

We were informed we had been eliminated and with that Helo, being a little disappointed said his goodbyes. As he was walking out the door, the admin's said they wanted to start again and hold a round robin format. Reluctant to set everything up again, Helo wished everybody well and made it home in time for *AUS*'s 10v10 match.

Taking on the other team (a group of randoms) saw us win comfortably which put us into the final to face AusStoners again. We were now only playing with seven and were unsurprisingly steam rolled 183-0 - the rounds lasted only two minutes. We congratulated them on the win, but we were pretty happy finishing second.

Unfortunately, the competition finished around two hours later than it should have. You do the math... three teams... started at 1pm and finished around 7pm.

Call of Duty 4 (5v5)

The COD tournament was even worse. It was meant to start at midnight, but there was a screw up. Here's a tip for anybody wanting to host a lan - if you have 500 people in a room on a 100MB LAN connection, it is a BAD IDEA to tell them that the only way to win the gorgeous 24" LCD screen is to fill out a survey on the intranet site. 500 hits in 3-5 seconds = BANG! The server went down and the LAN went dead. Suddenly instead of playing COD4 we were meant to be throwing bottles into a bin for some stupid prize.

About an hour later they had a new server running and we were put us up against Distortion in our first round. We got absolutely raped and knocked out of the comp in about 5 minutes. God knows why they held a knockout format and why the rules were decided two minutes before the tourney. Too bad if you travelled a long way to play and then lost your first round.

After that we had some great scrims with the guys making up the AusStoners team. The lag was insane though - not just jumpy every now and then. Sklex was smashing the opposition with only a knife because he could only been seen every ten metres. By this stage employees had been fired, the boss had raged quit and any one who remotely looked like an admin was steaming from every location possible.

The BF2 blokes packed up and went home while three of us stayed on for a few hours to steal a few movie files and watch the COD4 finals, but it took too long and we headed home just after 6am.

Summary

In summary it was an unorganised waste of time, but there was excitement to be had...

Vyp3r from R6's COD team got arrested by the Australian Federal Police for having child porn on his computer. His computer was sweet - SLI 8800GTs with water cooling and an absolute load of power to boot. Oh well, it belongs to the cops now - coming to an auction near you!

There were some really bloody cool setups there and at least ten chicks you wouldn't have needed a paper bag for. The Guitar Hero Pro comp was awesome to watch, as was this crazy kid on a DDR Dance station.

But otherwise everybody enjoyed hanging out and having a few beers on the lawn. They was also plenty of chin wagging with other fellow gamers including saddam (what_aimbot?), fat_bud/budzilla, [CCT] Aids, Westy ex5, DodoExtinct and even Momo from Gamestah.

They said it..

"The organisers were more disorganised than me." Helo
"Ugh, GamingSA fails again." Basefield
"The BF2 guys are great blokes, it was an absolute pleasure playing with you all." Sklex

LAN write up compiled by Camouflage with reporting from Helo, Basefield and Sklex.


Helo, Basefeild, Redtracer, Greentracer, Extractor	The front door (very unassuming)	Looks like 500 comps crammed in	Greentracer, Redtracer, Extractor, Basefield, and Sklex standing


Some of the guys from x5 and RF	The AUS table	Some "l33t" sponsored clan	Basefield on COD4