Saturday was the NJ LoCo Team’s April LAN Party ^[1]. Another LoCo Team member, and professional Linux writer, Dave Harding ^[2], gave a detailed account of our last LAN party ^[3]. Dave hasn’t posted a report on Saturday’s, so I assume this time it is my turn. What follows is a detailed report, without the detailed part.

11:30 It started off with quite a bang. I had planned on waking up at 7 or 8 to start setting up downstairs. Christina woke me up around 11:30, because Dave had been ringing the doorbell for 3 minutes. Dave, Christina, and I then spent the next 40 minutes or so setting up.

Noon. Randy from the PA LoCo team shows up, with his friend “Teddy”. Setup continues.

12:30: We’re set up, Bryan shows up, and play starts. We start with Urban Terror ^[4].

1:30ish: Jerry and his son show up for the scheduled Frozen Bubble Tournament ^[5]. As Jerry’s son is 8, we quickly switch to Armagetron ^[6].

2:20: Frozen Bubble Tournament begins. I realize that I’m horrible at Frozen Bubble. Christina takes my spot while I run off to shower.

3:30ish: Frozen Bubble Tournament is complete, and Teddy is the undisputed Champion.

^[7]

I put together Planet ^[8] badges for both of the tournaments; unfortunately, Teddy doesn’t blog, so he won’t get to use the champion one. You can tell who participated, as they have this badge:

4ish: We play some more Armagetron. Jerry and son leave. We switch back to Urban Terror, “lunch” (burgers and fries) gets ordered.

5: More Urban Terror. John (aka “the ringer”) shows up.

6: Mostly Urban Terror.

8: Brett shows up. Like John and I, Brett spent much of his childhood playing FPSes like Counter Strike (which is very similar to Urban Terror). Teams are split up to make ringers as even as possible.

We play through a number of different modes: Free For All, Team Survivor, Team Deathmatch, Follow the Leader, Capture and Hold. Of all of them, Bomb is the most popular. It’s a throwback to the general Counter Strike scenario — the Red team has a bomb, which they must plant; the Blue team has to stop the Reds from blowing up the bomb, by either stopping it from being planted, or defusing it before it goes off. This usually involves “hunt down and destroy the opposing side”, but planting the bomb forces the blue team to track down the red team and defuse the bomb within 30 seconds.

10: We grab dinner. Three people split a pizza, and everyone else grabs food at WaWa.

11:30 Randy and Teddy head out. More Urban Terror.

1AM: I’d been planning an Urban Terror Team Tournament, but I wanted 2 or 3 person teams, so I had held out for more people (8 had signed up, many more said they were coming; 6 showed, plus Jerry and his son for Frozen Bubble). Once the LAN was officially over, I held the mock tournament. As I said previously, we tried to split up the ringers as evenly as possible. Teams were as follows:

Blue: Me (almost a ringer), John (“Ringer of Ringers”)

Red: Dave, Bryan, Brett (ringer)

We played a bomb match (as previously described). Play was intense, but it was quickly obvious that when teams are 2 to 3, and the 3 have the bomb, 3 definitely have an advantage, regardless of average skill level. Play went as follows:

1. The round would start
2. Within 20 seconds, Brett would run to a bomb site and plant the bomb.
3. John and I had 30 seconds to figure out what bomb site they were at, and beat 3 people.
4. Terrorists win.

The final score was 13 Red, 8 Blue

We decided to do another round, with switched teams (Red switched with Blue). This round was much more fierce, and a lot closer. In the end, the score was Red 15, Blue 14.

To beat the tie, we decided to play a Team Survival Match with knives only (ie, the dumbest idea in history). When John and I were winning 14 rounds to 3, we decided to call it.

For the Frozen Bubble Tournament, Dave made an amazing Frozen Bubble Trophy ^[9]. Not to be outdone, I had equally impressive awards for the Urban Terror Tournament — specifically, gold and silver painted plastic dollar store bling necklaces.

“2nd Place”: Dave, Brett (MVP), and Bryan.

^[10]

“1st Place”: John and Joe (me)

^[11]

Not pictured: Christina, MVP (Most valuable Non-Player).

Given that we really tied, and the other team didn’t have to play another round, I will forgo the champion badge: , and we’ll all use this one:

I can’t guarantee the accuracy of these events — specifically, the times people came and went. If you notice any glaring inaccuracies, please comment and I’ll correct them.

In Conclusion, despite having fewer players than last time around, the LAN went great, and I’m glad to have been a part of it. We’re planning on having a combined LAN and BBQ sometime over the summer.