It’s time to find out who’s the toughest, most stone cold Black Ops killer in the Good Game Network. Tonight, the GGN is holding a Black Ops FFA tournament! Three of our very own will be laying it all on the line: Kalamari, NartFOpc and rowboat 000. Overall, there will be 55 participants from 13 different communities. This should be a blast!

Many of the matches will be live streamed, starting at 7pm EST. Check it out:
http://www.twitch.tv/tiedtheleader

We recently participated in a Modern Warfare 2 tournament hosted by Tied The Leader (TTL) and the Good Game Network (GGN). Here’s how it all went down.

The rules were simple: Search and Destroy, Hardcore settings, Best of Five, Double Elimination. Our squad consisted of JDubbs11, Apollo Running, Xerone, and Rowboat 000. We also got a little help from fellow HMB members: KalamariKidd and NartFOpc. (Thanks guys!)

Round 1:  SoF vs. Training Wheels (H3Wheelmen)
SoF wins 3 – 0

Round 2: SoF vs. #2 On Game Battles (TTL)
SoF loses 0 – 3

Round 3: SoF vs. 8 Bit Brigade (8BB)
SoF  loses 1 – 3

And with that, the SoF were sent packing. All in all though, we had a blast with the other GGN teams and are definitely looking forward to gaming with them in the near future.

Continue reading for a more eloquent telling of games with H3WM.

It was a dark and stormy night, (At least for Apollo!) when four brave men with orange insignias picked up their rifles and walked into battle. Xerone, JDubbs, Apollo and Rowboat went off to battle to protect their loves, Spirits of Fire and Hawty McBloggy.

The first map? Afghan. Charged with destroying the targets first, The Four Spirits ran into battle with heated passion.

“What’s the gameplan, guys?”, Asked an inquisitive Xerone.

“I’m just going to pick this up”, said Rowboat as he scooped up the bomb, “and run it to A.”

And with that, Rowboat charged into battle. The bullets started firing, and the Wheelmen started falling. Rowboat successfully planted the bomb, and from there it was only a matter of time before The Four Spirits had won the round.

“Again.”, crackled Rowboat’s voice in my ear.

Rowboat loudly roared a warcry to his God, Odin, before being struck down in a spray of fire. Apollo and JDubbs quickly followed, leaving a bewildered Xerone behind. A few shots later and there were only two enemies left. Sneaking around, Xerone quietly made his way to the bomb site and planted.

Unfortunately, he became suppressed and flanked. This was a battle that the Spirits didn’t win. Do not fret! For it was only a battle, and not the war! The four Spirits finished out the rounds with creativity and took victory in Afghan, 4 – 1.

After swiftly defeating the enemy in the sands of Afghanistan, we end up on the docks of a Russian Submarine Base. The first match on Sub Base found the Spirits attacking. JDubbs put his running class on and picked up the bomb. Followed by Xerone and Apollo he found cover and let them take down two opponents before planting the bomb. The bomb was planted and the Wheelmen came running, only to find the Spirits bullets and the end of the first round.

The next round, JDubbs tried to get cute by attacking B only. On his way to B he found his enemy, the claymore, and fell to his death. Others Spirits quickly fell and the round was lost.

For the third round, JDubbs stuck to the first plan that worked. He and Xerone headed to A. Xerone took out the lone H3WM guarding A, leaving the bomb site open, but there were still three Wheelmen alive. Rowboat called out 2 enemies on top of the generators and Xerone dropped death from above in the form of a Predator Missile, but only got one kill. JDubbs, relying on a call out from Rowboat, quickly sprinted around to the back of the map by passing the bomb site on full attack. He sprinted up the ramp, and removed one of the Wheelmen from action. On his way down, he found the last man standing and quickly dealt death from above with his UMP. The Spirits ended up winning the matches on Sub Base, 4 – 1.

The last locale for battle was Terminal. Here, The Four Spirits were again charged with the task of demolition first. Apollo quickly stormed A with the bomb, while the other three Spirits made their way through the book store. Apollo’s appeal to Odin rang in their ears as his blood thirst was quickly meat by the death of his enemies at the escalators. If you were to listen carefully, you could hear the ghosts of his enemies speak as they furiously exclaimed, “OH MY! WHERE DID I GET SHOT FROM?!”

This round was a favorite of Xerone’s, for this round was where he was blessed by the powerful Odin to overcome his enemies…against all odds. Apollo quickly made his way to A again, JDubbs and Rowboat went through book store. Being, some may say overly cautious, Xerone didn’t quite run either way, but carefully followed Apollo. Apollo ran around the corner and was lit up in a blaze of glory. The bomb fell to the ground.

Pfft, pfft. Pfft, pfft.

Rowboat and JDubbs fell.

Xerone was the last left alive. He peaked over a couple items of baggage and took out two guys near the bomb. Double Kill. Two down, two to go.

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Bomb planted.

Clunk, clunk… Clunk, clunk.

“I hear you,” Xerone whispered, to no one in particular.

A hand, holding a grenade, appeared around the corner. Xerone took the initiative. A small target, yes, but good enough for him. Three down, one left. All was quiet. Xerone, again, took a peak over the baggage. Bingo.

Pfft, pfft

Spirits win the round and go on to finish the match 4 – 2, taking the victory. This leads to a spot in Round 2 of the winners bracket and that’s where it all went downhill.

Visiting from another clan or community? Looking to play some games? Great! We love meeting and gaming with new people. If you would like to schedule a mixer or challenge with us, please feel free to use the link below to do so. Here at SoF, we are generally a more laid back and fun loving group, so mixers tend to be our thing. But we’ll defend our honor and throw down if you tease us enough.

When scheduling your mixer or challenge, please make sure you include the following information:

-Desired arena of battle
-Whether you want a mixer or a challenge (all challenges will be considered recreational challenges)
-How many players should be present on both sides
-In the event of a challenge, please include your choices of maps and gametypes. Further details can be agreed upon with an event coordinator.

See you on the battlefield!

-Spirits of Fire

Last note: You’ll need to have a registered account on our forum to make your post. You can register HERE before following the link to the topic below.

TOPIC LINK: Invite us to play!

Attention: SoF Members Only

The time has come to put our boots back on the lines. This Friday, the 23rd of April, marks the first of many bimonthly Spirits of Fire Game Nights. Your attendance is highly encouraged. Be sure to report to duty no later than 7 pm PST (10 pm EST).

Hit the link below to RSVP through the usual channels:

Report for Duty

This weekend, SoF members Das Kalk, SonofMacPhisto, and Xerone, along with fellow Hawtites Girlwolfie and ResilientMonkey (and their respective spouses) and NartFOpc flocked to Boston (great city, by the way, I highly recommend it) to visit their hero, the rather dashing elpolloguapo. Also to attend PAX East!

Xerone bummed a ride from SoMP and his friend Katie, while elpolloguapo met Das Kalk at the airport, where his flight from the great white north was delayed for an hour, leaving elpolloguapo to sit twiddling his thumbs (on his phone keyboard, bitching to everyone about how Kalk wasn’t showing up) waiting for him. That, however, was the end of the snafus, until about an hour later when the SoMP group and the elpolloguapo group were trying to meet up at 862 Beacon Street. Unfortunately, they were in two separate towns.

By the next morning, however, that had been resolved, and elpolloguapo met up with SoMP, Das Kalk, Xerone, and Katie, who were all fresh from a night of snuggling each other in their collective room at the Holiday Inn. Reaching the Hynes Convention Center just after 10AM, when the line was opened, our heroes grabbed their (disappointingly full of ads) swag bags and reached the front of the line for Wil Wheaton’s keynote address. After half an hours’ ambivalence, the five realized that it was not, in fact, worth waiting five hours to see a speech by someone who only ever reached acting ensign – and whose name is rejected by spellcheck, and so they retired to a nearby bookstore/café. elpolloguapo still owes Xerone $10 for breakfast, but shhhhh.

Returning to the line with only a couple of hours to go until the 2PM opening of the convention, the group – now back close to the middle of the hangar-sized room nearer the entrance – enjoyed quasi-entertaining Wait in Line games and made jokes about the guy standing up in the red sweatshirt (Redshirt, don’t get in that shuttlecraft!) and the state of West Virginia, unrepresented at the convention (They don’t have the internet yet!). In the meantime, Hawtites NartFOpc and ResilientMonkey showed up in line well behind.

At 2PM, the convention opened, and the horde stampeded in. elpolloguapo, SoMP, Das Kalk, Xerone, and Katie waited by the entrance to rendezvous with Nart and ResilientMonkey, then set off to explore the convention until a 3:30 panel on video game music. The panel – which SoMP, elpolloguapo, Nart, and Katie attended – was quite entertaining, featuring excerpts from games featuring music by the panelists, and montages of climactic musical moments in many games. After a montage featuring the opening to Combat Evolved, the Q and A session began, where elpolloguapo cited Bungie composer Martin O’Donnell in a question regarding synthed/midi instruments versus live orchestras, demonstrating, in SoMP’s words, that “Marty O’Donnell wins PAX without being here. Well, at least this panel.”

Dinner followed, at the upstanding (and well-located) establishment of Whiskey’s across the street from the convention. Hefty bacon cheeseburgers and heavily salted fries recharged the crew for their second panel of the day, at 8PM, concerning women and video games. While the panel itself was disappointing – the female game designers, marketers, journalists, and amateur journalists making it up were fairly ineloquent in their responses, particularly to a question by SoMP regarding video games and art – the group encountered a bright young woman researching for a PhD for SoMP to hit on. After the panel, elpolloguapo retired to his home, while the others left for a bar, where a man bought Katie a drink and paid for a taxi, which she used to leave without him.

The next day, SoMP, Das Kalk, and elpolloguapo arrived in the morning for the 11:30 panel “Kotaku and Croal: In Search of the Best Games Ever,” featuring a favorite video game journalist of SoMP’s, N’Gai Croal. Croal and Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo demonstrated their game, “Canon Fodder,” which took the top ten games on the metacritic-style gamerankings.com and allowed several prominent members of the game industry, from Lionhead’s Peter Molineux to 38 Studios’ Curt Schilling, to either replace one game with another or swap two games. The panel, less about what games are the best than about how to decide, was an excellent way to make up for the disappointing panel of the previous evening. Afterward, Das Kalk, SoMP, and elpolloguapo ambushed Mr. Croal outside of the panel theater in order to discuss Mass Effect 2, at SoMP’s behest. The group had an enlightening and intellectually stimulating conversation with Mr. Croal, who has yet to finish ME2. Considering his remarks, he is in for an especially interesting time.

After another lunch at Whiskey’s, SoMP left for the hotel to rest his aged body, while elpolloguapo and Das Kalk were joined by Xerone, GirlWolfie, and her husband for the greatest of all panels – Rooster Teeth. In the (enormous) main theater, the panel featured 21 minutes of fantastic new Red vs Blue (the first four episodes of season eight, which will begin airing in five weeks), along with a live-action video entitled “Immersion” (which will appear on the site within a few weeks), and boatloads of hilarious banter.

Following the panel, the entire crew met up with Hawtite Penguin Ninjoid and his girlfriend Kayla at the Barking Crab for a Boston-style dinner. Despite an attack from a vicious and well-armed lobster…

…the dinner was entertaining and delicious.

Tearful goodbyes were said, as ResilientMonkey and his wife departed, as did Penguin Ninjoid and Kayla. GirlWolfie and her husband returned to PAX to see the concert, while Xerone, SoMP, Das Kalk, and elpolloguapo dropped off both SoMP’s car and Xerone at the Holiday Inn, then went back to PAX to try to get into a panel on choice in video games. A few stops along the train ride, SoMP realized he had left his pass at the room, and had to go back to get it. Unfortunately, he was well on his way back when Das Kalk and elpolloguapo reached PAX to find that the line for the panel had reached capacity. The three retired to the bookstore/café for some lethargic non-conversation, and eventually realized that there was nothing left to do. elpolloguapo headed home, while SoMP and Das Kalk stayed on briefly to say goodbye to GirlWolfie.

As I write this, I prepare to return to PAX one last time to visit some of the booths, but I do so alone (well, with an IRL friend using SoMP’s pass, but IRL friend are of course lousy friends). SoMP, Xerone, and Katie are on the road headed for Pittsburgh, and eventually Cleveland, while Das Kalk is soon to be airborne heading “overseas” to his home up north. The Hawtites and Spirits have scattered once more, but with many memories and the odd souvenir.

An addendum, from this evening: I spent a while at the Rooster Teeth booth, and got my “You Will Worship Me As Though I Were A God” shirt signed by Burnie and Geoff, and a Blood Gulch Chronicles poster signed by Burnie, Geoff, and Monty, and best of all…

From left: elpolloguapo, Burnie, Monty, Geoff

Special thanks to everyone who attended, to ResilientMonkey for the photos, and of course, everyone who had a hand in organizing PAX.

-LPG

This weekend was filled with some great games. Friday night during our regular bi-monthly practice several of the SoF members got together and battled it out in Halo 3 matchmaking.

Over the course of the night we played 14 matches and lost only 3, which is a huge improvement over the previous weeks practice session. The games that we lost were close matches and were successful in achieving our goals of working better as a team.

Our first match was land grab on Narrows where SoF prevailed 11 to 4 in total domination. The match was as exciting as land grab can get on Narrows. We secured all the power weapons each round and easily dominated the opposing team.

We then went into Neutral Assault on Valhalla where we lost 0-1 in a close match. We did have 2 random players playing alongside the SoF group with no mics making it difficult to coordinate and conquer. It was a close match with the bomb traveling from one end of the map to the other during the whole match. They ended up getting the laser which kept Crazed from being effective in the banshee.

Our next BTB match was Slayer on Rat’s Nest where we won in a close match 100-93. Overall as a team we went only plus 7, however our two random players went an outstanding (-18). In this match we racked up a nice 66 assists not as many as other matches but definitely a good start to the night.

At this time SoMP had to drop out for the night, so the remaining group went back into social slayer where we had BR’s on Foundry. The group did not disappoint winning an outstanding 50-25. The group racked up 17 assist on our 50 kills with almost everyone going positive in the kill death ratio department. From there we got a BR match on Assembly, since this is one of the newer Halo 3 maps I think we are all still finding our way around, the best strategy, and how to best work as a group. We ended up winning 50-31, with 29 assists and a plus 19 kill death ratio for the team.

Ghost town, where we were dealt our second loss of the night, losing to a group better prepared and coordinated on this map. The opposing team took control of the center room after opening up a huge lead and camped out there taking us down as we entered. This is a smaller map that our group does not see that much and it showed in the end result.

Since we still only had five members we kept playing social slayer where we once again found our group doing battle on Assembly (BR’s).  This time we faced a group of highly skilled opponents but were able to emerge victorious with a score of 50-38. We managed to go plus 12 in the kill death ratio department and had 33 assists as a group.

The mythic maps seemed to be weighted heavily during our night of matchmaking as Assembly (BR’s) came up yet again in social slayer. This was one of the most heartbreaking games of the night losing 49-50 in the last seconds of the match. It was a hard fought battle but our opponents had our number in the end.

Adding a sixth member to our group we headed back into BTB for one of my favorite games of the night. Neutral assault on sandbox with two random people with yet again no mics. We racked up an outstanding 252 kills, 216 assists, and a few betrayals. We had a positive kill death ratio of plus 54 as a team. Although the match ended in a tie it was a very one sided match, the opposing team catching us out of position and storming our base resulted in our entire team spawning across the map unable to diffuse the bomb in time.

For a change of pace we got a 6v6 social big team match, a nice change of pace that allowed the SoF group to play together without the impact of matchmaking randoms. 2 flag heavy on Standoff was the match where our group went plus 28, had 91 kills and 46 assists. The light show and I (JDubbs) racked up some great stats in the Gauss hog. Spark and Brussles provided support on the flag runs while Crazed manned the banshee and angel used her plasma grenades to defend our flag.

With elpolloguapo joining the match the SoF team was now up to 7 members and only forced to deal with one random member of matchmaking at a time. Our first match with 7 was BTB on Rat’s Nest. The SoF group won 100-86 with yes I am not kidding 97 assists!! This was a match played against a similarly skilled team but with great warthog driving the match was won.

We had a good match on Valhalla in a CTF game we ended up getting 70 kills as a team with 45 assists to go around. That’s 64% of our kills came with assists. With the sniper, laser and banshee it is hard to get assists on each and every kill. That game we ended up going plus 50 in the kill to death ratio department showing that we were working and communicating as a team.

One of gupo’s favorite matches was our CTF game on Rat’s Nest. Where we had already managed two flag captures and needed a quick third to ensure victory. The other team was pressing our base hard, so guapo and I (JDubbs) got a hog up and running. I was on the chain gun while he was driving me. We arrived at the opposing base, I jumped out got the flag and got back in the hog. This left us a little exposed since we had not thought to bring a gunner and the other team was on to us. Sure enough guapo splatters our way back to the base for a skilled but somewhat easy capture.

In our last game of the night we had a BTB slayer game on Sandbox we won 100 – 41, with an amazing kill death ratio of plus 58 as a team. In addition, our 100 kills came with an outstanding 77 assists.

That rounded out the formal part of the SoF night but did not finish the weekend. Most of the group attended the general HMB forum night on Saturday night and a few of us got together on Sunday for some additional action. Guapo and I hit up team doubles for several successful matches. Then we switched over to team snipers with GreySpark for several matches. At the end of the night Mendi even joined us for a few matches.

It was a good night of gaming on Friday and a good weekend full of Halo 3 fun.

Written by Jdubbs11.