Let’s talk tourney. Before anything else, shout out to Thomas Provitt for coordinating and George Raptis for hosting the September Laser Storm regional tournament at Skyway Laser Storm in Warren, OH. Even though Storm is not exactly my strong suit, I have always really enjoyed being part of events held here, and this past weekend was no exception.
No event ever happens without a surprise or two. There were some unforeseen challenges that occurred and I think they did a great job of both balancing and adjusting to a variety of unexpected scenarios that came up. When I think back on this tournament I will remember it as a fun time, a success for Tag 4 A Cause and above all, interesting at every turn! Among the most unique situations is how from the first game to the last game there was a notable difference in the “before and after” roster for Team Selenago.
Let’s start with how I ended up on this team to begin with. This occurred right after the draft. With about 40 people registered for the event, there were 7-8 teams expected, which is a lot! That is a great problem to have and I think the increased interest was likely the result of this event being a draft. It was certainly the reason I signed up and there were a good number of players coming from other tag systems who were also relatively new to the Laser Storm scene. I think this is awesome because clearly they are cultivating new interest in the system and the tournament scene.
The volunteer captains drafted players and I was announced as a player on team DemiDeath, captained by Clayton. Due to there being an uneven player numbers, this team had a roster of six players instead of five.
Logan was also captaining a team and had drafted Lonewolf…who was nowhere to be found! So instead Shel asked me if I would mind taking his place on Logan’s team. Since Clayton had an extra player, the move did not impact numbers, so that’s how I became part of Team Selenago.
With a roster that included Gumby, George, Grumpy and Logan (along with the young Pittsburgh player who goes by Laser Beam), on paper this looked like a really strong place to be (even though George and Gumby were intended to swap for each other, not play at the same time). But life happens and we would face a few more surprises before the day was done!
With this many teams, a traditional round robin would not work due to time constraints, so instead they opted for a Swiss team-pairing format for the seeding games. I have absolutely no idea how that worked, so I will not even try to describe it, but I trust in the process. The only part I am sure about was that it had to be adjusted from five rounds to four, also to account for limited time. Here’s how the rounds played out.
At one point there was some additional roster confusion. Someone called out to me “Tivia, are you playing?” I had not heard Team Selenago called…and that’s because my name was still showing up for Clayton’s DemiDeath team.
And some flip-flopping of team names/rosters happened, but both of these issues were easily resolved. What was not so easily resolved was losing Grumpy mid-way through. His son, Papa Smurf, had injured his knee earlier in the morning. In spite of his dedication and insistence on powering through, the injury warranted a trip to the emergency room, so unfortunately both father and son had to exit the tournament early. That’s all we knew at that point and of course we all wish Brayden (Papa Smurf) a speedy recovery! But losing Grumpy was also a blow (and disappointing to not be able to visit longer with them both).
Somewhere during this time window Lonewolf arrives! So, with the continuing roster rotation he’s back on this team and our player line-up continues to morph. I’m not actually certain that I played with the same group of team members in any two games of this tournament, lol!
Considering how it was all going down, you can probably understand my confusion when fairly early on Logan said we ended up with a bye (always looks wrong when I type it) into the finals, but ok. However, we also heard Gumby might have to leave soon (again, because the event was running long), so what would that mean if we lost another player? For the record, we didn’t.
In actuality, we all moved into double elimination. We took a break between the first round of games and the finals to run the Tag 4 A Cause “Top Gun” games, which were intense and showcased some awesome Top Gun scores. Corbin won the trophy and continues to impress everyone with his Storm skills! :)
Then we entered the finals and, well…we were out of it pretty early on. This was one of those “that’s the way the cookie crumbles” situations.
However, I really enjoyed the event and want to congratulate the top placing teams! In third place was Love Hugs, second place was Just Chillin and first place was (ironically the team that had drafted me at the beginning of the day) DemiDeath! Congratulations to all!
I also want to again thank Tom and Lex for doing a skills session the night before the tournament. They had a great set-up in the party room and shared many useful tips and examples.
This included some tips on Wilsoning.
And here are a few more!
No matter what, I always enjoy playing in these events. And when I show up for work on Monday morning and my coworkers ask me what I did over the weekend I can always sum it up in two words. ;)
Comments or Questions?
Contact: Tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com
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