It’s been a while since I have
played in any tournaments at all and since the last one I played at Lasertron
Rochester was a little, well, unusual I thought it would be interesting to do
another one and see how the event might be different now that they have been
running them for a few months. This tournament was a much more complete
experience (which is why I call it a “total tourney” compared to the last one I
played) and I am glad I had a second chance to compete here again as a newbie
to the Battle Royale squad format. I ended up playing with a very solid team
(and all’s well that ends well), but this event had a few interesting moments
of its own to start with, even before I arrived.
Since I live a considerable
distance away from Lasertron I do not get to play there very often, therefore
my only chance to participate in the squad tournament scene is to be picked up
by a team that has already qualified. Initially I got added by a father/son
team that had qualified and were forming a squad. I reached out to them a week
ago to additionally confirm Shadowdragn (Emily) from my ‘geddon team to be our
fourth and I headed out to Rochester on Sunday knowing that our squad was all
set. Well, as it turned out…not quite.
A couple of hours before we
were due to arrive, I got a message from the team captain (the father)
informing me that in spite of having had our squad line-up confirmed for a
week, they had just made a change. The son had invited his new girlfriend to be
on the team and that meant he no longer had room for both Emily and me on the
squad. Sheesh! He offered to let me keep my spot since I had confirmed first,
but this last-minute change of roster did not sit well with me and I was not
willing to drop my allegiance to Emily. Even though she is a great player and
could easily get picked up by another squad, to drop a player like that at the
last minute in favor of “bringing a new girlfriend” was in my opinion NOT a
classy move (putting it all on Front Street there). Especially considering the
late notice and with both of us already in route and both driving in from a
fair distance away. So, I declined to keep my spot on his team and decided to
stay loyal to my friend and hope to pick up more teammates within the couple of
hours remaining before the tournament start.
As it happened, by start time
we had successfully joined up with a couple of other players who couldn’t have
been any more welcoming and awesome guys! Sometimes things end up working out for the best and that’s how I ended up as part of the
Spartans squad along with CDragon, Ghost and Shadowdragn.
As luck (or karma) would have
it we ended up facing the father/son/girlfriend squad in the first round of
quarterfinals. We got suited up, were ready to go and took first place in that round.
That meant our team advanced
along with the PewPewToo squad into the semifinals, but the team that changed
their roster did not go on any further.
We headed over to the
observation window to watch the next round of quarterfinals and things got
interesting within the very first minute of that game.
A team that appeared favored to
win this round ended up having a bit of a challenge early on. One of the game
nuances of Battle Royale is that you MUST tag an opponent within a specific
time allotment or the clock will time you out and you automatically go from
being an active green player to a purple storm. Team SteveO had three of their
four players go purple within the first 40 seconds of the game simply from not
being able to find an opponent. This was largely due to them going in against two
squads of two in a big arena, as it is not required that you field the maximum
of four players on a team. The lone player to survive was ironically their last-minute
pick-up player, Daniel, and this started a bit of a cool underdog story for the
night. While it didn’t look good for them based on that start, Daniel survived
and got Team SteveO into the next round along with the Thundercats. These teams
would advance to the semifinals along with the teams from the first round and
also the Just Us team that had won their buy (or some say “bye”…who wants to
weigh in?) into the semis based on previously earned point totals.
For the semifinals all we had
to do was be among the top four teams to survive and we would go on to finals.
By the skin of our teeth, we did just that. Now we were going into finals with
the other finalist teams and the two teams that had earned their buy into
finals on points, squads GI Joe and Gone Fishing.
I knew Emily had her sights set
on being the Storm Leader coming out of this game. The only issue I see with
this goal is that to accomplish it requires that you to be tagged out of active
mode, meanwhile the only way a team can win is if you keep at least one last
man actively standing to the end, which is somewhat at odds with the lesser
objective. I’m a little perplexed by this element of the game where there is
some personal benefit to intentionally letting yourself be tagged out early to
go “purple storm” in hopes of getting the top Storm Leader medal. Regardless,
in doing so she ended up going head-to-head against Snake Eyes, a very skilled
player who appears to have a tremendous amount of experience with playing the
purple storm role. So (as I recall from, I want to say…Zork?) “the drought was
for naught.” And before too long everyone was purple. Finals were fun and
adrenaline pumping, but over in 4:25 minutes.
Final results played out as
follows:
Snake Eyes - Storm Leader
GI Joe - 3rd place
Steve O - 2nd place
PewPewToo - 1st place
The conclusion of that quasi-underdog
story from earlier (which seems odd to say because they were actually all vey good players) is that with one wild card player keeping them alive during
the quarterfinals, Team SteveO managed to narrowly survive the quarterfinals
and sailed right through the semifinals to end up in second place overall, which I
think is pretty awesome and deserves a shout out. Actually, I want to
congratulate everyone who was involved with this tournament, including the
Lasertron staff. It is fine with me that my team didn’t end up placing at the
end. Getting to the finals was plenty accomplishment enough for me as this is
not a system that I consider to be my forte. However, it was really nice to
observe how this tournament structure can work well when all the right elements
are in place. Ten teams made for a pretty good turn out and I think it was
smart for them to develop this format in a way that requires squads to keep
their distance from other squads during the game. I was a bit critical of my
first Battle Royale squad tournament, but last night’s experience had me
feeling like I would definitely want to try this again. My thanks to all who
made last night awesome, including those who expressed an interest in getting
involved with Tag 4 A Cause.
Emily had already donated and
achieved her laser tag 5K, so I personally delivered her Tag 4 A Cause medal.
Full details on the Tag 4 A
Cause Laser Tag 5K Challenge to raise funds for Feeding America can be found
here…
To Benefit Feeding America - Q2 2021 | tiviachicklovestag
(tiviachickloveslasertag.com)
Thanks to all those who are
helping to make a difference through laser tag!
Comments
or Questions?
Contact: Tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com
