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12v12: Gladiator][
Primary: Win
Secondary: Switch One > Ancient Warrior > Wall > Bridge
Permanent (Att): Two or more fully charged hammer shots, including a clear killing blow, on the Ancient Warrior
Permanent (Def): Killing spree using the catapult only
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ROUND 1 - BLUE ATTACK
Suitably warmed up by the warmup, the twenty four Mym disciples faced off for this gigantic custom map. Gladiator][ is heavy on things like objectives that are a long way away, hills, launches, rockets and big bridges, yet light on things that all UTA players seem to want, such as sniper rifles. So, this map was placed on the board to have all the snipe-ho's scratching their heads and wondering why their frags weren't going up as quickly as they usually do. The blues poured forwards from the first spawn and Ase was the first to take the Bridge(S4), but the reds were up for some thpammage and began knocking down all blue comers.
Salva and Loco decided they like really wanted that permanent immunity and stuff and so they started squabbling over the catapult, like two dogs
fighting over a trombone, each getting nowhere just as quickly as the other. Mym did get a spree but mainly from his minigun, while everyone else packed the bridge and rocket-spammed the back hill. The blues meanwhile had the idea of setting a rocket-launch along the side hill, Insp, m1cr0 and Promax getting sent high and long, courtesy of the selfless smant, although he did also send Ase into a big fat wall and forget to bring the armour from the spawn
With at least three reds approaching the arena it was largely up to free^ and XB to hunt them down and keep them from hitting that tantalising Warrior permanent immunity. Solar and killerdude also arrived on the scene from the same rocket-launch and the defence around the arena was slim. Ase had long since snagged the Wall(S3) and the reds were baffled (someone hadn't been practising the map!). It didn't take long for the blues to push into the square and steal the Sword from under the noses of a weak red defence on
22:50, smant being the man who got it by sprinting all the way around the back of the Sword enclosure and hammering over. With no teamspeak the reds had been unsure of which place to defend - Sword or Warrior - so this freed them up a little to regroup on top of the hill and regain some control.
The blues were likewise free to try for the Warrior immunity, though understandably few of them were willing to set launches for their team-mates over the wall and into the arena. The reds were not defending the wooden ramp at all, although it's easily done, which led to a steady succession of blue Myms hopping over and making beelines for the Warrior. Poor free^ had little help in the arena and found himself in a 1v1 situation with Farac, who failed to spot him in the very centre of a huge, flat arena of flatness
This didn't matter because Pogo arrived on the scene to stop free^ doing any real damage to the Warrior with his
Solar and Stylefish were spared the embarrassment of being flakked by Pogo - they got noobed by the Warrior instead. Oh, and Axl got blown up by a mortar.
Insp and m1cr0 were going nuts on the big hill behind the First Gate, leading Mym, Loco and Twnz a merry dance all the way to the top and way to the back of the map. Insp brilliantly splatted while Twnz managed to finish off m1cr0 with a quick flak-to-the-nostrils. There was plenty of similar tossage, such as Ase trying to get creative by going to the back corner of the arena, then realising he was lost, or nightwing trying to hide at the Gate, unwilling to accept that it was surrounded by four million red deffers. But the important thing is that it was smant who finally got sick of the whole immunity bollocks and just sent three rockets the way of the Warrior(S2) at around the
20:45 mark, meaning the blues could now hit the First Gate, which smant again did by running up Twnz Hill, dropping down the other side without splatting (hi Insp) and dodging in before backman Sphere could react.
By this point the red team already looked stronger, just going by the frags. DJ was top on 20 but there was a nice even spread all across the team. Most of the blues, however, were under 8 frags, which was the lowest red def score (Vitz, sry m8). Anyway, the Box Barricade was next and it fell from virtually the first push, Bn getting the killing blow, and so the blues were through to the bridge. I don't usually like to talk about Bn, in the same way as I don't like to talk about women's nipple hairs, but it was he who pwned the Bridge, first by having the initiative to set hammers along it, then by sneaking left to snag the invisibility. It was this which allowed him to just hop all the way along the bridge, unlooked for by any number of blind red fools, and take the objective on
17:52 with no real help from anyone.
Riv on red was beginning to put in some nice frag work and was way out in front, and the next section gave everyone on the red team a chance to distinguish themselves, whether by dropping low like Twnz and Loco or taking charge above like Riv, who quickly got bored and started flak spamming. The blues were trying hammerlaunches, hammerjumps, sneaking around the back and failing hammerjumps (m1cr0) and just charging up the ramps for lack of any better ideas. This normally simple portion of the map went on for over three minutes and it took the ever-thinking smant to go all the way back along the bridge, grab the invisibility, armour and boots and just jump his way up the slopes to grab both Switch 1(S1) and Switch 2. I had no idea invisibility lasted that long
It lasted even longer, letting smant cross most of the outside bridge before he was finally spotted, though it took a Twnz minigun to finish him off before he could sprint to the Radio.
This next part is a horrible chokepoint and the likes of Solar, Insp and Bn were getting nowhere with hammerlaunches from behind the boxes. This was like shooting rats in a barrel or whatever that phrase is, and even after the blues' high double launches to the top of the facing wall kept failing they still kept on trying to do 'um
Actually, one did work beautifully except that it sent the blue player to a roof containing two red snipers
The only way to get past these twelve spammers (well, three were sniping) was to !summon killerdude who, with the help of some powerups, charged emo-style through the archway, backhammered to the right to run behind the building, then backhammered again to the Radio on an appalling
11:13, just before arsemissing Sphere could twadge him one.
XB, DJ and Vitz hung back at the door while everyone else ranged out in front. The blues rebooted the launch that had gotten someone to the roof earlier and sent quite a few more people over, but the reds knew all about it by now. Riv was still heroing his way up the def fragcount and not even Twnz was keeping up with him. After a prolonged period of nothingness Solar managed to sneak to the rock on the back right to set a hammer into the doors. Twnz spotted it and took him down but meanwhile Insp and nightwing both took advantage of the break in the backdef to arrive at the door at the same time. Used to wearing much wider trousers than Mym's, Insp fell over his own feet and died, but recently reconnected nightwing was dodgy enough to grab the Final(P) on
15:43, backman Riv too slow with the minigun to catch him. Just over quarter of an hour gone, bad start by the blues. Riv had made nice inroads into the top frags immunity, coming well first with a hefty 76
ROUND 2 - RED ATTACK
The reds needed few or no long drawn out pushes or iffy launches to have both the Bridge(S4) and the Wall(S3) in the bag in under a minute, Sphere grabbing both of them with a little hammering and not too much trouble. The blues had only time to give the catapult a tug once - m1cr0 boosting Bn out of the way to grab it for himself - before they found themselves being very quickly rolled over by the far more obnoxious reds. Twnz, free^ and DJ were not slow to head up the hill to the launch spot, although the mortar was equally speedy to knock poor DJ in the head before he got there. Twnz was courteously sent over the wall and into the arena with not a single blue around to see it, but the Warrior took him out with a deft cumshot to the eyeball
Salva and free^ emerged from over the wall immediately afterwards but non-noob Farac was at hand to drop them both with one flakshot each. Trickster Riv turned up on the arena surround straight away and, seeing Farac's work with the flak below, chose to feign until the danger was cleared. He loaded up six rockets and dropped to the floor but he completely missed and Farac sent him packing as well.
Stylefish eventually got the message and joined Farac in the arena to play with his monster, joined soon afterwards by Ase, Solar and nightwing. Bn, m1cr0 and Promax, among others, were on the far side, flakking the stairs against the onrushing reds, the Sword having been taken long ago by the lovely Axl. The arena was clearly the reds' priority, however, and it was the easiest thing in the world for Pogo to not even try and hammer the Warrior(S2), instead choosing to rocketshot him from fourteen miles away, shortly after the Warrior took Twnz down for the second time in two minutes. DENIED!
Blues then saw the end of the First Gate roughly twenty seconds later, thanks to no teamwork and Sphere's dodgy dodgings onto the switch, in spite of four or five blues trying to flak him. The blues held the Box Barricade only slightly longer than the reds had, seeing it fall within ten seconds of the First Gate thanks to some Salva sneakage, in spite of a lubly spree from Solar, and they had to be in place at the far end of the Bridge to be ready for whatever launches the reds would try. Bn had the sense to prevent the reds from copying his earlier triumph by grabbing the invisibility, a fact unappreciated by Vitzy, who went for it, didn't find it, and then jumped in the lava for an encore
Pogo and XB combined unlooked-for in the right corner, sending free^ all the way
not to the end of the bridge from a double hammer. Eat lava, free^. The reds then managed what the blues hadn't and they pinged Salva all the way across on
12:08 from a double hammerlaunch which the blues failed to spot, despite it being right in front of their noses. At least it put an end to Axl trying deplorably to hero his way across the bridge alone
Something else they failed to spot was Riv and Pogo running all the way up to the Switches on only their second (at most) run from the new spawn, with Riv hitting Switch 2 and Pogo following up straight away with Switch 1(S1). Laughable blue def there, what with only two spam chokepoints to defend and a million flak cannons to do it with. When I tell you that the biggest fragger on blue's defence was now d1sc with an almighty
15 you will surely see how total the blues' capitulation was, even only one and a bit rounds into the match. A long hold on the Radio was obviously completely out of the question and the reds didn't even bother with setting any launches - they knew by now that all they had to do was run forwards and fire lots of flakshots, so it was simply a matter of who would be first to the Radio and they don't come any more simple than Salva, who reached it on his first run by doing precisely what I just said. Ase was there to kill him off, but too late!
A primary immunity for the reds was now a given with nearly eleven minutes remaining, and all the blues could do was try to be top fragger in the hopes of snagging that elusive def frags immunity. It was easy as pie for DJ to arrive at the top of the stairs while his teammates dropped around him and dodge his way through, nightwing-like, to the Final(P) on
10:25. No-one from the blue team could hold their heads up after this one, although there was one bright spot for Insp, who came top of the fraggers with an awesome 18...
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BLUE IMMUNITY: nightwing(P)
ELIMINATED: Promax - this was maybe unfortunate for Promax, who came third from bottom on the blues' attack round, but nightwing clearly just looked at whoever was bottom of the frags on the second round defence and with a mere 3 Promax had to go.
TOP DEF FRAGS: Riv - 76
RED IMMUNITY: DJ(P)
ELIMINATED: Vitzy - it's unknown whether DJ voted Vitz out based on his def frag count or his attacking prowess, but since Vitz came last in both rounds this seemed a fair verdict anyway.
TOP DEF FRAGS: Insp - 18
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