The Bungie.net forums are special. They are special forums with very special users. Especially the Halo 3 forum, its users are very special. That said, it takes an extraordinary group of people to moderate these forums. This week we took on these moderators in an attempt to humiliate them.
We played a series of warmup games starting here which went on until the actual Humpday. They were quiet for much of those games as well as the Humpday itself. Their silence was either due to nerves, concentration or an ingenious plot to leave me with no material to mock them. Clever bastards.
Chris547 - Quiet jerk.
stoshy - Too busy sniffing daisies to aim for the head
NosferatuSoldie - May have a hilarious speech impediment, we may never know.
SevenToast - More like Se7en Host.
Yoozel - Giggles like a schoolgirl.
Anton P Nym - Might have thought we were playing Oblivion.
Frankie - Served two minutes in the box for lagging.
Ninja 0n Fire - Figurative no-show.
KP - Not all he's cracked up to be.
evil otto- If his kids challenged us to a Humpday, they'd have to rotate for all 3 games to get everyone a chance to play.
Jejor - The Steve Kerr of Bungie.
Shishka - Literal no-show. Let's go to sideline commentators Heretic Leader and Dinosaur for a report .
Game 1: 1 Flag CTF
Game Stats
Zanzibar, normal weapons
Game Duration: 10:14
General Tone of Game: So close, yet so far.
Four rounds, 1 Flag CTF with reasonably balanced teams; you know how that goes. We were on offense first. We got lucky and the guy with rockets was snipable for me and Frank got in the front door. After that though, we stumbled a little bit and lost control of some power weapons. Possibly the ones that I was holding on to, even though I was invisible, shut up. They didn't stay outside and try to suppress us, however, so we were able to infiltrate the base with relative ease, open the door and inch the flag out to its ultimate destination.
We held them off during our defensive round for quite some time. With about 45 seconds left they were able to get the flag out of our base and slowly move back to theirs, but we were able to head them off first at the fan and then at the stairs and actually held the flag there for about a minute worth of sudden death. I was sitting on the stairs with a shotgun while Ninja provided pseudo sniper cover from their base. He did an excellent job of taking down their shields and then letting them run into my shotgun. Eventually, they wore us down and were able to get the flag home and score it.
Our second round was more careful on all sides. The rocket carrier on the moderators stayed out of my sights and got into the base before I could see him. Instead, I grabbed the active camouflage and went over to spy on Camp Frohman and found their sniper. I took him down and set up outside of their base with 20 shots and an open gate. Frank walked right in the front door, grabbed the flag and walked out the open gate while I kept the moderators off his back. In a bit of good timing, most of our team was converging on the base but not in the base, so we were able to keep them away from Frankie. Seven Toast splattered 3 of us in a row on the way back, but by then it was too late and Frankie was able to escape to the base and score.
The next round they did much the same to us. They struck quickly, while a few of us were still outside the base taking up positions and grabbing weapons. A ghost and a sniper teamed up to do significant damage to us and allow their flag carrier to escape. They took that round handily and the game ended in a 2-2 tie.
2-2. Tie game.
Game 2: Team SWAT
Game Stats
Turf, Battle Rifles and Magnums
Game Duration: 10:26
General Tone of Game: zomg
This game was epic. Bonus points were on, so the score to win was 250 points. Bungie was dominated by Seven Toast, who seemed to be just a hair ahead of us at all times. Words like, "hosthax," "shooting around corners" and "-blam!-" were tossed about. They jumped out to a 30 point lead almost instantly but we stopped the bleeding and stayed even with them up until the end.
Frankie seemed to be suffering from some lag and dropped out after a few minutes. After a couple of minutes, he was reinvited and the moderators came off their power play. From then on Frankie was actually doing pretty well, finishing ahead of Ninja 0n Fire even.
To my complete surprise, we were slowly coming back from the deficit established in the opening minutes. We finally took the lead at 243-242. It was at this time that the struggling Ninja found a corner to hide in, lucky for us. The moderators actually came back and tied it up at 249-249. Jejor came up huge with a clutch double kill and won the game for Bungie.
250-249. Bungie wins.
Game 3: Low Ball
Game Stats
Lockout, normal weapons
Game Duration: 7:06
General Tone of Game: Decapitated chickens.
We started this game off so well. We got a couple people with significant amounts of time relatively quickly but then it all fell apart. The mods were constantly on the move and never really seemed to have the ball for that long but were racking up time with the right people.
They got their good players time first and then they set up to protect the ball carriers. Bungie never had a coordinated attack so we were never able to get the ball away from them for more than a few seconds at a time. Before we knew it the moderators had 30 seconds with every player, it was a really well-executed game plan on their part.
0:30 - 0:06. Moderators win.
We didn't win, but more importantly we didn't lose. We had some good times last night playing with these guys, we even played a bunch of warmup games leading up to the Humpday and a game afterwards just for fun. The mods are a cool group of dudes and we're lucky to have such an awesome team helping us out.
Next week we're going to be taking on the Cayote Cavegirls who aim to end our streak of not losing. Which, I will remind you, is at a whopping two .