Sugar and spice and everything nice.
The ladies of the storied Halo community,
PMS Clan, banded together against poor little old us this week, hell bent on proving they had what it takes to not only put some cracks in the glass ceiling, but also in our visors via some expert DMR marksmanship. I’m still not convinced Lionel didn’t have a secondary goal of flexing his Halo muscle in front of the lovely ladies – he and Hal set this whole Humpday up outside of the usual, albeit recently inoperative channels – but either way, the challenge was issued and we responded as we always do…by barely fielding a horribly organized team of players easily confused by the simple prospect of smoothly hosting three custom games.
Let’s begin!
Team Bungle
The Manliest of Manly Men.
Team PMS
Suddenly, all the misogynistic jokes we made in the pre-game lobby weren’t all that funny.
“Um…wait. Hal, you didn’t put the Crazy in Crazy King, did you?”
Ah, that’s better. The hill moves! But not before our opponents worked up a sizable lead. It wasn’t until we took to the skies instead of trying to match up, if you’ll forgive an expression, man to man, that we started to whittle away at their effective hill control strategy.
Durkin
Things felt close to start off with, but at some point we gained control of both Falcons and with Tomo as my gunner, we could do no wrong…that is until they reclaimed the Splaser and reduced our bird into a smoldering pile of scrap metal.
Lionel
We had to restart this game after realizing that static king would mean we’d all spawn at the top of the hill and run all the way down just to get killed immediately for 15 minutes. After upping the fun level by maximizing the random, 30 second hill moves had us scrambling back and forth across breakpoint like crazy, crazy kings. More than once we’d finally capture the hill only to have the rug immediately pulled from under our feet. The PMS clan had a talent for changing my plans, I PLANNED to get some hill time, I PLANNED on not getting teamshot, I PLANNED on being alive for more than 15 seconds at a time.
Due to some Falcon heroics we were able to pull this one out, barely - by a mere 18 seconds. I fell victim to some unlucky positioning, getting teamshot by swarms of freshly respawned ladies on more than one occasion.
Hal
Favorite part of the first game was realizing that a game to 500 was on the same page as a game to 5,000.
Hal: “500, huh?”
L Askan: “Yeah…”
We abused the Falcons at one point, but it was definitely a close game off the get go.
Bungie Wins, 173-155.
Ah, Boardwalk. Once your were the bane of our Humpday dreams, now you bend to our will. Slayer Pro was a good selection for us, even though Tomo confessed to be pretty cold with the precision weapons. Turned out his rifle was indeed hot, and did most of the talking for Team Bungie.
Durkin
Don’t have much for a summary on this game. As long as I was with a teammate I did ok, but if I was on my own I tended to get taken out pretty fast.
Lionel
These girls had obviously done their homework and sought to undermine our growing confidence threefold; first, in a daylight savings-esque maneuver they pushed the slayer game up a spot in an attempt to jumble our internal clocks. Secondly, they went for the jugular by selecting Boardwalk (Hi, Tomo!) and I knew in my heart of hearts that it was a pre-planned move. Third, they brought in their ringer, errratica.
Normally manly men, we aren’t easily shaken - a quick review of her service record however revealed that she is approaching 100,000 MM kills, more than our entire team combined. Before I was able take bended knee and propose, she made the admission that she preferred the Assault Rifle over the pistol. Beyond that I can only tell you this: The wedding is off. This game was over from jump (pun intended). We spawned on the high side, and never truly relinquished control of top snipe area.
Hal
I totally clipped the girl who fell off the map at the get go, but I guess I forgot to upload it to my share… but that was my favorite moment when we were literally 10 seconds into game and without a shot fired you hear “Gained the Lead,” and Lionel saying, “That’ll help.”
Bungie Wins, 100 – 46.
Humpday already in the bag, I figured I’d just play for fun. Apparently, Durkin doesn’t have a “Just for Fun” gear.
Durkin
As I hopped into the gunner seat of Hal’s Warthog, I called it a death machine, expecting to be a double kill on wheels. It did turn out to be a death machine, but the other way around. Despite our constant warthog onslaught, and the other team losing a player, it still took us a long time to get our first flag cap. Shortly afterward Hal’s reckless driving combined with a hail of DMR fire flipped our ‘hog, ending our reign of terror. Without the Warthog to hide behind, I felt pretty ineffective, and resorted to throwing myself at the other team in hopes of distracting them from our flag carrier.
Lionel
6v6 Two flag on Tempest is my favorite game of Halo right now. Great mix of Warthog and foot battles, perfect balance of weapons, amazing map. The PMS clan had a lock down defense, it took one of their players lagging out (yeah, lagging out… that’s it) before we were able to even put hands on their flag, probably well beyond five minutes into the match. A few times we had a player close but the warthog carnage led to them respawning right next to their flag and decimating a would be thief. When we were finally able to get a flag carrier into the passenger seat of our Hog it was a harrowing experience, more than one rocket very nearly missing the already damaged transport. I think I should quote Halcylon here.
“This hogs gonna blow up if I sneeze.”
They pulled our flag a few times and even managed to work one back to their base. We used that opportunity to set up for another pull and slow walked it over top mid for the win.
Hal
While they did lose a player early, this was definitely the most fun. Driving Durkin for his frenzy and getting my road rage.
Bungie Wins, 3 – 1.
It’d been a while since we rolled out the Bungie crew for some good old fashioned humpin’, but I gotta say it felt great to get back in the saddle. Good thing the lovely, and respectable, ladies we faced off with took it easy on us.
Lionel gets the last word:
Great games PMS Clan, I look forward to meeting you on the battlefield again.
P.S.
All images from today's write-up can be found in high resolution glory in Hal's Service Record. Because I am far too lazy to link them all individually.