As always the games I admin are the ones I am totally unprepared for, this one was no exception. Mpk contacted me on IRC eager to get me to admin the game between Bulgaria versus Lithuania, a game that can't be called the most anticipated game this far, but a nice litte clash between two different quake2-cultures: Bulgaria with a very small and unexperienced scene, while Lithuania has proven that they have a scene that is alive and kicking as well as experienced players available if needed. Anyway, when they spoke in their native languages it made no difference to me, I couldn't get a word they were saying regardless.

After the usual session with server-testing, we settled on a German Dediz server and both teams pinged about equal with a slight advantage to the Lithuanian side, but as the game progressed it proved to be only a minor contributor to the final result.

Bulgaria's Map: q2dm1
Lithuania's Map: q2dm2

Then the teams gathered their available lineups, and we were ready to go. Serversettings were voted according to the rules of NDML and I sat back ready to enjoy the game.

Lithuania's Map :: q2dm2



Well, Bulgaria got the very first quad and I thought for a second "oh, maybe they can get control of this map right away?". Well, I wont say they did because after a stumbling quadrun by Mpk the Lithuanians seemed hellbent on mapcontrol, immediately securing the lift with mg sitting comfortable at the top of the map doing whatever he felt was the right (meaning, spamming tons of rockets at passerby's). What struck me was that the Lithuanian had a team that to me is completely new to NDML, no Vaga, Padonkas, weedazz or prt, but a new lineup that got to shine. Nrk did wonder with the quadrunning, almost getting all the quads in the first half of the game, and as the game got more chaotic I had a hard time following the quads so I can't say he did any worse or better the latter part of the game. Gip5y showed up some nice railing near the Red Armor, supporting mg and his quest for the golden "0 deaths". Boo! seemed somewhat less comfortable on top of his lift, by the quad, where he kept fighting spawned Bulgarians and had to fight off Beaves and his jump and fire ssg attacks. But he had at least one great quadrun, and did a solid job supporting Nrk each time he had a successful quadrun so he did his fair share and more. So, what were the Bulgarians really up to while Lithuania completely dominated the map? Well, after a decent start where they got a few frags, they seemed to resign to the fact 10 frags maybe wasn't all that bad and decided to go with that. One frag was immediately followed by a teamkill and they just could not seem to get the fact that hiding from the quad is a good thing. Then over halfway through (I think) Mpk timed out, and then several timeouts were called. Nothing happened, and the Bulgarian team started calling another player to see if they could get a 4th man on the server asap. Then Malefactor somehow found it suitable to leave the server and while he was gone Mpk did come back, but now we waited for Malefactor. He did come back, and he did (eventually) get picked up, and the game fell back into the same old pattern: Bulgarian being fragbaits for Lithuanian players. Not a close game whatsoever, but Bulgaria seemed pretty pleased nonetheless. What I remember most vividly is Nrk totally dominating quad, and mg not dying at all during the map.



Bulgaria's Map :: q2dm1



You know, I didn't expect q2dm1 to be any closer, I really didn't. I've watched quite a few onesided games on q2dm1 over the years, and I know rape when I see it, and this game definitely falls into that category. Immediately, and I mean immediately, Lithuania had the map locked down with two guys at mega, one at lift and phr doing a mans job at rail. Phr really did perform outstanding in his rail-position, hitting rails all over the place never allowing the Bulgarians the railgun. In mega mg and nrk (Norsk Rikskringkasting) did their share of the work to keep the map locked down for as long as possible. The only place on the map where there seemed to be some changes throughout the game was the liftposition. Boo! was in charge most of the time, and was armed with enough rockets to take down the Ottoman empire in its prime, but the continous stream of freshly spawned Bulgarians at times took its toll on our sole hero, and Beaves had the lift under control every now and then. No offense to Beaves, but he also had one of the most hilarious moments in this far in the season. I'm pretty sure you're all familiar with the nasty angle you need to fire the rockets from lift towards the chaingun in order to not make the rocket splash on the wall? Well, someone need to tell Beaves cause he wasn't! He fired not one, nor two but three consecutive rockets into the wall ending up killing himself and handing the lift over to boo! Who in order to compete, managed to blow himself up while trying to fire a rocket towards the arena-armor. Worth adminning the game for these few seconds alone! Anyway, the Lithuanians had a mean mean rail that day, and they mercilessly locked down the map, while the Bulgarians never did seem to get a decent teamplay going. They attacked mega one at the time, and at times I thought Mpk or Ma_In could be able to kill at least a couple opponents, but somehow they did not. You know how you can have the worst luck throughout a single game and not hit anything. Well, that's what each of the Bulgarian players were experiencing. The Lithuanian team impressed me, all doing a solid job especially Nrk, mg and phr, while boo! actually seemed a lot more comfortable when roaming around the map instead of playing in stationary positions on top of various lifts.

And not everyday you outscore your opponents by a factor of 10!