the flagtime rule was a bit disappointing (if teams are tied after 10mins of overtime, the team with more flagtime wins), especially on q3w2 where people often chose to hide behind the flag or play for flagtime rather than take a risk and trying to leg it for a cap. the inclusion of cp15 also managed to dampen the competition, it was clearly an american map where the europeans teams appeared very out of place (except for aaa vs pm). it was a very enjoyable tourney nonetheless, and well played to aaa and gzd for proving that they were more than worth the plane fare.

the quakecon 1v1 was won by zero4, who beat the swedish player zamuz in the final. also congrats to creamy from the irish qw clan gauntlet who played for 4kings and managed to come 4th in the rtcw tournament, with $6000 prizemoney for the clan.



elsewhere, clanbase summercup group stages have been finishing up. fh topped our group, fourth league group b, which turned out to be a disappointing division. both @tarctica and kreaturen dropped out midseason, it didn't really affect us since we had already beaten @ and kreaturen were bottom of the table and didn't look like getting any wins anyway, but it was still disappointing to finish the season with only 3 and a half clans in the group (clan death defaulted a few too i think). dynamic core says fh will be playing the spanish clan sac in the playoffs. ts have been cursed with familiar bad luck in summer 4v4 ctf competitions, narrowly missing out on points each week.



bw draft divisions are up, scheduled to start on 31st august / 1st september. fh are currently in division 3a, a division where we made our debut a few seasons ago, and finished the season without losing a map despite having all our players on isdn. a few of the clans from that season are still there... dp, mia and 28+. xpd is a team we have played a few times in division 2, which has always given the majority of the points to fh. we're in with death from portugal again, who defaulted in our clanbase summercup group, along with yadegari (mostly kuk players i think), klf, sps and bdi. on paper it should be an easy season, i think fh is still a div2 side even with our bad connects, but last season's lack of organisation and player shortages gave us too many 4v5s and unpractised lineups, so we deserved to be relegated. it is difficult to predict how the season will shape up, i might be losing my connect for awhile, and the results will depend on the team we have available to us. unfortunately the l33t broadband from other players in the clan never materialised, so it won't be a return to season 8's ownage.



ts face another season in division 1. theres plenty of competition there this season, with gzd and h' likely to be fighting it out with the newly added 32nd for the title. for 4th place though, its anyone's game... except for yo! who look very out of place here. i have played them several times in leagues in the past for fh and nvr in clanbase, and as far as i can remember it has always resulted in a heavy defeat for yo! i've been told theyve got some l33t players now, but their lineup does not look convincing so i hope for their sake that they've got super teamplay a noticable absence this season is that of recap, with wc being the only clan flying the swedish flag in the top flight this season. ts have the ability to finish in the top 5, but they lack the consistency of other teams like nv, who have been improving again since the addition of blokey to their squad. some people might be surprised to see elaw and lag playing at this level, but elaw have looked very good at times in clanbase... even if it is 4v4, thanks to their new recruit (i think hes new anyway) erazor... formerly in top german clan hf. lag's multinational team stormed through the league so far, always improving, but i think they still have a bit to do before they're comfortable at this level.

and finally jobos have swapped places with fh and find themselves in a familiar looking division 2a. they'll be expecting a win vs l2i and frenchies super fruits.. but theres plenty of competition from the other clans. x4 and scrb are down from division 1, and along with tc, i would expect them to be too much for most clans in this division. zn have plenty of experience at this level and i think they'll be spending another season here after this one. inf the mostly uk clan should be well at home here.. and rofl, when they play well, can beat any team in the division. mdu and zn are the other french clans, i would rate them both above super, even if mdu can be erratic at times, their teamplay is good, but i expect them to be the third clan relegated (along with l2i and super).

clanbase

clanbase summer cup - 4v4 q3 ctf competition is about to enter its 3rd week. although its a fun cup, which most clans wouldn't take seriously, it is worthy of coverage if only because of the growing interest in 4v4 ctf in europe at the moment, mostly inspired by the upcoming quakecon2003 ctf tournament (more on that later).

the league, being fun orientated, uses mostly nonstandard maps, w2, ctf3, c6, cp2, ospctf2, and cp18. all of those maps except for cp18 have been used in european 5v5 leagues in the past, cp18 is something completely different from what is usually played.. its a tiny map, and makes very hectic games, but appears to be well suited to 4v4. i'm getting to like the idea of 4v4 ctf... regardless of the gameplay, theres less lag for isdners and its easier to get an impromptu game together for a 4v4, which makes it a good thing for the irish q3 scene

ts are in the second league, and although on paper they would be well capable for the premier league, they're experiencing some bad luck, narrowly missing out on points in both of their games so far, against insomnia in week 1, and against scrb this week (no report there yet). i think they have their most difficult fixtures behind them at this stage. next week they play the solid swedish side sec, a team that i would have placed in division 2 barrysworld, so i would expect a win for ts there. following that, a freshly dsl'ed mindphuck will be out to get revenge on the clannamestealers inc, a mostly croation team of players traditionally associated with tdm to my knowledge, but likely to prove handy at 4v4 ctf nonetheless. to wrap it up, they'll be looking for a win over a still-improving elaw side, who were impressive this week imo in taking a map off insomnia, albeit .8 seconds too late to force a decider. its interesting to note that both insomnia and elaw have acquired germans from heinerfest, one of the best ctf clans around last(?) season. theres a bit of irish interest to insomnia's squad, with melachi registered for them, i don't know whether he still plays for them or not.

fh were placed in the fourth league, a fair placement going by our form last season. i was still expecting third league, since that would have been more true to our form had we been able to field a full team each week for our bwctfl and savage campaigns. instead, at least we've got plenty of experience in playing with 4 players after the past couple of months now with myself on broadband, and enough strength in the squad to put a decent 4 players out for each game, i was looking forward to an easy time of it in the fourth league. thats not the case unfortunately, since the lower divisions were poorly made. i can see 4 or 5 clans in the fourth league that i think would finish in the top half of either groups in the third league. i'm pleased with fh's group nonetheless, although we're in with some tough opposition, such as the former eurocup clan @tarctica, the rapidly improving french clan hf, and the solid belgian clan 3p, there are no german clans, no italian clans, and no scandanavians 8) group a were not so lucky as dp have found out.. the spaniards sac, a clan who impressed with their high ping skills and teamplay in past seasons, lost to an unfamiliar 'pb' clan from finland. the group also features a misplaced jobios-enhanced intensitiy, and a couple of german clans that i've never heard of.

fh have been lucky so far, a narrow win in 2 maps over @tarctica was followed up with an even narrower win over whiney dutch clan 3p (no report on that - but it was a 2-2 draw on our map w2, while we managed to take their home map in our q3wc6 debut, 2-1). our remaining fixtures include the familiar french clan hf, whom we have met in many competitions in the past, usually resulting in a comfortable win for fh but most recently hf taking the honours in savage last(?) season. i've always known that the benelux ctf scene is huge, but i'm still surprised to find a decent side that i know nothing about... kreaturen is the clan in question, from belgium. looking at their website, they appear to be an rtcw team, although their week 1 game, almost taking w2 off 3p, suggests that they know what they're doing in q3 ctf. our final group game is against the erratic portuguese clan death. the problem with clans from portugal usually is that they're at a severe ping disadvantage over every clan (except fh's isdners) when they play outside of their own country. clanbase gives them a chance to play at their best, by allowing the option to one game on a home server, and one game away, and its its 1-1 in maps after that then the third game is split into 2 halves of 10mins on each server. while this does not sound like a favourable option to me, it would be interesting to have a on official ctf game on an irish server... something that has never been done afaik.

it will be interesting to see what the rest of the season holds for fh playerwise... we'll be missing one our regulars as saik heads off to israel today for a few months, and is likely to be without a connection for some time after returning to ireland. for the first time in over a year, we have recruited, only one player to help us get a full team out for games, a belgian cable cpm player called sg, althoguh even he has been inactive for the past couple of weeks due to temporary problems with his cable. one of our star players, the long lost jc has finally got broadband and got his q3 set up the other day, whether he decides to become active again is another question. even the legendary 2fish will soon be on broadband, so hopefully we can convince him to return to the game, and by october when casc and nex get dsl maybe we will be capable of fielding an all-broadband team.

savage

a small bit of quake.ie interest in the savage summer cup. fh didn't enter and neither did jobos, but ts topped their qualifying group, the closest thing to a group-of-death this season, with a flawless record to reach the a cup. they took nice wins over the dutch clan lkff, swedish bl, and english smak, before beating the german clan >v< in overtime in round 1 of the a cup. next up they play gunzoids. this cup is 5v5, and also fun-orientated, but they have stuck mostly to normal maps. i'll have to mention the good work taylor is doing running savage leagues, with minimal help... hes looking for someone else to take over so if you think you're the man for the job then go read what it says on the website somewhere.

quakecon

at the moment it looks like ctf is bigger than tdm... for q3ers at the massive dutch lan, "drome", last week, it was the q3ctf tourney that was the highlight (won by gzd afaik). now quakecon have decided to run a ctf tourney, and although i don't know what the prizes are its big enough to lure several top euro clans into it. while quakecon is not an exclusively american event, they have gone to no lengths in the past (that i have noticed) to include the rest of the world. they went a little better this time around, by giving european clans a chance to qualify. the qualification was a bit of a disgrace in my opinion - only 4 slots out of 16 available for non-american clans, maybe this is fair enough considering the difficulties the problems that euro clans would have even going to qcon... but the rules of qualifying games were terrible for euro clans - the games had to be played on american servers at american times. of course this led to almost farcical games on 100+ ping. i've said it before, ctf on 100+ ping is a completely different game to ctf on 40 ping, let alone ctf on lan! its frustrating that so many top european clans cannot get the chance to participate in this lan, but at least we have four familiar outfits qualified.. namely mtw (featuring the best of med), gzd (needs no introduction, goe derf), aaa (featuring the top frenchies from an assortment of clans), and four kings intel (blokey/blunt/jay/x afaik). all capable clans, this event will definitely be one to look forward to, kicking off in 27 days i think, and there will be plenty of biased coverage on quake.ie (i might throw up some predictions later, once i've seen a few of the american teams in action). the maps are ctf2, w2, cp1, cp9, and cp15. all quite standard maps except for cp15 (i don't even know what that map is).

jolt

jolt q3ctfl goes on, despite the departure of its talisman tnxeh. theres a surprise leader at the head of division 1, in clan lag. the quake.ie interest is in division 3 though, where jobos have been underperforming slightly despite their recent acquisition of dc.storm, and sit second from the bottom. this week, they lost to a litzter-powered bl, after a default loss earlier this season. however, i expect they'll be moving up that table in the next few weeks, since their remaining games are a lot easier, with wins to be expected vs lsr (who could be a handful given the addition of nv-bd to their team), l2i (potentially katostrophic), and my own jolt clan n2s (another improving side, having added pumpkin to their team this week).

for more ctf coverage, have a look at dynamic core - a new comlete ctf community website with plenty of updates and interviews demos and all that. unicious appears to be the main man over there, and thankfully (unlike some people) he seems to know what hes talking about.

bif has posted his review for season 11 of the href="http://leagues.barrysworld.net/bwq3dml">barrysworld q3dm league. as usual it is
a good read.. coffee and food essential :

- part i
- introduction, stats & division 1

- part ii -
divisions 2a & 2b

- part iii
- divisions 3a, 3b & 3c

- part iv -
divisions 4a, 4b & 5

splash damage/id & activision have released a new multiplayer game based on the (rtcw) wolfenstein engine. it's getting good reviews so far, it's class-based in the traditional tf style and this game is _not_ a mod, it's totally standalone. e.g. you don't need to own rtcw to run the game.

oh, and one other thing. it's free. yes. free.

available on activision's rtcw site; click the "enemy territory" link.

update: it appears to be a test release, but i'm reading conflicting reports that the final version (if it's not gold already?) will also be completely free.