Listen, you’re busy, I’m busy, everybody is busy.
But this Friday night, if you don’t show up at 9:15 for Halo Reach, you make me sick. So keep me healthy and join the fragging Friday. It’s fun, for crying out loud! DO YOU HEAR ME? FUN!!!

Practice your social distancing.

This winter we are holding a festival of events! The theme is Hammers and Flames.
We have scheduled three sessions of Worlds of Wonder, our irregular table top rpg playing game, featuring Pathfinder, IDC Rpg, and Dungeon World.

Plus Virtual Kumite 22 on 1/1/2020. This will feature Halo Reach and other old school fighting games with an emphasis on Juggernauts, gravity hammers, Rock, and anything flammable. Entry fee is 1 Burger King crown, home of things that are cooked by flame.

Teams will be random with the losing team selecting a player from the winning team to join them. That player will then wear a crown and shall pass it to the next person taken. The person wearing the crown may not be selected to switch teams.

Brackets for single events:

I thought this game was a lot of fun. I always enjoy hollering and cheering during matches! The teams were evenly split, 6 vs 6. The Warthogs, blue team, was made up of players with parenting experience, while the red team, The Banshees, had none. Blue team took an early lead, sweeping the first round of the Mortal Kombat 3 event. They were also dominating Soul Calibur and Street Fighter. Nadia persevered for The Banshees and made it to the finals in two of those events. The Warthogs began to lose ground when the Smash Brothers event started. Jonah was the only Hog to make it to the finals. The Banshees then dominated the Halo events and eventually went on to win on a technicality. Total team scores were tallied via tokens earned during each event, 1 per win with extras awarded for achieving specific randomized tasks. The winner was clearly The Warthogs when the jar of their tokens weighed in at 260 grams, The Banshee’s jar was in the 180 gram range. However, upon counting the had scored 40 plus tokens vs the Warthog’s 29. Clearly there is some controversy here, but The Warthogs, again having parenting experience, conceded to The Banshees.

Tournament Winners: The Banshees

Mortal Kombat (Ultimate 3) – 1st Brady “Bleeding Eyes” 2nd – Janel “Lady Cake Ninja”

Street Fighter IV – 1st Nadia “the dragon” – 2nd Cruz “Omaha”

Soul Calibur – 1st Cruz “Omaha” – 2nd Nadia “the dragon

Smash Brothers – 1st Nadia “the Dragon” – 2nd Liam “Sloth King”

Welcome to the New Thunder Dome! Which isn’t really a dome at all, it’s kind of a basement. Here is the agenda!

Warm up play: Mortal Kombat(s), Smash Brothers(‘), Soul Calibur(s), Halo(s), eating(s)
Round 1: Halo, Red Team vs Blue Team – 3 matches
Round 2: Fighting game brackets and eating
Round 3: Halo RvB – 3 matches
Round 4: Fighting game finals, eating
Round 5: Halo RvB and Elimination Final

The brackets for our fighting games can be viewed here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15EOOC0PiJ6riLJIK_pKtM1YHZ-htgvIEJ5Kun1NuLoI/edit?usp=sharing

11-16-19

Cooler weather means the warmth of vast amounts of electronics filling the air.

Format, ah, who cares. Maybe I will have you pull randomly from a bucket. Yeah, that sounds cool. Food, friends, and fabulously fantastic fun!

Kumite 21 is postponed.
Start the rescheduling countdown!

I am always thinking about how to make out tournaments more interesting, fresher, better! As a consequence, I am continually changing the rules and format up until game day.

Behold! My latest vision!
ROUND 1 – Halo 1 matches
ROUND 2 – Fighting games (Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, Smash Bros., etc…)/food break
ROUND 3 – Halo 2 matches
ROUND 4 – Fighting games/food break
ROUND 5 – Halo 3 matches
RINSE AND REPEAT TILL TIME EXPIRES…

Each match you win still gets you a token towards your team’s total score.

How would you like some links for the move list on games?
Street Fighter II iterations
Super Street Fighter IV (A-G) (H-Z)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Soul Calibur II
Soul Calibur IV
Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
We will have guide books available during the event!

Halo: The Master Chief Collection
We did some testing with three Xbox One consoles and five players. We were using the new LAN network option and the Heimdahl 10/100 switch.
We experienced issues with the Hydra console being slow to get started, however, after that it was smooth sailing. Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3, and Halo 4 all played well, the party stayed together.

Teams:
The age cut off for the veteran players vs the rookie players is being considered. Attempting to benchmark our player abilities during testing, it is still clear IVAN003 is a scale tipper. I am thinking about instituting a “Capture the Player” system. The losing team getting to draft a player from the winning team to be forced to play for them.

Games:

• The Master Chief Collection: Rotating maps and game types of Halo 1,2,2a,3,and 4. Veterans vs Rookies, “capture the player” in effect.
• Halo 3 – Valhalla Infinite: Infinite time and score. Veterans vs Rookies. There will be 4-8 active gamertags per team. Any number of players may participate per team, but all gamertags are to remain active. The goal is to achieve the highest total score for your team to be tallied at the end of the night.
• Street Fighter: Veterans vs Rookies. Any player may request a match against the other team. The opposing team must send a player to take the challenge, if no one volunteers, the player requesting a match selects their opponent from the other team. The player forced to play may only be forced to play once. If all players have been selected, then only volunteers need play.
• Soul Calibur: Veterans vs Rookies. Any player may request a match against the other team. The opposing team must send a player to take the challenge, if no one volunteers, the player requesting a match selects their opponent from the other team. The player forced to play may only be forced to play once. If all players have been selected, then only volunteers need play.

Scoring:
There will be an allotment of “Tokens” available. For each win, everyone on the winning team takes a token, even if they are a captured player. Tokens may be collected in a team coffer. A captured player must place their token in their original team’s coffer. Valhalla Infinite will contribute a number of tokens equal to the difference in kills count at the end of the Kumite.

Greetings Halo Players!

It’s time to start thinking about Virtual Kumite 21.
ELDERS VS YOUTH
Blue team will consist of the over 30 year olds
Red team the under 30s.

Saturday November 3rd.
The format is always subject to change, but we usually start off with innovation!
This year I propose two setups.
Station 1 – 4 v 4, infinite marathon game. This game will start earlier for the diehard players.
The object of the game will be to run up the score. Blue Team vs Red Team.
This will be one game type on one map. We might change it up every 30-60 minutes, but keep the score tallied on a board.

Station 2 – ? v ?
This will have the classic rotating games and game types, still young vs old.

We have the ability to have everyone play at the same time all night. But maybe that is not a good thing.
Some people may need rests or food breaks!
So if we use this system people can rotate in and out when they desire.

What we have:
5 Xbox Ones, 5 Xbox 360s, One projector, 7 tvs, 2 computer monitors.
12 Xbox One controllers, 11 Xbox 360 controllers

Let the discussion begin!
past events may be found at http://vk.level2199.com

Cash Converters, my new favorite store. This time I picked up a used Epson Powerlite 715c for $25, original price $5600 back in 2001. Sure that’s almost twenty years old, but it is fully functional and appears to have a fairly young bulb.

Here are a couple photos of it projecting onto the full basement wall. I hadn’t figured out where the focus was at that point, but I figured it out since then.

I have not thought of a name for this one yet!

Black Friday 2017 arrived with a sweet deal.  Gamestop was selling used Xbox 360s for $60 with a $60 rebate!  The limit was two per customer, so I got two.  That brings our Xbox 360 count to six systems.  Add that number to our Xbox Ones and we now have a total of eleven systems.  Now to keep things in order, we had to start naming everything.

Cash Converters in Pottstown had an interesting item on their shelves, a forty-eight port managed lan switch.  It took me three trips over three weeks to eventually give in and pay the $16 to buy it. I tested it out and it worked great right off the bat, no configuration needed.  I believe with it’s acquisition lag issues will be a thing of the past. KK said, “We should have a Kumite in January!”

A battle for the ages, two teams pitted against each other in an epic confrontation.

March 2018

11.11.17

Virtual Kumite 20 has come and gone.  There were a few glitches.  Halo 3 lagged for a few combatants.  Halo Reach transported a single system into an isolated parallel gaming dimension.  Despite these issues it was a fantastic event.  Thanks to everyone for coming.

Then there was the lying.  “Oh no, don’t kill me! My screen went blank!”  Sure, of course it did.  Don’t make me have to employee a referee to watch over the event.

Results:
Open Champion: Ed (Ivan0003), 2nd place: Crash Ninja KK
Over 30 Champion: Janel (Cake Ninja), 2nd place: Brady (BleedingEyes)
Under 18 Champion: Crash Ninja KK, 2nd place: Liam (Sloth King)
Under 12 Champion: Liam (Sloth King), 2nd place: Faith is Day
Melee king: Rob(PongRocks), Tank King: Daniel(Chewbacca)
Day 2: Family Regicide Event (11.12.17)
Champion: Nadia, 2nd: Crash Ninja KK
Untouchable: Faith is Day

Down into the depths of the Earth we go!

The ping pong table served a greater purpose this night.  This was a night of playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One.

July 11, 2015