ARCHIVES: THURSDAY 8TH MAY 1997 -WEDNESDAY 22ND MAY 1997

UKCL WEEK 12 ROUNDUP

Imagine accidentally walking underneath a falling piano. Now imagine it with a migrane. That's approximately the impact that Week 12 of the UKCL had on all its observers.

The reason? At 4:00 pm, on Saturday 10th of May, Clan Corpus played unbeaten league favourites the Quake Police Department, and beat them by over 60 frags, 240-175. For the full story, scroll down to the report on the 10th May, but suffice it to say that CC were jubilant and QPD shocked but determined.

But what does this mean in the long term? Well, it doesn't mean that QPD are out of the running, or that the Quake Lords are home free. With 1738 total frags to QL's 1179 as of Week 11, and only having played one more game, if QPD beat the Quake Lords in the final round they could still win on aggregate frags. However, this means that QPD not only have to prepare for what will surely be a very difficult match against the QLs, but also have to make sure they score as highly as possible in every game between now and then- if the QLs somehow gain a significant frag advantage, it won't matter whether QPD win, lose, or don't turn up in the final game.

Other games were less dramatic, but still important. CIX beat Clan Pendragon, a tough opponent, 211-137, making that only the fourth loss CP have suffered so far. The Frag Kings had an unexpectedly close game against the always unpredictable TFS, winning by only 188-169, a result which would have dropped FK a fair way in the league if TFS had managed another 20 frags.

The Qauke Lords had a fairly easy game versus Clan Nasty, whilst DC had to replay their game against Minos.

There are a few scores missing from Week 13, so I'll update on that and get you all up to speed ASAP. Week 14 looks like it could be interesting, with CIX playing the Quake Lords and Clan Corpus up against old enemies the Demonic Core, and of course I'll be reporting on those results as soon as I get them in.

CP VS HB- MATCH REPORT

Following my comments on the Clan Pendragon/Hellbringers MCW game yesterday, Keeper.CP.KoD emails me this report on the game:

"We didn't expect it to be a tough game so alot of our players didn't turn up inc. Me, Choad and Carnage. Spirit had to play on modem for the first time in ages. 5 mins into the game we were lagging waaay behind and then both Redman and Fab dropped. It didnt look pretty 4 v 2.

15mins into the game I logged on and noticed this and immediately entered the game. 5mins after me Choad entered. At this point it was like 85-35 to the Hellbringers. Then we got it back together and slowly clawed back the difference. Lets just say that the only time we were in the lead was for the last 2 seconds!"

So, is that "MCW admin appears crap in own game shock"?

EVERYBODY'S ICQING...

Hot on the heels of Siren's world-wide ICQ directory comes the UK ICQ listing, run by QL-Cenobite. As I said before, ICQ is an extremely cool "internet pager", that makes the previously impossible task of finding someone on the Internet at any one time easy.

If you want to add you ICQ number to Ceno's listing, please send him a mail with "ICQ" as the subject line.

HTMLLOG- IS THAT WELSH OR SOMETHING?

CC-Pryo emails me to tell me that there's a new version of his Quake Log parser (a cool program that generates game statistics from logfiles of games), Htmllog, up on his homepage.

"Htmllog 1.4a creates the gif files directly, and they have a transparent background, so you don't have to use the default one now.... there's an example page from the UK team practice log available."

Looks cool. I know I'm not the only person who uses logfiles around here, so you might want to check it out.

MCW WEEK 4- ROUNDUP

Week 4 of the Modem Clan War looked like it would be a quiet week, with the "big" Clans not facing up against each other. However, some even and close matches meant that Week 4 was perhaps the best MCW week yet for narrow results and exciting games.

Clan Pendragon, as yet unbeaten in the MCW, faced their toughest opponents yet in the Hellbringers, a Clan bloodied by their loss in Week 2 to the Dominion, but still fighting fiercely. In a stunningly close game CP won by just one frag, 131-130, in a result which puts the Hellbringers out of the running, realistically speaking, for the top 4, but also does not bode well for CP. Given that they only just won against HB, what chance have they got against the Dominion, who beat HB 210-108 in Week 2, or Demonic Core, who then beat the Dominion? Unless this was a freak result, it could be that the Pendragons are looking at a lower place in the War than they expected.

Clan Corpus also faced a tough game against the Jedi Knights, winning in the end 119-109 ( altough this could partially be attributed to connection problems on CC's side) . Whilst Corpus certainly aren't the strongest Clan in the league, with most of their "name" players being career LPBs, they are tough and well-practised, and the Jedi's near-win shows once again that they are certainly a Clan to be reckoned with.

Other games saw The X suffering a run of bad results, apparently due to poor Clan attendance, losing by default to the Biker Klan and dying horribly versus CIX 242-29. Vengeance saw their first victory of the league, against the Legion Of The Insane, winning 174-5, and Mere Mortals once again belied their own belief in their inability, winning against BOG 173-309. BOG aren't, admittedly, the toughest of opponents, but it's a clear win, and hardly what one would have expected from a Clan who said they would end up "in the bottom 3 of the league".

None of the other front-running Clans had much of a challenge to face this week, with QPD facing Minos (231--3 to QPD), the Quake Lords defeating the Fallen Angels 267-22, and DC winning by default against the way-too-relaxed Weedkillers.

Week 5 sees a couple of the "name" Clans clashing, as Clan Corpus take on CIX tomorrow (DM3), and old-timers DC play equally venerable Clan Pendragon. Good luck to them.

THERE AIN'T NO COMING BACK

Yes, the Crow was just as good as always ( I cheated and watched it on video- did the ads spoil it?). I've decided to carry the theme on for a couple of days, though, since then I can avoid going back to the boring type and use the cool logo Leann made up for me...

DRAGONFLIGHT?

Yes, another Clan has left the UKCL Weekend League. The Riders of Telgar Weir have withdrawn from the league, meaning that once again the odd number of Clans stops one Clan from playing per weekend. In week 13, this was the Demonic Core.

Oh, well. Good luck to RTW in whatever they choose to do now.

UKCL WEEKEND WEEK 10 AND 11-ROUNDUP

Yes, I know I'm a little behind with the scores. Working on it...

Weeks 10 and 11 were quieter weeks for the UKCL in comparision with the tumult of Weeks 8 and 12, with the farourites in the league storming through comparatively easy games and many of the weaker Clans facing near-impossible matches and single-figure scores. Of the Week 10 games, the most even were between weaker Clans, with the Mandalore Warriors beating Vengeance in a very close game, 160-143. Minos Academy also managed a narrow win over The X, beating the alphabetic Clan 78-66. Given that both Clans are entered in the Modem Clan War, this could forbode another loss for The X in the MCW when they play MA.

None of the top Clans in the league faced particularly challenging games in Week 10, with QPD beating Clan Nasty 348-61, the Quake Lords beating The Desperados 235-35, a result TD took particularly poorly, CIX playing a moderately difficult game against TFS, winning 137-63, and DC beating BOG in a record score, 419- -7.

Week 11 saw one fairly crucial game, with Minos and the Mandalore Warriors, neck and neck in the rankings, playing a game whose very close win by MA, 125-123, put them back level with MW on 7 wins apiece. Clan Pendragon were also tested by TFS, winning by less than 20 frags against the unpredictable and often unlucky Irish Clan, 131-110.

Other than that, it seemed to be the week for unbalanced games. BOG, Quake United Tiger Attack and The X all ended the week with single-figure scores, playing Clan Corpus, CIX and the Quake Lords repsectively. Vengeance, the Weedkillers and The Desperados fared only marginally better, losing 357-37, 320-59 and 202-50 to QPD, the Frag Kings (who didn't play in Week 10), and DC. Even Clan Nasty, not one of the strongest Clans in the league, managed a considerable win over the Riders Of Telgar Weir, 111-44.

The scores and reports for Week 12 are coming up as soon as I get them. And believe me, the relative quiet of Weeks 10 and 11 was just a buildup to the League-shaking action of Week 12!

CLAN CORPUS LIGHT THEIR FIRE

Yes, Clan Corpus have been growing again. Hot on the heels of aquiring Toxic, who was talent-spotted at the UK Team Practise, fellow Southamptonite Dibbler has persuded BB-Pyro to advance one letter and become CC-Pyro.

Pyro, the creator of the HTMLLog logfile parser used by Dibbler to generate the UK-Sweden statistics last weekend, is very happy with his new Clan over the somewhat quiet Buckshot Brigade.

CLANLIST UPDATED

Yes, it's been updated again, and now features a working link to the Quake Lords (hurrah) and yet more new Clans.

BTW, if anyone knows anything about QClassic Clans in the UK, please email or ICQ me.

NEW UKCL 4X LEVEL

Yes, as the juggernaut that is the UKCL rolls on, new wheels are created. Or something. Anyway, the first custom made map for the UKCL 4x tourney, Ukcl4x1, has been released, and John Burton emails me to say that all next week's 4x games will be played on that level. Download it now from the UKCL homepage (Quake Perfect).

Also, the UKCL weekend server (158.143.100.69:27500) is always set during the week to run next week's UKCL Weekend map, complete with the server mod set to Skirmish mode. So, get some practise in there.

UKOOL LEVELS RELEASED!

Yes, the UKOOL Levelab has released two new levels, UKOOLDM2 and UKOOLDM4, by Copycat and BB.Nitric respectively. Given that the Lab also has some fairly cool midi tracks set up, I advise you to go take a look.

No reviews of the levels are up yet- if anyone wants to write reviews, BTW, I'll post them here.

THEY'RE ALL DEAD. THEY JUST DON'T KNOW IT YET.

Wooh! Yes, my favourite film of all time (one of them, at least), The Crow, is on on Sunday, Channel 4, 10:00. Watch it. This film is one of the all-time major influences on my style, taste in music and for that matter makeup routine. The story's very strong, the action sequences are superb, you could cut the atmosphere with an axe and the soundtrack is certainly in the top 4 Goth/Industrial albums of all time. Watch. it..

SLIP SLIDE SCORING

Yes, John Burton has finally managed to compile the list of scores from Weeks 10 and 11 of the UKCL. I'll be doing my normal roundup in a couple of days, but in the meantime you can check the numbers out on the UKCL's homepage.

ICYOU...

Yes, I've finally installed ICQ. If you haven't heard of it, it's a superb little program that tells you when other users come online, so you can talk to them, message them or whatever.

If you have, feel free to add me to your contact list. My ID number is 1192097.

HMM.

As regular readers will know, I take great pains to be pleasant and neutral to my readership, and to not say derogatery things about anyone. However, following the appearance of 8 separate, identical mails in my mailbox advertising an" interview " with John Romero, I sent a possibly slightly harsh letter off to the Fragulators, the people responsible. I think I should print their reply:

"You, fuckface- like I told the other stupid bastard,

I SENT THAT E-MAIL ONLY ONCE TO UKQUAKE@MINOS.CO.UK.

I dont know why the rest of them turned up, so fuck off"

I hope that clears it up for everyone. Oh, that email turned up twice.

Update: OK, evidently someone amongst the Fragulators has some sense. I've just had a very nice email from the above address apologising for the mistake- so nice, in fact, that I can only assume it was from a different person:

"Sorry about posting the Romero interview announcement eight times, I have been assured that it was hot mail that messed up and not the poster. Just for the record, and so you know who to mail bomb, it was ethry@technologist.com, so you can stop mail bombing the rest of us now.

Since we are so sorry we won't take part in the juvenile revenge bombings that are customary for this sort of stuff!"

QUAKE LORDS- FALLEN AGAIN

I've just heard from Cp-Choad that Clan Pendragon beat the full might of the Quake Lords in their huge friendly against them last week. Check the CP homepage for more details, or last week's NFTF archives for my report on the exceedingly close previous game in this series.

LINUX USERS, READ THIS (APPARENTLY)

Pyro.BB emails me about a great new device CC-Dibbler has created for Linux users. Since I frankly haven't got a clue what he's talking about (some might say I just haven't got a clue), I'll let him explain:

"Dibbler has written a shell script front end to QStat that runs in a linux virtual terminal (where we have to run QWCL from) and creates a browsable list of servers.

For more details, check out his page about it

I think a lot of linux QW players would find this useful, as the QSpy for linux is not very useful when running QWCL."

Well, there you go. If it's useful, don't forget to thank the nice man.

OXFORD VS THE ALL-STARS

Those of you with long memories may recall that about two months back I mentioned the Oxford Intercollege League. Well, it's still going on, and DMS has just emailed me about an amusing incident therin:

"Remember the Oxford Intercollege League? Well one team was doing far too well, so it was decided to sub in an all star cast to replace the team who were about to be thrashed by the league leaders. This cast included Sujoy, Nightwing, JB, and myself- and as you can imagine wiped the floor! The opposition didn't find out about the stunt till after their captain (ADZE) challenged a player for a duel, and Sujoy obliged to thoroughly demoralise him."

If you want more details about that game (and they're quite fun), check out the report

SPLASH.

DC-Loki brings this curious phemomenon to my attention:

"I've been playing a bit recently sort of experimenting and I've noticed a rather annoying little reoccurring glicth with QW- well, I'm not sure it's Quakeworld's fault.

Anyway, if I play one on one(me on my 28800 modem) against an LPB, I've noticed that when I'm running around and no one is shooting everything is OK, but as soon as I find the other player and they start shooting I get flooded; my modem connection goes to pieces, and sometimes (during my last ukool match) disconnects.

I know that my opponents are not intentionally flooding me but their connections are. I've tried this with several LPBs, all with the same result, and I've even found one modem player who does the same thing.

What I was wondering is has anyone else noticed this, is there anything that can be done stop it and finally, knowing that modem players get flooded by LPBs, is the combined ukool league a fair contest?

Anyone should be able to repeat this bug easily- just join a one on one server with an LPB and round around and get them to shoot at or near you and just watch your connection die."

So, anyone know anything about that?

UKCL- THEY'RE WELL UP TO DATE.

If you find that the Quake Perfect UKCL pages are a little out of date, you might want to try their alternative location at www.poison.co.uk/ukcl/. John Burton has recently updated them.

Oh, results haven't been updated because John's still waiting on hafl a dozen Clans to send in results. Come on, people!

THE X- I WAS A LITTLE UNFAIR...

Following my comment that The X have had a bad run of luck in the MCW, Extreme mails me to tell me that they have, in fact, only lost one game so far. Oops. Sorry...

Oh, and DC apparently had a harder game that was immediately apparent against Dominion, saying "The Doms were a tough opponent. ". Even I didn't mean what I said about QUTA beating them- that was a typo. Anyway, with a score in the event of DOM 150 QUTA 16, I suspect they're not that worried. Thanks to Salamander(?) for correcting me.

Whilst I'm adjusting typos, I should point out that in fact Nick and BoyWonder work for Brann, not ftech. Sorry again...

TEN PINTS A' HEAVY, JIMMY.

Yes, it's another announcement on the Quake Gathering in Scotland. I'm really going to get in trouble with my Scottish readers one day...

Anyway, for more details, I'll hand over to the man with the dubious accent (Highlander joke), RefuX:

"Well I've had a fantastic response from all you Quake Players! I met with the owner of Reality-X today and we worked out some stuff- like the date!

The Date:

Saturday June 28th. This gives us enuf time to make sure everything is working perfectly, and also contact some people for 'g00dies'.

The Place:

Reality-X is at 54 Broughton St, Edinburgh. It is 10mins walk from both Train and Bus/Coach station. Parking is also easy in that area. They have 16 (20 if needed) p166's and also 4 VR headsets. (which work with Quake)

The Plan:

The gathering will start at 4pm and go onto 12midnite. After midnite we'll be heading out to hit the town. The day will basically involve lots of DM playing and we will be having some CTF and DM tourneys. We'll also trying out all those other networked games: Interstate 76, XvT, Diablo, C&C, etc, etc..
So much to do, and only 8hours to do it in!

The Cost:

A measly 10pound note from your sweaty grasp for 8hours of pure pleasure. Interested?: So far I have about 30people on my 'interested' list. We will limit the total number of 'playing' guests to 40 as this ensures a 2:1 Person:Computer ratio. So if you are interested, you had better get an email to me FAST!"

Aye, and a packet of tatties with that.

MCW WEEK 3- ROUNDUP

The third week of the Modem Clan War saw some major shakeups going on within the league. Obviously, the biggest surprise of the week was the defeat of the Quake Lords in an extraordinarily close game with the CIX Clan, which they won 102-100 in the last ten seconds. Despite the fact that this game was dogged with out-of-game problems, this narrow victory for CIX shows that despite the loss of Coerj, they are still a powerful and formidable Clan who cannot be taken lightly in the Clan War.

More details about that game can be found on Sheol's Quake pages.

In the other major game of the week, Demonic Core crushed dark horses Dominion 212-124. Dominion are a Clan with a very low profile, but many people, myself amongst them, were tipping them as a possible dark horse to win the league. With this victory, DC have clearly established either that DOM are not likely top-place candidates, or that they themselves are the strongest Clan in the league: to find out which, we'll have to watch their games against other top-ranked Clans like CIX or QPD.

QPD won easily against the capable Desperados, 164 - 14. They haven't appeared to be seriously tested yet, and it'll be interesting to see how they fare when they come up against other high-ranking Clans- have they merely not had challenging opponents or are they truly as capable as they seem?

The Jedi Knights confirmed their position as serious top eight candidates, beating The X, who have had a run of bad results recently, 167-126. Vengeance suffered another serious loss, losing to Clan Corpus 204-39, and definitely appear to have lost the skill which propelled them up the ranks of the last MCW. They now look like candidates for a place, at best, in the early teens.

Both the Mere Mortals and fellow underdogs BOG pulled surprises out of their hats, with the Mortals beating Clan Dogz by a considerable margin, 174-90, and BOG fighting the Fallen Angels to a very close loss, 200-191 to the Angels. Quake United Tiger Attack have continued their surprising run of luck or skill, beating the unchallenging Legion Of The Insane 236-84 and the possibly more dangerous Biker Klan 74-69. It could be interesting to see QUTA against more challenging opposition, like Minos or the Desperados- they might pull a surprise out of their - um- whiskers.

Week 4 looks to be a quieter week for the top-end Clans, with most of the interesting matches happening lower down the skill levels. Bog play Mere Mortals on Thursday, which should be an even and entertaining match, whilst QUTA are pitted against the Dominion for might possibly be a shock result on Wednesday. With Clan Corpus pitted against the surprisingly tough Jedi Knights, it'll be a time for the top Clans to recuperate, whilst others in the league face their crucial matches.

IRC HASSLES

Following various events in the IRCnet channel #quake connected with allegedly powertripping ops, there appears to have been a general decision to boycott #quake and instead use #quake.uk. I'm staying neutral on this issue, but I'm telling you so that you can make up your own mind.

It's a pity when things like this happen. Could the people involved (not just the UK people- everyone) please sort this out so I can go back to using one IRC channel?

GROFFY AND BOYWONDER- THE FRAGBOOK FRENZY

Yes, not one but both of the FTech crew, Boywonder and Groffy, aka Nick of UKCL fame, have started what they charmingly call a "fragbook". Fairly obviously, these are-uh- books of frags, or rather games, in- oh, go and check them out yourself. Groffy's Fragbook and BoyWonder's Fragbook (currently residing within Quake Perfect, but soon to have an independant existence), that is.

MORE DEMOS...

The Upload section of the NFTF demo archive is now up. If you have a demo you'd like to submit to the NFTF Demo Archive, FTP it to ftp://131.111.195.49/d/public/nomad/incoming, and in the next couple of days I'll download it, check it out and most likely add it to the demo archive. DON'T email demos to me- 33.6 connection...

On a related matter, we've got our first submitted demo up. I won't mention every demo that goes up in the Archive, but this one, showing Sujoy in a thrilling battle against DC.Danold, is worth it. Check it out.

NFTF PORTRAIT GALLERY- UP SOON!

Yes, I'm working on it at the moment- with any luck, it should appear tomorrow. However, to make it as good as possible, I'd like to ask two things.

Firstly, if you have any photos of any Quakers scanned, email me them or point them out on the Web.

Secondly, I'm also hoping to add a "Location" field to the Gallery. I'd like to ask readers to email me with your location in the UK at least, and preferably the locations of any other Quakers you know. The aim here is to make organising LAN parties easier, which can only be a good thing.

STITCH THIS, JIMMY...

Following the success of the Quakeathon and the Clanmeet in London, RefuX is organising a Scottish Quake Gathering. I'll hand over to him for more details:

"I'm holding a Scottish Quake Gathering one weekend.

There is this happ'n 'Multiplayer Internet Gameplaying Outpost' in Edinburgh, which has 16 cyrix p166 (soon to be p200 ). They also have 4 VR Headsets for inter/networked Quake, which I must admit I'm dying to try out! The guy running it is VERY interested holding a Scottish Quake gathering. Maybe even a weekly thing.

Could anyone in the Edinburgh area who is interested in meeting people from the Scottish Quake scene mail me?"

IT'S HERE...

Yes, the thing you've all been waiting for- the NFTF Demo Archive is up at last! Yes, now you too can thrill to Sujoy destroying everything in sight at Shoot And Surf, and laugh heartily at my pathetic attempts to find a rocket launcher on Death32...

Seriously, I'm aiming to archive as many demos from top UK players as I can find. There are quite a few in there now, but I want more. Please, if you've got a LAN or a low-ping connection, record some deathmatch, one on one or whatever demos and I'll add them to the archive.

Anyway, enjoy. Thanks to FK-J'honi-Bo for the FTP space.

UKOOL- SUJOY VS FRAGGA REPORT

Yes, the titans have clashed once again. Here's Sujoy's report on the mammoth UKOOL battle:

"I played my ukool match with Fragga today (sunday) and won it barely 9 to 8 on dm2.

I was confident after about 7 minutes with a solid score of 8-0, but I collapsed and Fragga scraped back into it, levelling the score at 8-8. With the timer reading 10 seconds to go I made a desperate jump for the quad and found Fragga running beneath me into the large lava room. I chased after him firing quad rockets (but missing) and trying to avoid his minefield of grenades. In the last 0.5 seconds I managed a hit with a quad rocket winning the game 9-8.

This was probably the best game I've ever played, and although I know I had a ping advantage I only scraped through at the end."

Congratulations to Sujoy, and commiserations to Fragga. I'm looking forward to their next meeting...

CLANMEET UPDATE

Uther Pendragon (the once and possibly future leader of Clan Pendragon, currently leading Team Pendragon) emails me with this:

He tells me that it's a banner to advertise the UK Clanmeet II, and asks that if people are coming to the Clanmeet they put it up on their pages, with a link to the Clanmeet homepage. Well, done that.

He also asks people to email him again if they're coming. To save time, I'll just say I'm certainly going to be there now. It should be very cool.

UK/SWEDEN CONTROVERSY- UPDATE

I've had some more communication from Sweden on the matter of the recent UK/Sweden international, which we won handily. Evildead, the Swdish organiser, says:

"My planning stinked, and due to that we unfortunately came with an unprepared team, that was way easier to beat than it should have been. Not only that, due to our player problems, that got worse during the match, we suffered in both parts of the match. However, soon there's a rematch coming up, and then we will be better prepared. I promise you. "

I'm not going to go into this any further here. If you want more info, check the UK and Swedish team homepages for more details.

THE MORNING AFTER...

Well, we won. Just a little. In case you haven't seen them yet, here are the screenshots of the ends of both games.

Away Leg- UK 533 Swe 451

Home Leg- UK 874 Swe 333

If you want more details on the match, there are also match stats available- NFTF's home and away stats, and Dibbler's UK-Sweden Stats page.

Obviously, everyone in the UK is very pleased with this victory, in spite of Sweden's claims of difficulties during the games. Amongst others, Spudgun contacted me about them:

"Some of us had connection problems. I got dragged from my computer by the police (there had been a break-in at school and thus everyone had to leave). They didn't care I was playing a real match- pigs! I am sure we'll meet again, though, if the UK team would like to."

Here's what Angel , the UK administrator for the match, had to say about that:

"A day before the match I was receiving email from Sweden saying they were having problems cos some of their players couldn't make the match and therefore to postpone it...obviously this was way too late for us to agree to another postponement as players had made a lot of sacrifices to make saturday possible...Plus we were missing some of our first team too:Boywonder,Fragga,Pyro .However we said we wouldn't mind playing a rematch with them because we knew this would be the general moan "we didn't field our best players...blah..de...blah"

Then i got email back from Evildead saying about a rematch:

"I count on that we don't need to :)I've got some new intelligence, and it says that you're not as good as we've thought afterall :) "

and also just before the match:

"I don't want to hear lag-complaints from any of the teams. There will of course be quite high pingtimes, that's why we play on two servers. Our server is connected without bottlenecks directly to Sunets backbone, much better than that we cannot offer. If you're getting high ping, it's probably your line that sucks, not our server, and that's not our problem."

So I found the Swedish attitude quite arrogant throughout our contact and its a good thing that we whipped them big time and if there is a rematch, I guess we'll do it again!

Maybe they didn't read the message on our website too carefully ....when we said there's gonna be PAIN!....and now they're feeling it bad. Anyway, I don't want to gloat at all but I think we've got the makings of a most formidable squad and in the near future expect to see us pitching our might against the other continental sides as well as Canada and The US. "

I stayed on far too long last night for my RSI, and so I'm not going to be writing the report on the game for a couple of days, if at all. If you want details of what happened earlier than that, here's the edited version of John B's excellent commentary in #ukquake.

Oh, one more thing-

WE ROCK!

Well done, all in the team. Bring on the Yanks.

UK-SWEDEN- GETTEM, BOYS!

Yes, at 9:00pm the first UK International Match will begin, and News From The Front will be offering live updates throughout the evening. So, what are you waiting for? Head on over to the NFTF UK-Sweden Live! Page, now!

OOPS!

In yesterday's rush report on the Ql vs CIX game, it was of course Dark Raven, not Dark Angel, who was wrestling with his mouse. Sorry to both of them.

MORE UKCL RESULTS

In week 12, Fk just beat TFS 188 to 169. Well done.

AND QPD TOO!

Well, well, well. The giants are falling like ninepins this weekend. At 4:00 pm today, Clan Corpus played UKCL weekend favourites Quake Police Department, on Ukcldm1, and won in a shocking result, 240 - 175 to CC.Clan Leader RawMeat attributed their win to "Quality players, practice, tactics, skill and GIBBINGS!"

RawMeat said "They played well, and I thought they were catching us, but our players took charge. Communication played a key part, and tactics: we had been on a server previously and played a practice game to hone our strategy."

CC-Onyx added "Someone who made a big difference was the new LPB we have recruited, Toxic." Toxic, recruited by RawMeat after a stunning performance in the UK Team practise on Tuesday, is a relative newcomer to the Clan scene, but 'Meat says "I reckon he will be one of the best players around in the UK." For his part, Toxic is very happy with his new Clan, as he might well be after such a stunning win.

Danman, leader of the QPD, says

" Well, QPD was hurt a little by the shock defeat from CC. Their team strategy was superior to ours. However, it doesnt actually change anything.

Assuming QL make it with a perfect record, it will still comes down to a showdown between us (assuming we get through FK and KoD) if our frag difference remains as it is. We are going to use this opportunity to take stock of our own team tactics, make some general improvements, and come back fighting.

It aint over till the fat lady sings."

So, Clan Corpus. Will they, as CC-Treznor (another recent recruit, this time from the Weedkillers) says, "Storm the MCW now that we have got ourselves back on track, and ... storm the UKCL"? Or is this just a flash in the pan?

We'll have to wait and see. One thing is sure, though. With outspoken, dedicated players like Rawmeat, Treznor, Onyx and Toxic around, it won't be boring.

THE QUAKE LORDS FALL!

Yes, I hear that CIX won their Modem Clan War game against QL yesterday. According to Sujoy, both Clans were beset by difficulties, with QLs dropping left, right and centre and CIX-DarkRaven having his mouse break half way through the game (been there...). Despite these difficulties, the game was apparently incredibly close, with CIX-Lord Soth winning it for the CIXers with a Quad Damage rampage ten seconds before time. CIX won 102-100, thus becoming the first Clan to beat the Quake Lords this year.

Congratulations!

DOM VS DC RESULT (MCW)

I seem to have upset the Demonic Core crew by suggesting that Dominion could have beaten them on Wednesday...

The actual score, from a match played on DM2, I believe, was 212-124 to DC. DC.Moose 2000 said

"Splutters of righteous indignation! OK, so we didn't actually slaughter them, as such, but...

Seriously, they played well, and we didn't control the level as we might have liked, but it was a victory nonetheless."

Thanks to DC.Osiris for the score and Moose for his comments. Now we're waiting for the CIX vs QL report.

Oh, and apologies for my bad grammar- I should, of course, have said that "the DOM team definitely could have won the match., not "the DOM team could have definitely won the match". Uurgh. Do I know nothing?

UK CLANMEET UPDATE

I've been asked to give the next Clanmeet another mention, so here goes.

The Uk Clanmeet is just that- a meeting of all Quake Clans, in Real Life, for an afternoon of drinking, talking, drinking, playing Quake, drinking- you get the idea. The next one will take place in London, on May 5th, and everyone remotely connected with the Quake scene is invited. For more details, check the Clanmeet Web Page, hosted by Uther Pendragon.

I will be there at the next meet, and I'm looking forward to- yes- meeting all of you. See you there.

CLAN ZED XED

An email comes through from John Burton:

"I've had an email from clan-Zed this morning informing me that they no longer exist. This means that there is an opening in division 3 of the 4X League.

Does any clan who either failed to let me know they wanted in, or didn't get an application off in time, want to take the position?

The first week of the 4X League is this weekend, so nothing has been missed yet......"

I know from the Clanlist on NFTF that there are over 50 Clans in the UK. Surely one of them might like to enter the 4x league?

CLANLIST UPDATE

The Clanlist, maintained by BennyBoy of the Desperados, has been updated. Check it for details on all the current UK Clans.

UPCOMING BEGINNER'S GUIDE

For a long time I have been worrying about the lack of new blood coming into Quake. As a result, I and others on the UK Quake mailing list are starting a selection of events. series and articles aiming to help beginners at Internet Quake enjoy the game.

I, among other things, am writing a complete guide to UK Quake for the beginner, including details on Clans, IRC, competitions, playing strategies and everything else connected with Quake or Quakeworld. If you have any tips that might make entry into the UK Quake scene easier for beginners, please email me with an article, a couple of paragraphs or simply a few tips.

DEATH- COMING SOON. APPARENTLY.

Foz emails me with the news that he has started a new Clan, the Deathbringers. If you want to challenge them, email him or check their Web page.

Apparently they'll "rip your head off and %^&* down your neck". Well, that's a relief. I thought they might be confrontational about this.

UKCL WEEKEND AND 4X LEAGUE

The UKCL Weekend League has a couple of interesting games scheduled for this weekend. On the Saturday, TFS play the Frag Kings: given the Frag Kings have suffered a couple of unexpected losses recently, and TFS are a capable and famously low-ping Clan, this should be a tough and well-fought game for both sides.

Meanwhile, on the Sunday, CIX play Clan Pendragon. Again, this is going to be a fairly even game between two Clans who have been lagging just behind the League leaders throughout the 12 weeks of the Weekend League, and the fight between tough, well-trained CIX, recently weakened by the loss of Coerj to QPD and Clan Pendragon, who have improved from being one of the weaker Clans in the UK to a force capable of challenging the Quake Lords last week should be impressive.

The new 4X league also kicks off this week, with tough, evenly-matched games scheduled in all three leagues throughout the weekend. It should be interesting to see how well the new format works in its first extended test, and whether the various Clans involved will take advantageof the opportunities offered for diplomacy and deals with other Clans.

With the first international match between the UK and Sweden scheduled this weekend, it looks like it'll be fascinating to watch anything happening in the UK Quake scene this weekend.

MCW WEEK 2 RESULTS

The second week of the Modem Clan War held one very interesting result, with The Dominion beating the not incapable Hellbringers by a convincing 210-108 frags. With this result, the Dominion, including amongst their members players such as Kevlar, of Shoot And Surf, and Salamander, Ladder administrator for the UK Quake ClanRing, have firmly established themselves as possibilities for the winning place in the MCW. I haven't got the result from the DOM vs DC game last night yet, but now it looks like the DOM team could have definitely won the match. If so, QPD and QL had best be watching out.

Minos beat the Weedkillers in a close match 156-94, with the Weedkillers evidently weakened by the loss of their LPBs, and Minos showing their erratic ability in Clan matches once again. Clan Corpus won against the Quake United Tiger Attack by a relatively narrow 100-60, with the QUTA again showing more ability than their UKCL placings might indicate. Possibly QUTA could be heading for a middle-ranked position in the MCW, rather than the lower position one might have expected.

Demonic Core and the Quake Police Department both won their matches easily, playing against the Legion Of The Insane and Mere Mortals, both weaker Clans, respectively, whilst the Quake Lords had more trouble against the Jedi Knights (MCW Special entry coming), who are proving themselves to be a very capable if lesser-known Clan. The result from that match was a 164-104 win for the QLs.

With Demonic Core against the Dominion and the Quake Lords against CIX, this week's games are very exciting. Look for a report on them as soon as I get the scores.

News From The Front and all written material therin is copyright 1997 The Nomad This page has had visitors since 26th May 1997 Report News to nomad@easynet.co.uk