By kowa

Ted Hansson

Kowa: Dreamhack Shootmania blog

Sat 30th Jun 2012 - 1:20pm Category: Events

Alright this short but eventful journey was an impulse thing that started with ExoGenesis saying “There’s a Shootmania tournament at Dreamhack you should come down for it” and this was after I’ve been working 10hours. I gave it a thought and didn’t think much about it.

Then the next day I played some Joust, which is the duel mode in shootmania, with fazz to practice it since he was going down to play it as well. I told fazz I was going down to play but I was not thinking of going until I realized that me and fazz played so even with each other and since he is an old quake dueler that been playing at pro level in (my opinion) the most skillful duel game and also got a good amount of shootmania hours in his bag I thought he was going to be the clear favorite.

Kowa uses the force to move his mouse

I started to think about it and painted a picture in my head where fazz went down and won easily and felt that I would feel absolutely shit knowing that I could have beaten him in the finals. So I thought screw it, went to my girlfriend and gave her this awesome news and she said I would never win anyway since I’m the forever 2nd *sadface*.

After convincing her to jump on a bus at 03:45AM, stay awake for 34hours, win a tournament, go for a few beers at the after party, then go home with the bus 01:45AM next night to sleep 4hours on the way home and then write this was a splendid idea... I booked my bus ticket!

However when I attempted to do so it wouldn’t work with my bank so I pm’d fazz and after I convinced him to buy a bus ticket to someone he never met and known online for about a week and probably the only one that is able to beat him in the tournament he is playing in is a SPLENDID idea.... He booked my ticket! (We’ll see if you get your money mate).

I was playing some more to get as much practice as I could before the bus were leaving from Stockholm Central in a few hours and thought I had full control until I realized that it was Sunday which means it was 30Min's traffic so I threw on my hoodie and grabbed my bag which only contained hair wax and some candy and I don’t even use hair wax at the moment and also I’m deeply sorry ODEE but since it was in a rush and I REALLY needed to run to the train station I put on what you hate the most, crocs and socks.

When I arrived at the bus central I found out that I never saved fazz number however I knew how he looked like from a Google picture but I never found him I even know we passed each other and I thought that those glasses looked familiar but I wasn’t sure. He however must have known it was me since I was wearing “TEAM DIGNITAS” all over my clothes but I guess he thought of something else while walking next to me or maybe his glasses are fake? He finally called me 2Min's before the departure time so we found each other.

After the ~4hours super fun travel in a tiny seat... we arrived and I asked a cab where to find Scandic to get my wristband of Zaccubus and lucky us Zac and Dogbert had just arrived at the hotel when we came and met up with us to give the access to go in to Dreamhack and had a little chat before they went to bed and me and fazz went for a 45-50min walk to the event.

We arrived and headed for the Western Digital booth because Zac said it would be cool to play some on the computers there but the security guy would not let us in because there had been some theft one night earlier. With hours to kill we went to the press area for some free drinks and snacks and we basically just sat there on the couch for 5-6 hours talking and doing nothing until the booth area would open up at 10:00.

We finally sat down to get some practice going while waiting for the sign ups to start and it was still even between me and fazz and I tried secret styles without him knowing I think to see how I was going to play against him if we were to face each other in the tournament and I found a pretty good ‘tactic’ against him.

The qualification round took a lot of time and I signed up in the 4th one and won it without any problems then it was another 5-6hours to kill to wait for the other 6? qualification rounds that had no “pros” in them so they took quite some time to finish.

When I had eaten some food and had 100 smokes it was time for the playoffs to start and there I saw Cypher and Rapha joining the playoffs without qualifying, which is understandable but it made me nervous. Only until I saw Rapha play and found out it was the first time he saw the game, but I knew Cypher had been playing some but not of this 1v1 Joust mode and he was on the other side of the bracket so I hoped someone else would take him out. In the end rapha got knocked out by fazz and cypher knocked out by Zaccubus so no harm done with the decision of letting them join the playoffs stage.

I won my quarter final versus a young guy that had done well to come so far in the tournament and I knew fazz was up next in the semifinal which everyone thought was going to be the final but the admin messed up the brackets because of the quick joining of the other QL pro’s. At this time I was getting really tired and I suddenly got a migraine so I took some pills to make it somewhat better while watching the other quarterfinals and do some mind games with fazz, to be honest it did not look like it affected him at all and he looked confident but so was I.

We were the first semifinal to be played so I jumped up on stage to play an awesome game against what had become my rival. The maps were chosen random the map cycle just cycled through every game and lucky me both maps we played were the ones I had the higher win % on against him in practice this made me calm and even more confident at the same time I felt it wasn’t fair but that’s how it was.

The game was really close and epic and the last round I had the lead with 6-3 and that was the score for about 1 minute and then he came back to 7-6 (the game mode is played like first to 7 but you have to win with 2points like in tennis) and I had 3 rockets left and shot them all within 1½ second and they all hit and I knocked fazz out with 9-7 score I really recommend watching that VOD whenever it’s up because the game was really tense and close.

After the game I was shaking a little of the excitement of beating him and it may have looked like I was bad mannered towards fazz directly after the game but it was pure happiness and I even gave him the hug of love after the game.

After this I didn’t even care what happened in the finals I was satisfied with two dignitas in the finals and I would be happy whoever won of Zaccubus and me it felt like we had won already and I think Zac would agree with this. We talked while watching fazz winning the bronze match and said we would make this an epic final so just play for fun and that’s exactly what we did.

It was the most relaxed final I’ve ever played and I won it 3-1 in maps if I’m not mistaken (Yeah I lost a map where I kept falling into the water and gave away point after point) at least the audience liked to see me fall into that stupid water.... and Zac typed in game something like “it doesn’t matter how many times u take a bath you still stink” which kind of proves how relaxed the final was for us. Afterwards when I think about it I was so satisfied to beat fazz and didn’t think of that I beat Zaccubus which has been a really respectable 1v1’er in other games but I guess since we are team mates there is just love!

After the finals Sjow called me and was mad because I didn’t tell him I was at dreamhack (someone told him) and made me come to the after party to see him before we left.

It didn’t feel like a good idea, I mean after party with free bar and 31hours without sleep... Why not? We went there to say hello to everyone and the first thing that happens is Stephano throwing up all over my nice lovely green crocs and a bit of my jeans, and Bischu did not hesitate to say “hey kowa you just gained value”. Apart from that we had a good time for about 2-3hours before we had to walk to the bus a little tipsy, wasn’t hard with no sleep trust me, and we fell asleep instantly for 4hours had breakfast at McDonalds and then parted ways. Then I came home realized that I had a scar in my forehead (most likely made by fazz at the bus while I slept) wrote this, and then died in my bed!

Conclusion: I am very good at convincing people, Fazz glasses are fake or he needs new ones and he also likes to give people scars in the forehead while they sleep. When Stephano vomits all over your feet you gain value. The Western Digital, Qpad, Antec and SoundBlaster guys are really cool, QuakeLive pros can join a tournament in playoffs but they are not automatically the best at all FPS games just because they are at Quake and even though I need a haircut and wear crocs I’m still the Shootmania Champion!

All images are courtesy of Qpad.

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