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Winter WonderLAN 2020

Halo 5: Guardians · House LANister

📅 Jan 11, 2020

Sixteen people at Localhost in Philadelphia on a Saturday in January, and the LAN where the format stopped following the free-for-all. Captains had always been the free-for-all's top four; from this one they were the four highest all-time 4v4 kills per minute among everyone with two or more LANs behind them, which freed the draft from the LAN floor entirely. It ran in the Telegram group over a lunchtime three weeks earlier, on 18 December 2019, pick by pick with commentary between them -- so teams could practice together, name themselves and print shirts if they wanted, none of which had been possible when four strangers met at a station at noon. The time that freed up went into the bracket: best-of-seven for the whole tournament rather than just the final, floated and widened in the same thread the same afternoon. The free-for-all changed too, its fourth round splitting the sixteen into a top-eight championship and a bottom-eight toilet bowl, each one game, winner take all, the earlier rounds ignored. Entry went to $60, and what each prize was got argued out in the group and settled two days before Christmas: $100 a man to the champion team, $60 and a plaque to the free-for-all champion -- who also signs the Master Chief figure the organizer carries from LAN to LAN -- and, for the winner of the bottom pool, the Master Chief Buddha in place of the most-improved-player trophy that had been planned. The MVS, a gold Magnum, goes to the highest kills per minute on the winning team.

📊 Stats