Blogger ate my previous post. Bugger.

This CAPL was probably the most tiring and frustrating one ever. So coupled with the usual happiness from winning was a feeling of relief. Gamesync did surprisingly quick and good coverage of it, but I'll do a bit more from my side of the story, which covers more in detail the hiccups that we went through.

Well, at 1010, I get word that we have to start the game by 1015 or risk being DQed. Unfortunately, ice has yet to show up, rather predictably. He says he'll be down in about 10 minutes and that Lux is with him. Oh well, I guess delaying for 5 minutes isn't too bad. We're facing the prospect of DQ here since we can't present 5 players at 1015, but luckily we get away with having to start draft at 1015 and waiting for them.

More delaying. I spend a large portion of my very limited handphone usage with ice on the phone, drafting. Can't really delay much though, since the marshalls are REALLY PUSHING US. We finish drafting at 1030 and begin to set up, at which point ice and Lux are still not showing up, and apparently will show up in 15 minutes.

Fortunately, GPS is around. After delaying as much as we could, with all the drama and whatsnot, we start our first match at 1050, 4v5, with ZX, NutZ, GPS, and me (Tofu is in school, Lux is waiting for ice and they are travelling together). We leave our last computer empty. In other words, we enter the game 4v5, and leave a computer empty in hopes that ice will quickly come and take over.

Around 10 minutes into the game, ice finally comes, and takes his spot as a LEVEL ONE Enigma. Hero assignments have been rather screwed up though. Ideally, it would be ice playing Spectre, but NutZ takes this role instead, and lanes are completely changed to accomodate the fact that we have to play 4v5 for god knows how long before ice comes (thankfully he comes only at 10 minutes... I mean one gets rather distrustful about another's time estimations when they tell you they'll be there in 10 minutes, and 20 minutes later tell you they'll be there in 15 minutes, and come in 50).

The game lasts for 2 hours, in part due to many of our roles being screwed up, and ice feeding madly as Enigma. Oh well, but the drama doesn't end there.

See, as it turns out, revealled after the drafting is done in our next match, we are only allowed to register 6 men in the team, and GPS having already played the first match has to be in our team (it was meant to be Tofu, Lux, ice, ZX, NutZ, and me, with Tofu sitting out the first match as he was in school). AFTER the drafting is done, we are forced to essentially have either Tofu or Lux sit out for the entire tournament.

Oh dear. Hero assignments are screwed up yet again. Lux has to play this draft due to the essential make-or-break role he plays, and so for the first time ever, Zenith plays CAPL without Tofuboi.

Which leaves NutZ playing Tofu's hero. Fortunately, he has Tofu by his side being very annoying and helping him. Phew. Cue another really long game.

We aren't allowed to eat lunch either, since they're rushing us for being behind schedule and whatsnot. However, we get Tofu to buy a few burgers for us and chomp them down.

The semi-finals against Micronology had us pretty much on our toes since we were playing them, for the first time ever, without Tofu. It was a pretty good draft in our favour, so I guess that made for a pretty easy game.

Everyone was pretty tired by the finals. Quite honestly we didn't even do a proper draft. Then again, we didn't actually do much of a proper draft in the previous games either, except against Micronology. With Tofu missing, and some of us feeling tired, and me still feeling like we were fated to lose CAPL because of things out of my hand, we did pretty touchy-feely drafts with no plan in mind as to how to play them. The draft in the finals though, pretty much had us mostly playing heroes that we had never played before in competitions.

I'm still quite surprised we won.

Without Tofu too.

With ice feeding for 2 out of 4 games, and one of those games having him not really doing so hot either. Yes, feeding even worse then NutZ.

Actually NutZ didn't even feed a single game. Not too badly at least. Compared to ice. Bleh.

Then again, I guess I should be happy that ice and Lux even came down. Who knows what would happen if we used GPS for the other 3 matches. Although he did play a rather good KOTL against rev0.