The official 9L soundtrack. No, really!

 

 

Admittedly the season ending was anti-climactic, as saunamen were unable to field a team and we had to take a forfeit win in the final. Nevertheless we proved ourselves by defeating them convincingly in regular season play and our score sheet for the season is perfect with six played wins, no losses or draws. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re worthy champions and the overall strongest season 15 team.

 

 

Franky prepares a traditional Swedish dish: French Lerk chops.

 

 

Ingame we carried ourselves well this season, although lack of regular practice left our play very haphazard at times. Between marko’s shotgun, franky’s Fade, s4’s skulk and the all-round play from the rest of us, we were able to dominate most matches through raw skill alone. Our alien side turned out statistically perfect: we didn’t lose a single alien round in season 15 officials. Of course, our alien play wasn’t actually perfect. We made lots of mistakes and had some very close games (Week 6 vs. CAL on orbital comes to mind!) but in the end we always managed to outperform the opponent and take the win. As the team’s alien comm, that’s something I’m very pleased with obviously.

 

 

Commanding. Not for the faint of heart.

 

 

Our marine side struggled more, however. Dux did a great job adapting to the comm chair, but he’s a field player at heart and re-educating yourself to be a perfect commander in one season simply isn’t possible. Combine that with weak team play and lots of silly mistakes in the field and you have the reason why our marine half wasn’t as reliable as perhaps it should’ve been this season. Fortunately for us, marko is a one-man marine team.

 

 

Nerf marko plz!!

 

 

Outside of the game things weren’t so idyllic unfortunately, as inactivity hit us just as hard as all the other division 1 teams. I suppose it was a combination of people having other priorities and the fact that for the last month of the league it was practically impossible for us to find opponents for practice matches. When there’s nobody to play, it’s difficult to get the motivation to show up for matches instead of doing something else. At times we had so few people on we had to use mercs for officials — practically unheard of in any previous incarnations of 9L. It’s disappointing for me of course, having put so much time into organizing the team, but understandable.

 

 

Six weeks of this was “fun”.

 

 

We still had a lot of fun when we actually did play though and this is without a doubt one of the nicest groups of people I’ve played with in the past seven years. When you put together a new team from a lot of players who don’t really know each other, there’s always the risk you won’t gel socially. Although we all knew who each other were, many of us had never teamed up together before, so this was a bit of an experiment. Fortunately things turned out great in the end.

 

 

Team spirits are off to a good start!

 

 

As usual with 9L, the IRC and Ventrilo (TeamSpeak actually… the times, they are a changin) antics were great. From the endless queries about Tweadle’s — our lost leader who randomly turned up for the semi final and then disappeared again — current whereabouts to terrorizing s4 with steam calls and Doctor’s failure to quit NS, there was no lack of “teh funnay”.

 

 

Fuck your three Hives, NOW we dance!

 

 

I’d like to thank Doctor, dux, enigmatic, franky, GibbZ, mOkezi, lagga, Tweadle and s4 for the good times this season. Hopefully you guys will stick around next year and who knows, maybe even play some NS…2? Well, maybe not just yet, but stay in touch and don’t let the IRC priv chan die! Thanks to our opponents too and the ENSL staff of course, for yet another good tournament in this rather dead game. Lastly, to all of you reading this, I wish you a merry Christmas and an EXCELLENT new year!