ReflexGT6 Good LAN/Bad LAN

As the final Reflex event of 2011 draws to a close, we take you through the highlights and low lights of the event as we saw it, with feedback from players and spectators.

Good LAN - apeX

There's not much we need to say here I don't think. Anyone who watched the stream was treated to a master class in how Modern Warfare 3 looks at the top of the European scene right now. The line up looked great on paper, with arguably the two best European Call of Duty players in Gotaga and Gunshi playing in the same line up for the first time ever. apeX did not disappoint and swept aside all of their opponents with relative ease. Their finest moment probably came in the final when they took on the almost equally impressive Team Foreign and went on to make a mockery of the second place finishers with an emphatic 3-1 beating. apeX looked as dominant as any other team we've seen at their peak and I'm sure they will hope to continue this on into future competitions. A great start to life on Modern Warfare 3.

Bad LAN - apeX [GER]

Unlike their fellow organiastion mates, apeX [GER] were not expected to do great things at this tournament, however their 17th to 18th placement was most definitely not what they expected. For once though, you have to feel sorry for the Germans who really did get dealt a bad hand. After topping their group with relative ease, not dropping a map, because of the dubious Foreign vs. Fariko.Svejans match up the day before, apeX [GER] managed to draw Foreign in the Winner Bracket Round 1. A big ask for the first game of the day and in rather unsurprising fashion, Foreign came out on top. In their Loser Bracket they then came up against 3DMax, the eventual 6th place finishers from France and eventually fell short to French supremacy in a 5 game series, leaving the Germans with a rather disappointing 17th-18th placement. A bad weekend for the unlucky Germans.

Good LAN - Fariko.Yin

A team too regularly overlooked, the 2nd place finishers from EGL once again looked impressive and although they fell short of Foreign who they beat only a few weeks ago, they still looked highly worthy of their 3rd place placement. LowLandLions also had a great tournament but it speaks volumes about how far Yin have come since becoming the Fariko first time when you compare their performance to that of LLL. A good tournament for LLL but a better tournament for Fariko who will only get better with time.

Bad LAN - eXtensive

One of the pre-event hot prospects, eXtensive started out exactly as everyone expected. After easing through the group stages their first real challenge came in the form of Babas aka dzs. For a team that were so successful on Black Ops, you'd expect them to breeze past the fairly their German opponents, especially after Germany's extremely lackluster efforts on the previous Call of Duty series. eXtensive did exactly that and dropped their opponents to the Lower Bracket following a 3-1 beating. Business as usual. Then came the regularly overlooked Dutchmen, Fariko.Yin. Unfortunately for eXtensive, Fariko had other plans and it was Brainiac's band of merry men triumphed over the French all star line up.

eXtensive now found themselves in the Lower Bracket with a lot of work to do. Their next opponents were an English team called Infintio who so far had been coasting through the Loser Bracket. Still, for the Frenchmen whose players had won more events on Black Ops than everyone else in the venue combined, this should have been a fairly standard match up. Once again things didn't go to plan for eXtensive with Galvz and his team mates delivering a fatal blow, leaving the SlayR's and their former MythiX team mates crashing out the tournament in a very disappointing 9th-12th place.

Good LAN - 3DMax

Why not Foreign you ask? Well Foreign more or less did everything that was expected of them during the tournament. 3DMax on the other hand had an exceptional Sunday beating apeX [GER], Lekker and Babas (dzs) before finally falling at the hands of Fariko.Yin. Their run of games was by no means easy and despite all their efforts to make it hard for themselves after a poor outting on the Saturday, Agonie and friends definitely made up for it on the Sunday and did themselves more than proud.

Bad LAN - Lekker

The popular English and Dutch outfit will probably claim that they didn't really care about the tournament, after all, they had already parted ways before the tournament event took place. The team's first real blow was dealt only days before the event with the news that Vintage would not be able to attend. Lekker found their more than capable replacement in DareDevil. Lekker dominated their group and looked like they were deserving of their pre-tournament predictions. A narrow victory over a very evenly matched LowLandLions paved the way with the most highly anticipated match up of the Saturday, apeX vs. Lekker. You could put the result down to a late start, you could put it down to Amsterdam antics but however you look at it, the dominate apeX were in fine form and while the match was closer than the score line suggests, apeX deserved to win and win they did leaving Lekker in the Lower Bracket after a 3-0 defeat.

Come Sunday a tired Lekker returned to the venue to take a challenging set of opponents in the form of 3DMax. The Frenchmen were running through the Lower Bracket and were much improved on their early start in the groups where they looked fairly mediocre. The match up produced a tight game which surprisingly went in favour of the Frenchmen in a series that went to 3-2. Whatever way you look at this, for a line up that had so much promise on paper, 9th-12th is undoubtedly a placement they'll hope to forget.

Good LAN - XPX

When XPX first appeared on stream they were just a Portuguese team at their first LAN. While apeX were undoubtedly still warming up, XPX definitely came out firing on all cylinders and gave apeX probably their closest contest of the whole event. It's fair to say that XPX got the rub of the green in the bracket and probably couldn't have engineered an easier route for themselves if they paid Xorta but for their first LAN event, they can definitely look back and hold their heads up high. Eventually LLL stamped out the Portuguese run of luck but 5th-6th place for their first LAN event in what was the most competitive Reflex event to date is something to be proud of. Hopefully this isn't the last we've seen of this team.

Bad LAN - Fariko.Svejans

This will undoubtedly be a point of conversation for a while now. After dramas at three LAN events in a row, just how far do you have to enforce rules? At 5-0 up on CTF Foreign made the mistake of using Sniper Rifles with Extended Magazines. Decerto rules of course state that Extended Magazines are banned for all weapons that are not SMGs. Of course what this actually means is that Extended Magazines are banned for ARs. That didn't stop Fariko.Svejans claiming the map as a direct result of this. While sportsmanship was at an all time low, Fariko.Svejans went on to clutch the SnD and actually beat Foreign. It's fair to say Foreign were definitely in the wrong here and their stupidity definitely cost them, as well as a number of teams in the tournament. This rigorous enforcement of rules is not actually why Foreign.Svejans have received Bad LAN however. The real reason is that despite beating Foreign in the group stages they still managed to place last. You could argue though that at least they got their taste of glory, regardless of how it was achieved.

Good LAN - Attendance

ReflexGT6 sold out pretty quickly and if it weren't a few teams letting the tournament down, we probably would have seen a full 32 teams in attendance this weekend. Still, 28 teams is still the most teams we've ever seen at a Reflex event to date. A proud day for Xorta and his team who once again delivered an enjoyable tournament for everyone involved.

Bad LAN - Schedule and 360 Hardware

With an ambitious schedule came issues with scheduling and while some teams weren't affected, for others there was an extremely late finish on the Saturday night with the final game completing around 1:30. The schedule wasn't helped by the Xbox 360s which, as usual were playing up over the weekend and a number of people have reported delays caused by repeated failures. A seemingly recurring theme at LAN events as the Xbox 360 continues to seem like it has a mind of its own. A number of people also reported issues recovering their accounts, with it either taking ages or not working at all.

Good LAN - Value for Money

Once again Reflex rolled out an ambitious tournament set up and despite a couple of late finishes, it's fair to say they delivered on their original plans. Every team in attendance enjoyed at least 3 matches over the course of the weekend, as well as a memorable LAN atmosphere and the usual production values we've all come to expect from a Reflex event.

Bad LAN - Wi-Fi for Press

An unfortunate feature of Reflex in recent times has been the inability for members of press, particularly Decerto to maintain internet access. While we still rolled out a fair amount of content, there were periods where we were completely unable to get online. A minor point but perhaps something to resolve for future events.

Good LAN - Commentary

While the jury is still out of a_spec, with a collection of mixed reviews for his weekend work, the quality of commentary by the likes of Oli 'ReL' Whitfield has definitely come on leaps and bounds since he made his casting debut only a few months ago. No longer just a popular YouTube personality, ReL is now at the forefront of console casting in Europe and this weekend was possibly his best work to date.

Bad LAN - Food

The food at Reflex has always been a negative point, with Weesp offering very little in the way of alternatives and the venue food being fairly dire. A few vending machines somewhat make up for what is otherwise a rather low standard of eating over the course of the event. Ordering a take away is definitely the best decision.

Good LAN - Modern Warfare 3

A lot of us waited with baited breath but it seems like the first official outting of Modern Warfare 3 in Europe was met with a positive response. While it's worth noting that everything was placed online technically, with the world's leading experts in the field of psychology still scratching their heads about IW's decisions when rolling out MW3's LAN settings, the game played well on Reflex's hardware and went some of the way at least to giving us peace of mind about the future of the series. With patches already in the works, the future may be bright after all for the latest release to the Call of Duty series.

Bad LAN - Location

While a lot of the problems with food can be attributed to the bad location, the Kaos LAN Centre is also a bad location for a number of other reasons. While being situated near Amsterdam is undoubtedly a reason to attend for a number of participants, the actual LAN centre is still far from ideal. This was best highlighted when a late night finished left a team stuck without public transport and after waiting in the cold for 45 minutes, the team paid a considerable amount for their taxi home.

Good LAN - Organisation Support

I think this speaks volumes about the development of the console scene and the recognition it is receiving in Europe in the bigger picture of eSports. Reflex had a huge percentage of players attending on the support of an organisation, whether it be with LAN support, salaries, t-shirts, hardware, or maybe even some wise words and a guiding hand, whatever was received, it was received in spades by the attendees of Reflex and hopefully this is a trend that will continue a long way into the future.

Bad LAN - Spectator Experience

For various reasons which are yet to be established, Reflex changed how players could watch the event and only coaches, (with passes purchased for 10€) were able to stand behind the players. The rest of the area was taped off and spectators could only stay in the centre spectator area. Considering the increase in numbers as well, this meant that games were both hard to spectate and it was sometimes too congested in the middle.

Good LAN - Xorta

From a neutral perspective, it's great to see Xorta doing well. Anyone who knows him will know he is one of the nice guys of eSports and an extremely bright guy as well so it's great to see someone like this doing well in something he clearly has passion for. Hopefully Reflex will continue to expand and be an even bigger success in the future.

Bad LAN - Stream Music

A final point from someone who was sat at home. I know music taste varies from one gamer to the next but it's fair to say that we were subjected to a collection of the worst music ever, including what seemed like a lot of Jamiroquai. I'm not sure whose playlist that music was being played from but whoever it belonged to needs to have their laptop quarantined for the sanity of future Reflex stream spectators.

-

So that wraps up yet another ReflexGT event. Rumours are already circulating that the next event will be held in Q1 of 2012, gamers will not have to wait long for the next event. As always Decerto.net will be on hand to cover the event and bring you all the action as and when it happens.

Please follow us on Twitter for the latest news, articles and media!

Good read.

Well played apeX.

Nice one XPX and good opinion's. So shocked Germany got slammed on LAN apart from dzs' old team. Drop SK/apeX current team and get them in. Nothing against any of you lot I just personally think you're trash offline

XPX had a good Saturday then sadly fell to bits on Sunday, still did well just didn't seem the same team.

Hopefully they come to the next EGL

Nice to know my commentatings getting better I had no idea what people were thinking throughout both days as I couldn't see the stream chat at all... Im sure there were a fair few mistakes in the 20+ hours of commentating (or however long it was) but really enjoyed doing it. Was so funny commentating with A_Spec haha.

Commentating the best moment of the tournament

Gutted I didn't get a chance to attend, it's on my priority list to attend the next one.

I heard you slayed more than dragons this weekend Rel, Momo leaked me a scene from the next vplog.......

You've already said that once.

Just wondering how many Reflex events you've actually been to? Or in what way Reflex is better than EGL so we can try to improve rather than you just posting that everywhere.

You seem to have some sort of hardcore hatred towards EGL haha. What's the deal?