Heya,
Thanks everyone for making it out to the event, that was a lot of people. I am pretty exhausted still, including the after party ran about a 24 hour day. Good times though. Big shout out to Cole and Seattle, Tacoma, Eugene, and Missoula. Also to Nelson holding it down for Medford, lol. Thanks to Dojo Sports for the 5v5, and Team Khaos for the streaming. Shout to the commentators, I liked the Omne/pdx_jive duo on the mic, we’ll hit that up again. Finally holla to Ground Kontrol for continuously supporting this thing. This was one of the largest turn outs Portland has seen for the Slugfest series, aside from participants in the tournament, we had a fair amount of casual players and spectators. Definitely a high energy event, it was a more of everything event. More people, more events, more venues, more gaming, more hype, more side projects (my favorite were the interviews), and more time taken up. Hell, even more beer. Bunch of trashed peeps by the end of the tourney, looking at you Seattle and Theo ; ) Finally congrats to our new Slugfest champ, SamB. He’s been due for it, as a Portlander it was nice to see P-town take it with Seattle in the house.
Anyway, lots of stuff went down, it was a packed house for sure. I was in between locations quite a bit, and unfortunately after 5pm missed out on much of the action at Ground Kontrol as we were over at Backspace with the under 21’s. Shout out to the kids for sure, there was a lot of fire there. I remember being that age and sizing up the players in my age bracket as I knew they would be my competition for the long term. Good to see that energy. There was a Minor’s tournament later as well, here’s the top 3. There were a few sandbaggers, they shoulda given them the boot for being over 21, lol. I look forward to seeing these guys kill it in future events, some of them are doing it already.
Minor’s Tourney
- Virsaga
- Alix
- Scubba Steve
I was able to see the end of the teams tournament, congrats to Old School for taking it, OGs represent. Mixed Niggas and Big Bootie Hoes got paid as well, with Hopeful Bailey in 4th. Somewhere around 5pm I got the boot from the singles tourney by Yangsing, but held to my pledge of rolling with Fei for the entire event. Got some work to do with that character, but am all in for Fei now. From there I was down at Backspace, thanks to Wedge for helping overlook it as well. I can’t report first hand most of the stuff after 5 at GK, I knew there were some ups and downs however. Got back right after grand finals, it of course had come down to the veteran Jason Cole and Portland’s own SamB. B took it, and from there it rolled right into the after party. It looked like a rampage of drinking and getting loose. This led into my favorite part of the evening, mainly the interviews. Slash and I ran outside and started pulling people aside to get exclusives, interviewing everyone that evening from Virsaga to Nelson to Riki-Oh. Mackenzie’s interview was a lot of fun, he basically did all of the work lol. We finally wrapped up Ground Kontrol with a big clean up of the event area, the place had been trashed pretty good over the course of the day. I headed home, soon the after after party kicked in. That was good times, a lot of people and a lot of shenanigans. The one/two button trolling was good, this then descending into the blind challenge, then finally the double blind challenge. Cole once again won the award for cashing out suddenly, but to his credit he came back a few times before Seattle was out. Jetay was taking bets as to how Jason was going to cash out, seems this is an ongoing thing. I counted 3 times homeboy dropped out that evening, some good pics for the faded Cole archives. I think Nelson mentioned something about getting kicked out of a bar that night as well. It got rowdy to sum up. Some other semi serious matches did occur, good games Tanaka and BBH, thanks for the tips AJ. Definitely will find the comfortable ground with the Rekkas. Never got those games in with Slash though, we’ll get a series in soon. Stuff went on until about 5am, until we finally called it good and closed shop. I ended up sleeping until 8pm (got up for a minute during the day but crashed again) almost a personal record.
Sum Up:
I don’t think there is any doubt that this whole thing is on the rise, the scene is simply blowing up in all directions. With Marvel 3 coming out next month, I doubt things are going to slow down anytime soon. On a regional level I think we are seeing the result of this NW Alliance in action. It’s undoubtedly a good thing, but with this expansion we have to up our own organization. This of course means Slugfest. The event has been growing, and as a lot more is happening in it now, many more problems can come up. We saw that this weekend too. Though it was good times, the tourney was not without its share of issues. The state of things has gone from a small handful of committed players to a much larger movement. With that, we have to improve our game to accommodate, and yes, that again specifically pertains to us running the event. As this thing gets bigger, the stakes get higher, gotta adapt to that. As I mentioned to someone that day, there are a lot of people that give a shit in this scene and want to contribute. Working together and playing to our strengths is going to produce the best results. There are a few people with varying projects to improve the scene, with Cole’s vision I like the idea of these different entities linking together. We have our work to do in Portland as this thing progresses. It was a fun weekend for sure, bunch of work, some trip ups, and a lot of people in the mix supporting this thing. See everyone at the next one, it really is turning into a circuit of events in the NW. Looking forward to Marvel, I expect things will get even more hype when that drops. I am taking the next couple of days off, hopefully be rested up by Throwdown Tuesday ; )
