Monday, December 22, 2014

Now that I'm finally back home I can post my review of the week's quasar activity. Starting with Thursdays Regs Night (18th December, 2014), where there was 10 of us playing. Participants were John, Graham, Al, Kev, Simon, Mikey, Angela, Peanut, Johno, and Ted. No shows included Ray and Dave, while Blondie had to study for his end of year Chemistry exam.

Pretty much all out of practice (so fresh, right?) and mostly full of treats from beforehand, the games were good natured, competitive, and also quite enjoyable. All games were Super 6, 10mins, 5v5. And thankfully it was the same teams all night because there's no way I'd remember all different teams at this age. We had the stacked team, with 8 World Championship titles between us: Graham, Johno, Kev, Peanut & Angela. Then we had the not so stacked team, with a measly 4 World Championship titles between them. We played 5 legs, and tactics were pretty much the same for all the games really, with a 2v2 of sorts with John & Ted v Graham & Kev down the back, and a melee of everyone else at the front. We're all getting so inventive in our old age. Could Team Not-So-Stacked upset ALL the odds and pull off what would be a famous victory? The answer was no, then no again. And no a couple of times more. But as always happens, the people who go home happy are the ones that win the last game. Team Not-So-Stacked were Red for this one, and won by easily over 100 points. Finally they managed to get a tactic that worked, which was to wait until we had a gun that couldn't hit any one, go after that player and then not leave with them when they had go to change it. Congratulations to Simon for implementing that to perfection.... Team Stacked let ourselves down in the last game, but with the overall win secured we definitely took the foot off the gas. It was disappointing to lose like that, but most disappointing was the performance of Becky, who didn't shoot a single player all night. The worst I've seen her play for at least 4 months!

On now to Friday Night (19th December, 2014), with 15 of us playing. Participants were Ray, Alan Gavin, Graham, Al, Kev, Simon, Mikey, Deniro, Peanut, Becky, Zack, Paddy, Craig, Deniro, and Ted. No shows included John, Angela and Dave, while Blondie again had to study for his end of year Chemistry exam.

Well, this was an absolute disaster, I'll explain why. The plan was to get to the Mercantile for 20:00 hours in our Christmas-themed attire, and find ourselves a nice little seating area upstairs. Then we'll all get a few pints in and head to a nightclub around midnight. Stay there dancing for a few hours, then hit up Zaytoons for a messy kebab, and then get locked out in our underwear and/or get stuck in a lift. You know, the usual. Sound good?

Where to start? Well not one person showed up on time. Ok, so I was 2 and a half hours late, but I had a valid excuse: I was writing the first few drafts of the Regs Night Review. For a few minutes when I got there, there was a bit of stellar teamwork going, but it all unravelled because Ray was too amateurish and downright stupid to follow the tactics! We also had some Christmas Jumper related issues. Peanut and Becky were too incompetent and stupid to realise that you wear a shirt under your jumper so you can take it off when you get too hot. And Al, Alan Gavin and Simon were too unprofessional to stick with their jumpers and make it work. Now I've been through this type of thing before, were tactics are, if not quite sound, at least workable, but people just don't get it. Thankfully Craig showed up in Christmas style and brought in a tie for Mikey, while Ray's present helped make Graham look a bit more festive than usual. Ted rocked his Santa suit from last year (making him super obvious to the bouncer), but all in all we could have done better. Most criticism is reserved for Zack and Paddy though. These guys the type that will be the death of Quasar Christmas Parties - as soon as they get a little bit drunk and rowdy, they start ripping up bannisters, then pretend not to care, and "mess" through the rest of the night. If you two don't buck up soon, you'll end up like Ger, or worse, Stephen King. Things were going so bad that we had to get Colin in from his work Christmas party, and I even had to draft in a Ste Warren lookalike to try salvage things, but it was too late. Towards the end of the night a few people went home early. Conor Farrell had to be up early for work, Alan Gavin, Simon, and Ted all had to go home and study for Blondie's Chemistry Exam, and some others got lost in the confusion between the normal pub and extremely latin nightclub downstairs.

By the time we got to Zaytoons, a few people sat out inexplicably, and the table ended up being Kev, Peanut, Colin, Warren 2 across from Becky, Zack, Paddy and Al. Not bad, and a bit of fun. Although I suspect everyone but me was on a diet, what with all the Diet Coke. There was definitely something missing from last year though, we lacked a crazy topless drunk man dancing around a bus stop with Peanut. But sure, there's always next year.

Kev @ 2:25 PM [+]

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