So it’s been a while since I blogged. I usually try to keep the community up to date with tidbits but I haven’t had much time in a while. So Toronto was two and half weeks ago, Carbon went into the event as a redemption event from Orlando’s disappointing finish. We spent a week together prior to the event in preparation. We seemed to have worked out all the kinks we had been sucking at. One week left before the event we were supposed to lan vs. UTI but it fell through due to some transportation issues. So Shockwave used the week before to the event to go to V-Tech to move into his new apt. and sort it out. At the same time Ghost and I both went to Penn State to fix up our new place. We took a 5 day break and decided to rendezvous back at Waves near King of Prussia which was 3 hours from State College. Five days later we met up again. We only had 2 days before we flew out to practice so we took advantage of it.

Skipping the in-between: Saturday Rolled around and it was time for Pro bracket to start. Our biggest match in the bracket would be round 3 against Instinct. Second round turned out to be a minor bump in the road vs. Breaking Point but Carbon prevailed 3-1 dropping Team Slayer Pit. Now came the task at hand, our match vs. Instinct. At the beginning of the match I felt like our team had pretty good control of the map. We had a quick flag pull to start the game. We managed to get the flag to our side of the map numerous times but only to have it stuck in our pit. We seemed to never get the last guy that was guarding the flag so we can move into position to cap it. Instinct held strong to camo and green and we couldn’t do much off the spawn in sniper. So that led to slow but 3-0 Instinct CTF PIT win. We made a lot of team mistakes and it seemed like our team work was way off on one side of the map. The next two gts were Narrows ts, and Guardian Ball. I don’t remember much of those games but we lost both of them. It seemed that we had played the Instinct game and that was chase rather than play our game. We kept getting in 3v1 or 3v2 scenarios. They seemed to always move in a perfect team formation. We were finished for the night and had to wake up at 11 to play for top 8.

We played UTI for top 8 and it was a pretty easy victory after a quick 3-0. The next match was for top 6 and our opponent was Ambush. Ambush has been an underdog this entire season; they are a team of pure unpredictability you really don’t know what they are going to do. I don’t really care about the first three games because the series came down to game 4 and 5. Game 4 was Onslaught CTF, easily one of our best game types. Within the first two minutes of the game we capped. We had control of the map and position to spawn kill. This is when all hell broke loose. For some unknown reason we were never able to cap the flag after the first cap. We had their flag at our base in front of our flag every time. One of us would go to cap it and get naded over the box. Just stupid little things would stop us from getting the cap, oh and the guy that would always snuck off to our base with us knowing he is going to be waiting for the return. Frustration at its finest, Ambush capitalizes in the end after a lot of defensive stands 5-1.

So it all came down to game 5 Team Slayer Amplified. Amp is either hit or miss. You’re team has to start off strong in order to hold onto the lead in the fast pace kill fest. A lot of br battles and running away. This was one of our best game types, we made sure to practice it because amp is a random map. So the game was going our way up 8-10 kills midway. We had them where we wanted them picking them off. The score at one point was 40-32 and I thought in my head “there is no way we lose”. I thought wrong. For some reason we all died in our positions and got caught bottom red corner purple side. Ambush throws massive nades to red and pick up more kills. We stand off and go up 46-45. They catch up after a ridiculous play, Cloud is red 2, Ghost just got killed red side purple corner, Ghost is respawning, and Cloud throws a plasma nade to blue 2, the grenade lands and sticks Ghost off the spawn. They tie the game 48-48. We get another kill gold side of the map and take the lead, and then two Carbon members go down and we lose 50-49. After the game I really had no idea how to feel or what to think. I didn’t see the series panning out the way it did. The rest of my team felt the same way but we finished playing consolation vs. Anti Gravity for 7th. We ended up beating Anti Gravity 3-0. Two disappointing 7th places in a row.

A few days after the event I couldn’t stop thinking about that stupid game 5. Like how can something like that just happen. I thought the same thing when I heard Ambush beat Str8 Rippin in Orlando in the same scenario. Getting beat is never fun, but I would rather get destroyed 50-25 than lose 50-49. The event was a learning experience; don’t look past a team in the remaining minutes of a crucial game. This wasn’t one of my best events; my shot was so off on Saturday which pretty much sucks when it comes to halo 3. If you can’t shoot you can’t do anything for the team besides objective, and that’s what I should have done. Sunday my shot was a lot better but not to my potential. The weekend was a waste. To resolve my shot issue I resorted to lowering my sens to 3. 3 sens seems to be working for me pretty well and I just have to keep working at it from now until Dallas.

Looking ahead, as a lot of you know Karma left our team to join Triggers Down. After the event we all headed our ways knowing the summer was over and we wouldn’t be able to game next to each other until the next event being Dallas. I didn’t ever really see Ben leaving Carbon seeing as he has been part of the team since the beginning. After all that we had gone through over the summer nonstop gaming next to each other, the Lan vs. Str8, the boot camping before Toronto. We just fell short every time. There always seemed to be something stopping us. So Ben’s reasoning for leaving was not that we weren’t skilled enough but that Karma is such a prideful person about his stature in the Halo world. He was the national 1v1 champion and 4v4 champion at one point in time. Our team chemistry was great, we were all like best friends the ones you have back at home. My personal opinion is yeah s**t wasn’t going our way but to leave with two events after we had put so much into it is kind of disappointing. We should have at least finished out the event.

I have no hard feelings towards Karma because he is my boy, and he always will be. I have a lot of respect for him as a player. I don’t necessarily know how he will fit on TD but I wish him the best of luck…. Now for the newest member for Carbon…NADED!!! After Ben told us he was leaving he gave us a few people to look into that would fit us pretty well and Naded was one of them. Ghost even called Elamite who is very knowledgeable of players in the circuit and he also said that he was most impressed with Naded at Toronto. So after 5 days of searching for him we finally got to him to join our squad. I couldn’t be much happier with the 4th we picked up, yeah we lost Karma a sneaky beaver, but we gained Naded a slaying monster that can go off with the right support players. We think Brett aka Naded will compliment us a lot better than Ben with time. Ben seemed to always control one side of the map but never move, and just have people come to him. But with Naded we can run and Gun. It’s just going to have to take a lot of practice to get Naded into the loop. So we look ahead to Dallas with a new team and a new beginning for Carbon. I am very excited for Dallas seeing as it’s always been a good city for me to play in. I seem to go off every time, and after Toronto’s performance I am going to have to do just that. Hope to see some Carbon fans in Dallas.

Here is a last look at Carbon from Toronto 08.

-Cpt Anarchy