Yes, once again, it is review time!

And this one certainly deserves a great review! We have been working hard to bring you this on and the gallery too! Oh and for an extra bit of fun, make sure you all play the "Spot the Intel Bunnyman" competition! Report sightings in the forum! And of course, all captions are brought to you by Ze Skull, so send flames to him! Anyway, without further ado, over to Ze Jarra!

Ze Baron

Roweb Easter Review

Easter, a time for fluffy bunnies, painting eggs and celebrating the birth of all living creatures….
Well we did just that at our last Easter Roweb event, there was much delight as we painted our virtual opponents in red goo with our cross hairs, and there was equally as much rejoicing at the respawning of our fellow teamates after a serious case of fragging. The [fluffy bunnies] clan were not present at the venue because we didn't invite them, we knew they would own us in all the tourneys so we sent them a consolatory crate of homegrown carrots from Pheo's garden, he's the toughest gardener in Brixton you know!

Our Easter event was not only a celebration of re-fragging & respawning, our gathering was also an excuse to commemorate the revival of BarrysWorld who became the new member of the Electronic Boutique family, and so we can all be safe in our hearts knowing that somewhere out there, there will always be a fast server dedicated to online gaming, Long Live BarrysWorld!!!

Venue

Well our venue was held at the Salisbury FC, the titans of the Dr Martens league, in the South of England. The main beauty of this place was the en-suite bar which was at a staggering distance to the main LAN setup.

The event had our largest turn-up so far; around 55 people including staff were packed into the main reception room.

3 other empty small rooms were available at a first come first serve basis for those who wanted a quieter place to sleep, otherwise most ppl would be snoozing to the lullaby of the PC fans. The site was on the outskirts of Salisbury town and therefore car transport was the only realistic option for the provision trips. The town had a 24hour Tesco and ton's of pizza providers who were in for a busy weekend.

Friday

For most of those who came from London, a special 54 seater Roweb coach was arranged, so the Roweb cosy atmosphere could get running from the start. The coach departed from Ze Fort in Willesden, main headquarters of Ze Emperor. Some of the ULLA clan such as Spey and Skyler met most of Ze contingency at the first stop over and helped with the loading of PC's, Intel kit, prizes and crates of beer for the trip, they also had the honour of setting eyes on Ze Great Ginger one, I am sure the memory will stay with them forever….

Once all the kit was packed we set off for the first stop over at Victoria to collect the SaaaFFF' London massive, Pheo and his quiet mate, Chief and Raven. There was much beer drinking and joke telling; with Pheo who's larger than life personality kept the coach atmosphere at an all time high.

The second stopover was at Basingstoke in order to recruit the Shotgun crew, Glimmerman, Heretic and their wig-defying leader Pete Ze Hair, with such personalities mixes, the remainder of the coach trip passed effortlessly.

By the time the London/Basingstoke Krew arrived at the scene, the LAN had mostly been set-up, and more than half the attendance were already in full swing.
Once again our invisible network was maintained by our Intel allies, in the guise of Ze Wolverine, Flemming, Ute and Mark Mutch. I will LEAVE IT to Ze Baron to give you a full breakdown of how our Intel ambassadors outdid themselves at the event:

Once again Intel outdid themselves. Switch-wise they brought a stack of Intel Express 535/530's and Express 460T's linked together via the Intel Netstructure 480T routing gigabit switch. Also on display were the load of Intel Pentium 4 Processor driven PC's with 17" TFT screens. The whole thing was driven by a dual Xeon III server running Counterstrike and Quake 3! Awesome!

Dave and Steve from LPUK paid us a little visit and brought along a friend in disguise as a 42"screen, and I can assure you he was one of the main highlights of the event, with his gorgeous flathead and sexy resolution, he knew all the chat-up tricks and charmed the pants off all Rowebers.

The first night of Roweb is as usual a time to catch-up on LAN talk with fellow Roweb veterans, however there were also loads of new faces and new clans to add to the fodder pot.
Phlebus' Cix clan made an appearance in greater numbers, with Keldon and newly recruited Shad (the RM traitor!) who joined their ranks. We look forward to seeing more of the clan at the next Roweb

UC_UK Clan members: Medusa, Kornholio and LimpMisfit made their first appearance at Roweb. These guys & gal dealt some serious 0wnage on Counter-Strike, I am starting to suspect that Kornholio is one of those prototype Bots disguised as a human and infiltrates LAN parties in order assimilate human skills, we think we may have caught a snapshot of his highly developed ocular implants at a work (check out the picture). I wonder what Medusa will have to say about all this…

The ULLA crew made a full show with Sherbot_Lemon, Raven, Magistrate, Skyler, Body Count, DejaVu, Spey and of course our Aardy. The Lemons came to claim their right to CS trophy as well, did they have what it takes or would they be left with the sour taste of defeat in their mouths? (oohh that was terrible).

Ze Clan came in force sporting their customised T-Shirts (Thanx to the Ze Matriarch for all that last minute ironing!). Ze Bounce who came to be brocked up by Ze Jarra, Ze Gog (coming all the way from Bradford in order to assimilate data on peoples hard-drives), Ze Wolverine sported his lawnmower trimmed beard, Ze Hothead made an effort to turn up Saturday in order to drink Salisbury dry, Ze Baron, sporting tough guy camo trousers (no-one would be messing with him for the rest of the night), the one with the Homer 24 round the clock shadow, Ze Jarra and finally Ze Skull whom I have nothing witty to say about except that he was once mistaken for a stunted Steve McQueen.

So adding Chief's Roweb Regular Militia, we really had a rich clan turn up, the CS tourneys were going to be positively tense and gritty to say the least. By the way if I did miss out any other clans I'm sorry, try and get yourselves noticed next time!

So back to the Friday night events, well some of the staff members were getting recruits for the up and coming tourneys that were going to be played over the weekend. Shad handled the 5 a-side CS tourney, Ze Bounce enlisted all Age of Kings 2VS 2 and Unreal Tournament 1VS 1 players and with a bit of prodding, Aardy masterminded the Quake 3 Arena 1 VS 1 Tourney. Phoenix designed the Tourney Web page so that we could follow the progress.
None of the tourneys kick-started til Saturday as we all wanted to chill and mingle for the first night.

By the late evening there were a plethora of games going round. Midtown Madness 2 was probably one of the loudest games, well that's if you are playing with Pete the Hair, who would periodically scream out one of the five only insults he knows, I think "you whorrrre!!!!!" was among the most used.

The favourite game type proved to be the cops and robbers with big London buses, squeezing those double decker behemoths down Soho lane, then smashing into Pete and Ze Skull and getting the customary curses from down the room, utter madness!!!!

We had a lot of other racing games going on as well such as Rally master, which was more akin to destruction derby when you are racing against the likes of Toastie, Valour and Kinetic the ethnic (he's from Wales you see). One of the funniest moments was playing with Dogmeat, where he kept quiet for all the races save the last one where he managed to come before me for the first time and he just stood up and gave me a barrage of emotion and jeers, good old Doggers, really had me shocked with the vast change in emotion!

Of course many Rowebers could not resist the lure of Black and White, which proved to be popular as a relaxing alternative to the FPS'.

Besides the usual spatterings of CS, UT and Quake 3, people were also playing Alien Vs Predator, Phlebus and Keldon were pushing their hand/eye coordination to the limits in a game of Worms. There were no doubt tons of other games being played which I missed out on but I would be here all day if I gave them a mention.

Friday night like all Roweb nights, is more the night for experimentation, namely because players are wrapped up in the Tourney events in the following days, so anything goes!

Saturday played host to the preliminaries of the Tournies, and all Roweb staff worked hard at getting recruits. Shad handled the 5 a-side CS tourney, Ze Bounce enlisted all Age of Kings 2 vs 2 and Unreal Tournament players and with a bit of prodding, Aardy masterminded the Quake 3 Arena League Tourney. Phoenix designed the Tourney Web page so that we could follow the progress. Check the webpage for the complete picture of results.

The tourney games soaked up quite a lot of the day, needless to say there was still plenty of time to chill and have a couple of beers with the person you just fragged. At some point in the early evening we were joined by the Salisbury football squad, fans and staff who were obviously mystified by these bunch of weirdo's setting virtual camp at their reception hall. Still, Mr 42" plasma screen managed to get them playing a few games of ISS pro evolution 2 the footie game, he's such a party animal so he'll do anything for the attention.

As usual, Saturday evenings are when the Roweb cosy atmosphere is at its zenith, enveloping us in a constant mood of drinking and chatting with one's fellow Roweber. I can recall pockets of ambience emerging in different areas of the room and people would be wandering from one to another, very cheesy sounding perhaps, but that's what was happening.
We had Pheo who had setup a little Brixton barracks in his corner blaring out tunes from his speakers.
Then there was the Hardcore RM and Redeemer [TR] strip along the middle of the room, Skack, Ch1ef, Phatt, Army and rosy cheeked Death ;) who were playing Severance when I lasted checked (well some of them were anyway).
Next to them was Pete Ze Hair's (new Ze member), anarchic Shotgun LAN squad, including the loud Glimmerman and "my PC never fails" Heretic with their white T-shirts emblazoned with the outline of a cow

To the far right of the room, we had Tridion, the Canadian bloke would always be following me round like a familiar, I never knew I was charismatic, still this was his last LAN before returning home to Ottowa, let's hope he keeps up the LANing tradition! Poor toastie (with his bloody cool case, looked like a time travelling machine fit for a rabbit) was surrounded by most of the ULLA lot, Raven, Aardy, u know the rest…. At the far end of the room by the entrance, we had the old gits corner, comprising of Ze Baron, Ze Jarra and CrimsonHaze. Other areas around the room included the CIX corridor where Phlebus, Shad and Keldon would encourage games of Carmeggedon or Worms if they were not at the bar. Further along we had Adolescent alley where the younger Rowebers, Ion, Orcas, Infiltrator, Potshot and the like.. hung out. No less these guys were lethal at CS and I am sure they could teach us all a few tricks in the virtual trade!

At the far corner of the room we had the UC_UK clan, LimpMisfit who let his hair grow for 8 years (he had forgone the way of the barber for the way of the LAN), "Terminator" Kornholio and the mortal Medusa who did most of the 0wning for the clan (which fool said women cannot play PC games and kick ass at them?). That area was also dedicated to the Intel P4's where users and guests who did not have a functional PC could still play games.

That was only a highlight of the different areas we had in the room, everyone mixed around by the evening, mostly by the bar of course.

Saturday night's eating arrangements were simplified by getting 3rd party caterers in. Generous amounts of chicken curry and rice, red/white wine was snapped up by the majority of the Rowebers for only 6 quid a head! Who said we're not fair? Those who were not particular to curry simply ordered pizza, or people like Phoenix had VIP shopping trip to Pizza Hut, he threatened to break our legs if we didn't take him so what choice did we have? Although Ze Skull ruined his trip by letting off a really stinky one whilst waiting for the pizza to bake!

	By late Saturday night most of us had had a fair amount of drink, hopefully enough not to have noticed Crim and Shad fall asleep in the midst of an Age of Kings game.
Earlier they had said they would take on 6 people, it seems they had trouble taking on their pints of beer/wine let alone any of us ;).

Sunday morning hailed the day of the pranksters (april 1st) which some individuals wanted to remind us about, here is a little rendition from an eyewitness about the morning's antics:

The main victim appears to have been Anaardvark who says in his statement that he awoke to find intruders in his room. However due to shock and general poor visibility within the room, was unable to positively identify any of the culprits. Agent Skack has a theory why Anaardvark targeted, he was sleeping on a camp bed, good for comfort but can also be used as a kind of stretcher, this would have enabled the culprits to carry Anaardvark to another location without waking him up,in order to confuse and disorientate, a cheap trick I'm sure you'll all agree. Fortunately though Anaardvark woke up, (lucky, very very lucky >:)) But this was not the end, for shortly later Anaardvark was again awoken but this time by sounds from outside his room, several other people in that room were also awoken. They described the sound as a bit like gaffa tape being unrolled. Anaardvark opened the door to catch the Ba*****ds red handed. Again though, he was unable to clearly see who they were due to bubble wrap blocking his field of vision. Agent Raven believes that this was an attempt to tape bubble wrap to the door frame, and then make fun of the people trying to leave the room. Definitely a dark and dastardly plan, but not without sign of creative genius. As you can see it is important to catch these peace and sleep wreckers. If you have any information, no matter how trivial you think it is, please feel free to tell Skack, Raven, or Ze Bounce at the next Lan."

Lan Watch: "ensuring gamers get a good nights rest every Lan".

Hmmm, well luckily April Fools is only once a year, so we can rest assured that we will have a more comfortable nights sleep at the next Roweb (?)

So for those who did manage to wake up it was going to be a busy day because Sunday was mainly going to be dedicated to the finals of the Tourneys and the prize giving.

Age of Kings finals was a 3 way fight between Crim/Shad Vs Ze Skull/Phoenix Vs Ze Baron/Ze Jarra which ended up in Crim/Shad being overwhelmed by the other 4. In no way were the alliances related to clan sympathies, we are above all that, no hard feelings Shad and Crim but remember that in the previous night you said you could take on 6 other players, so we simply granted your wish!
Anyway despite ingenious maze of palisades type defenses of Ze Skull/Pheo, Ze Jarra-Baron alliance won the day.

The tourney showdowns like the CS one between the ULLA and RM (mix n' match team) were shown on the 42" plasma screen and viewers pulled up chairs to get a good view of the action. ULLA crew seriously owned the Tourney in CS terms beating their opponents convincingly (sorry RM but it's true!)

Our friend from shotgun LAN, Glimmerman, emerged as the champion in the Quake 3 Arena league tourney, l wonder if things would have been different if Izz were around?

Then came the prize giving to the Champions and runner-ups. Click here for the tourney site!

ULLA. CounterStrike tourney winners: Magistrate, Skyler, Raven, SherbotLemon and BodyCount.
	Ze Clan. Age of Kings winners: Ze Jarra and Ze Baron (taking picture)
Glimmerman. Quake 3 Arena tourney winner.

Unfortunately we just managed to squeeze in the 3 Tourneys, we did not have time for the UT match, we'll have to save that one for next time.

After the prize giving it was time to pack up, luckily "El Dogmeato" managed to squeeze in a bit of entertainment with the maracas and Latin jig whilst we were clearing the room as well so it wasn't all so boring.

We bade our farewells to the Roweb regulars and new chums as well like UC_UK clan, Kinetic, Ion and many more, we look forward to seeing them back at the next event. Poor Crim stayed behind to finish off the clearing up, Valour and Dogmeat kindly helped out as well, so thanks for that.

This review by no means justifies everyone's experience at the Easter event, and I know a lot has been missed out, though I am sure we are all in agreement that we had another great weekend and so bring on the Roweb May/June event!

Once again, it wouldn't have been the same without the efforts of the Roweb-Intel crew and supreme organistional skills of our Tourney staff members (even you Aardy!), thanks to Steve and Dave from LPUK for the plasma screen and turning up, last but not least, CrimsonHaze gets a mention for piecing it all together!

Til the next one,

Ze Jarra

(/mumbles something about ridiculous looking picture of himself)