Hard Landing at Bucharest

Fri 26th Oct 2012 - 3:11pm News

With several difficulties during the weekend Alien Invasion tried to qualify through Dreamhack Bucharest for the Grand Finals at Dreamhack Winter.

If you would count all the things gone wrong this weekend and try to beat the odds, you would be one very lucky person. Starting off with Tarra and Hanfy who should have landed in Bucharest at 18:00. They missed their flight because of a scheduling coincidence at the airport so they had to rebook their flight and lastly arrived at 20:00 in Bucharest where I picked them up but sadly without any gear which had been lost with their baggage probably because of the rescheduling. This turned out to be one of the biggest problems for Hanfy and Tarra who’s medicine was also missing due to the baggage loss.

During this time I got a call from Totoro, the owner of Alien Invasion, that Seiplo won’t be able to check in because of Tarra’s and Hanfy’s late arrival. Therefore Deathangel and myself searched for Seiplo in the quarter we lived in because the cab driver dropped him off at some coiffeur. After 15 minutes of search we found him and took him with us to the Newrosoft teamhouse until Tarra and Hanfy arrived.

Later that evening we all went to a “High Class Romanian restaurant” but the food there was rather normal and didn’t qualify such a price. Hanfy and I both had the “MUH Schnitzel”(that’s how Hanfy called it) that was only some chicken breast with cheese and ketchup on it. After that Hanfy, Seiplo and Tarra took a cab to their hotel at which I picked them up the next morning at 9:00 for the first day of Dreamhack.

Starting off the first day Tarra and I still had to convince Hanfy to atleast try some gear at the venue but it didn’t really work out for him and he went 1-2 in his group with the one win being a free win. Referring to the gear problem Tarra adjusted quite quickly and only lost to TheSTC advancing to the second groupstage. Atleast Seiplo got his own gear and also on dropped one set in the first group stage against Targa.

In the same manner Seiplo continued in the second groupstage with beating Ziktomini 2:1, but after that he lost to SortOf 1:2 and in the deciding match he lost 0:2 to the Korean Sage. It went even worse for Tarra with losing to Cloud in the first set 1:2 which he faced a few days before that in the IEM Singapore qualifier and had mouse problems in the third game. Those mouse problems killed him against Harstem but not because of a malfunctioning mouse, this time someone went to his computer while he was away and turned on mouse accleration which ended up in dead Colossi and a 0:2. The last game he played was against one of his rivals: Bly. The last time they faced each other in a tournament Tarra beat him 2:0 but this time being frustrated after the loss against Harstem he went 0-2 and didn’t advance to the bracket.

One thing to highlight for this tournament was the Twitch.tv Lounge which provided players with a relaxing atmosphere and always fresh food and something to drink ranging from water to mountain dew. But to get atleast a decent meal, one of the Fragster editors, Hanfy and I drove 1 ½ hour through the district to find the pizza restaurant who distributed flyers in front of the venue.

Moreover you could also practice in the Lounge at six PCs which happened to be our occupation for the second tournament day besides watching the bracket games. We also got a little notice that the players party will be in the evening with a free bar provided by Twitch.tv.

Hanfy and Seiplo both went there and Tarra was the responsible guy who stayed at home because he didn’t want to miss another flight. In the development of the evening more and more people left the party and some where just too drunk to dance and just sat in a corner like one of the Koreans. Later on Seiplo went up to the bathroom because he didn’t feel that well. A few minutes later Hanfy met us in the bathroom and because of Seiplo’s condition I convinced him that we should go to their Hotel first. Equally to both’s state of drunkenness Seiplo puked five meters before we arrived at the Hotel and Hanfy was sleeping on the rear bench seat.

All in all this was a nice trip even if the perfomance was miserably at the event itself. Atleast Hanfy and Tarra will have their gear in the hand baggage from now on.

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