After last month's small turnout, we did a bit more recruiting, resulting in a pretty decent turnout. On this eve of the coolest holiday around, a father/son duo brought a couple fresh faces to the night, each with a very different level of performance (the son won the first match he played tonight, while dad played his first match ever tonight). And, as if risen from the grave, xXZ33Z0 graced us with his presence as well! All total, we had eleven players.

This night saw a lot of Rocket Race matches on a variety of maps, and anywhere you looked, you could see a Mongoose flying by. Despite a terrible overall performance in the match, Riley Craven and stinklikeonion encountered a unique situation involving a wild rocket deflection. Halo's physics engine had fun with this one. It's hard to have a still screenshot do the image justice, but we don't have video capacity at the moment.

The "classic" feel of Wartorn was dominated, as usual, by John486 and Riley Craven. Most of the other players struggled to stay alive for more than 30 seconds at a time, but these two fought neck and neck for the top spot, exchanging the lead several times. Ultimately, John486 edged in the victory by a slight margin (25 to 23), but the rest of the players didn't even reach 20.

One of the more entertaining matches was a round of Team Slayer on Vehicle Fun 2.0 (a vehicle-heavy variant of Avalanche). Aside from all the guys being on either the pink or purple team, the round itself was full of interesting events. For example, with thread-the-needle-like precision, bubbagump (who is expecting a baby bubbagump next week) managed to use a dismounted machine gun turret to kill Riley Craven out of a Banshee a hundred feet away.

And, of course, what Halo Night would be complete without a round of Mayhem? Unfortunately for xXZ33Z0, this was his first time playing with us in almost a year. And his warmup round was Mayhem on Standoff, neither of which had he ever played before. Shortly after asking, "there's a cliff?" he found himself saying, "Oh, there it is." It's amazing what a bit of a launch from a hammer does when combined with lesser gravity.

Finally, as we have before, we ended the night with a nice, clean round of Boom. The lead was fought hard for by Mighty Nimrod 6, Riley Craven, and one of the new guys (the son), and with one point to go, Mighty Nimrod 6 looked to be the clear winner. Unfortunately for him, he was caught looking the other way, and Riley Craven assassinated him for the win, thanks to Boom's Leader Kill Bonus of 3. You can never count on remaining the leader on Boom.