We started 2010 right: with a ten-player Halo Night on a cold night in January at Riley Craven's house. And it was good. We had fartbubble (under the alias SARS) and his son Darth Gager for the first time in several Halo Nights. We had a first-timer, sparticus, who picked up a foreign Xbox 360 controller and got up to speed quickly. And we had a happy 16th birthday for John486 (and barely missed his big brother bubbagump's by 3 days).

With such a good turnout, we, of course, had to play some team matches. We found that five teams of two was a fast-paced combination of strategy and chaos. In one such round, Darth Gager demonstrated high precision when he and a bad variable were launched over the edge at Guardian. Not content to simply fall off the edge alongside the enemy, Darth Gager saw fit shoot a bad variable out of the sky on their way down.

For a while, we only had nine players, so we did a few three-teams-of-three rounds, which proved to be intense and fast-paced, much like the journeys into teams-of-two we've been doing so much recently. In a round on Vehicle Fun, our vehicle-heavy Snowbound variant, the team of bubbagump, a bad variable, and stinklikeonion (who all seem to have something against capital letters) decimated their enemies, leading one team by 15 kills and the other by 29.

Despite having a few Rocket Races, too, the team matches were not all done with small teams. We even did it once when the teams were uneven. Five vs. four on Balanced Variety could have been a lot better were the teams not so poorly stacked. Placing John486 on the team of five was probably the deciding factor, as usual, but the final score of 50 to 18 clearly indicated a need to reconsider out teams.

Despite being a round that contained an honest, open area  kill of John486 (no small feat by any measure) and a good series of Wheelman medals, the moment that stuck out the most for bubbagump was likely a dogfight with Sparten 4000 that was cut short. Apparently, a charging Hornet is completely capable of splattering a Banshee much like a Chopper would a Ghost on the ground. Kudos to Sparten 4000 for finding a way to take out a Banshee from Avalanche's underpowered Hornets.

Finishing off the night with a simple round of Slayer in the black-and-white bullet frenzy of Wartorn, Riley Craven reminded us all of dominance. His victory surely wasn't hampered by his handful of double kills, a triple kill, and wide array of beat downs and assassinations. His strategy seemed simple. if you see a turret, grab it and kill everyone. Otherwise, hop down from scaffolding and rafters to make the most of the element of surprise. And the rest of us didn't have an answer. Well, except John486. But he doesn't count.