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EDIT: SourceTV demos have been released for ALL of the matches!

In case you've either been living under a rock or otherwise outside of your bedroom for the past few days, both of which not being very likely of course, you've unfortunately missed probably the most glorious TF2 LAN ever.  Everyone gave it their all, and the climax in the final match was more entertaining than any Super Bowl I've ever seen... in my humble opinion, at least.

Let's talk about how each one of the bo3 matches went...

First match of the night \ EG versus blight

The opening match of the LAN, the broadcast of which you can watch all 3 maps on pwnage.tv by following this link (at least until the sourceTV demos are up anyway), set the pace on a rather high note as blight humbled EG with a 4>1 win on cp_badlands, which (as would be demonstrated later) is unfortunately not their strongest map.

Next map that came up was the crowd favorite.  During the 30-minute midfight that ensued on koth_viaduct, both sides (as you would expect) went back and forth and EG garnered the upper hand toward the end of the 2nd half with a 4>2 thanks to some outstandingly timed uber pushes by cassey and Medic picks by the various EG players.  That's not to say, though, that blight didn't get their share of great plays... I'm just saying that EG controlled that midfight of a map.  Especially in the second half.

So the first match of the LAN was going to the third map.  The only thing that could make it be any more epic than it already was would have been a full two halves with one team barely edging out the other side... oh wait.  DAMN, this was a good playoff....  Blight went back and forth, losing at the end of the first half on the tiebreaker, cp_freight, but ended up coming back 5>3 thanks to the most epic of Sniper runs by pokey.  I'm talkin' like, outscoring the Medic and earning double dominations.  Go watch the VOD. You know what? Stop reading this.  Just go watch the VOD with that link I gave you earlier.  Holy crap, right?  Go back to reading on when you're done.  I can wait.

Anyway, the ESEA people made quite the big deal out of blight's win.  They emphasized the fact that blight was the #4 seed (conveniently forgetting to mention the epic run that Muscle Milk and Moolians — now Area 51 Gaming — had throughout the season and the subsequent denial of entry into the playoffs because they weren't rich enough to fly to Dallas and play with the frequently crashing computers there) and characterized them as the underdogs who just toppled Goliath, conveniently forgetting the real gorilla in the room.  You can see their post-match interview with what's-his-face if you don't believe me.

Second match in the morning \ Complexity's rolling

Later that night, blight celebrated with a few doobies and hookers in their suite while EG were in the next room, the janitor's closet of the Hotel, consoling eachother with fellatio while Party In the U.S.A. and SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS blared through the wall of blight's victory party (I'll be honest — I don't really know if that's what they were doing. I didn't stop by their room afterward, but I imagine that that's how it went).  In fact, cassey was so depressed, that he lost the vision in one of his eyes.  Like a trooper, though, he overcame it and performed the next day for the interviewers.  That's why I like Cassey.  He can handle anything.

Reptile though... not so much.

Anyway, the next morning comes around and while team blight are recuperating from their night of booze and fornication (nobody heard from EG yet... people started to wonder whether or not they were dead),  Complexity and Pandemic both got up early — early by our standards anyway — to do battle... and however awesome and epic the blight-EG match was the night before, it was the total opposite when it came time for the coL-Pandemic game (pwnage.tv VOD here).  They first went head to head on badlands, but that went completely  5>1 in compLexity's favor.  Nothing much to talk about there, unless you were with Pandemic anyway.

Later they moved onto koth_viaduct and as is usual with these half-hour-long-mid-fight maps, Pandemic actually stood a pretty good chance! I gotta say... this map actually could've gone the other way if it weren't for a few slip ups.  Its a bit of a pity, actually, because if Pandemic had pulled it off then coL would have fallen into the Lower Bracket to fight EG.  It was a total ripoff how EG and coL never went against eachother.  I actually think that we should make it illegal as a community for coL not to play EG in a LAN.

So even though Pandemic was up 3>1 over Complexity at the half, SolidSnake went to go take a piss and then the shit just hit the fan as Complexity eclipsed any hope Pandemic could've had to stay in the Upper Bracket.

sadface

TheFragile was actually pretty cool about it, though, in his team's exit interview.

Meanwhile, a few minutes later, the same interviewer went to go visit carnage, who was appropriately dressed up in his Maddox costume.

Battle of the Not-Winners: EG versus Pandemic

So a few hours after Reptile almost hung himself off of the cieling fan, EG stumbled into the LAN room to take on Pandemic to find out which team gets to see naked pictures of Ruwin, which is the standard prize for finishing in last place at a TF2 LAN.  Given EG's manic depression, everybody in the room expected Pandemic to take the win, because for some reason the statistics from the Regular Season didn't mean anything anymore.  Blight made sure to remind us of that.

Speaking of blight: since they were just about fully recovered from their night of drinking, they came in a few minutes before the match to give Pandemic a bunch of thumbs-up for good luck when EG wasn't looking.  Unfortunately for Pandemic, though, Reptile caught a glimpse of ww- grinning at Seagull and when Reptile turned around and realized what blight was doing behind their backs all of those suicidal thoughts evaporated into pure rage as Reptile beasted the shit out of Pandemic on the cp_granary in the first half, ending it with 4>1 in EG's favor.  Reptile was going to be okay after all!

Ww- tried to make up for just1n's dumb mistake earlier by doing a little beasting of his own in the second half, but he just couldn't get it up in time.  The final result was 5>3 in favor of EG.

So fifteen minutes later, the cp_gravelpit fires up and Reptile is still caught up in his rage.  Cassey, who has been sitting next to him all match, is trying to get him to calm down... but it doesn't help.  As a result, Reptile ends up going 100% ape shit on Pandemic, outfragging Shade and fanom three times over!

Long story short,  EG knocks Pandemic out of the playoffs and that was that.  Pandemic never had a chance — Reptile was just raging too hard.  Nothing they could've done.

Meanwhile, in the Upper Bracket... blight versus coL

Pandemic, having just been knocked out, decides to return the favor that blight did for them and troll compLexity irl so that they can rage during their match against blight in a few hours.  Seagull, though, being the smart guy that he is, noticed what Pandemic was trying to do and so he got oPlaid to come with him as they confronted Pandemic about it.  A fight then broke out between just1n and TLR versus oPlaid and Seagull, but it didn't last long because once Seagull and oPlaid sat on just1n and TLR, eveything was fine.  TLR suffered a fractured ribcage though and had to be carried away to the hospital, but his team was knocked out of the LAN anyway so nobody cared.

So yeah: blight vs compLexity (pwnage.tv VOD here).  It wasn't all that interesting, to be honest.  It was the only match of the playoffs that went completely how we would have expected it to have gone:  5-0 on granary, then 5-0 on gravelpit.

One interesting thing that happened though was that the most epic play ever in the history of TF2 occured in this match:  SolidSnake, after calling it in his pre-game interview alongside "Jaeger", Targe's all the way from across mid and then finishes with a Medic Pick, a Scout pick, a Demo pick, and if that wasn't bad-ass enough for you to read, he finishes it off with a point-blank Soldier air pipe kill.  Those of us who were watching on Mumble collectively came in our pants.  I don't have the recording of it, but take my word for it.

Moving on.

EG versus blight... version 2.0:

After coL finished slapping down blight in the fastest match of the playoffs because SolidSnake needed to go take a piss really badly but didn't want to pause for it (which was kind of weird considering that they paused for every other possible reason that match), blight had a second chance to redeem themselves by defeating EG.

Now, this one was pretty weird.  Not because of how it turned out, but because of the crazy game of Musical Chairs that they played irl at the LAN after the first map finished.  The first map, by the way, was cp_freight and it went pretty well in EG's favor.  Pokey was unfortunately not able to kick names and take ass like he did the last time that they met in the first match of the playoffs, but his team, blight, was able to hold off EG long enough toward the end of the first half to not lose it completely.  Unfortunately for blight though, EG was out for blood and so they ended up getting rolled (albeit not as harshly as it had been just a few hours earlier against compLexity) 5>0.

Here's where the weird crap happened:  after EG completely rolled blight, they were 100% recovered from their manic depressive mood swing that happened the night before.  Now they felt that they were on top of the world, and Reptile made sure to let out his anger in the form of a Lion's roar in the middle of the LAN room.  If you had been watching the live stream of the event on ESEA's justin.tv account, you'd know the occasion I'm talking about.

Unfortunately for Reptile though, he was still red-faced from the events earlier in the day.  Cassey's worries about Reptile's health came back and he began to think that Reptile might be suffering from a heart attack soon due to his prolonged high blood pressure.  A few minutes later, as they were beginning to setup for the next map, cp_badlands, Reptile fainted.  Cassey gave him mouth to mouth immediately because he was the team Medic, but he missed Reptile's mouth a few times because that one eye was still broken.  Naturally, all of the games grinded to a halt as everybody took a turn trying to give Reptile mouth to mouth because nobody knew how to do CPR and Cassey kept kissing Reptile on the nose, to the delight of the homosexuals in the room, which consisted of pretty much all of the CounterStrike players.

Eventually, Reptile regained consciousness after the Paramedics arrived and did the mouth to mouth process correctly.  Admist all of the chaos, though, everybody forgot which set of computers was their own and so when blight and EG sat down again to continue the map, the EG guys sat at blight's computers and vice versa.  Somehow, EG and blight either never really noticed or didn't care about the mix-up and when they resumed the game after the long-ass pause, EG and blight had switched positions.  Because of this, blight ended up 5>0 rolling EG on badlands.

At the end of the match though, one of the guys on EG noticed that they were on the wrong side, and then when they went to the league officials to dispute the mix-up, the officials ended up giving the win to blight anyway because even though EG played and won the map, they did it under blight's name and therefore bilght is to be declared the map winner.

Reptile was furious, but his team talked him into remaining calm because he didn't want to get another heart attack.  EG and blight returned to their computers and continued the match on yukon.  It was a very, very epic battle.  EG was fired up because they had just lost badlands due to a bullcrap decision by the league officials and blight was giving it everything they had because they now wanted that #1 spot more than ever.

Unfortunately, though, EG was just plagued with unluckiness and blight ended up to somehow be able to take the piss out of every EG push that came their way.  The last round of that match was epic, going back and forth between EG's last point and the middle.  Every time EG pushed out, they would make it to the mid point, but then blight's scouts would just get the jump on Cassey with a crazy pick and force EG to regroup onto the last point.  Eventually, though, in the last few minutes, blight ended up getting ahold of EG's last point and that was that.

The Sexy Finals: blight vs coL, version 2.0

This one really put the icing on the cake.  As a matter of fact, this match was so epic I don't think that I can do it justice.  I think that I will just instead link you to the pwnage.tv broadcast of it (I'd do the sourceTV demo instead but they don't have it on the ESEA site yet) and let you see for yourself: Epic Link

And that was what really happened at the ESEA-Invitational Season 5 TF2 Playoffs.

... Oh yeah, by the way: spoiler alert.