The Beach LAN: http://www.beach-lan.com / Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/beachlan This is the 5th annual Beach LAN and 2nd annual tournament that takes place down near Tampa Florida over the course of a week. The Beach LAN is the largest gathering of skilled Halo CE players throughout the world. The numbers and players in attendance vary from year to year but on average there are roughly 40 players that attend and many of them are ranked in the top 20 throughout the country. This year we have just over 50 players going including 2 of the legendary horseman. There are four players in the country who are significantly better than #5-#10. Both Patch and LegendPimps are confirmed which means you guys are in for some absolutely amazing Halo. Unfortunately Ogre 2 will likely not be there and Harris as far as I know has retired. Feel free to spam Ogre 2 on all media possible and tell him to attend! Attendance: Here is the list of confirmed attendees for this year. It's important to note that two of the *four horseman will be attending. Others on this list are highly skilled as well but I will admit I am not aware of who the *nippers are besides McDick. If you have any questions, please let me know and I can reach out to McDick and others. The full list is here: Spoiler Tournament and Info: Current Prize Pool = $3,500 There will be two tournaments. They will take place on Wednesday, August 10th and Thursday August 11th. As we get closer to those days I will try to update with a schedule and see what we can do about getting you guys a bracket and other info such as how the prize pool will be distributed. First and foremost; a HUGE thanks goes out to @CodyDragon and the fellas over at Weedmaps. They have been gracious enough to sponsor our event and provide us with some awesome stuff and opportunities. Cody is in charge of the WeedMaps e-sports division and has donated $2,000 for the Halo CE 2v2 tournament! On top of that, he is responsible for getting Jeenyus out there which does an incredible amount for our community and LAN. Due to his awesome efforts, our event will have improved a lot from last year! Tournament #1 will likely be Wednesday and feature a randomly paired partner tournament. This is done in tiers and top players will be matched up with new players. This was done last year and was considered successful. It benefits the players in attendance and creates more balanced matches in general. The only issue is that top players can get a noob and it is difficult to carry a new player in Halo CE 2v2. Despite this, both Patch and Legend had reached the finals proving that raw skill can overcome it all in CE. More than likely a small portion of the prize money will go to this format. Tournament #2 will feature the standard pick your partner tournament. This format should provide for the highest skill Halo possible and you're likely to see incredibly close games as well as some of the horrific stomping of new players. More than likely a large portion of prize money will go to this format. Overall Tournament Structure: The main tournament is the pick your partner tournament. We will likely split the tournament prize money between the two, but heavily favor the main tournament. Depends on how much our final prize pool is, but can expect a split in the range of 65/35 to 75/25. We will figure out all the rules here first before bothering with the random tiered tournaments. Round 1 : Prisoner, Hang Em High, Chill Out Round 2 : Damnation, Derelict, Battle Creek Round 3 : Chill Out, Downrush, Prisoner Tournament Rules: So far the current maps are: Damnation Chill Out Prisoner Hang Em High Downrush Battle Creek Confirmed teams: LePatch - LegendPimps + Patch (aka Skillz) PhatDick - PhatBastard + McDick BoneFight - Bonesaw + Fight Rumored teams: HalasterBlack + Poonmaster Zephy + Finny Equipment/Set Up: We will be using Original Xbox's and a mixture of Samsung and Panasonic CRTV's. The consoles have been modded to include "Halo 1.5 NHE" I consider this to be similar to Melee's "Project M" in a sense. The community had modded the game to make it more competitive for LAN environments. "NHE" stands for Neutral Host Edition. For those not aware, even on LAN Halo CE has a very noticeable host advantage. Some very serious work has been done to make a third box the "neutral host" and allow both players to connect to essentially creating a dedicated sever. This cuts tournament series down in half by not having to replay the series by switching on/off host. This is a huge deal and an enormous thanks goes out to all who had contributed! You can find out all of the changes on their website which includes stuff like a talking in game timer as well as removing certain noise cues that the players sitting across you could hear! http://www.halo1final.com/
I've loved watching this every year, either through live streams (when they've had them), or on Youtube after the fact. It's pretty much the highest level of CE we get a chance to watch these day, and it's a thing of beauty to me. They've really stepped up their game this year with sponsors, donations, and just getting a good plan in place overall. But the thing I'm probably most excited about is that we can now watch it live with relatively good production value. They have Jeenyus there keeping an eye on the stream. For anyone who doesn't know who he is, he worked on all of the Halo events MLG did back in the day, playing a big part in running the live stream. I already watched for a few hours last night, and it's safe to say that a lot of my downtime will be spent watching Halo CE this week. On a slightly related note, here's a video that shows some of the wild stuff you can do in CE. It's from McDick, who's the host of this weeks LAN, and somewhere around the Top 5 as far a CE players go. He just took a casual stroll through Hand em High, and made some stuff fly.