We left Madison after a cheery bagel breakfast and headed south, for a couple hours, arriving at Gurnee about a half hour before the Halo Regionals would begin at 1:00 August 17th.

The Gurnee Mills mall was a bit larger than we expected, but it was no problem finding Cyber Area. Thankfully, things were much more organized here at the Regional Playoffs than at the Qualifying rounds. I understand that a lot of those glitches in the first round came from this being the first such tournament offered for Halo. We'll have to see if things improve in those areas for next years tournament.

There were four lovely flatscreens hooked up to four Xboxs total, and a full complement of original style controllers
(The type Rampant Sorrow Members prefer.)

I need to take a moment and plug Cyber Arena. In the Gurnee Mills mall, its a great LAN game place. Possessing plenty of comfortable seating, is well lit, and staffed by intelligent, pleasant, and knowledgeable people. A definite recommendation. Not only were they hosting this part of the tournament, they had a full complement of counter-strikers, everquest and warcrafters, all co-existing peacefully.

Another nice feature, which Novicius and I took advantage of, was the available net-terms. We put ours to good use updating our
7th Column Rampant Sorrow Page, while waiting
for Novicius to play in his first round.

I wasn't competing in this round, having lost splendidly on the second day of qualifying, but I was more than happy to visit with all those who did, and watch the competition that would send one of them onward to glory. Everyone was surprised with the swag of Tournament T-shirts and Halo:'Making of' cd's that were given out. It was a nice touch practically made the trip worth it all by itself. After checking in, we had quite a long time to wait for his first round, and did a bit of web surfing, watching the current games, and wandering back and forth around the mall. (I really didn't go all that far) There were several people like me who had come to watch, making the arena a bit warm, but it was easy enough to wander towards the entrance to feel cooler.

The first round of oddball took each group quite a long time to finish, even though indicators and radar were both turned on. (And, unfortunately, not really explained in the rules if they were supposed to be, we played with them on, other net reports have mentioned playing with them off, or a combination. Either way, all competitors played the same settings, so it was still fair. Another vague portion of the competition was the starting weapon sets, should they have been generic or custom)

The second round was lightning quick in comparison, with everyone racing towards their flags, any order. By this time we realized that Novicius wasn't going to win the day even with a first place finish, and began to root for Sgt. Slaughter. The Sarge had come from our qualifying area, and had been one of the reasons why I didn't qualify (one of many, mind you, but he's really good), and after winning first in both his games, the results were clear, the Sarge is going on to the finals!

All in all, it was a very good day, with the festivities running from about 1:00 to 6:00. We got to network with some very cool people, including another female Halo player, June! June and I jumped in for a couple fun rounds after the competition, and she's an amazing player! I bet anything we'll be seeing her again in next years tournament.

Hopefully we'll be seeing many more female competitors.
I was the only female who showed up for our qualifying round
here at Ping-Time

In fact, the whole tournament experience was such a pleasant one, I'm sure many of us will be back next year, with another year of practice under our belts, you can be sure it will be an awesome battle. Until then, we have the finals to look towards, to see if our regional leader takes home the big prize.

We went home happy, and excited just to be part of something so big. We hope to meet up with many of the people we networked with. See you all next year!