My favorite moment of the evening came during a game of action sack. One guy who apparently didn’t get the memo sent an XBL message which read something like, “where did u get the flaming head from? Do you work for Bungie?” Obviously I just replied with, “Yup.” Couldn’t resist. That lucky guy was playing in a game filled entirely with Bungie employees. At least that must have been his thought process, considering he was the only guy not on fire.

In honor of the spectacle that was Flaming Bungie Day, we’ve decided to put together a special Flaming Highlights reel. Your mission is simple, comb through your grifball pick-up games (or GGL games if you play in the league) and submit to us your best flaming highlights from the evening. Obviously that means you and any of your teammates involved in the highlights need to have been either rockin’ the flaming Bungie headdress or beating down on others that were. Drop the clips into your fileshare, grab the link from Bungie.net and submit them to highlights@grifballhub.com. Please don’t submit more than three clips.

One thing to remember – don’t forget to leave about 5 to 10 seconds before and after your highlight, to allow for proper editing and such. If you don’t, your clips may be unusable. Also try to create clips from your own films, and from your perspective. This helps to prevent clips from looking laggy. If your teammate pulled off something epic, don’t make the highlight from your film. They need to make it from theirs.

NOTE: Bungie is migrating Halo 3 to new servers today (the ones used for Reach), which means file share will be unavailable until the migration is complete. If you’re unable to file share your clips right away, no worries. The deadline for Flaming Highlights will be Tuesday of next week (July 13th).

Now, a year and a half after its launch date, Grifballhub.com is proud to post this, its 500th article. In celebration of this Quincentenary article, the Hub is also proud to present a new site design.

For the last 515 days, Grifballhub.com has had the privledge of serving the Grifball community. We would like to thank every Grifballer who has submitted an article, shared an idea, or created a video. We’d also like to express our profound gratitude to the Grifball community for their continued support and we look forward to sharing another 500 articles with you.

Thank you,

Grifballhub.com Staff

We had a very lulzy time recording this, mainly because I believe it was such a long time since we did a real episode that we all missed each other’s voices (Creepy much?).

In this episode of the HubCast, we cover:

-The New Direction of the Hub
-The Good Games League
-Adam Pisani (LBCountry) taking over as Commissioner of the AGLA
-Recent Cheating and Bans in the AGLA
-Games we are playing (and Wii Dusting) (I should have explained Borderlands more, but I will leave that for a review!)
-Goose’s VGA Contest
-Quick Glance at the Amateur League Playoffs
-Thanksgiving, preview of Apple vs Pumpkin Pie, and Lumpy Hand Turkeys

It was a fun episode and we hope you enjoy it! If all things to according to plan, we will be doing another one next week (it all depends on my moving status)!

I heard a report from a brain doctor on the radio this morning saying that Tryptophan (the amino acid in turkey that makes you sleepy) is actually good for you, as well as a drink or 2 of wine a day. So that being said, have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

This weeks transition songs were made by I Come to Shanghai, who can be found at icometoshanghai.com. Their album is available as a “Pay what you wish” model, so go and pick it up if you are remotely interested in their stuff!

Note: Sorry that the streaming option isn’t available right now. So for now, download is the only option. Thanks!

I will not go into detail about my personal reasons. I made them known to Caleb who was still the acting commissioner of the league at the time I decided to make my exit. I also made a journal post on Rooster Teeth (viewable to friends) listing some of my reasons.

A Change of Direction
When I first made my decision to leave competitive Grifball behind, I felt it was in the best interest of GrifballHub to cut ties with Grifball.com and its leagues. Much of the staff felt the same way. In general the community was becoming something we were having an increasingly difficult time supporting. The amount of needless drama, personal attacks, bickering and constant whining really seemed to be at an all-time high this past season. We’d had enough of it and decided we didn’t want to be a part of it any longer. Quite frankly Grifball had lost its appeal, becoming a chore and not quite so much fun anymore.

It was at this point that the Hub staff began talking amongst themselves and friends about forming a small community based around an idea presented by Goosechecka and Kalbegarion, the GG Recreational League. GG standing for Good Games. The idea of the league was to provide an alternative for those who would prefer to play the game of Grifball in a much less competitive environment, focusing on just having a little fun.

Because the idea was new, the decision was made to start the league quietly, give it a test run so to speak and see how things go. In a short amount of time, six teams were pulled together and as of last week we are now nearly two weeks into our inaugural season. Response from everyone involved has been very positive. As we’d hoped, everyone has enjoyed themselves and had a lot of fun thus far.

Will the League Eventually Open to More Teams?
Yes. This first season has been a shortened shake-out season to ensure that things like scheduling, game reporting and tracking player and team statistics worked smoothly and to incorporate feedback from the players. Unlike this season, next season will be full-length and hopefully include more teams that are looking for a non-competitive environment to play Grifball.

So There Will Be No More Coverage of the Grifball.com Leagues?
I personally won’t be covering them and will have no further association with Grifball.com. I’ve however given Hub staff members Goosechecka and BobbyBirdseed much more control on the Hub and what they decide to write or not write about will be entirely up to them. I trust their judgment as two people who have worked quite hard on this site for some time now. I will actually be taking on more of the traditional webmaster role, handling behind the scenes tasks – site maintenance, tweaks and so on.

For those that I know and am still friends with that are continuing on with the Grifball.com leagues, I wish your teams the best of luck. Perhaps I’ll see you around in double XP and pick-up games.

There’s still 23 days between now and ranked DXP (but who’s counting, right?), but thankfully there’s quite a bit going on in the meantime to keep you distracted. Most notably, it’s playoff season.

Pro League
Two teams have already been eliminated from this season’s playoffs:

Grunts of Fury lost to Power Outage in 2 games (7-2, & 5-4).

C.U.N.T. lost both matches they played against Brb Steak (7-2, 7-2)

Amateur League
Two games have also been played so far in amateur playoffs:

Deadly if Eaten bested The Guilty Sparks 6-3

Collateral Damage over Major Beef 9-0

A bracket for Amateur league can be found here.

Update 11/10
The Janitors over Outcast Revelation 8-1

Good luck to all teams in the playoffs!

This week topics of discussion include improving amateur discussion, class (or lack there of) by members of the grifball community and should it be expected, neutral host and what the protocol should be when teams can’t agree and much more.

As always if you have ideas for discussion in future HubCasts or would like to be considered as a guest please feel to contact us. We welcome your feedback.

Topics of discussion included 3v4 league games, the neutral host issue, the amateur league and more.

If you have an idea for topics of discussion for future HubCasts or would like to be considered as a guest, feel free to contact us.

Note: Keep in mind, this recording was actually done last week, if I remember correctly.

First and foremost, the Extra Life charity gaming marathon hosted by Sarcastic Gamer and the Hub’s very own BobbyBirdseed, is now less than a month away.

The money raised from this event goes to aid the fight against pediatric cancer and directly benefits the Texas Children’s Hospital. For more information about Extra Life, you can check out the official website.

Players are encouraged to donate (or be sponsored for) $1 per hour of play and to get their friends and families involved. Donations can be submitted here. So get together with your buddies, stock up on the Mountain Dew and oatmeal creme pies and put your game face on. This is a great cause and an even greater opportunity to give back to the community doing something we all love.

The next event Grifball Gives Back is happy to announce is a concert to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network. HighlndHellrazr has been working to bring together local Baltimore bands to headline this event as well as assistance from local sponsors. Although many of the details remain tentative, the band Of Broken and Second Impulse are booked to play at The Quarter on Bourbon Street in Baltimore in November (tentative). Both bands have been featured in recent editions of Pup and Friends. Radio station 98 Rock has agreed to MC the event. Please show your support by attending the First Annual – GrifballHub – Rocking for Recovery Tour and help the children at Johns Hopkins get the specialized medical care they need.

Pro League Champs – Power Outage
If you picked Power Outage to win the Spring Pro league, kudos to you. My guess is not many picked them, especially when you had very strong teams like Cat in the Hat Crew and Shut Your Lips and Learn in the playoffs. They did it though and congratulations to them. I personally neutral hosted a couple Power Outage games this season, so I saw first hand how solid a team they were.

Amateur League Champs – Zero Logic
Unable to find anyone to pull host over Irish Mafia’s Phil Silbaugh, the championship series was played without a neutral host. In the end it didn’t seem to matter that the mafia had host advantage. Zero Logic won in three games, proving that good teams do still win off host. Imagine that.

Fall League Begins Soon
This coming Monday (September 21st) marks the beginning of the the Fall league. Obviously the very next day Halo 3 ODST will be released, but try to find some time to play your league games. I know it will be tough. I’ll be playing ODST too.

Speaking of ODST
Look for the Hub to host an event or two after ODST is released featuring the firefight mode. I’m not exactly sure when, but I know Dragon has plans to do it. Check back soon to find out when.