The first and foremost flaw is the map they are using. For whatever retarded reason, they’ve decided to allow for 5v5 games and in doing so took Nokyard’s foundry map and added extra spawns in a rather sloppy fashion. They also removed his very cool artwork from the wall.

When Nokyard heard of the ladder and learned they were using his map with goofy spawns, he headed to the Team Mayhem thread on the Gamebattles forum, politely letting them know of the issues with the map and even offered to fix it for them. In fact he did, and placed it in his fileshare (Slot 22).

One of the forum moderators acknowledged his post and thanked him for pointing out the flaws and said they would look into fixing it. Considering Nokyard already fixed the map, they didn’t really need to fix anything. He posted once more, again linking to his fileshare where the correct map could be found. Eventually his posts were deleted for unknown reasons.

The last word from Nokyard is that he has now taken to private messaging to correct the map issues. While a map with screwed up spawns is irritating and something I’m sure many of us would like to get on Gamebattle’s case about, let’s all hang back and let Nokyard do his best to resolve things with them. I am hopeful that they will listen to what he has to say, once they realize he is in fact the person who creates the official league maps and provides several maps for double XP matchmaking.

A second issue I’ve personally run into in the new Team Mayhem ladder is cheating. It would seem a couple cocky generals who are perhaps offended by the game of grifball are going to attempt to make things miserable for those of us who enjoy playing the game and were intrigued by the new ladder.

Last night my teammate Anubis and I decided to play a few 2v2 matches since none of our teammates were around. The first couple went fine. The third however did not. After playing and winning the first of a three game series with a team I will affectionately call “Host Booters”, they decided it was time to try and cheat to win.

To make a long story short, they created a new party, invited us into it (which obviously was fishy) and then proceeded to IP flood and boot me from the game, leaving Anubis to fend for himself. What they apparently didn’t count on was Anubis getting the host after they kicked me. Anubis won, 5-4. I’ve captured the game for your viewing pleasure, which you can watch below. You can clearly see the exact moment when they booted me from the game.

What I didn’t realize until after watching Anubis’ film is that it appears that I was in black screen for the remainder of the match. In reality I had to shut off my XBOX, disconnect my router and cable modem and do a total restart. It seems several other teams are also accusing them of the same thing and not just in grifball matches. I guess we know how they earned their fifties.

Here’s the deal though. It’s extremely hot here and unbelievably muggy, so I got a little lazy with this capture. I decided to leave the game’s original HUD display on rather than use the scoring overlay which I used for game one of the Pro league championship. It would have required more editing time which I just don’t have the ambition for today. Stupid weather. Anyway, with the HUD turned on you’ll of course still be able to keep track of the score. It just doesn’t look quite as pretty.

The game is captured from the perspective of A Baby Tortoise, one of two Bleep Bloop players in the game. The other was Cofrog. Even though Tortoise was rather drunk during the entire three game series, he still managed to pull off an MVP performance. We may have to get him drunk during our Summer league games, to be honest.

Red Team Roster

• A Baby Tortoise
• Cofrog
• Shadow S16
• YoungNastyMan79

Blue Team Roster

• Doc Status
• I CITI I
• Twizzted Status
• x Zeg x

After countless hours of capturing, editing, and flying, the Hub is proud to bring you the first game of the Spring 2009 Amateur League championships. This was taken from the neutral host’s point of view (CITI), so it’s almost like watching a LAN game! Yay LAN!

The text on the score board rendered slightly goofy, but it really wasn’t something worth spending the three extra hours to re-render.

Galloping Seagulls (Red Team)

• Dr Waffles
• Doerstopper
• I MajorSilva I
• El Diablo X230X

Team India (Blue Team)

• PP MooCow PP
• jlamanna91
• III DIAMOND III
• U sToL mY CoKie

The first game is available to watch now and the second will hopefully be online and posted here on the Hub by no later than Monday. There’s a lot of time involved in capturing, editing and rendering the films for the web. The rosters for each team were as follows:

Separate Intelligence (Red team)

• I CITI I
• Spud H3ad
• Lord Stanley2
• TnT Bioshocker

Strictly Business (Blue Team)

• II Flowers II
• x0 Pie x0
• Super Status
• Shadow S16

SYaL featured Scet Shin and x0 pie x0 of the Pro league team Strictly Business. Their opponents in the championship game were Yougnastyman and Blade from +1 Beer (also of the Pro league), playing as Beers and Blunts. You can check out a full capture of the game below.

Thanks to everyone who participated last night and helped make the tournament a success. We hope to do this again soon!