Weekend One: An Inside Look at LNA in ATXI

"Sorry. The corpse of Bahamut420 has to go."

 LNA's first mach of Weekend One in the alliance tournament started with a GM telling one of the guys that he could not carry the corpse of our fearless alliance dictator into battle. Apparently, each match starts with the GM's scanning down the vessels and implants of all participants to make sure no illegal items are on board, or plugged-in.

Corpses are not allowed...even lucky ones.  But thankfully, judging by how well Late Night did their first match, it wasn't particularly needed anyway.

Having been on vacation last weekend, I was able to get caught up on things recently thanks to Wex --one of Late Night's support pilots during both matches. He was able to give me all the juicy details of what happened behind the scenes --details you simply don't get when you watch the tournament on CCP's Twitch stream. (Which I also did.)

"It was like having your hand held on a stove for a while....the waiting and waiting." Wex said, talking about LNA members waiting for their first ever Alliance Tournament match. Apparently, the nerves were a little thick --especially when they were told during the pre-match scans that one of their ships were illegal. (They had too many of one ship type.)

"You would have laughed really hard, Susan. After EVE mailing everyone what ships they were supposed to bring, he went and brought the wrong one himself..."

But it simply would not have been in true Late Night style not to have at least one facepalm moment. (Hopefully, we have them out of our system for the rest of the tournament now, with no harm done. =p  )
Thankfully, someone had the needed ship fit up already, and the sheepish pilot could quickly jump into what he was supposed to be in before the match officially began.

"There were six different arenas, and it was really nerve racking making sure we were warping to the correct one..."

As LNA landed on the field of battle, and saw what D3vil's Childr3n had brought --a Vargur and Widow setup --two words spewed from our FC:

"Oh F---."*

"But he snapped out of it, and had --in two seconds--formulated a plan on how to take them and was giving us directions." Wex said, continuing the story of the first battle. "And then, we proceeded to slaughter them, winning the match 100-8."

Coms exploded after the win. According to Wex, Late Night members were "sky high," excited about winning their first match --in the first alliance tournament we've ever been a part of.

Probably a lot of other people were happy also...and maybe some not so much. Apparently when betting closed before the first day's matches, Late Night Alliance's match was the most popular betting match with over 26 billion ISK being bet on either side.

At least five billion of the ISK won went to one of Late Night's members, and will no doubt be at least partially used for next weekend's tournament ships.

Everyone was excited, ready to go for the next day's tournament, where LNA would be going up against Clockwork Pineapple. LNA members knew it would probably be a bit more of a challenge than their previous fight.

Thankfully, no facepalm moments happened pre-match this time. And everyone left their favorite corpses at home.

"It was funny, "Wex said, as he was telling me about Sunday's match. "Prior to the engagement [our FC] was telling us about one of the setups he was particularly nervous about someone bringing against us. In fact, he said that if they brought it, we might as well all eject. As we warped in to face Pineapples only moments later...sure enough, they were in that setup."

Late Night's FC gave a similar speech as was given at the beginning of the first match, only this time a little more colorful. It has become affectionately known as the official pre-match 'Inspirational Speech.'

"It definitely was a harder match, but the tides turned when we killed that Armageddon. We ended up winning, 92-27."

Looking at a replay of the match, it looks like Clockwork fought tooth and nail, even when they were obviously losing toward the end. A very good fight with some very worthy opponents. Maybe someday we'll see them outside the alliance tournament for a rematch. ;)


Anyway, it was obviously a very exciting weekend for my alliance. I know that some of those guys have been talking about wanting to do the alliance tournament for years...many even before Late Night was even formed. I'm glad that they were successful, even though I'm sad I wasn't around to cheer them on.

Next weekend will be very interesting to watch --there are a lot of good teams that made it into the undefeated bracket with us. We definitely have our work cut out. But, win or lose, I can already say that everyone is already having an absolute blast.