One Last Smackdown at D&B Houston 2005

Originally posted on Monday, September 12, 2005 - 09:34 PM

By the time you read this, BattleTech will be removed from Dave and Buster's in Houston Texas. September 11, 2005 was the last day that Virtual World's Tesla System was open to the public. This is somewhat strangely appropriate for those of us who have played this particular set of pods for over 10 years at this particular location.

Tragic that something as firmly-rooted as we thought BattleTech was at D&B could be gone so quickly.

However, with such a tragedy, you find out the bonds that have been established are strengthened and hope arises from the ashes.

We wanted to get one last play in on this set before it was dissasembled and moved to Game Wyze in Dallas, TX and September 11 was set as the date of the "One Last Smackdown" at D&B Houston. It was an unofficial tournament and we came up with the rules as the night went on.

In attendance: (in no particular order)

Kindrael, Phrogg, Bombadil, WAR, TJaden, Tex, Mutha, Terminator, Aiacha, Death Jester, E Nomine, Maestro, Tucker, Wreck, Widowmaker and me (Muerte). (hopefully I got everyone in that list.)

Since everyone was not up to the same skill level we decided to have a King of the Hill tournament with the finals being decided by No Return Attrition.

The finalist included Tex, Bombadil, Mutha, Terminator, Kindrael, Death Jester, Muerte and WAR.

After an interesting battle on Lunacy/night/peasoup-fog and an interesting game of cat and mouse / hide and seak the last two remaining combatants were Mutha and WAR.

Evasion seemed to be the key to victory here as Mutha chose to take an Owens and skirted the battle and waited for the prime shots in straifing runs. War chose to keep his Daishi shut down (avoiding radar detection) untill discovered by visual contact and then employed Jack-in-the-Box tactics.

In the final faceoff, a greatly wounded Daishi faced an undamaged owens! In the end War's Daishi prevailed and won the "One Last Smackdown".

After the tournament results were announced, all of the combatants were gathered for a "Class of 2005" photo:

Then, as the ash of destruction settled, Phrogg made an announcement to the group that BattleTech was NOT GONE from Houston. Instead, this was merely a rebuilding and birth of a new era. In October of 2005, BattleTech would be returning to Houston in the form of MechCorps. Keep watch at this website for more details!

We would like to thank Dave and Busters for the previous glorious years of destruction and mayhem and thank the many, many Techs for putting up with us, our tournaments, our disputes and the thousands of destroyed 'Mechs that must be piling up around there.