insomnia 46

Insomnia 46 was a fun weekend. Its the UK’s biggest LAN event, held this year in Telford (who doesn’t miss Newbury though) and was probably the biggest event that Wizzo and co have put on. I usually go and hang out with the CantFitMyN crowd and play some games – TF2, Starcraft 2, Civ5 to name a few. Then we adjourn to the bar, have a few drinks and play games like Fluxx, Munchkin and Carcassonne.

There’s a thing they run called the iHunt – basically a treasure hunt based around clues from a website (think ARG) which embed clues and breadcrumb trails to allow you to enter a keyword to progress to the next, usually more difficult (or at least more involved) test. Apparently the organisers used a picture from my Flickr account and caused a few red herring trips here.



There are costume contests as well as the pro-gaming scene; it is an inherently social event, with the regular crowd getting recognised as soon as they arrive, helped by playing games – Werewolves being the main one. (Mafia to people across the pond).



I’ve generally modded at least one game (Quiet down villagers of the new town of Crinkly Bottom) and it generally runs okay, and online there are generally IRC games going on over at netgamers.org

The SC2 finals were fun, but I really think for the serious tournaments they could do a better job at getting the players at a particular venue rather than play the Ro4 at the desks, the could move them to a smaller stage, making it much easier to cast and photograph. As it was, I only managed to get the first Ro32 match and some of the final. Still, I think I took my favourite SC2 photo:


Starcraft 2 – FM-Slyce

JR vs Bling in the final was a good series; JR's recovery to beat Bling was insane in the interrupted game.


Dignitas/Bling

All in all, a fantastic weekend event, shame that with the MLG happening it didn't get much attention. Hopefully I'll be able to get to more of these events in the future!