C04B01 Results!

DAMN that was a great battle! We had an awesome turn-out. More than ever before! At one point it was 38 vs 37 players if I am correct. From my perspective, both sides seemed very evenly matched throughout the match.

I watched the biggest part of the first round from the sidelines, and it looked awesome! So much coordinated firepower around hot zones. Assets were used to their full potential, which should be a compliment to the map maker as well as both teams. A big contribution to the win of round one was Ash who killed around 150 (one-hundred-and-fifty) players with artillery strikes setting a tournament record.

Round two ended in a draw and was an excellent fight between both sides. Then the TLA decided to give the 101st a run for their money. Ash wasn't as effective with his artillery strikes as he had been previously and the TLA attacked hard and secured a round win.

Round four ended with a very well and timely coordinated attack from the 101st on the TLA's bases, which secured final victory for the 101st. Congratulations to the 101st for a hard-fought and deserved win. All in all this promises to be one hell of a campaign! As closing words I would like to thank everyone who participated in one form or another in this battle. It was one of the finest battles AGW has seen in its short history. Be proud of yourself!

Below some video footage of battle action.

Interview with the tournament president Blisstick

Here's an interview we did with our TP (tournament admin, not toilet paper) Blisstick.

Question: So who's this Blisstick guy? Tell us in short about the real person behind the nickname.
Blisstick: I'm a 27 year old (28 in 1 week) guy from just outside Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.  My girlfriend Skye and I have a cat named Manao... Skye's from Thailand and Manao is Thai for "lime".  Having recently graduated university with a BComm degree, I've just taken a new job and transitioned from the IT field where I've been for 6.5 years into Inside Sales.

Question:Explain your online handle, what does it mean? why did you choose it? do you use any other alias? How long have you had it?
Blisstick: Blisstick is actually short for "BLIStered STICKers".  Around 10 years ago, when I decided I needed a fresh, unique online handle, I created this because I was a new volunteer firefighter and was proud of blistering the stickers on my helmet after being in a hot house fire.

Question: What were you hoping to accomplish with starting up the AGW tournament?
Blisstick: AGW was created by a small group of us who came from a Battlefield 2 tournament called FFTF "Fight for The Future".  We loved organized tournament battles, but BF2 was limited to 32v32 games.  Tacho was an ArmA1 fan and showed us that game... like ArmA2 it had huge maps with potential for large battles and could be heavily modded, so we decided to form a new tournament based on the Armed Assault series of games - enter AGW "Armed Global Warfare".

Question:: How long did it take to develop?
Blisstick: We originally started with the concept in late 2007/early 2008 and I created the website June 2008.  It took a long time to get started because we had such a small group starting out, and it takes a lot of gamers to produce a successful war-game tournament.  Campaign 1 officially started a more than a year later in August 2009.

Question: What has been the biggest challenge running the online tourney?
Blisstick: By far the biggest challenge is managing/dealing with all the people and personalities, which are critical to the success of the tournament.  Naturally, no two people think alike, and having armies and so many people in different positions of authority who we depend on to perform their duties takes a lot of patience, people skills, and close management in order to push forward for everyone's enjoyment.

Question: How long have you been involved with gaming in general?
Blisstick: Since the days of Wolfenstein... that must be close to 20 years now.  Although as a kid I was into Nintendo a bit, PC - and especially multiplayer gaming has always intrigued me.  My first PC CD-Rom game was SimCity 2000 and my first PC multiplayer game was Duke Nukem 3D (via dialup modem connection).

Question: Which current AGW member have you known the longest?
Blisstick: Roybean and I were platoon mates in Wiskey Company of the 32RA Coalition Army of 21CW "21st Century Warfare" Battlefield 1942 tournament in Campaign 7.  This was my first experience with online tournament gaming and would have been somewhere around 2000 or 2001.  Looking back, we've been in 4 or 5 different tournaments together and often worked/played at similar levels; some as plain old grunt NCM's together, some as HCO's and Officers together, and some as Admins together.  My only trip to Europe was to visit Roybean a few years back.  If you ever have the chance to meet an online gaming friend, do it; it's amazing the friendships people can form online!

Question: Tell us a little about your gaming rigg?
Blisstick: My current rig runs an i7-920 2.67Ghz CPU with 12GB RAM, an ATI 4890 video card, and 4 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm harddrives running in RAID 10.

Question: What are games you play currently?  List your top 5 favorite games with a short explanation of why they are your favorites.
Blisstick: 1. ArmA2 AAS - Because of its capacity for large-scale first-person shooter battles, modifiability, and naturally because our tournament runs it!
2. Mafia 1 & 2 - Because of the great graphics and mission storyline... thank God it's not multiplayer or no one in my real-life would ever see me!
3. Team Fortress 2 - Because of its exciting, fast-paced action, continuous updates, and comical characters.
4. Tropico 3 - Because of the management of resources and strategy involved... I'm a big fan of tycoon-style games and this is the most recent one I've played.
5. TheHunter.com - Because I enjoy hunting in real-life and it has amazing graphics and equipment which are continually updated... again, I wish it was multiplayer!

Question: What other hobbies do you partake in?
Blisstick: I enjoy hunting and fishing, computer/web programming, driving/traveling and hanging out with my friends and family.

Question: Describe a perfect game night/day?
Blisstick: Some of my friends and I used to get together for LAN games back in the day... probably around 2003/2004.  A couple of us were officers in the local volunteer fire department at the time, so we'd invite 6 or 8 guys to the firehall and all bring our PC's and set up in the meeting room, order some pizzas, and game all night long.  IT WAS A GREAT TIME!

Question: Do you see yourself gaming when you are 75 years old?
Blisstick: Sure, if I'm still alive lol!  Can't wait to see the graphics and interface systems by then... virtual reality anyone?!

Question: What are you hoping to accomplish with the new Campaign 4?
Blisstick: My goal for C4 is to finally achieve the regular 50v50 battles we've been working to have since Day 1.  It feels great that the team we have in place on Staff and HCO level are functioning so well and advertising/word of mouth is finally making that possible after 2.5 years!

Question: Do you have a favorite AGW moment? Tell us about it.
Blisstick: Our very first AAS Scrim... I can't remember the name of the map, but it was amazingly fun.  AAS helped concentrate the action on our battlefields in a way that wasn't possible with regular ArmA2.  I can remember walking with a platoon in line-formation along the edge of a meadow and getting so many kills on our way to the flag.  In a sense, "you just had to be there", but I'm sure we have all had experiences like this in AGW battles by now.

Question: Anything else you would like to add?
Blisstick: It has taken a lot of time, work, and money generously donated by our members past and current to get AGW to where it is today - one of the premiere Armed Assault tournament communities on the net.  I feel a lot of pride and respect for all who have contributed to the community we've become and hope you all do to.  Thank you all very much!

Thank you very much for your time, Blisstick on behalf of the media team.

Campaign 4, Battle 1 Oh yeah, game on!

Battle 1 of the new campaign is scheduled for next sunday. Sweet! Our first match with the Operaton Arrowhead expansion! I'm looking forward to an exciting, challenging match.

The 101st Airborne is attacking sector Final Curtain and the mission is called Final Curtain.

Click the picture to see the battle map of Takistan.

Oh, one more thing: if you're a fan of us, then join our Steam group! Here's our Steam page.

We have generals for Campaign 4!

We're pleased to announce that the Generals for Campaign 4 have been chosen

To lead the Blue Army will be Grimes!
To lead the Red Army will be Cat Toaster !

They will be selecting their army's names and structure within the next few days and we will be opening enlistments shortly thereafter.

Planning Campaign 4

Just wanted to let you people know that a core group of AGW members is planning Campaign 4. There's already been a kick-off meeting where some points were discussed. For instance:

• we will be using ArmA2:Operation Arrowhead;
• we will be using AAS as our main "mod";
• to attract new members to AGW, we're going to play very regularly on the Basecamp server (which is the most active server in the world at the moment).

We like to get more new members! So if you're interested, come and play with us on the BCA server until the signup period starts.