The final Insomnia LAN of the year has come to a close with the CS:GO Tournament taking centre stage at the NEC this weekend. With £7,500 prize money up for grabs, it was always going to be a thrilling encounter as insomnia61 came to round the year off.
Usually Tom “Gumpster” Gumbleton does these sort of posts, outlining the general goings-on of the LAN. Unfortunately he’s busy and we’ve decided that I need to start pulling my weight around here, so it’s time to enjoy my dulcet writing tones. Once again, we did not attend this Insomnia event because of the financial burden of such events. Once again, the decision was made that if we were to attend an event we would require support from Multiplay regarding tickets, or have a press pass that’d fit our needs (i.e. not kicking us out at 6pm). To the credit of Multiplay/GAME there were attempts to get us to LAN, but by the time confirmation came it was unfortunately too late to sort our the remainder of our travel/accommodation etc. Now with the six-month wait before i62, hopefully we can agree on the details further ahead of time.
In terms of the bare-bones approach to our content for the second Insomnia, I’ll add another apology. UKCSGO.com currently has 3-4 regular contributors. Myself, Adam “Blanks” Heath, Gumpster and our new-hand Alex “Xela” Harris. Due to work constraints, lack of time, illnesses or having to run a team competing in Gfinity’s tournament (that one’s Blanks) we’ve not been able to focus too much of our time on kicking off a load of remote content for i61. This also explains why we’ve been low on content for UK Masters and the Gfinity Elite Series. We’re always looking for new writers so if you want to join in with restarting UKCSGOor just curious about writing about our dear scene, feel free to drop us a line (our DMs are open).
Multiplay’s insomnia event still drives people for the BYOC (Credit: Multiplay Flickr)
Now, back to the actual event – insomnia61. All in all, 67 teams took part in the i61 BYOC tournament, including CeX who bypassed the Group Stages by being in the UK Masters final. The Endpoint mix team (more widely known as fish123) on the other hand dropped out before competing in the main BYOC tournament due to players having to compete in the Gfinity Elite Series Semi-Finals or other teams at LAN. The group stages were rounded out quickly, with no major upsets occurring right at the start of LAN. Whether or not that’s down to the fact no seeds were published (until the bracket stage) or if we couldn’t actually tell who played in which teams because the brand new system the LAN has doesn’t provide line-ups (yet) can be questioned, but we’re fairly confident everyone who was expected to qualify did. That’s not the only complaint on the system as it caused a couple-hour delay at the start-of-play on Friday, caused by a small crash. Teething problems, from the first use at a large LAN event, is the diagnosis it seems.
The teams who managed qualifiers fit themselves neatly into what was supposed to be a 32-team bracket. Due to the odd-number of competing in the tournament because fish123 didn’t expand themselves past the UK Masters final, it turned into a more-or-less as simple 31-team bracket. Luckily this new tournament software doesn’t break when initialising strange bracket shapes, meaning Jon “ViciousHorizon” Kelly is a happy, happy man and bracket stage carried on smoothly, winning “Athena” a point. From here, the teams with interesting names did fairly well. ‘In and Out by Friday Night’, featuring Immi and swaggyavi, managed to last until Saturday evening as they grabbed a 9th-12th finish alongside their other strangely named compadres ‘Zulu’s White Friends’. With the Elite Series smashing right into the LAN weekend, a fair amount of the Gfinity teams decided not to attend LAN. Whether or not that’s down to teams restructuring in the off-season or being in exceL’s case where they were fighting tooth-and-nail for the UK’s reputation against Epsilon over in London.
Looking at the prize-winning places, adamxoxo‘s new ProjectX squad suffered a grueling run in the lower bracket after being sent down in the second knock-out round to claim a solid fourth place, after a narrow 2-1 loss to Vexed. In the 5th-8th spots, the teams were made up of the likes of insomnia60 runners-up XENEX (formerly DOG Gaming) and IGI eSports, as well as The Goose House managing to secure their highest Insomnia finish. CeX, who people pegged as a favourite to take the event before the UK Masters final, dropped out in third as Vexed managed to pull a couple surprises out of the bag to create a solid route to the Grand Final to meet who sent them to the lower bracket – Reason Gaming.
The Player Stage at insomnia61, where all the Grand Finals took place (Credit: Multiplay Flickr)
Reason Gaming managed to craft a solid route to the Grand Finals without too much issue. Only dropping maps to two teams, Call Me eSports and Vexed, they weren’t challenged too much as they faced CeX to secure their Finals place. With Vexed also managing to take CeX out in the consolidation final, it led the two sides to a rematch, this time in the Best-of-Five game. Reason saw themselves having a hard-fought one map advantage from their upper bracket run, the two sides were set to face off on Inferno, Cobblestone, Mirage were some of the maps on offer, and the people saw Reason take none of them. Inferno was a close match up between the two, as Reason on the T-side only managed a one round advantage at the half being 8-7 up. The second half saw the two trading rounds before Vexed managed to scratch a win at 16-14. With Cobblestone coming up next, it appeared more of the same at the half, with just a mirror image as Vexed were 8-7 up on their T-side. The second half wasn’t as close, as Reason managed to take a small lead after their pistol round victories, but Vexed kept on rolling. Strong performances from the squad led by SHEEKEY saw them keep on moving stronger and stronger to take the map 16-11, giving Vexed the series lead at 2-1. Mirage came afterwards and Vexed were pretty much always out of touch. Shaney and wonderkid van1ty constantly performing over their opponents for a 10-5 half-time lead, before a small Reason resurgence was halted by Vexed to win the map 16-8, and the series 3-1.
#CSGO 🇬🇧 WE ARE YOUR @MultiplayEvents #I61 CHAMPIONS!
Big thanks to @EbuyerGaming @Seagate @HyperX @ballistixgaming and ofc, our Vexed Fam pic.twitter.com/Ct0Vu965ry
— Vexed Gaming (@Vexed_GG) August 27, 2017
The full insomnia61 standings are as follows: (Lineups of certain teams can be found here)
1st: Vexed (£3,750)
2nd: Reason Gaming (£1,500)
3rd: CeX (£900)
4th: ProjectX (£450)
5th/6th: XENEX (£225)
5th/6th: IGI Esports (£225)
7th/8th: Call Me eSports (£225)
7th/8th: The Goose House (£225)
9th-12th: Cryptick
9th-12th: In and Out by Friday Night
9th-12th: Zulu’s White Friends
9th-12th: Choke Gaming
13th-16th: Eden Esports
13th-16th: Osterity Esports
13th-16th: Nuclear Storm Gaming
13th-16th: London Lynx
17th-24th: TeqR esports
17th-24th: ODIN Esports
17th-24th: BARRAGE CSGO
17th-24th: Inception Esports
17th-24th: Impulse Gaming
17th-24th: Caliber
17th-24th: OMEN Esports
17th-24th: Viperio Esports
25th-31st: VapeLordz
25th-31st: Delirium CS
25th-31st: Tritus
25th-31st: Cex, Pugs and Spray Control
25th-31st: Lucid eSports
25th-31st: Overpowered | Outrage
25th-31st: Blackout Gaming
32nd-67th: Newcastle Nitro
32nd-67th: Necrotic eSports
32nd-67th: Synapse.UK
32nd-67th: Aerox eSports
32nd-67th: Revelation Gaming
32nd-67th: netPlay
32nd-67th: Overheat
32nd-67th: Nocomms.com
32nd-67th: FUBC
32nd-67th: ChillBlast.com
32nd-67th: HENTAI
32nd-67th: Tritus
32nd-67th: Fnatic.Mix
32nd-67th: Frying Pan Assassins
32nd-67th: Holy Potato Skins
32nd-67th: Peritus
32nd-67th: Puglin PD
32nd-67th: Brexit Squadron
32nd-67th: Afflicted.Mix
32nd-67th: Look at our team
32nd-67th: Causing Mayhem
32nd-67th: Double Dukes
32nd-67th: DHG
32nd-67th: Opportunity Gaming
32nd-67th: Super Mario All-Stars
32nd-67th: CHOKE ME DADDY
32nd-67th: NWOH
32nd-67th: GEAR.EU
32nd-67th: Last Man Standing
32nd-67th: VeryyGayys
32nd-67th: KQ
32nd-67th: Cerberus|CS
32nd-67th: Brad N Co
32nd-67th: Team Synapse.UK Mix
32nd-67th: Nans On LAN
32nd-67th: A SUCCULENT CHINESE MEAL
Group Stage Post • Elimination Stage Post
After that brilliant weekend, the next (and last) UK LAN of 2017 will be epic22 on the weekend of October 12th – 15th, you can still book tickets here, with only 213 tickets remaining, you won’t want to miss out on another weekend of glorious banter and incredible Counter-Strike.
