'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

It was a game on Facing Worlds, an old favourite of BoggyB's, and his team was desparetly lacking. The rooftop snipers had succesfully kept out most attacks, but the blue team kept on comming and a certain Master_Sniper was probably revelling in picking of anyone who was daft enough to atttempt to get the enemy flag.

I had my work cut out here. It seems like the blues had finally deciced to take us by storm, and at 0-2 our team was doing badly. However, an old friend, +Ac][d+Jiles, was doing well in defending the base, and I had just managed to nab the redeemer. Right, now to take care of Mr. Master_Sniper. Snipe this!

The Redeemer missile soared gracefully underneath the lonely asteriod that was Facing Worlds, and arced over the top of the enemy tower, before landing perfectly on what appeared to be a solitary sniping figure.

"You killed Village_Idiot!"

That wasn't planned. I had expected Master_Sniper to be vapourised, and even hoped a little that he would leave the game and sulk. However, it appeared to be a different player, who happened to have about 5 frags for 98 deaths. Time for plan B.

The translocator is a very powerful device, loved and hated by players alike. It is most hated for the infamous anti-sniping trick, which is the bane of snipers everywhere.

I landed on the rooftop, and knew that I only had seconds to act. Fortuantly, +Ac][d+Jiles had picked up a Redeemer, thinking that it might come in handy, and as I was warping across I gave the command for it to be fired.

Master_Sniper was enjoying a little bit of refuge while he got some health and ordered his team around. What he did not expect was the mini-nuclear rocket that flew into the enemy base, stragith for him. Uh-oh...

"M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!" was the message that flashed up on +Ac][d+Jiles' screen, along with the words "You killed Master_Sniper!". With the enemy out of action for a few seconds, now was the time to invade!

The sirens went off as I grabbed the flag and headed back to the roof through the hidden warp. Alien_HQ was waiting for me, having followed me over. "Okay, here goes nothing," I said, as Alien_HQ loaded up six rockets and fired them at my feet.

Master_Sniper had just respawned and looked up in auprise as he heard the boom. He just spotted a distant figure soaring overhead with what looked supiciously like his flag. The red mist rose in front of his eyes as he forgot about all else. Grabbing a Ripper from a fellow teammate he charged across the open ground where so many have met their doom...

I just made it back on to the top of my tower and was about to travel through the warp as I heard the unmistakable sound of a Ripper echo back through. Moments later, a manical laugh echoed through my headset as the sirens went off and our flag was taken. This could be a problem.

Master_Sniper thought of nothing else as the wrath covered him. The bloodstained grinning skull that he wore as a helmet seemed to take on a life of its own as he ran out of the door. Titanium-lined, it was impervious to the sniper fire that came from both rooftops. Sparks crawled over the skull as an anti-matter plasma bubble gently wafted past...

"Yeeee-haw!"

The pure energy beam of the ASMD shock rifle crashed into the plasma, ripping it apart and releasing the cloud of anti-matter and high voltage contained within. Master_Sniper served as a nice earthing point for all that, and the anti-matter anihilated him in a burst of energy that destroyed one of the two bridges that linked the facing bases.

Destroyed a bridge? I looked around in suprise, and realised that some of the blue ASMD energy beams had come from the enemy base. They must have fired at the plasma bubble too, causing it to implode and explode simultaneously with immense power. Anyway... the flag fell away from the asteriod, and was respawned in our base. I rushed down and was just about to touch our flag when...

The timer had been running in the background, and everyone had been oblivious to the final countdown. As the game was ended and the remaining players warped to the holding ground, blue team were still the winners. The reds had been beaten, but this game would go down in history, and the name of BoggyB and the story of how he destroyed the infamous Master_Sniper would live on.

I'm slowly melting at my computer here. I can't have the windows open more than a tiny crack otherwise our two kittens will do a runner, and so I'm rather stuck with the heat. At least I can eat thia lovely cold choc ice... mmmmmmmmmm......

Anyway, I was playing UT with a friend over his LAN the other day (a rather dodgy Wi-Fi setup, as in his PC was only running at 2Mbps instead of the top speed of 54Mbps and so you get him jerking across the screen from lag... no chance of sniping him then). We tried out a few different CTF levels, with 4 bots each on the "cannon-fodder" aka "experienced" level (high enough to be useful, low enough to not get in the way). CTF-Coret he pulled off quite well, as I didn't work out what to do with him until too late (as in 4-1 to him and 1 minute left). Hall of the Giants was funny, as we both spent the last 3 minutes of the game hiding by our bases with the flags (by the side pipes - I was standing on the bottom ledge of mine). His luck turned with CTF-Dreay, as apparently he just could not play that level. I did wonder why I pulled off 5 successful captures with only about 3 deaths... The last level was Facing Worlds, and he had learnt from the last game (where I won 5-1). Before I think he was just sniping, which was rather effective as I had to do every capture in two stages (grab the flag, out through the redeemer area, use the redeemer on anyone daft enough to follow me, get headshotted by him, respawn and run out to the flag, grab the flag and run back in before he got me again). This time he decided to go after the flag himself, and that changed things. I had to work very hard to win 2-1 at the end of the 15-minute time limit. One time I had a redeemer and was just starting out to get his flag when he got mine, so I fired the redeemer straight into my base. It did work, but don't try it unless firendly fire's off!

Here's a sort of story sort of based on that game:

"Welcome to Facing Worlds, a Capture-the-flag arena designed exclusively for the Tournament by the Liandri coporation"

The sniper's playground, as it was known, was actually rather simple in design. Two towers bult on an artifical asteriod oriting a gas giant, the middle mined out to create a pair of wide bridges in an X shape, it was the most popular of all the CTF arenas. The towers held plenty of places for snipers to hide, and the lack of any walls meant that you had to watch your footing. Many an unfortunate player had been too concerned about removing his pursuit and had fallen off the edge, to be incerinated by the planet's atmosphere.

To successfully capture the flag, one had to make their way across the exposed ground between the two bases, dodging sniper fire from both sides (it was not unknown for snipers to camp in the enemy base) and then enter the base. Inside, the flag was just round the corner. So were any other defenders. Once the flag had been picked up, the attacker then had to escape the base, dodging very heavy sniper fire, all the while hoping that his flag was still there.

Various tricks had been invented to solve the problem of snipers. The first was simple enough. Use the translocator to get inside the enemy base, if not most of the way there, without giving the snipers something to aim for. This worked very well for getting in, but was hopeless for getting out as the flag was not warped by the translocator. And getting out was when the snipers decided to get you. There was one way of dealing with the snipers, and that required a lot of teamwork, something relatively uncommon even in team-based games...

The alarms went off as BoggyB grabbed the flag. He had been lucky to get his far, lucky to spot the amubusher first and turn him into the ambushee. Now all he had to do was get out. Fortuantly, he had planned for this, expecting to actually get this far. He quickly took the middle warp, dispatching the two snipers with a pair of neck-height razor disks. Standing behind the warp ready to deal with anyone daft enough to go through, he gave the order to proceed with the plan.

The two redeemer pilots standing halfway up the home tower at the back were ready. They fired their redeemers, skillfully guiding them under the asteriod towards the enemy base. Meanwhile his snipers were attacking the respawn points to prevent anyone coming to help.

The first redeemer rocket popped up through the gap in the asteriod, and detonated inside the enemy redeemer area. As soon as BoggyB heard the explosion he ran through both warps and escaped through the redeemer area, grabbing it along the way. The second rocket continued under the asteriod before rising up behind the tower and incinerating the snipers on the rooftop.

As BoggyB ran he heard the insults of the other team through his suit radio. They sounded rather unhappy that his gambit had paid off. Spinning round he launched his redeemer roughly at the base entrance to slow down any pursuit. He knew the two helpers on his tower would be guiding their second rockets towards the tower, to deal with any pursuit or snipers that had turned up.

An urgent message came over: one of the second redeemer rockets had been shot down in mid-flight by a new sniper. BoggyB was about to order his defenders to attack the rooftops when he was shot from behind by that sniper. The flag landed just outside his base - a usually fatal position for the enemy. Fortuantly, the fighter who had lost the rocket was expecting something like this, and instantly picked the flag back up. There was no chance of the enemy reacting in time, and BoggyB's team won the match.