Well. My apology was meant to quell the fire, and I didn´t want to post on the issue anymore, but since freakns addressed me directly, I´ll just have to reply once more.
Though I don´t think, this discussion will lead to anything. We all know & understand, what HH did here, and why they did it. And I want to thank Master Fenrir for summing this up better than I could hope to, especially this part:
Master Fenrir wrote:I just don't really understand why you seem so surprised that a couple of gamechats ended up less than friendly. You said, "All because I pointed out in an earlier post that two of his clan mates had soured the experience for us." That's kind of a weird thing to say when your map choice could have conceivably soured the experience for every IA player.
That is pretty much spot on. We know, HH were within the rules & within their rights to choose the maps they did. We just didn´t like it, didn´t appreciate it, and we do not respect it. This challenge had turned sour for us, before the first game was filled. So Keefies complaint about us making a couple of games an unpleasant experience for them kind of made me snap ...
Keefie wrote:It is the right of every clan to negociate the terms of a clan war, including the exclusion of certain maps. IA chose not to do this, so every map out there was available to us.
This is just wrong, and you know it. This challenge follows the rules of the Conquerors Cup, and we are not free to negotiate terms freely. You rejected the Fog Courtesy rule for this challenge (and we had to suck it up or walk away), and now you make it sound, as if we only had to ask to exclude certain maps & you´d have agreed to it ?
As for freakns:
I am not sure, if I should be glad or not, that you chose that particular game as your example. The Sydney Quad was one of the most gratifying wins I´ve ever taken part in here @ CC. And in this specific case, I´d have to say: Yes, as a matter of fact, it was dice, that almost killed us in the early rounds of the game (us losing 9v2 attacks, them winning 7v1,2,1,3 - I am sure, all of us have had games like that happen to them), and it was pretty flawless team-play, that brought us back & in the end won the game for us.
It is the one game, that I truly enjoyed in this challenge. The one game, that will stick out as a memorable experience. One of the games, that make it worth playing @ CC (amidst all too many one-sided dice fests). And in my opinion, one of the games as clan challenges should be: Lots of strategising & planning & discussing involved. The complete & exact opposite of a Doodle Quad.
When I joined IA, clans were mostly a business of the real hardcore CC addicts & veteran team players. It was the place, where the toughest competition was to be had, because you were always up against well-tuned teams, who played together regularly. And that was, what people were aiming for in these days: The tough competition, a real competition of skill.
I was part of CLA, when the set-up for CLA League 2 was discussed, when the first guidelines for clan challenges & clan medals were discussed, and all these discussions always centered a good deal on the question how to minimise the luck factor and make it all a competition of skill at the game. Maybe things have changed since then, I myself took a break from CC for almost 2 years, but for me Doodle Quads have no place in a clan challenge.
Now to the question of respect: As pointed out by freakns, HH have been doing pretty well on our home maps. They had us on the brink of defeats on maps like Sydney, Poison Rome, Supermax & Third Crusade, and they won a good deal of games on the old school Risk style maps, and yes, that is something, that I can acknowledge & respect.
But sadly this is not, what I will remember them & this challenge for. For me, this entire challenge is over-shadowed by their map selection, and I will forever remember it as the "Doodle challenge", and that simply kills all respect, that HH could have gained here otherwise (frankly speaking: looking at their performance in some of these games, I don´t even understand, why they felt the need to choose those ridiculous maps, and that is about the nicest thing I can say at this point).
As for beer: He is known as a notorious dice complainer, and this has caused some ruckus in earlier IA challenges already. He at one point offered to leave the clan, if we were concerned about him damaging our reputation, but we decided to stick with him and accept some bad rep in return. Now I personally don´t have a problem with Keefie (or other players) calling beer out. Throw a "dice whining fuckwit" & "numbnuts" in his face right there in Game Chat, and you won´t hear me complain about it. But making this the central issue of this here clan challenge ?
At one point in the first round it looked like HH would take a 12-8 or 13-7 lead at half time, and apart from beer (who always complains) not a single IA member complained or showed any disrespect or ill feeling towards HH, not one. Not in Chat in any of the games, not here in the thread. And it continued like this, and we just played the games, and we managed to turn around a couple of those games, and as it appears, we will probably now go on to win this challenge, if only by a very small margin.
And then Keefie comes into this thread and makes a post, that somehow puts us as a clan in a bad light. 8-9 challenges they have played, and they were all enjoyable & fun. But this here challenge was unpleasant for them, because of "completely unprovoked nasty, mean spirited remarks in game chat". Sorry. But to this I had to respond.
IA have played 11 or 12 challenges in their history, and none has been as unpleasant for us as this one. Not because of personal conduct of HH players in the games, not because of the result (IA has lost quite a few challenges before, including one real upset land-slide defeat at the hands of FOED), but because of ... ah, yes, we talked about that ...
We obviously have very different stand-points then. For me a bit of dice bitching is a minor annoyance, that can easily be ignored, whilst HHs map selection in this challenge in my eyes is a transgression against the spirit of clan competition, and yes, freakns, I am serious.
But I guess, everything that could be said has been said, and everybody will read & understand, whatever he wants to read & understand. From here on out I´ll simply up-date the scores, but not participate in this discussion anymore.
this has been great entertainemnt
hehehe
Why is everybody ignoring this? Some people are blowing up about 3 damn games! Hell IA played one random this war. that could have switched it too a 2 game bitch fest 
