Before our 2nd match, Obi Van suggested that I paralyze the opposing melee man, as he was seen to have NO lag in the previous match. This was done, whereupon their mage started ebolting me like it was going out of fashion. With the melee man out of action I was easily able to heal myself, and when the mage was out of mana I finished him off (already weakened by our fighters) with a nice explosion/ebolt combo - both seemed to do almost full damage. Well... some people don't learn from other's mistakes *grin*. At this point, however, the match was disrupted as GRIMACE teleported into the ring and started looting the fallen mage... In the confusion he got away, since all contestants were grey he didn't get flagged. It's quite sad that someone would do something like that for a paltry bag of reagents... Well, the match was stopped and we had some other fights while the mages regenerated their mana. The mage who was looted, Falco did not return... Another mage had to be found for that team.
In the rematch, EXACTLY the same thing happened except the looter didn't return... I paralyzed the swordsman while our fighters hacked at the mage, who was emptying himself of mana at twice the rate of my heals. I even resisted one this time, leaving me with enough mana to quickly take out their archer who was taking lots of heat by this time from Obi's bolts and Saben's viking. After this, they were easily able to take down the melee man, who chose to die rather than surrender.
Well, after writing all that I find that it wasn't the fight in the picture... ARGH! I'd marked the pic "2ndVictory" for some reason.. Bah, who's counting? :) Anyway, our 3rd fight (semifinals) was rather similar (still used the paralyze melee man tactic), except their mage played abit smarter, conserving his mana. But when our fighters started disrupting him, I took the chance of spending an explosion/2 ebolts on him, and succeeded. After that I didn't do anything much except heal when necessary, letting our fighters wear down theirs without great risk. I'm not sure why Reo conceded with almost full life, but they had little hope anyway...
Picture taken by Praxix. Date: 20.09.98
