This is the European round of the famous Aftermath-Clan Vallasherra match. The European round was held first, and due to a server error, the round only lasted 27 minutes. As for the match, Aftermath played rather defensively with the ping disadvantage, and probably had to be pleased with only a 50 frag deficit as the round ended capless. Also of note was a rare Fall 1998 appearance by [AM]Anfernee, my former roommate.

Dred intended to start out attacking but found himself unable to cross the bridge due to the cVH snipers. He wound up defending against some early cVH flag movement, instead. AM still couldn't cross the bridge, so Kablooie started sniping to help Anfernee. Dred finally made it through the water to the cVH base about 9 minutes in, but he ignored the flag and camped snipers for a bit alongside Navy, who was playing pyro.

17 minutes in, cVH managed more flag movement, but it was eventually returned. 18 minutes in Navy managed AM's first flag touch, but that was also returned. 20 minutes in, Dred finally makes his first true flag run, but only at 23 minutes does AM manage real damage in the cVH basement, pushing the flag to the bottom spiral, helped by the fact that a cVH player had lost his connection. A minute and a half later, AM takes the cVH basement again, and Dred desperately wanted Inigo to drop the flag so that Dred could take it and gren-jump the elevator shaft, but Inigo doesn't, drops the flag in the bottom spiral, and Dred couldn't pull it out to escape.

Dred switched to medic in the final few minutes but managed only one more touch, while cVH pulled their offense back to defend the flag. The final cap score was 0-0 and the frag score was 295-246 for cVH.

I actually hosted round 2 of the match on my server at the University of Pennsylvania, and Aftermath used its ping advantage well, managing 3 caps and earning victory.