It looks like Laserforce International is going to be creating some new merchandise and is looking for user submissions.

People with artistic talent (i.e. people who are not me) should have a read below:

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(originally posted in the forums)

Hi Everyone!

This is Sam Kelly from Laserforce International, Brisbane, Australia!

We are doing some extensive renovations of our premiere site in Brisbane and part of those renovations we are getting into some great merchandising.

We are therefore hosting a competition to create a space marines design to appear on t-shirts that will be worn by Laserforce enthusiasts world wide! The design will appear on the front only and can be black and white or full colour. The winning design will also recieve a free brand new Space Marines t-shirt of their own design, a package of Laserforce merchandise, and $200 cash.

Please send your designs to sam@laserforcetag.com before February 4th to be judged by myself and the owner Len Kelly. We look forward to seeing some great talent and ideas!

Best regards,

Sam.

Special Conditions
The copy rights of the material will revert back to Lasergames Pty Ltd.
We reserve the right not to use any of the designs.

As this time of the year gets hectic for everyone, I figured I’d get the “Happy Holidays” out of the way now

I hope everyone gets what they want/need this holiday season.

Speaking of getting things we want/need, there are several new Laserforce sites in the US that are either opening shortly or have already opened.

The first is a site in Branchburg, New Jersey. It’s part of a larger sports complex and has a monster-sized field (roughly 9k sq feet) and 50+ suits. You can check out their web site here. It’s already received a visit from Aztec, who’s a cross-system laser tag player whose opinion I respect greatly. Boiled down, his review came to “Amazing site, great potential for advanced play, owner and management really want to make it a fantastic site.” Always a plus when we hear things like that.

The second is another new site opened by the current owners of the Caseyville, IL site. This makes their third – so obviously something is going right for them. My apologies to Smooth Criminal, who told me where the site was but I didn’t write it down. More information when I have it.

I’m also waiting to hear about some new sites in lands outside the US – hopefully we’ll be able to go “official” with them sooner rather than later.

DATES: April 29th to May 1st

LOCATION: Loveland, CO

GAMES: Space Marines 5 for sure, possibility of D&D depending on # of teams and time available on the days selected

RULE SET: US Rules

Interested Sites: Sacramento, Chula Vista, St George, Sugarland, Detroit, New York, Caseyville
Some of these sites are aware they’re not going to be able to bring full teams. At this point, the thought is to combine teams by region as needed.

COST: TBD, though should be in line with WCT and ECT ($35-$50/person)

Please check this thread in the Tournament forum for further details as they become available.

WCT 3: January 28/29th in Sacramento, California.

US Nationals 2011: July 25-29th in Syracuse, New York.

Please visit the tournaments page or the tournament forum for further information.

Rather than be original, I’m just going to shamelessly steal what Nite Owl posted in the tournament forum already.

Thanks to Nite Owl for making such an awesome post And thanks to everyone who attended this years AU/NZ nats – let’s see if we can make next years a little bigger though, ok?

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Well… What an awesome week of Laserforce. I have to say that I had almost the most fun this week of any Nationals that I’ve been to… And it had some serious competition from the Townsville Nats (1998), both Auckland Nats (2002, 2006) and Sacramento US Nats (2004).

Here are the winners, losers and other in a whole range of categories. I have not posted full lists for anything. Top 10 for some awards and for highest averages etc, you needed to have played more than 3 games in that category to get onto the list.
I’m also putting up here the final ladder, Aus/NZ All-Star team and Rookie.

Final Ladder – after 4 rounds of play
1st. Oakleigh – 70pts.
2nd. Brisbane A. – 38pts.
3rd. Brisbane B. – 22pts.
4th. Mildura – 14pts.

All ANZAC Team – and their votes out of a possible 24.
Commander – Mental (Oakleigh) – 22
Heavy – Duckman (Oakleigh) – 20
Scout – Hoodlum (Oakleigh) – 17
Scout – Jared (Brisbane A) – 9
Ammo – Nite Owl (Oakleigh) – 22
Medic – Fish (Oakleigh) – 19

Medic Killer
1st. Hoodlum (Oakleigh) – 139
2nd. Mental (Oakleigh) – 109
3rd. Jared (Brisbnane A) – 73
4th. Ice Queen (Mildura) – 72
5th. Anarki (Brisbane A) – 60
6th. Spoonman (Oakleigh) – 49
7th. Duckman (Oakleigh) – 45
8th. Meow (Brisbane B) – 44
9th. Zim (Brisbane B) – 43
10th. Deryn (Brisbane A) – 39.
NB: EVERY player in the competition managed at least 2 medic kills for the tournament.

Best & Fairest
1st. Mental (Oakleigh) – 29 votes
2nd. Jared (Brisbane A) – 24 votes
3rd. Duckman (Oakleigh) – 21 votes
4th. Zim (Brisbane B) – 18 votes
5th. Anarki (Brisbane A) – 17 votes
6th. Ice Queen (Mildura) – 16 votes
7th. Meow (Brisbane B) – 12 votes
8th. Nilthing (Brisbane B), Deryn (Brisbane A) and Aristocrat (Mildura) – 10 votes.
NB: Once again EVERY player in the competition managed to poll at least 1 vote.

Golden Gun
1st. Duckman (Oakleigh) – 89.63%
2nd. Nite Owl (Oakleigh) – 87.06%
3rd. Fish (Oakleigh) – 86.98%
4th. Ragnarok (Mildura) – 84.66%
5th. Mental (Oakleigh) – 82.92%
6th. Jared (Brisbane A) – 82.29%
7th. Shagadelic (Oakleigh) – 80.04%
8th. Nightshade (Brisbane A) – 78.75
9th. Anarki (Brisbane A) – 77.42%
10th. Siony (Brisbane B) – 76.63

Melted Gun
1st. Maximus (Mildura) – 55.52%
2nd. Pat (Brisbane B) – 61.93%
3rd. Hoodlum (Oakleigh) – 62.81%

In my opinion, this is probably the highest overall percentages that we’ve had in an Aus/NZ Nationals ever.

Missile Magnet
1st. Hoodlum (Oakleigh) – 19
2nd. Ice Queen (Mildura) – 18
3rd. Deryn (Brisbane A) – 17
4th. Nilthing (Brisbane B) – 14
5th. 007 (Mildura), Muppet (Brisbane A), Zim (Brisbane B) – 13
8th. Maximus (Mildura), Siony (Brisbane B) – 12.
10th. Pat (Brisbane B), Ragnarok (Mildura) – 11

Sneaky Ninja Missile Dodger
1st. Shagadelic (Oakleigh) – 0 missiles.
2nd. Fish (Oakleigh) – 1 missile.
3rd. Nite Owl (Oakleigh) – 3 missiles.
4th. Duckman (Oakleigh), Nightshade (Brisbane A) – 4 missiles.
6th. Mental (Oakleigh) – 6 missiles.

Bomb Defuser – person who cancelled the most nukes.
1st. Duckman (Oakleigh), Mental (Oakleigh) – 2.
3rd. Ragnarok (Mildura), Zim (Brisbane B) – 2 (These guys come 3rd because one of the nukes they cancelled was their [color=#FF0000][b]OWN TEAM[/b].[/color]
5th. Deryn (Brisbane A), Ice Queen (Mildura), Jared (Brisbane A), Pat (Brisbane B), Spoonman (Oakleigh) – 1.

Rookie of the year
1st. Zim (Brisb B) – 13 votes.
2nd. Nilthing (Bris B) – 5 votes.
3rd. Deryn (Bris A) – 3 votes.
4th. Muppet (Bris A) – 2 votes.
5th. Cookie (Bris A), Orix (Bris B) – 1 vote.

Another small update – go here to download your very own copy of the original LFAnalysis program to keep track of your members night stats.

I’ve used this program since it was released in 2002 to track everything from members nights to tournaments – it definitely makes stat collecting a much easier task.

There’s a known bug with the tournament module – it doesn’t work. It’ll let you generate a schedule, but if you try to actually do anything with it [i.e. actually enter games], it’ll give you a program-crashing “null” error. Just FYI.