I regret to announce that there will be no final game played. As most probably know by now, Mixons has decided to quit the KaM community. I'd like to apologize on behalf of Mixons, who didn't want to leave me, the tournament and the community in such a situation. With respect to that decision, and due to the fact that things slowed down so much that nobody seems interested to play the final anymore, I need to finish the tournament in this rather disappointing way. I think it will be best to just decide that we have three winners - Romek, Destah and Bo_co. Congratulations! You three definitely deserved to get into the finals.
Since it's best to talk about all the disappointments in one place, then move to the positive things, let's try to sum up our mistakes. We started off with a mission to bring you the best tournament ever (or at least a slightly worse than Mulberry, To and Floro did before). However, apart from the final disappointment, many things did not go as we wished they would. One major grip that I had were the streams. I really were excited that we're gonna try to stream the most important games, however the technology proved that we were completely unprepared for that task. If I done more research before the tournament, I would realize that there is no way to stream with a long (45-60) minutes delay, which is necessary for a game like KaM. The disappointment mainly came for the fact that I felt confident enough about streaming that I did not think a test run would be needed. I'm sorry for that, let's call it a lesson for the future. Also I won't deny that I depended too much on the promises of Open Broadcasting Software, which seems to provide an option for delaying the stream for more than 15 minutes. The problem is, it doesn't... it just silently disables the delay if it's more than 15. I understand the software is a free hobby project, what I don't understand is how no one thought about making a simple ">15 minutes delay is not supported" warning. We almost transmitted a game without a delay because of that. I hate to be blaming anybody else than myself for the streaming issue, but I cannot really resist.
Now about the players. I am pretty satisfied with the amount and quality of players in the tournament. We only had 1 completely absent team - HH, which registered then played nothing, so we had to replace them with LaG. We had a couple of problems in the group stage but eventually almost all was fine. The only problems were Nacht having to quit (partially because of HH absence and ToFu being unable to play for a long time, but mainly because Nacht was away from the internet for a period of time), and Mulberry having a bit of trouble in real life (you know, Ukraine) so he wasn't really able to play. Later on (apart from the losers cup turning out to be a bad idea, cause people lost interest in it pretty quickly), there was hardly any problems until RG's PC crashed so he had to be replaced with Destah. Overall, if not for the last and worst thing (Mixons quitting) I would say that the players did a really good job on playing through their games, even if some random events meant we lost some of the top teams around (Nacht-Destah, Mully-Florek).
I think it is time for a list of colorful thank you!s, following the tradition that
Mulberry set before:
First of all,
Mixons. Even if the ending was a little bit disappointing, he really did a good job while he was still here. It really felt like we were making 50% of the job each, while for example, in 1st Battle Tournament it was more like Paweł 85% me 15%, so I felt a bit useless
As I point it out below, I really appreciated when he had to make some important decisions on his own.
Next thank you goes to all people of Teamspeak, who helped me with advices.
Romek leading the list. I appreciate the help and support.
Another big thank you goes to
Ben for making sure the memory of the tournament will remain in those two videos!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akp2-yQJ9UY and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Ln1Bte8-Y
Paweł gets a thank you for trying to help me with the streaming issue. We failed, but we really tried!
Tiank and Lady Pauline - for making a quick replacement when it was needed. You might have lost all your grop stage games, but as a name of another team puts it well - Who cares! Thank you, Lady and Gentleman!
Mixons and Bo_co - for being a kind of a black horse. It's not like people underestimated them a lot, but I wouldn't guess they were top 4 or even top 2 before the tournament
The Polish Killers!
Cudi and Janek - for the most imaginative name I saw on the list
The Pikeless Pikemen!
Luki and Kamykos - just a thank you, can't think of anything more personal
Hope that you'll forgive me, LuKam!
Destroyer and Worshipper - nobody knows you there, yet you played your games in time. For a non-TS team, that's an achievement. Thank you, Pig!
Florek and Mulberry - my dear BAZA W CHUJ! Thanks for organizing the tournament that inspired us to do our own, and thanks for supporting us in our try! Also thanks for a... err, "nice" name xD
Next team nobody cares about, not even them, judging from the name, so why should I thank them? Haha, just kidding, thanks
Jero and Dicso, the surprise was very close
Also it was nice to watch Jero turn into a monster on Arctic Warfare
Who Cares?
rolig hund - thank you.
Döner - the Umlaut team. Thank you for participating,
Wochenende und Paweł 
The Burning Arrow - thank you for showing the teams in your group that they need to be constantly vigilant, even if they
think the enemy isn't a top one!
Killer and Rutger!
Viva Hollandia - for playing well through the group stage, making a threat to Mixons and Bo_co, and proving Romek wrong ("are you stupid to put them in the better half of teams for the drawing?" xD)
Thommerd and Sebas!
a2 -
rom and wosiek - for trying. Remember that wosiek was a newcomer to KaM. Rom really wanted to participate and to help us have more teams, so he trained his friend to play the game. Thanks guys!
Zaamoot and Ariee - thanks!
Lexus and Hargon - thank you, Czech friends, for playing as well as I thought you will, and for beating my team quite hard on Arctic
Also for all the opinions on the tournament. Blaničtí Rytíři!
Madgamer and Mexican T - for playing and beating us and everything
Mad Mexicans!
Authentic - it was really really fun to play with you, as always! Also, respect for how you won the game against TeamB xD
Boris and Bon - thanks for playing against us, it was probably one of the best tournament games to watch
Sorry that
we Authentic had to win it eventually xD
Browar and Woloszek - thanks for playing everything in time in your group. B&W!
ToFu - thanks for eventually playing everything, and getting to the 1/8th!
Nacht - shame you weren't able to finish, the tournament lost a great player that way. Thank you for participating!
TRB and Boss - you played really well, smashing your group opponents! Thanks, Team NL!
David and Gentor - the Hungarian Bananas, you played well! Thanks!
chetki patsani - thanks
witek and THOR!
AlBo - thanks
Aldaron and Oky Bo, for representing the Polish crew!
koczis12 and Bludmaster - thanks for interesting games, for getting to the semifinals (you deserved it), and for everything!
RG - thanks for playing through the group stage. Real shame your PC broke down, we are missing you on TS until today
Romek and Destah - thanks for being in the best team, for helping me really much with advices (Romo) and your will to play (both
). There's no tournaments without such good players!
DMU - thank you for participating.
don artie and Mexican b - thanks for playing! Shame you were in the group of death - given how well you played you'd have a chance to win every other group but not that one
My biggest mistake when if comes to the drawing! Sorry!
Now a list of "go dies" xD The list will be short and will include only those two trolls:
Hui Yebing and Hui Li. Those names alone sounded like they were meant to be a Chinese version of a Polish/Russian swear word, but we decided to allow them to play, because we weren't 100% sure they were fake or not intending to play. Guess we were wrong...
And finally, a couple of advices for those that will come and try to make a tournament after us:
-make a forum account for your tournament, if you have 2 or more people organising it. It really helps.
-make it shorter. People will not play their games in time anyway, but I think the way to go is to try to have less games for all teams but played in shorter amount of time. This way, nobody will lose interest in the tournament too soon, as it happened with all recent building competitions.
-get somebody to help you. This way you will not be alone, and each time an urgent decision needs to be made, the other person can do it when you're not around. I really appreciated the work Mixons did when I couldn't get to my PC for a couple of days, which happened all the time. It is simply impossible to do it alone if you have a life. I think the best number would be three organizers.
-if your co-organizer makes a decision alone because of the time pressure and you not being around, agree with it and support it. Even if it could be better, remember how time is important for a tournament.
-get an opinion of people from Teamspeak, but you don't have to do exactly as they say. In the end, follow your own judgement and try to make it fair for all the players, those who are better and those who are worse.
And again: THANK YOU TO ALL THE PARTICIPANTS!
. Joking, you have obviously won, without a doubt.