Brandon Martel · @BlastaMastaa
6th Oct 2016 from TwitLonger
Breaking my silence, and being done playing Halo.
The point of this post is mainly ,for anyone that knew me, to understand where I went, what I'm doing, why I stopped playing Halo, and my opinion of the Halo community as a whole now that I'm done with it all. I started going to Halo tournaments back in 08' during halo 3. Never did much, just a "combine, Local AZ LAN Kid" had fun, glad I got to experience the golden era that was an MLG event every month or so with full brackets, huge venues, etc. I started to make a name for myself in Halo: Reach where I was on a team called "Nightmare" that a lot "reach kids" probably remember. We had some top 32 placings, did well vs a lot of pro teams at the time online, had some pretty big upsets on LAN, most notably knocked SLU at their peak in reach, in losers after tying 4 times on Beaver TS in game 3. Was 1 kill away from putting Munoz, Devon, Kaiss, and Hotax into losers in what was their breakout tournament at the time. A lot of great memories with a lot of future big name players mainly. That team was comprised of me, Woe, Regulata, and Ragnarok. Pure randoms at the time, we just put in work, stuck together a long time, were very loyal to each other, and eventually got to a pretty high level of play at a time when competition was steep. It was amazing times for the 18 year old kid I was at the time and really helped me grow as a person and shape me into what I am today. I learned that loyalty and hard work really helps get you what you want and I love all the people experienced those times, because I think a lot of people that were around back then probably got that same lessons and experiences. Years later I came back to halo for one last harah, to tie any loose ends and just try to get that nostalgic feeling I had from reach way back in 10'. I had a 3rd place placing at eglx toronto 16'. I went to that tournament with xploits, Expozur, and Moniz, again, 3 guys I fucking love. Super cool, mature, welcoming people that weren't intimidated by anyone else's accomplishments or abilities and played best at the tournament when we needed to and it mattered, never discouraged by any losses we took along the way. Before I left for that tournament I reconnected with a guy I teamed with back in Halo 3, 8 years prior named "Adamar". Was a cool guy, always pretty honest upfront guy that I enjoyed playing with. Adamar had a little cousin, that was 10 years old at the time, he used to play with us and joke around. This was a little kid who went by the gamertag "Boamx". He showed me his dog on his XBL camera, we played customs, and random matchmaking, I always had fun with the kid, never disrespected him and tried to just be the nice older kid, that was much better at the game, but still be a decent influence and play the stupid shit he wanted to play. Fast forward 8 years, I randomly ran into Adamar somehow online, hit him up, started playing random customs with him again where I noticed a familiar name, Boamx. Obviously all the reconnecting stuff happened, I readded him and was happy to see these guys again 8 years later. Well I continued to play customs with them every now and then and Adamar was making it pretty clear boam wanted to get into the competitive scene. I've never had an ego about this kind of stuff so naturally I offered to sacrifice some time to play with him over the coming months. I was involved with all the team hopping, and running games at the time, grinding out gb ladder for points, but still found time to play with my old buds from h3 and lil boam who's all grown up and wants to get into competitve games. At the time boam just played a lot of team slayer playlist and customs from time to time. He obviously had a lot of holes in his game and there was a lot of stuff I felt like I could help him with, all while trying to make my own teams work, practice, etc. I continued to do so for some time when eventually boam's spring break of his senior year finally came up. Boam and me both saw this as an opportunity to grind out some games, we played gb doubles... a lot. Every single game I was just trying to help him grow, and get better and with time, he did. I would simultaneously grind 4s in prepartion for this EGLX tournament and 2s with boam pretty much every night. All the while boam was cycling some very low level teams, we kept grinding with eachother and I kept putting time into him to help him get better. The weeks prior to EGLX Boam expressed strong interest in wanting to team with me in some capacity, I just kept telling him I need to focus on my EGLX team and try to make this work, if things dont work out with these guys or things go poorly at EGLX then I'd give it a shot. Just prior to leaving there was kind of an arbitrary number of outside top 3 and we'll try to do something team wise. Well I got 3rd at the tournament, and I remember him texting me up until the stretch on Sunday where I was playing for top 4, top 3, etc. No congrats. Hmmm I wondered to myself, damn this kid wanted me to fail so he could team with me. Eventually I receieved a text saying, something along the lines of "hey are we gonna team because I need to know" . I lol'd told him to chill and we'll talk about it when I come back. I get back, we talk, things aren't ideal with my teams practice schedule, theres a bunch of these online qualifier things coming up, fk it ima give you a shot lets see if we can do something. So unknown, inexperienced, green Boamx jumps on a team that had tons of event experience in me Xploits, Expozur, been around for a long long time, just got 3rd at a decent AM tournament. Generally people in the halo community dont get these opportunities, I never did, but I've always been unlike the halo community in that I attached no ego to helping people out or trying to give them my time and effort. Boam got what he's been thirsty for, a chance. Didnt work out with xploits and expozur, largely due to some personality conflicts and bad games in general. Obviously this could be attributed to our new prospect, right? Naw, I didn't see it that way, I decided to stick it out with boam and make him a project. We grinded 2s, tried tons of different people eventually through GB dubs met Pyrettic and DylanisInsane aka leche. Night before the last chance qualifier made a roster. Welp, we got 5th place or something in a pretty dramatic fashion vs sTw mexican team to qualify for a pool play tournament vs liquid, optic, hysteria's team etc. to make it into pro league. We were all super hype finally felt like we were breaking into that top AM realm in h5. 1 week to practice 1 make it out of a pool with liquid and hysteria's team in it, we had the last seed of the tournament. Not discouraged, we grinded pretty hard for a week straight with any team that would play us (always a challenge in halo community). Luckily got a scrim vs str8 rippin the night before the tournament and beat them like 5 games to 1. So had a small amount of confidence going into the tournament. Tournament was bust, we didn't win a game, and got dominated. Over the coming weeks combinations of me, pyrettic, boam and different 4ths tried and tried, things just never felt as good as the first day of the last chance qual we played, but one thing remained constant, boam and me. We still remained determined and dedicated, grinding as hard as we could with the people that would give us the time of day. I always told him it's a matter of time before we get the right mix or the right person that we can grow with. Things just weren't working out though, no one we played with was on our level, and no one we played with had the right mindset to grind, grow and get what we wanted. Pyrettic was the GOD AM with insane individual skill, but lacked some of the dedication and attitude, Boam was my disciple, a younger version of me that was just trying to grow, we just needed that one last person. We played with RealisedG, Romo, re-tried things with Dylan "Leche", nothing ever quite felt right and all of these people would end up splitting after these tournaments saying Boam or Pyrettic lacked something. I didn't care though, I knew that Boam and Pyrettic both could make shit happen with my guidance and together with the right person we could take down anyone. Eventually Boam said he cant team with pyrettic anymore, he cant handle his lateness, and atittude anymore, which at the time I agreed with. We stuck together though, I think at this point boam and me were both feeling discouraged by the situation and this cycle that we seemed trapped in of the same group of people and no better players even playing a single game with us so we could show them, but we settled on a mix which randomly felt really good in myself, boam, Dylan"Leche", and Kidfox. GB dub squad. We all liked eachother had fun, felt good, played decent, just needed to get that week of practice for the upcoming tourney. Maybe 2 days into it Dylan says hes going out of town with his family that weekend and cant play in the tournament so we end up with pyrettic again. Around this time there was a FFA tournament at PAX or something in TX around where boam lives. So he was pretty hype about this tournament, it'll be his first live tournament, its just standard FFA which hes pretty good at, so he starts grinding them and says hes going to this thing in 2 weeks. I encourage him to practice for it, go there and do well. Now boam and me were definitely discouraged over our situation the past 3 or 4 weeks but we mutually agree in essentially all of our tournaments we were happy with eachothers play and understand we werent ever "the problem", but it was more a problem of our situation. So the team is Pyrettic, Boam, Kidfox and myself and we start practicing the dylan says he cant play this weekend. We had one decent scrim and are working on another when boam's mood is just declining... fast. We get into the 1st game of our 2nd scrim when boam is having a rough game, which I feel is partly intentional. As the game is ending he goes into something about how we should just find someone else and he's not enjoying 4s at the moment and he wants to focus for this FFA tournament, which I could understand. He says he doesnt want to play any 4s at all and just grind FFA's for this tournament and reconvene after hes done to try our team stuff again. Again, I understand where he was coming from, but he's 17 years old on summer vacation, so somehow my feeble mind couldnt understand why we couldnt scrim 2hrs a day and him play ffas the rest. We argued. He never really could justify not being able to practice 4s for even the minimum amount of time, so I left it. I said alright do it man, give your FFA thing a shot, go for it. Boam played maybe 10 FFA games over the next week and a half and 2 days later he was doing this tournament with Dylan (family vacation......), Kidfox (supposedly super friendly chill guy), and Romo (a guy who always had bad things to say about boam, but no ill-will toward, he was just trying to get on a team). Obviously, I'm like... what? I had been competing in halo for 8 years on and off, a masters Starcraft player, a high level league of legends player, I never in all my years had experienced anything like this. I was completely baffled, this kid I'd known since he was 10 years old but months of time and work into when in no way did I ever need to do that, and challenge anyone to give me an example of someone else in the Halo community that would do what I did given my experience and his situation at the time, just seriously shadied me that hard with people he knows that i'm better than and we were better together than. I couldn't understand it in the slightest. Still, to this day, months later never acknowledged he even did that. Boam is now on what appears to be a top AM team and probably not a blip of this situation ever was spoke of. I honestly wonders what he told people when they asked him what happened with him and Blasta. I was done with halo. This was the nail in the coffin for me, at the end of my road, I sacrifice time and effort to help someone that I trusted, knew since he was a kid, always was good to, just turn his back on me like that. Boam and me were in the same situation with the same feelings at the time this happened, the difference was I am a loyal, trusting person who's best success came from exactly that, loyalty and trust. I never in a million years would've done that to someone, and I'm happy I didn't. This is just metaphor for how the halo community is though. A long metaphor for the fact the halo community is infected with people like Boam here, and go on to thrive. You can say "well it was the right move, look at him" or "clearly you were the problem" or "you're just jealous", at the end of the day I know what I was capable of, and integrity matters more to me than stepping on people to get what you want out of them and leave them in the dust. I happily have moved on from playing halo.. for good.
So my final words for anyone that cared to read this overly long post, fuck you Halo, you showed me what I suspected all along, trust no one and the illuminati is real.
Honestly though, I learned a lot of valuable shit playing halo and got a lot of good life experience out of my years competing.I am unhappy what the community I grew up with has become, but was happy to experience the golden age of MLG days, I went to 14 tournaments in 8 years and love all the following people and hope somehow we stay in touch even without halo.
Ragnarok wherever you are I love you bro and miss you, you're the first person I listed for a reason,
Nairfy biggest teddy bear love you forever man definitely gonna keep in touch,
Woe Jordan you my nigga and luckily still talk to you frequently,
Regulata love you conor some of my best memories in halo thanks to you,
Popcorn P the first "name" I teamed with loved this guy and everything he taught me about the fuck you attitude of life
Brandon MONIZ literally one of the coolest dudes ever thanks so much for the hospitality in canada your family is the greatest,
Mad Max again one of the coolest dudes i've ever met I literally wish I lived near you irl so I could chill wit you on the reg,
Tragic the most gangster black dude I've ever met who showed me what MLG was back in 06' met him on my first day I owned halo 2 at 13 years old,
Ryan Xploits Coulter probably one of the nicest people I've ever met... period love you Ry hope we stay in touch,
Expozur Jerm I truely did value your friendship and personality especially irl I wish we didnt end on such a sour note,
Burton you never did give me the time of day but I always saw you as that reach kid I knew that was fkn up all the stupid big mouth ams "the peoples champ" for me,
Commonly again a reach kid that made it and seems to have kept the awesome personality he's always had,
Ryan Destin Means at the time he was getting top 3 would play reach with me every night just because he thought I was good, got me into 2v2s vs formal and heinz, the one top pro who never had an ego with me and didnt give a fuck what people said, this dude really helped me grow and get over a lot of that pro anxiety shit I owe a lot to him, but he went MIA as fk and wouldnt remember me at this point,
Henry "Detox" Sanchez my man, went full SSBM fiend on me but I will definitely get back to AZ and finally chill with you,
the whole AZ LAN crew who I was cool with, Chouncey, K, Agent, Free, TSM COD PRO PACMAN.... this guy helped me a lot as well, strafe who at the time hosted a lot of them, Juan Romo even though you were on the team that shadied me you were honestly fkn bff IRL at eglx,
Alex Lil Kountry lived with you for a month and it was amazing love your family... and penny,
Brady Saintly Boswell fuck you, I love you though met you when you were 13..... fk man my arch enemy bud,
Zach Ruler of Chaos Miles my first true duo,
Max Randa the TRUE randa this dude was a homie in h3 miss him,
Pyrettic honestly alex you knew wtf was up when it came to loyalty and trying to be a good dude somehow I'd like to keep in touch, but I hope you're successful in whatever you decide to do man and I'm sure you can be,
Adamar even though you're cousin is a piece of shit you were on one of my first teams ever and always thought you were super awesome guy with his priorities straight,
Hustla Todd I guarantee you wont see this but I wish we could somehow get in touch,
thedougler9 my first dose of canada growing up love you bud, luckily still occasionally talk to you,
Martin voodoo Omes Legit one of the best "tournament runners" out there you catch a bad rap sometimes but I only ever thought you were the best,
If theres anyone i'm forgetting I'm sure I'll hear it from you but thanks again for all the memories and to anyone that took the time to read all my BS insignificant "retirement" post that I just wrote in 2 hours in the middle of a thursday LUL
-ps didnt spell check or typo check, please exuse meh.
Peace y'all
Brandon "BlastaMasta" Martel