RP wins special awards in SEA Granado Espada Raid Party

By Joey Alarilla, hackenslash Editor INQUIRER.net SINGAPORE--The Philippines may not have made it to the finals of the first Southeast Asian Granado Espada Raid Party held at Zouk on June 16, but the teams went down fighting and gained experience in competing at the international level. Kudos to Malaysia, which emerged as the champion in the two-on-two player vs player tournament after cara and Nuub of YakiMY2 defeated the Singaporean team Ravage composed of Voyage and RavaNa. Interestingly enough, it was an all-Yakisoba affair as all four members of those teams belong to the Yakisoba faction in Granado Espada. Meanwhile, the Philippine teams received a number of special awards. Hailed as the Most Valuable Player was Mark Sta. Ana, one of the members of the NCR team that emerged as the top team in the Philippine tournament and was sent to Singapore to represent our country. Mark went home with a Pinnacle digital media player. The other Philippine team in Singapore, the GE Philippines "Wild Card" Team composed of Lam Shun Chun and Rommel Reyes, was named Most Supporting Team and received a Microsoft Reclusa keyboard and Pinnacle TV tuner. Team Visayas, which was one of the teams that played from the Philippines at the Philippine Toys, Hobbies and Collectibles Convention 2007 in SM Megamall, made it to the wild card round and was our last hope. Unfortunately, they lost both matches to the Singaporean teams in the three-way round robin. Still, the Visayas team was cited for Best Feature Match, with members Kenneth Tiu and Bryan Sacal receiving Seagate 250 GB hard disks. This isn't the Best Feature match because I couldn't recharge my Nokia N90 and the battery died, heh, but here's the previous wild card match of Team Visayas that was also featured on the big screen, courtesy of iVDO.