When I first arrived there were about a dozen kids wrapped around the little cardboard arena just inside the front entryway. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of waiting for a few of them to clear out before preparing to take some shots. I stood around for well over an hour hoping to see a few good duels that would be worth photographing, but very few kids came into the store after I arrived, and nearly all of the ones that did never really figured out the controls, mostly due to the fact that the IR beams were often blocked by parts of the armor plating on the tops of the crabs. The control units have Gali hooks (orange or yellow, depending on the crab) that are used as keys for the channel selectors, and nearly ever fight I watched involved one or both of the kids turning the hooks, evidentally thinking it might help them get their crab moving. Some of them were even bending nearly flat in a vain attempt to get them to function like a joystick. After watching that happen a few times, I suggested to the TRU referee that maybe he should just take them out of the control units, and the result was that I got to watch one good, unobstructed fight between one kid and the TRU referee before the batteries went dead and the event was shut down for the night. Unfortunately I’d forgotten that my camera was still set up for studio photography, so some of the nicer shots were way too dark to use.

Once a fight was finished, regardless of the outcome, each contestant would get a copy of the MATA NUI map poster and a copper HUNA, same as the ones given out earlier this week. They also received a special promo CD. Yes, I played one battle just to get the CD. Yes, I felt guilty about whomping on some little kid who didn’t even know how to work the controls, much less have any practiced strategy. Yes, I felt more guilty when I popped the liftstand on his crab within about three seconds of actually getting in close to his crab. And yes, I felt even more guilty when he spent the rest of the duel-time trying to drive forward and, of course, failing to do so. If you’re wondering, I’d really hoped to take on the TRU guy, figuring it might be a bit more fair than sparring with someone 1/3rd my age who had probably never seen one in real life, but I was kind of pushed into it.

Beyond all of that, there were really only two things of any real interest. One was the fact that they evidentally plan to keep running the event for a few more nights (probably until they run out of the horde of giveaway materials) and the other was the prize box used to hold the slew of copper HUNA MASKS that they had to give out. The front side had a giant cardboard HAU attached to the front. The two sides and back surface all had identical panels, and the top…well, I have to admit it was pretty sweet looking inside and seeing probably a hundred copper MASKS covering the bottom of the box.