One Crazy Day in New York City
October 02 2016
After Optic beat G2 we were settling in to play them. The late match yesterday didn't go our way but we felt confident going in to the NA mirror despite being 1-2. The benefit of playing our round three last night, however, was that we had some time to chill today. After doing our signing we settled back down expecting to be the first match in round four.
But there were three teams with a 1-2 record.
In the new Swiss format — when there are an odd number of teams on each record — somebody gets paired up. So instead of playing our NA mirror, we got Fnatic. Astralis and Optic were on their way to the stage and it's time for us to recalibrate. Because with our tournament life on the line, we got Fnatic.
So with one map's worth of time to prepare it was time to gameplan. Astralis made the map close which gave us some extra time but it was time for map bans. As it turns out, Fnatic didn't ban as we were expecting. Once Dust2 was selected we were given twenty minutes to prep. Not a tonne of time but at least it was a map they played earlier today.
This map was a bit too close. Afterwards — and noticably putoff — EliGE turned down all offers of food: "I just want a PC and a deathmatch server".
Everyone else in the team room was pretty relaxed. Our beating Fnatic made the remaining pairings awkward since — should SK win — Fnatic would have played everyone remaining. In the event that VP won, we would (finally) get to play Optic. So with everyone huddled around the monitor we watched as SK advance. Everyone except EliGE of course, he was still playing deathmatch.
The draw came through for round five and once again we were playing Fnatic. Since we were towards the end of each round we once again expected to play last. The atmosphere in the room mellowed somewhat as food plans were made for during the Virtus.pro-Optic match.
But Virtus.pro can't play two games in a row.
So once again — with less time than anticipated — we had to go play Fnatic. At this point everyone was scrambling to find their gear all while wondering how we managed to get this team twice in a row. EliGE finally wrapped up his deathmatch. On the way to the stage to set up Jdm handed EliGE an apple and asked him to at least eat something.
The map ban went exactly as it did the first time. So while the analyst desk set up our last match of the day we went back to the warm up room. Running back the same map gave Peacemaker tonnes of ammo and he started breaking down the gameplan. Pimp, Jdm, Hiko and Nitr0 all gave some insight as well on what they could change up. EliGE didn't say much.
There would be no 7-1 comeback this time.
After the match everyone was somewhat disoriented. In a rush to post about the result to twitter, a couple calls of "what was the final score again?" went out and every response was wrong. 16-12 was the final score.
In the end it took 58 rounds of Dust2 against Fnatic but that was what it took to make the semifinal. Heading in to our first LAN everyone had questions about this team. It was a long break after the major but these boys haven't missed a step.
