Wow! What a great series of matches we’ve had on the final day of official QuakeCon 2009 Tournaments! Some AMAZING matches casted by the Live On Three / QuadV crews.
QuakeLive Masters 1v1 Tournament:
Loser’s bracket: in the morning we saw dkt fall to spartie in a somewhat controversial match. To my knowledge, dkt’s mouse ceased to work, but instead of calling an admin, he dropped the server and spartie prevailed 2-1 with 1 forfeited map. At the same time, EG DaHang was facing off against a European (fnatic stermy) who many thought would never make it this far. stermy’s impressive run in the tournament was cut short by one of North America’s best duelers. In the next round of the LB we saw DaHang once again face off against top EU talent. This time, however, EU came on top as spartie edged out a narrow and exciting victory. To finish off the LB on the main stage, spartie will meet with Cypher for a chance to take another shot at rapha for the championship.
Winner’s bracket: bright and early quite an interesting match took place between the #1 seed, Cypher, and Italy’s lone e-Sports star, stermy. The first round went to Cypher, the second was a blowout in favor of the Italian, with the third a fairly convincing victory for Cypher. rapha, once again showing his confidence and prowess, took out spartie. Next, it was a meeting of the heavy hitters, as sk-rapha (#2 seed) clashed with Cypher, who won last years QuakeLive tournament. The match went to three maps, but once again, it was obvious that rapha knew his place. He was going to take the victory, and move on for a chance to take home his very own QuakeCon championship.
Most of the CTF matches were played yesterday. In fact, we were left with only the final 4 teams today. Who Run It vs Loaded, team fnatic vs Evil Geniuses. I missed the former, but let me assure you, the latter was a match that will go down in Quake history. Who Run It, to my surprise, surpassed Loaded (a team that I figured was Loaded with talent). Unfortunately I can’t speak to the contents of this match, so I’ll move on to what I consider the best matchup of the tournament thus far: EG vs. fnatic. The first round was on Ironworks. EG capped first a few minutes into the map, fnatic replied just a few minutes later. Both teams tightened up on D, and there wasn’t another cap for the rest of the match… until the 2 minutes until the end. fnatic’s linkin somehow made it home nearly untouched. All of the North American fans had about lost hope for a W. But the excitement quickly rose as a coordinated push by DaHang and id_ had id_ flying home with 35 seconds left on the clock. It was tied up, and it was time for some over time. About 4 minutes in, team EG was able to end it. The second map, on Troubled Waters, also went into overtime. Both teams were able to score reasonably early on, and it stayed that way (1-1) until a few minutes after over time, when EG was able to end the match in two maps.
Overall, I would say that EG had a slight advantage in terms of defense. The mix of clampOK and viju is truly terrifying. Before the match I expected that EG’s offense would far surpass that of fnatic with the pro dueler in DaHang and champion flagrunner in id_, but the real offensive star in this match was linkin from team fnatic. His rocket jumps and clutch plays were entertaining and ingenuity. With the likes of stermy and spartie playing midfield and defense, rail shots were aplenty as fnatic likely edged EG out in terms of pure aim. But in the end, it came down to superior defense and team work to push the flag past midfield on EG’s side that led to a very close and entertaining victory.
GG’s to all, and I look forward to the finals.
An amazing writeup, FishStix! The matches sound like they have been TENSE.
Good coverage, and I expect more great articles out of you all! Thanks a bunch!