I wrote this while bored of actually playing video games. If you don't follow competitive Team Fortress 2, I recommend you skip this one. It gets very technical and has absurd amounts of TF2 jargon.
Predicted to be one of the best matches of the season, the
rankings on Saloon were heavily favouring Cute Beast, but the call was that
both teams were equally experienced and evenly matched.
The write-up for the match can be viewed here.
It is important note however, that both teams had not
scrimmed for more than a week due to real life commitments on either side. Thus,
the epic standoff between the two teams devolved somewhat.
Play By Play
The first round was hard fought, repeatedly bouncing from
last to last, going for a good 12 minutes before Cute Beast finally managed to
take the first point. However, Pingu found a sudden burst of momentum and immediately
took the next two rounds in 3 minutes, rolling Cute Beast from middle to last
twice in a row.
While the next two rounds were more hard fought, it appeared
to be futile. The coordination demonstrated by Pingu was almost mechanical,
disassembling any attempts by Cute Beast to push out and ruthlessly seizing the
slightest openings to make progress. The only thing keeping Cute Beast in the
game at that point was Flower, whose sniping halted Pingu in their tracks
multiple times (Flower hitting the most ridiculous headshot on And between
Shocky’s legs was the highlight of the match).
Pingu picked up the next two rounds, making the score 4 – 1.
The clock was winding down for Cute Beast, and in a last ditch effort, the
Chinese played a super aggressive mid, jumping both soldiers in deep. It
worked, wiping Pingu and capping last in a good 1 minute 30 seconds.
The score was 4 – 2 and Cute Beast had only 5 minutes left.
Cute Beast won the next mid and took second almost
instantaneously, having full knowledge that every second was exponentially increasing
in importance. They readied their last push, and ubered in through shutter.
However, a single moment of disorganisation meant that not everyone was in at
last, and Pingu had kited the uber too well. The post-uber fight decimated any
hope that Cute Beast had of tying up the game,
and the map declined into stats padding, the score remaining 4 – 2 to
Pingu.
The second map was Sunshine, rarely seen in Asian pugs and
scrims. Cute Beast had to win in order to push for a third tie breaker map.
But Pingu’s momentum had carried over from Process. They beat
Cute Beast at the first mid, a scene that would become extremely familiar in
the following 16 minutes. In fact, from start to finish it seemed as though
there was little to no hope for Cute Beast. The first round was the longest,
lasting a good 6 minutes before Pingu were able to pick an overextending player
and complete the last push.
The remaining time was just a sad mess. Cute Beast were unable
to win a single mid and their players were constantly caught out of position.
One moment would stand out to many, whereby Hysteria and Shad0w were the only
ones alive after Cute Beast had successfully completed a four man sacrifice for
And. Shortly after, Hysteria jumped in afterward for seemingly no reason,
leaving his medic to fend for himself (Shad0w eventually dying in the following
chase), denoting a probable lack in communication and overall collapse in
cohesion.
It was an excruciating 16 minutes for the 73% that
had bet on MC7’s favourites. Pingu emerged victorious, taking the map 5 – 0 and
moving on to the Grand Finals. Now, Cute Beast has to defeat Kusoyotech in
order to obtain another shot at taking down their greatest rivals…
Log Reviews
The logs for the matches can be viewed below.
Process was dominantly a scout’s game, with the highest DPM
coming out from both Flower and Teejay: only 9 damage apart from each other.
What’s significant here is how little 10 did for Cute Beast.
Arguably, he did more damage than tommy, but when you have a reputation to keep
and teammates to carry (i.e. Hysteria), the damage numbers weigh more. What’s
more, tommy had a KA/D of 3.3, the
highest in the server. While he wasn’t outputting damage per se, he was doing fantastic
in the role assigned him.
In addition to this, Fury was unable to put out the damage
that he normally could. A floundering 229 DPM compares poorly to his usual performance,
especially considering that he took 26% of the heals from his medic.
With Flower top damaging and top fragging on the server
whilst sitting with the least healing on his team, could he have potentially
done more?
All in all, the conclusion is that because two of Cute Beast’s
star players were not performing to standard, the entire team collapsed around
them. While Flower and RLE (who was switched to roamer from medic before the
match started) were able to pull their weight impressively, it wasn’t enough to
make up for the fact that the remaining fragging classes scored under 250DPM.
As opposed to this, Pingu had an almost textbook game with
better slightly better and spread out damage, and with 22% healing across each of
the three core classes.
All in all though, the logs don’t really demonstrate how
well Pingu was playing together. Much of their victory on process should be
attributed to both their teamwork and the fact that many of Cute Beast’s
players kept getting caught making plays for the medic.
There isn’t much to be said about Sunshine, considering it
was a 5 – 0 victory for Pingu. Three things of note were: Fury did considerably
better, getting 315 DPM; Flower spent more time as sniper than as scout; Teejay
was out-damaged by Tommy even though
tommy got less healing, which is not something just anyone can say.
All in all, Cute Beast was shredded on Sunshine, a defeat
that they’ll have to keep in mind while facing off against Kusoyotech.
Conclusion
Cute Beast play a DM-centric style, and it collapsed mainly
because Pingu played the team game much better- and that a DM-centric
playstyles only function when each player
is in shape and performing as expected on the day itself. Ultimately, with
rusty rockets and dusty scatterguns, Cute Beast were unable to beat their more
cohesive opponents.
