World GameMasters Tournament Pune Exclusive Coverage Day 2

What an event! No rains or power cuts but the event still had enough excitement to keep everyone on their feet. The venue was filled with over 150 spectators trying to catch a glimpse of all the action. Things started a little slow but things picked up by 10:30. With all the CS amateur and professional teams arriving, it was time for the Counter-Strike event to begin. Alongside the DotA matches were to continue for the loser’s and winner’s bracket!

DotA:

With this tournament using a double elim format, the clans had a chance to redeem themselves and rally back to reach the finals. So it was time for clan AS to face off against clan DT and it turned out to be quite the resilient match the crowd thought it would be. However, despite Sharom playing a very good game, he just didn’t get enough support from the rest of his team and soon it was time for this team to go back and see what went wrong. The match was still rated to be one of the toughest matches fought all day. The match lasted for over an hour and had its amazing moments of ups and down.

In the background, the second game of the tournament was underway. This match was the first match of the winner’s bracket. However, it was quite a one sided match. The match was between Greek Gods and hmp. hmp playing with the same combo as yesterday found the going easy against Greek Gods. Rockhound, playing with Tidehunter yet again was unstoppable and his support team was an amazing combo of grit and hit. So, hmp remained in the winner’s bracket while Greek Gods went into the loser’s bracket.

Only 7 teams were remaining and the 2nd match of the winner’s bracket was about to start. The match featured MYE and Noobs. Noobs were really pumped up after an amazing victory yesterday. But MYE made short work of them. MYE is really on a role here and everyone is wondering if there is any team that can put an end to their wonderful run. This time around Nachiket was the star for them and Pumba provided the support, while all round play by cither helped them secure an easy win.

Back to the loser’s bracket, it was do or die for Xplod and Urs. Xplod went in for a combo and used the basic strategy of constantly preventing urs from making any kind of substantial inventory. This strategy really paid off for them because in the end it was Xplod who emerged victorious. So we bid our farewell to Urs who were remarkable competitors in their own respect. The match lasted 85 min.

The other 2 clans which had a do or die situation on hand were teams DT and Greek Gods. Again, unable to repeat their amazing display in their first round, Greek Gods were just unable to emerge victorious and handed a simple victory to DT. Even though Greek Gods went in for a different combo, they just weren’t able to pull off this combo. The match lasted just about an hour.

Counter-Strike:

There were a ton of exciting matches that took place. The CS pro first saw X-es, the best line-up, in the tournament take on a much weaker Indian Army. But the match was one-sided with the final score-line reading 16-4. However, early in the match the Indian Army had rallied to win one eco round and make the score 2-2. But after that the X-es team showed just why they are the best, f0x played a mind-blowing game and was the top-fragger for X-es.

The match in the same league was the one between Xplod and TB which turned out to be a non-starter because team TB was d/q due to non-reporting on the venue. After patiently waiting for 3 hours for this team to arrive, finally the organizers decided on giving Xplod a bye. Similar fate was in store for team What, who got a bye in their first round match.

The next match was between Psycho Ducks and Super Dogs. Here, Psycho Ducks were victorious 16-4 and moved to the winner’s bracket. Now, it was turn for the amateur tournament to begin. This league meant the most excitement, appeals and the closest games. The first game was not so close and Noobie beat DX 16-1. The next game saw IA against FOD. After a good start on both Terrorists’ and Counter Terrorists’ side, IA lost the plot. Losing the game 3-0, FOD came back strongly to win the next 7 rounds. But in the end FOD was just too strong for IA and won the game with ease.

Noobs faced off against LODa in another one-sided match but this team was challenged for the use of a pro player which led them to change this player and continue in the tournament. LODa eventually won the game 16-2 with the kills being shared by all the team mates.

The losers bracket playoffs then begun. IA faced off against Noobs and IA tore through the opposition. Then came the two most exciting games of the day. The first one was Noobie vs. FOD. Both teams had secured easy victories over the opposition and were looking to beat each other in similar fashion. However, that was not to happen. The game momentum swung wildly. In the fourth round, Ravi (playing for Noobie) planted the bomb and killed 2 people to win them the round. However strong team play kept FOD in the fray and was able to beat Noobie 16-14. But it was not that easy. In the 28 round, Roshan using only a deagle managed to pull of an amazing clutch round (1 v 4) and save his team from losing there itself. However all these individual heroics couldn’t help there cause.

The next match also went down to the wire, with Xtinction playing against LODa. Here both teams had very good co-ordination and displayed some amazing skills and strats in the game. But, LODa beat Xtinction 16-14 and kept them in the winner’s bracket.

So what is in store on day three? The CS and DotA champs will be crowned and given a chance to display their skills against the best in the country. So stay tuned.

By Piyush ‘knife’ Agrawal