Day two of the Antwerp eSports Festival is complete and many would certainly agree it was much better than the first. Day two saw fewer delays, better matches, and even quite a few upsets in the first few rounds of the double elimination playoff bracket. Both EG and Pandemic remain undefeated in the tournament and look to continue to make North America proud as Dignitas and KomaCrew are the only two European teams remaining undefeated. Be sure to keep it locked here at TeamPandemic.net for continuing coverage from Antwerp as Pandemic.CoD4 gears up to play KomaCrew tomorrow at 9AM local time or 3AM EST!
The first round of the playoffs started as expected with Dignitas taking SP gaming in a relatively easy match. The second match of the upper bracket, on the other hand, drew a lot of attention as gamers saw tek-9 and h2k go head to head. The match was a back and forth battle until the final few rounds were some impressive clutch play from tek-9 pushed them over the edge to seal the 13-10 victory over h2k. LowLandLions and eSuba each had fairly easy matches defeating each of their opponents by a safe margin. The first real big shock of the tournament, however, almost came between EG and PGS where the North American favorites were forced into overtime against the Polish team who looked absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, EG held true to their motto as overtime champions (EG has never lost a match in overtime), winning the first half overtime 2-1 and then capturing the first two rounds of the second half to win the match 16-13.
Meanwhile, in the other half of the bracket, KomaCrew managed to edge past the British Reason Gaming team who for some reason have not looked too strong today. After a long delay due to sound card issues of an opponent, the other North American competitors, Pandemic, managed to take a very impressive victory over SK-Gaming on Strike. Although SK managed to keep the score close in the early rounds of the first half, Pandemic pulled ahead to close out the half with a comfortable 8-4 lead. In the second half, SK managed to take the first two rounds, however, Pandemic got down to business winning the remaining rounds and the match. Arguably the biggest story, however, is MYM’s 13-6 victory over Fnatic on CityStreets, where MYM came back from a 1-6 deficient on offense to win 12 straight rounds and the match.
Unlike round 1, round two featured far less exciting matches with the exception of Tek-9 vs Dignitas. Tek-9 vs Dignitas is a rivalry that has been going on for the longest time and one that will definitely continue for some time to come. While the two might certainly be cordial to each other out of game, when money is on the line, it’s all business. In this case, Business with a lot of mm1 chat throughout the match. Perhaps the funniest thing to watch as a spectator is mick’s advice for his team to win rounds, “fix it in a.” EG managed to breeze past LowLandLions to catch a break from their narrow victory over PGS while KomaCrew pulled of a slight upset, beating eSuba on crossfire. eSuba were predicted favorites by some to possibly win the whole event. Closing out round 2 of the upper bracket in style, Pandemic went head to head with MYM who was hot off their victory over Fnatic. Despite their excellent play against Fnatic, MYM was simply no match for Pandemic who seemed to have better nades and more coordinated strategies as the Germans dropped to the Americans 4-13.
Storylines
European’s like mm1 - During Tek-9’s matches against h2k and dignitas we noticed there was quite a bit of mm1 chat going down between from both teams. I’m not talking the friendly “hi how are you” chat, no this was the flames usually seen in mm2 chat. Pretty interesting…
KomaCrew - While KomaCrew has always been a fairly decent team in the European scene, their victory over eSuba in round 2 of the upper bracket was very surprising. Whether it was just a lucky map for them or eSuba’s mistake, Pandemic will certainly have their hands full tomorrow in round 3 of the upper bracket.
Xfire computers without updated CoD4 - While here, Pandemic was supposed to do a promotional play with the pros event with Tek-9, however, due problems with the laptops the team was supposed to play on, highlighted by the fact they didn’t even have the right version of CoD4 installed, the entire event was cancelled due to time constraints with tournament play.
FIFA Spectators - Although the FIFA crowd here at AEF isn’t as large as CoD4, they certainly due make a lot of noise. During some of the more challenging matches today a lot of the FIFA players were yelling and cheering on their favorite players with even the players in the match getting in the spirit.
Food Tickets - At the venue, you can purchase tickets to be used for food, snacks and drink. The only problem with this system, you have to buy new tickets every day, you can’t reuse your old tickets. Wish I’d known that before I dropped 10 euros and still had half my tickets left over.
Delays - Today’s matches were delayed slightly, but thankfully nowhere near as badly as yesterday. From what I’ve seen, the biggest and most aggravating delay of the day was between SK and Pandemic were it took over an hour for an SK player to get sound working on his computer.
Day 2 Raffle - Day two’s raffle was much like the first, a lot of little bags to be given away with a few good prizes, including a quad core intel processor. Interestingly enough, however, orcana and another group of players seemed to win almost every prize as their ticket numbers just migrated into the hand of the booth babe tosspot got to pick out the tickets.
Wiseguy casts alongside Tosspot - Tosspot wanted to bring in a member of EG to add color commentary alongside his play by play casting of Pandemic’s match against MYM. Wiseguy volunteered and suffice to say he had his team laughing throughout the match.
2AM Dinner? No Problem! - Just another great thing about this city, it’s 1:30AM in the morning and we walk outside to get some food and half the street cafes are still open! There are even a number of cafes that are open 24 hours. Interestingly enough, there are also a lot of people out in the streets at that hour as well.
Not so random maps - Unlike the group stage, map selection will be based on elimination. Both teams take turns eliminating maps until a map is selected. This gives both teams a fair bit of control over what maps they do and don’t play, allowing a team to remove their weaker map or a strong map for their opponents.
Hot or Not
Antwerp as a city x2 North Americans winning both rounds of the upper bracket MYM’s 12 round comeback against Fnatic on CityStreets QuadV’s absolutely amazing live coverage The venue’s temperature (wicked hot)
More Tournament Delays Computers without the right version of CoD4 Losing against teams you should beat Having to pay for internet in rooms Number of really good teams still in the losers bracket
Antwerp as a city x2
More Tournament Delays
