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I
Nothing here is given.
Every loss makes something with it.
They're stunned to this crowd!
It reminded us that victory is never wanted.
The world tested us.
Now they know who we are.
Champions are made in North America.
I mean, it is a bittersweet moment, right?
I mean, it is. We started this journey one 40 days ago at this point and now we are sending
teams home. We are crowning a champion, but good thing is we get to end with a bang here.
I mean, it's a little bittersweet, but at the same time we crowned a new NAL champion,
but on top of it, even with the stage being done with EWC right around the corner, I
believe there's even minor leagues happening as well. So there's a lot of seeds to
be tuning into even if the stage is going to come to an end today.
God, you just said that because 40 days I feel like I just got here, but I get to go home and still watch seeds.
Love that. Yeah, it should be should be good.
Yesterday, we obviously got a chance to watch some also impressive seeds.
We sent Shopify Rebellion home.
But what we also saw was to fairly quick best of threes, where we saw these teams showcase the new update
and really bring out everything to win these games.
I mean, you talk about the update, you talk about the new operators and the buffs that they have to them.
but we gotta talk about the C4s that Wildcard was bringing
in this series specifically on Cafe.
I mean, I believe five of those defensive rounds,
they had five C4s ready to be thrown at M80.
But I mean, this series as a whole,
again, it was a lot of anticipation.
Coming back into this rematch for M80 was the first team
that actually knocked them out their high horse
throughout the play stage,
so I mean throughout the group stage.
And again, I mean Wildcard just came into this match,
that first night Haven Lab, they absolutely dumped them,
Then going into cafe, it was a great plan of strategy on their attacking half that pushed them over the edge and they were a thief in the night.
Yeah, it really does seem like they have their number, right? And I mean, really glad you highlighted some wild cards.
I mean, they were playing exceptional in this series, taking advantage of M80, kind of being a little bit of sleep here in this game.
We noted multiple times that, I mean, were they ever going to wake up? It was a little bit too late.
Yeah, and you know, we're talking about were they ever going to wake up?
That's kind of what we're talking about with SR.
Are they ever going to wake up?
Are they ever going to beat the Titans of DZ?
And unfortunately, when push comes to shove,
DZ is always going to win.
It's the inevitable.
We say, where's the inevitable for making a defense?
Well, DZ is the inevitable in terms of this matchup.
We talk about it.
We say it's a head-to-head.
We say it's a beef match.
It's really one-sided beef.
It's a really one-sided match across.
And again, I highlighted as well.
I can sympathize for SR.
I know what it's like to be here.
Eventually, it will come to them.
This time, it's just not happening.
to say we call it a rivalry all the time but I think it's 17 and 3 map count wise it was not
looking good for them once they lost their map pick I mean I have left with the map that they
needed to win and it was just I mean Jane I know with an ace right there I mean it was just
clutch after clutch and they got a little bit closer in the round count but obviously falling
on night hitting last year 7-5 and losing their map pick going to clubhouse where that's the map
where again DZ's just kind of had their number it was kind of over from there.
Which I'm a firebellion getting eliminated in that matchup, but still will be at the e-sports world cup
It just means that they won't go straight to phase two
They'll have to work through the the play-ins
Essentially something that they did in Salt Lake City where we saw them find success there
So it seems like they're comfortable in that territory. They're not afraid to just play more see no
They're certainly comfortable
It's just DZ as long as DZ isn't the obstacle that's in front of them
They're gonna have a great run at EWC, but again, that's as long as he
I mean as long as Dark Zero is not in their path.
Yeah, that's gonna be tough for them to see another regional opponent that has this kind of record against them
But with that win Dark Zero they moved on in the lower bracket
They have stayed alive here in the bracket very important because they still have a chance
To make their way to the grand final the winner between M80 and Dark Zero first up today
We'll go to face Wildcard for the title of stage one champ that grand final coming up a little later on
and we've also got a little fun surprise for you there coming through the middle of the day.
I guess not a super surprise, I'll tell you now. We've got a little NAL award show for you.
We're gonna crown maybe the play of the stage, the MVP,
all sorts of fun stuff coming your way in the break between the matches there.
But first it is M80 and Dark Zero, a match up that we'd like to call a clash of the Titans
because this is truly the two most heavy hitting teams we have right now.
Now the Assault Lake City champs against a team that went nearly undefeated in the group stage.
Listen, we have to build up this match again.
I know we let everybody down the stage.
We built it up and it was a quick 7-0 for M80, but this is a different time.
This is a different stage.
It is now a best of three territory.
So even if DZ wants to get 7-0 again, they have two extra chances to get the edge
over M80.
Yeah.
Okay.
We have to hype it up.
players in the NAL right now, four of them are in the server today, two from N80 and two
from DZ.
So we really do have a lot of Titans in the lobby, but again, unfortunately they did end
up getting 7-0ed.
It was M80 who kind of took a strategy from Wildcard.
They were C4 maxing on their own and on Cafe and not a map that DZ did struggle on.
So we'll have to see what have they learned because they came out of that series and
they said, hey, we learned a lot from that.
And that's great.
You want to lose in those best of ones.
I mean, you don't want to lose 7-0, but at least you can take something away from that series,
which I'm sure they definitely can.
Well, obviously, Kino is also going to have a chance to play against his former team.
He'll never tell you how much that matters to him.
And maybe it doesn't, but we asked him yesterday, right?
And he said, just another day, just another game, you know.
Like, come on. I mean, it's a little chip on your shoulder.
You want to get that win?
Yeah. I mean, of course, no one wants to be 7-0.
And you're definitely going to come into this with some sort of chip on your shoulder
of wanting to be the best, wanting to prove that you are better than an 80.
So I have no doubt that DarkZero is going to come into this matchup with a completely different look than what we saw in their previous group stage matchup.
Yeah, that literally is. Like, they don't lose twice in a row, and they have a gap, but do they lose twice in a row to the same team?
That's another little theory that we're going to be putting to the test.
The M80s, but lost to Wildcard twice now.
Wildcard for DZ.
Exactly. That's the point, right? The M80 that we saw in the group stage is 7-0 DZ.
It's not the M80 we saw yesterday. Against Wildcard, they didn't even win their own map pick.
They looked like a different team.
Yeah, we were talking about it. They were a little bit sleep at the wheel than what we were used to seeing them.
Symphony, especially in the group stage, and even in the round one, again, I was highlighting those 50-50 engagements that had to go into their favor,
and they were losing this, and it's not the M80 that we're used to seeing.
They're usually the ones that are getting aggressive, taking these gunfights, winning it, and then able to play off of each other.
But in this series, particularly, they were absolutely not.
And then, pivoting into that round two again, we highlighted this.
It was Savage all by himself here.
And realistically, Gunner should have been playing aggressive
or at least making some sort of engagement that then would allow
Savage some sort of leeway to fight back into this.
But because of that not happening,
it allows Wildcard to take full control of the fight.
And you'll see the Windcombe really came from defuser
being able to use that C4 and inevitably got shut down.
And then we pushed into cafe where we really heard
from the comms on the side of that maybe where you could
hear Savage was getting frustrated.
You could tell he was being animated that there was a lot going wrong that needed to be fixed
But in that round one in particular it was a great retake from wild card
I said it before and I'll say it again
They took this round they were a thief in the night throughout this entire series taking round after round and they did it
Damn well, they did it really well, and it was really those win conditions though from m80 like you just highlighted right there
I mean that they're letting wild card kind of into the site
They're backing up they're giving them the map and then they're a little bit late
going for the retakes and then even when they do get the bombs down it didn't
seem like in the comms that they were really sinking things up together and
they just kept saying over and over again like guys we need to wake up we need to
wake up but it was a little bit too late. Luckily for them there's another chance
though right they got to fall down into the lower bracket where there is
a chance for them to still earn those SI points that they desperately need.
Absolutely. We were talking about right comms I heard is like an overarching
theme here about why this could have possibly gone wrong. I mean tell me
You think there's any particular reason why we're seeing an M80 that is looking a little more flustered yesterday than we have in the past?
So I think there's three things. I think one of these things is definitely a little bit of stretch.
You could argue that, you know, it's shift of schedule.
You have players like Diffuser, you have players like Gunnar that believe that are starting at 8.30 a.m.
Young guys.
And you could argue that realistically at LAN events wake up early and also Ashen performed extremely well.
Well, that's East Coast, right?
Ashen?
No, 8.8.30?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Diffusers on the West Coast, too.
True.
So East Coast earlier, right?
Even earlier and then the second point I think is the biggest ramification and the reason why we aren't seeing the exact same
M80 that we're seeing the group stage is they aren't in the facility throughout all of the group stages
They were in the facility and that just has camaraderie written all around it
You're able to look into your teammate sides
You're able to see what's going on play off their emotions play off your own emotions and just kind of build off of that
You're not able to do that when you're away from each other when you're doing it online
Whereas the team like wild card we saw in their comms after every single win was it whether was a crazy round not crazy
They were yelling they were getting hyped. They were getting animated. It's just not the same a matey that we were seeing throughout the group stage
Yeah, great. It's that body language. That's what's nice about you playing in the same facility
There's little fist pump that you're able to give each other when you're losing rounds
You're not sitting in your room all alone just kind of somber right someone yelling who at the top of their lungs
Is not as exciting over the headset as it is
What if your teammates standing up right next to you that we see even with the Shopify rebellion?
We'll see was boy as he gets up and he's celebrating with the rest of team
So it is kind of a big factor.
It is kind of, I mean, it could definitely be
for their slow stars.
And the biggest one, I think, is definitely them
actually coming into a few of their first losses,
only coming out of wild cards.
But again, when you have a fantastic group stage
like you did, you aren't learning a lot from those series
until you lose.
And inevitably, when you do end up losing,
it can really expose you to a lot of issues.
And as you know, if you put too much emphasis
in those positions, into those things that
are happening, that are going wrong,
it can cause more chaos and do more damage in the long
term.
In terms of momentum, M80 coming off a loss. Their opponents today, DarkZero, they're coming off a very one-sided win.
They played incredible against Shopify Rebellion, and it just seemed like going into that matchup.
There were so many examples of DarkZero just out-thinking the rebellion and just playing a perfect game.
I mean, we could make a montage out of the 17-3 map can of them out-thinking them,
but of course I'm going to highlight another Labs round, which is the last time I highlighted DZ,
because they're going to have a problem there. There's the clash.
What are they going to do? They're going to bring new Zotia with those three impacts underneath.
And this one is going to be for the E-Box player.
This one is for anyone playing close to the E-Box door, and then they have another for the mirror window.
There's new words on the Twitch drone from down below.
At this point, they're going to get Kali. They're going to get MJR on the sniper rifle.
He's going to get set up in connector and look how broken this angle is.
This has to be practiced from DZ.
At this point, he's able to pester the clash player, which we all know is Canadian, and he's going to back up.
He's gonna back up, but they're gonna leave the smoke high and dry and there's Kino on the Grimm shotgun
He's gonna take advantage of that and after they get the kill on that player close DZ
They know what is the information they're looking for they know the SR have all backed up
So Kino's gonna use those grim bees push through and get another free kill
I mean look he sniped that guy on the other side of the room with that shot
Of course, there's only gonna be one person that's gonna use a Grimm shotgun and of course
It's gonna be Kino, but some that we also highlighted
is all of these he was always one step ahead. They always had a response to
whatever as I was trying to throw them even in just what you broke down. They're
so step by step. They know how to go to point a to point B and get it done very
concise and clean. And it's the reason why we always highlight them that we
talked about there. The Swiss Army night. They have every tool at their
disposal and can make nothing out of I mean they can just make anything
happen realistically. And when we're seeing this easy perform at the
level that they continue to be, it's the consistency for me that I look at
as the bigger picture for the scene,
is that they can bounce back after a loss
and look almost a seamless difference
from what we were seeing in the previous match.
You also mentioned, right,
Ash and he's the number one player right now in the NAL.
He's a threat on the M80 side, on the Dark Zero side.
I mean, Newers and Jane, I know,
yesterday they were letting up the scoreboard.
They are right behind Ash in number two and three,
overall rated in the league.
That is such a threat for Dark Zero to have
and a great weapon against the team
with strong fraggers like M80.
Yeah, I mean, it's not even the right operators.
It's not only the right operators, right?
They also have the right players on the team.
I mean, all five of them, I think it was NJR
was the one that even struggled in that series.
If you want to even say that he was struggling
when he's actually the SLC MVP.
I mean, he defined struggling.
I mean, he went negative in the match, sure.
But like we all know how good NJR is.
I mean, again, it's just so many good players
in this lobby.
It's literally all our best talents from North America.
It should be a heavyweight battle
as long as we don't see a 7-0.
That's the question here, though, right?
Can DarkZero bounce back from that?
We know how much they talk about, you know,
screwing the narrative and doing their own thing.
If you've been there in that situation,
having to bounce back from a very one-sided matchup,
how do you respond?
And how much of a role can that play?
I mean, realistically, you're not gonna,
again, you're gonna look at that 7-0,
and like I said, take from it,
learn what you can from it,
but you're not gonna hang on to it.
It's not gonna hang over your head
coming next back into the series just for the simple fact
you're in the best three now you can lose very badly
and immediately come back to next game
and then push that all the way into a map three
and that's exactly what Darkseer is gonna do.
Any upper echelon team knows once you get into the best threes
you have a bad series on one map
you just wipe the slate clean, go into the next series
come out the way that you need to be fixed the problems
and both problem solved
and then it's just about adapting
and being the better team at that point.
Yeah, especially DZ.
We heard from Kino yesterday. He's like we don't even think about our previous words, you know
And that doesn't matter to them seed at the top level again
I could say it over and over again and born every single viewer
But it is such a mental game and if you have those thoughts in the back of your mind. Oh my god
The last time we played these team. It's seven hours. You're loading into the lobby. You're not gonna be successful
So for me again, all of these he will probably see player cams of them
Meditating except for newer skills. He doesn't seem to
I mean, it's not just a bid.
He's skipping out on us, but it's newer.
He's number two on that list.
He's a top player.
But again, they're going to put that out of their mind,
and I expect them again.
That 7-0 is going to fire them down.
Well, let's talk maps and see if they can, you know,
find a territory where they're a little bit more comfortable
when it comes down to this best of three.
We start things out on layer.
That'll be where M80 chooses to go
before dark zero send us to lab.
Lax, what do you make of this layer pick?
I mean, this is a great pick for M80.
They're clearly comfortable on it.
really comfortable on. They've played it quite a bit. I would say the sample size is a little
different for the side dark zero. They only showed it one time, burst five fears. And
you could also, I mean, first five years for fun where you could argue on the side of MAD.
Some of those theories were close. The one that they looked the best on was against
five fears, however, but they play their attacks very differently in terms of their
bands where I believe DZ bands more of the information ops and MAD will get
rid of more of the cheese ops,
getting rid of the glass,
getting rid of any of those site executes.
So I have to see who's gonna kind of walk away
in those attacks.
We already kind of know and what to expect
from the defense side of things.
So it's really gonna be the attacking side
that I'm more self fixated on.
And especially those opening games
is where we saw DZ specifically yesterday.
I camera what they count was
that they were carrying that series
in opening games.
No, it's a great map choice,
I think for both teams.
But I'm most excited for those lives.
I've now done, I mean, two
demonstration issues for Dizzy
attacking the top floor.
So I'm almost kind of wondering
to myself, what else can they
kind of do?
I just think they're so good
at that map, which is weird
for me to say it because the
old SSG team, I criticized them
so heavily for the Nighthater
Labs.
And right now it looks like
one of their best maps.
And then that's a sider.
We're going back to cafe.
Dizzy, what have they learned?
That's the tough one though,
right?
You're going to allow that to
be the third map.
And I think if you're M80,
you don't want it to go to
that third map, especially
beating them in the 7-0 again.
But no, again, you're going to take a lot more from that coming from DZ's aspect
and their own point of view where I made it.
You're going to maybe try to replicate the exact same thing you did.
And that's what really can kind of bite you in the ass if you try to do
the exact same thing.
Well, I want to hone in on a point you guys made earlier about the
M80 comes because it's something that for the most part, we don't get
to hear, you know, on the viewer side, right in the green room.
You guys get to listen in, see what the issues are.
Kyle, you mentioned that there was something happening with Savage and
and how the team was almost leaving him out to dry,
like leaving him on his own.
Can you explain what you heard
and why that could be a problem against DarkZero?
Yeah, I mean, just a problem syncing, right?
That's really all it is.
And I really wish the viewers could kind of hear
some of what we're hearing,
because it's so cool to hear pro players.
But it's just the little things, right?
It's syncing, hey, we're gonna go for this VIP player.
As Savage, you're expecting someone to say
something like heard, right?
So you're synced up with him.
Then you're expecting a 3-2-1 count, right?
3-2-1.
We're not really hearing any of that.
more so. Hey, we're going to go for this VIP player and then you see players kind of walking on their own.
And then after the round, it's always diagnosing issues. Guys, I said we were going for this,
why are you not going for this? And it's great. Everyone on the top teams is taking accountability.
Ashen's first to be like, Hey, that's my bad. We'll be better than the next one. But it was
just constant over, over and over again. We weren't seeing the problems kind of fix themselves.
All right. Very fair. We get to dive into this one. One more team needs to get into our grand
final is it going to be dark zero or can M80 find that success again like they did in the group stage
we'll go over to Jesse and Parker to find out. Well thank you very much gentlemen Jesse what are
you wearing a blazer? Oh you look so good that's what you wore to your wedding right? Yeah basically
this exact outfit more or less so yeah more or less. You look very very good and just as I imagine
both of these teams are going to look very good in this matchup a lot of people at M80 at the
top of their list and yet Wildcard humbled them yesterday. How do they fare against the
defending major champions? You the people think that Dark Zero has the edge? We'll start a
layer and we'll very quickly get a good lay of the land as these teams do battle on
a very, very large and technical map.
I just got to say for a second here partner, it's crazy to me the community gave Dark
0SR a 50-50 prediction almost exactly when dark zero has like 20 years of history destroying
Shopify rebellion and now today against m80 in my opinion the most even matchup that we're going to
see all playoffs two titans going ahead today where it's actually a point for results they're all
just going to go back to major champions whatever the community can vote however they'd like we'll
get to see how it turns out in the server and i'm so excited to see how these games play
laxing predicted information bands from dark zero here in the early phase and it looks like he was right
That's the snake being taken off the board immediately
It'll force Gavin to jump on a new heart a new entry fragger here
You tap then they remove that ying as well
So you're gonna make it a little bit more difficult to go for those direct hits as I should play a little bit that game from time
Absolutely correct and no ying means it's a lot harder to crack open certain parts of this map you've seen it
I mean, time again, Yang is excellent for taking control early, and can also have some
huge impact on the site hits.
It's also been, for those that have not been following along, there have been a host of
changes that was discussed yesterday on the broadcast.
Operators that received buffs, and Sophia, Wamai, and Yeager, and we've seen both Yeager
and Zofia's pick rates shoot up.
Because of that, in terms of nerfs, Ubisoft, to their credit, have not been nerfing
very much as of late, but Joe could be a little too strong. So they have her ever so slightly,
which doesn't really make her less effective, Jesse, but certainly changes her prominence.
As you can see on the side of N80, they are locked in with operators that were untouched
before these mid-season changes went live. Yeah, and I really like the operator bands as well
from N80, Mears, whatever, but the Chonka is specifically an NJR counter. GDZ have this
really powerful smoke to Chonka duo-strat. That Kino and NJR will play here on Lair. They'll play
mid-floor on Bunk's briefing and of course on the top floor. It is so annoying to try to get past.
It's so much stall so they'll take some of that away from Dark Zero and then they'll try to change
things up a little bit. NJR is going to flex over to the Kaid with his Chonka gone. They're
going to pair this with the Tuberow so instead of stalling you out with Toxic Bades and
Fire Grenades, they're just going to stall your Walbridgeing. I like that.
that.
The diffuser got out of the building very, very fast and is droning himself at this point
in time, which is something that we usually wag our finger at.
I suppose you could say typically want some backup there because you're exposed and vulnerable
again.
Stuff that you're droning is usually good for about five seconds or so Zoto canister
is going to keep this wall in operation safe for the time being.
of course it will eventually run out.
I mean that's what I'm saying though with the Kaeya plus Tiber out and the Goyos and the
smoke like this is going to be a slow burn of around that would be shocked to see anybody
die before that 60 second mark Parker so expect this one to drag on a bit.
We do have a double shield comp coming up from M80 as well with Ashen and Savage going to
be running this.
Savage will be the real spear points he's going to be trying to get a plant in likely
through that.
I see storage hull right now so we'll see where he wants to put that down.
Ashe managed to be a force of chaos at some point in the midst of this default.
He threw a 15% damage from a Goyo canister.
That's a rare mistake from YargZero Captain.
Another deal!
You know, up top now is...
He's got a good line of sight and some kill holes with the double TCSG up there as well.
More damage is being done and that's Newer's getting the very first kill on to Ashe.
And down goes to Fuser, Newer's finding two.
Stay behind me.
Let's gather with two now as well, very quickly going back.
Fire in front.
Gunners just simply trying to wait this one out. Final minute.
What do you even do at this point? You've lost your back pressure, Parker. They can't get this wall open.
Well, they might be getting it open. They do find the EMP on the clock the second time around, so they can get the plant spot open and ready for business.
But there's still gonna be a talk to Faye from Kino. There's still gonna be some pressure with the points coming in. They've got to be so perfect.
NJR takes down Savage, got our trades NJR right back, immediately scoots over to pick up the
defuse kit, 25 seconds left on the board, a precarious spot, a little bit worried about
possibly getting electrified, but also able to open up the wall so he can waltz his way
out of that position, but DZ was circling around him and they were going to pinch him
no matter what.
An unwillable situation for him, maybe his DZ look ever so confident in the closing
moments that first round.
So Parker, we didn't get to discuss the map bans very much, obviously, here on the cast,
but I want to bring it up now because there is a very real possibility that M80 has just
walked headfirst into a trap.
This is their map pick.
They chose to come here on Lair, and I don't just like that pick from M80, they have a
4-in-1 record this season on this map, they really like playing on Lair.
There's no doubt that this is a good map for them, but yours is better than a
4-in-1 record.
A 5-in-0 record, and that's what Dark Zero have on this map this season, this
a very good map for DZ as well and while they've played it a lot recently and that means there's a
lot of footage clearly I made he had been watching that footage they banned the Chonka they know
what they're doing a more DZ strapped with might be a little too late because that last round was
a masterclass of setup from Dark Zero despite not having their usual tools available you saw
kills with Goyo canisters you saw kills with thorn traps you saw the electroclaw
delaying a bunch of time you saw all the utility being brought by Dark Zero having huge
impact and it was not all brand new but more or less a new strategy that M80
did not really come to expect because Dark Zero has just been so reliant on
the smoke to Chonka or warden to Chonka setup that they like drawing the tall floor.
M80 I think we're hoping to counter strat easy a little bit in this game
and just off that first round I'm worried the strat book might be deeper than they anticipated.
Jesse, you used the word worry. Why are you worried?
Well because this is M80's map picking if they lose it we might have a quick 2-0.
And given the desk was worried about a 7-0, uh, right before this game started, you know, I would like that to be avoided.
Alright.
I'm reloading!
I've deemed that acceptable.
Thanks.
Your reasoning and rationale noted, accepted, and now we move on in peace together.
See, Jesse, after yesterday when I said it's really nice to cast with you and you said that it was not and that you were hoping to finish as quickly as possible,
something in me which is nice and tarot where I intend to be nice to you all day
tonight
really
okay
I couldn't stomach that one bit
I'm out of honesty
good to have you back you scared me for a second there Parker I was I was worried
it's good to be back man
you talked about the double shield and how impactful it could be they have abandoned that for this round
will go onto Blitz, the Monty of course still available and as we saw in the previous round
DZ spread out well across the map and very close to the entry points for this MAD aggression.
Yeah, this top floor is going to be the focus, as it also often is they're using these EMPs
to deal with the electric laws that should be Zodo canister, not quite be there, so
they don't have, of course, the Zodo this time around, they're going to have a little bit more
So the trouble is these player states of the walls will get opened up without any issues
Talks of babes still being burned out. This is the problem with this top floor monster
There is so much you till that you have to burn through that's gonna get better the time they hit the site
You need to start getting a bit aggressive
They understood the mission gathered with the leadoff kill
But DZ's guns are hitting their marks those two SMG 11's getting put to good use and then 80 loses to bodies
Now he's just got an opportunity to defuse kit down, but there's no coverage as Kino shreds him from above.
All three kills from Darkstero so far.
In the hands of those SMG-11s.
Ash can tear into everybody by the way, but it's the top floor control which will be their undoing.
Now they're thought he had a window of opportunity to defuse kit planted, he does not.
And now it's Ash in the pick up the pieces.
30 seconds to go here, but Nye, Unlinable, I say, unless he can get a quick pick and force Dark Zero to rotate.
You've got NJR close enough to the bomb site, newer still lording over top of it as defuse gets been retrieved.
Ashen will attempt it to try to draw them out, but DZ know better than this.
A very patient team and NJR is just waning in the wings.
Ashen not expecting that, and Dark Zero starts off 2-0.
Beautifully done, that's the power of this Bunk's briefing bombsite parker the entire site could be held from above
So what do they do on the side of dark zero? They just commit to that top floor hold
They deny that plant when it's going down and the goal from M80 of course was to distract those top floor players
They're pushing in but without that ying available to you, especially it gets really difficult to draw all of the attention
You are way so dark sure did a really good job keeping their eye on the prize
spotting out some of those players down below. Of course it definitely helps that
they were winning some of their fights up top here. Despite falls going down as the
opening pick, they were always able to find that use kit as it's going down
below. And it just feels like a bit of a slow start from M80. I mean Dark Zero
are playing these these defenses really well. They're using their utility and it
feels like M80 aren't even a problem at all. It was a bit of a slow start yesterday
versus Wildcard and I don't know what the sleep schedule is looking like for
these gamers but it looks like another slow start early in the morning
today it is tremendously early we woke up for our call time Jesse because of
course it's not about the players castors we woke up for our call time at
for me 9 a.m. for you what time was it 7 a.m. for me and if you're on the West
Coast it was 6 a.m. that is some real nasty business I will say gamers go to
of bed at 6am. They don't wake up at 6am. So I have no doubt that some of these players
might be a little bit eepy, but I think most of M80 is still playing out of Windsor. I
don't know if they've been able to move around or not, and of course their player
camps, so we can't even assess whether they are in the same location that they've
been in most of the day. I agree with your point earlier by the way. M80's executes
just a bit too linear. You know that the defenders are going to have top floor control. You know
that. You assess that. You drone that out and yet you still want for the site hoping to get a quick
one off. I will say credit to Savage after they lost both Gavin and Diffuser pretty early on that
he said maybe I can just sneak a little objective down here. Stylistic, we don't hate it. It's
just easy or not the type of team to let that go unpudished. Turns this round into a near
must win for M80. You can't let the defense start the game off with a perfect rotation. Not
not when it's your map pick, not when the stakes are this high here in the lower bracket finals.
It will be a pretty direct take going through the garage here, savage the spearhead on the Monty once again.
Everybody from Dark Zero has fallen off the roam. They start with a couple of players up there on the mid floor,
but they've all fallen back down to the basement as I think they've assessed where this push is coming from, from M80.
Savage is actually backing up and going for a bit of a road save.
This is an interesting call from the M80 captain.
It could be going over towards the yellow stairs, trying to get a different angle on these garage players.
Again, there is nobody up here, so this will be a free rotation from Savage, and he is not headed lobby side.
He's gonna actually move forward towards that armor side of the map, it seems.
Or not.
He just keeps going back and forth. That's okay, Savage, take your time. Take your time. Pick whatever you'd like.
Just a swift correction there for you immediately, as Savage has other ideas.
All right, if he's getting hand-final minute if you were worried about a maybe potentially stalling out well
It's rearing its ugly head yet again in this third round dark zero so far. It's been in pretty firm control
And I have to suspect that if this round goes poorly
We might see a timeout get called somewhat early the mayor swings down goes gutter DZ starting off strong yet again
Fulls traded out an opportunity at the LL slipped through their fingers
but Ashen yet again just as he did in the previous round will pick up a double kill
You've lost savage though Jesse. That's not ideal to lose your shield and the diffuse kit
Action across the map students some good work of a Parker. That's not really where the brunt of this pushes
He's make his way inside of lockers now
You can group up with Gavin who has diffuse get and diffuser is across the map to provide this pinch
So they have to work together on this 3d3
Ashen taking care of five new words Tarkstar now with the numbers advantage new words finds to J9
Amidst the smoke, gets another and GZ start off with a perfect 3-0 site rotation. Predictions, Jesse.
You think M80's calling their time out?
I would expect it from Fobby and yes, again, it just feels like they're a little bit slow to start this game.
We'll get the fans through first, then we'll find out if there will be a timeout or not.
But again on this pushparker, it just feels like they're not getting very much value out of Savage on the shield.
Savage had a really rough game 1 yesterday up against Wildcard, went 1 and 8 in their opening matchup.
and Mint said on the desk actually that there was a lot of miscoordination going on where Savage and the rest of the team weren't on the same page.
The columns were a big issue for M80 early in that game.
Of course, the viewers and also you and I, Parker, we don't get to hear those columns, but it's great that we have the analysts breaking that down.
Here comes the tack timeout from our three-time world champion head coach, Fabian, for M80 to try to get things back on track.
But I wonder if it's those same issues coming back into things. I'd love to hear the desk's thoughts on this at the halftime.
Is it again Savage being a bit disconnected with his teammates because it feels like him on the shield has been really low value so far in this game.
Not a lot of good looks for M80. I mean if you just count those two double kills that Ash and Gott which were entirely impactless and had no bearing on the end result of those rounds, you're looking at a very unhealthy team from a kill perspective.
I know that we joked about it, but do look at the pings on your screen. Gunner is playing from the west coast. That's why he's sitting at 80 ping.
diffuser, I'm not entirely certain, but it might actually genuinely be too early for some of these players.
You know, there was, I think it was TSM at an event once, had every single day their match was the first game of the day,
and they openly said, we're tired, but we're not used to waking up this early, and they always did better after map one was concluded.
I know that we joke about it, but scheduling changes can impact a team absolutely, and I mean,
you just need to hang around people who haven't slept well or not slept enough, the crankiness
and all that comes with it can absolutely cause some friction there.
So, M80 obviously not liking this position, it's their map, Jesse.
You said you were a little worried for them, I think your worries are well-founded right
now as dark zero is steadily running away with this map.
You know now here a scary predicament to be and you mentioned a fuser as well
I mean he was a guy that also I think struggled a little bit yesterday
I talked about savage bats bats, but even the fuser at 7 and 18 in his role
That's not really working what you're looking for out of him
Defuser is one of these entry-flex players on M80 you expect him to be getting good numbers getting into the action getting engaged
Now oh and three to start this theory. We know how talented he is
I mean this guy won a major with M80. He's one of the best to do it came out of that element
game a little while ago too.
Element 2 he was the champion of,
with that old NB squad, not ENVY, but just NB.
He's had a really nice career so far,
has been doing so much at such a young age,
but these last couple of days,
we just haven't been seeing his best.
If the diffuser wakes up,
it feels like that might be the answer
for any of you who start getting rounds back on the board.
Well, yeah, I mean, they're big offensive threats.
Aren't doing anything from the kills department, right?
You've got guys like diffuser,
You got guys like Ash and Ash and for crying out loud consistently at or at the very top or competing at the very top of the NAL from a stats perspective.
And again, he's had his moments, but the rest of the team around him, the supporting cast has just not quite been there.
I don't know exactly what Bobbian would have talked about during that timeout.
He himself likely suffering from some sleep deprivation as he had a child, if you recall, all the way back when Salt Lake City was going on.
So I'm assuming there's very little sleeping in the Hauston house, but
Either way M80 does need to figure this one out, and I think you're correct if user is a big part of that
If you can start getting some kills if gutter can start getting some kills and kickstart this offense M80
There we go might have a shot and gutter gets to his J. I know an NJR get taken apart by gutter
Excellent beginning for M80
The West Coast boy at 8 a.m. Who's finding these frags? That's exactly what you need from M80
He's got the fuse kit as well so if he goes down it's a little bit risky
But inside of ops should be in a safe spot diffuser the other man the hour we're talking with a good phone
Oh, but numerous in the edge of right out the bathroom and takes the T side of the back side of that bush really nice play
Saved into fuser still searching for their very first kill gutters gonna kill them all
He's got three kills so far in this round living on board of time as he needs to evade that razor beam
And he does not do so numerous as three of his own as well
Well, we were on Ace Watch with both of these players.
That will not be had for Gunner as he's put in the ground.
One of the two remaining players on an A will need to break the zeros next to their name,
or else this round goes kaput.
It's a great opportunity for Neuers.
Down goes the fuser looking for Savage.
One away, his teammate J9O got an Ace yesterday.
Can Neuers join? No!
Savage shuts him down. The Ace denied.
Foltz and Savage will now engage in a 1v1.
Savage shrugging off some damage from that TCSG.
Foltz just needs to play fade away
and will dance around the flames.
Eating some damage in the process
as Savage rices to go get the diffuser.
He's gonna be very exposed right here
about to run out of time.
Foltz needs to play the clock very appropriately
and he will do just that.
Savage, no real opportunity,
but a relatively close round for M80.
Still breaks in favor of the major champs.
They're up 4-0.
Smart play by both captains in that 1v1 parker, but of course the situation just favoring faults
He played that in such a way where he could not lose it really well played by him
Savage does his best in the 1v2, but ultimately it is all for naught
It's Ethan James with the 4k newers really steps up in that one
I'm a little confused what happened with the thorn trap on gutter
I'm not gonna lie
It looked like he had shot it as the indicator went away, but then it came back
So
Unlucky for gutter in the midst of that after a really good start for him
That's the one right there. I was talking about but regardless it's a quad for newer is nine and two now
We'll be his stat line early in this game four rounds deep a phenomenal start for the star entry of dark zero
We're starting to continue to I mean we're just continue to spiral really Parker
That's four straight rounds now from dark zero attack time out ineffective for me
Dark zero well situated to go over the labs their pick which will be the second map cafe is the decider if needed
Those that didn't tune in to yesterday's matches. We didn't need a map 3 whatsoever. In fact, even saying map 3
Got you vaporized because of how quick our play day ultimately was
Brother didn't follow the matchup. Wildcard and the regular season at least the stage one portion of it in third place
It was M80's championship to lose. I suppose you could say with DZ
Nipping at their heels and yet wildcard vanquished both of them on route to a grand final starting in the upper bracket
Wildcard BDZ about a week or two ago and then destroyed MAD yesterday in a very very quick matchup
7-2-7-5 and now wildcard playing when this match concludes darkseer going down the lower bracket
beating floor fun then dismantling Shopify Rebellion yesterday
and now looking for a solid bounce back.
What a story it's been for this wildcard team as they have always been decent domestically,
but internationally is where they've shined.
Well domestically, they're dominating now and this is scary looking team in a region
that is showing a level of dominance we haven't seen in almost a full decade.
Yeah, it'll be really exciting to see wildcard playing those grand finals.
That'll be later today.
After this game, the winner will play that, but not before a little NAL award show to buy
some time for the winner of this game to get their bearings back and prepare for their
second year of the day.
For now though, all eyes are focused on Dark Zero and M80, and unlike the last time where
M80 put a lot of pressure up on the top floor, this time they are really just full
setting it for the bottom.
They are not going to clear out these rumors up above.
Their goal in this round, Parker, is just to sneak a plant down below.
They've got Capitao smoke bolts.
They've got Sense Walls from Savage.
got all sorts of distractions and even in his reaction to stop this warden so
there's a lot of utile being dedicated just to getting this plant down on a
matey and that's a great pick to take care of newers all nine of his kills
put in the ground the rest of the team has 10 that newers has been leading the
way and picking up multi kill after multi kill after multi kill usually in
the mid-round diffuser almost dying they're still searching for his first
kill. Execute at a moment's notice here Jesse. I'll go to RAU projectors, I hear that the
first one might have missed, which isn't very ideal at all. What remains of the
user taken out by Foltz is we're starting to see some action unfold. Gunner
getting yet another. He's been sensational the last two rounds. It's not been able to
affect things for M.A. and they are now looking at their very first
successful round. They just got to find Franks and J9. I know Stavage on the cross will get one
and J9 though, coverage from above, not good enough. He trades out Gunner, but they're still plenty
alive on the side of M80 and they get their first round. What a weird round it was. I guess you don't
they don't ask Kyle Parker. They just ask that you get it and certainly they do on M80. It's
again Gunner who starts us off with a little double kill just like the previous round. It
seems like since attack timeout Gunner has really been the engine driving M80 forward.
a nice couple of kills there onto Newers and Kino to break that one wide open and Gunner was pushing up above
after he got that wall open down towards Pillar and then yeah the U2 was was not exactly where it needed to be
I didn't see any sends walls actually inside the site from Savage so the plant was kind of
all forgotten all for all for not I should say might have gotten impacted out by NJR too
but regardless they didn't have the ability to go for a plant so they kind of had to rely back on their kills
Thankfully the frags were good for M80 and after some bad moves from Dark Zero they do get on the board 4-1, but
Still a rough spot to be in Dark Zero with all the momentum regardless of that last round
It just took them some time to be able to find their footing a close round after their timeout
Let's not let's not discount them there
They called the timeout after round number three they got to a 1v1 and ultimately just
Ran afoul of the clock this time showing a little bit more strength and I mean you said it yourself
If somebody like Gunner that wakes up they start taking matters into their own hands
M80 can thrive off of that. You're gonna struggle as a team if your
entry players are not getting those kills. Now Gunner's not a typical entry on
this M80 squad especially when he's playing heart breach duty. It's quite bad
actually to gamble a thermite before you're able to get your exothermic
charges down and yet he's still making tons of space for the team and we're
talking about now while we're in a tech pause if we're talking about how these
players stack up. It was a good day for the dark zero team yesterday. Ashen still
sits atop the leaderboard in terms of EPS. He is the number one rated player in
the league but right behind him are Newers and J9O go down to fifth.
There's Gavin so four of the top five rated players are currently in this
lobby and you find NJR down at ninth and it's the ways down until you get to the next player
which would be Foltz. Gunner himself is dead even in the middle of the pack 25th of 50 rated players so
while he doesn't have the best overall rating I think it's fair to say he plays one of the more
challenging roles on this team it's a role that oftentimes lands you in hot water if you don't
do well. Gunner is no stranger to community criticism but he does his job, he does it very well and if M80
is able to play around that they are a team that can easily beat the best of the best as we saw with
them finishing stage one at least the group stage in first overall whether they actually take stage
one reigns to be seen they need to get their dirt served first and then conquer wild card in
today's grand final that's coming up after this. You know it's funny burger M80 are by some
some definitions, technically the reigning NA L stage champions is they won stage two last year. Now they didn't win the NA finals or the kickoff but technically neither of those are called stages so it's kind of a bad argument but you could make it if you wanted to call NA the reigning champs.
Oh, Jesse I've considered it and I'll allow it.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
This is nice and tarot today.
I'm trying to hear the things you say and I'm trying to pretend that you're not saying them because when you say them
I have a visceral response and it's just I want to disagree so if I if I think oh
What if what if laxing was saying that what if mint was saying that would I agree if the answer is yes
Then Jesse I have to give you credit
That was not ideal for savage he thought he had a bead on it
But diffuser is there to refrag him right away
but still a devastating loss for M80 as player cams have returned please rejoice in chat
Again, I mean we're talking about savage being disconnected from his teammates like clearly something is going wrong on the information side of M80 savage
Just not even checking the hallway that must mean that somebody called it was clear
They they had some information on that player's whereabouts, but he just walks in guys. It is traded. Thank God
But now you're using fights down towards pillar. It's NJ are on the wrong game taking out action the entry fragger for ma
D's though. We're just losing his bodies
We're losing these fights and it really think get things awkward for
M80s trying to clear these rumors out and they'll get the space, but at what cost?
For a second there I almost thought he got that kill with the side armor is J9O popped up right on the kill feed
after a good performance to get themselves back into this first half it
feels like they will fall just short on this final round M80 left with Gavin
and Diffuser, Dark Zero staring at a five one half unless we can see some
serious heroics in the next minute. They've got some good utility like I
spoke to BoogieGrow and Diffuser has the kit in his hands right? Diffuser has a
diffused kit so you've got a couple of options here but as long as Dark
Zero play this smart they should be able to avoid divert pressure they
should be able to hold their angles and once this plant goes down it'll be 4v1 in front of them.
They're still doing utility work here but they'll have to confront all the stall potential that
DZ has laid out in front of them be those Goyo canisters, be those the Schmott mines,
and even some banshees depending on where they were deployed. That's a small opportunity
to take care of Jane I know missed by Gavin as he gets tickled by the flames,
needs to worry about the next 15 seconds so that's the main focus here for M80.
In they go and Gavin finds Newer's hoping for more, he might be able to get them!
No!
He gets one, but DZ outfoxes him and a sniffle from J9O as the job's not done, but pretty
close to 5-1 the first half for DZ.
Long way to go for M80 on their own map picking up the way they wanted to start.
I mean, we said our jaws were on the floor watching M80 take down Dark Zero in the
group stage.
It's kind of the same right now.
0 stunningly quite a bit away ahead of what M80 you're showing us.
Yeah it is the same and unfortunately if you're an M80 fan it's kind of the same issues as yesterday
as well. I mean we're seeing these guys just completely unsinked, we're seeing them kind of
talking in their comms as well like guys we need to wake up. I mean this is the very first round
we watched them look at them trying to go to fire through the flames and also through the
a thorn trap in a 5v5 calling a 3-2-1 right there. So really bad play. Got a second round.
Well, it didn't get any better. We're going to have Gevenny going through the smoke and
they're going to get this kill onto the Kaede at the top. But the problem is they're trying
to sink that pressure at the same time as going through the bomb hit down below. But
the top pressure went before the bomb was able to go down. So of course there's
a solace above. You can't plant there, right? You can't part of it.
No, you absolutely can. They had to wait for Ashton to try to make a play, take
the attention away and then go for it. They're just going too fast and they need to slow down,
but we have to highlight newers as well. I mean, even in that round four, you could
argue MAD actually started out very strong. Gunner ends up clearing all the mezz, gets
two important frags into their favor, has the opening picks, this should be their round,
but it highlights exactly what you're talking about. They're completely out of sync. There's
no way newer should be able to, not only could they kill from the window, but then
to push it even further and get the kill jumping out the window, but then extending
Killing the guy on rocket chair and then killing I believe gunner outside use its own the thorn traps Adam
And it was great for bolts to be able to handle that one be one the way that he did
But I mean newer already reset teams have to start out the gates hot here
These are one of the top two bombing top five players in the league right now
Newers already starting out nine and four and again these issues are still very prominent for the side of M80
Jesse said it perfectly. They're gonna allow them play aggressive
They're gonna allow them to use those shields, but they have everything for it. They have the delay with the kaid
They have the delay with the smokes. They have the delay with the thorns
They have the delay with the smoke shotgun on rocket stairs
I mean there they want and they need to get aggressive and a 5-1 result clearly indicates
They knew exactly how they wanted to handle that aggression and how they were gonna go it step by step of the way until they close it out
And even in that last round they played it perfectly to force them 80s hand
And then they just play the trade game like they have been boom shut case close 5-1
I mean all that success that newers has been having if actions not careful
Newers is gonna quickly overtake Ashen for the number one spot in the NAL right now
We have to see this turn around you mentioned the synchronizing of the team anything
I mean now they're going to defense should be a little easier to do that less of a demand to be in sync anything else
They can do to to make sure they stay together
I mean the coms it is the coms
But also we got to see some some players kind of popping off. Okay, we have Titans in his law
We have a lot of really good players and the fuser is clearly struggling right now
He's I believe a hand doesn't have a single kill in this series
He maybe got one in that last round right there, but he was also minus 11 in the series prior
So he's obviously struggling a little bit
It's average as well savages also
I mean we see him walk down that hallway by himself and again it comes down to the columns like defensively
They gotta try to get together the bitch be more in sync on the defense
They gotta try to bunker a little bit here and hey looks like we're gonna try to bring some information
I hopefully that can help him get back on track. Let's see four rounds down going into the switch
A battle of the Titans but four rounds down means that one of these giants is
still sleeping Parker and maybe have so much work to get back in this game they
will swap over to the defense so they should have a bit more of an edge coming
in against Dark Zero in the second half but 5-1 is still such a mountain you
have to climb. Oh it's almost unscalable when you have an opponent like Dark Zero
to contend with right that's we've we've seen crazier things I don't know
if anybody tuned into some of the SAL matches yesterday that went on after the NAL broadcast
was done.
But there's, you know, 6-0 halves are definitely possible, that's for sure.
Here, MAD is absolutely a team that can close this gap.
If they play to their level and DZ get punished for the mistakes they made, and DZ plays
a little bit worse than their own standard, this is winnable for MAD.
It will just take a lot of luck because there's a ton of things that are going to need to go their way and a lot of them are going to be out of your control.
A lot of it's going to rely on VZ not playing to their potential.
First step, information. That was something that the desk talked about. Darkster needs to bring some information.
There's plenty of info on the side of M80 and Gunner is in a rat spot. What a shocker.
He's not getting droned, Parker. They have no idea. They didn't check it, so this is going
to be a really big opportunity for Sean just hiding behind the desk. False. It's so easy
to check it, but he's looking up above. He's using his drone to watch the floorboards.
He doesn't even consider that gunner could be in this spot. Candelas, you can hear
going out. Sounds like it's just a fake, though. They're still droning out to get
information. This is a rare mix by Part Zero. They miss drone players like this
very often you know waltz is his way in now is this is a very typical push from
operational into the bomb site using those salmas to open up and not
imperil yourself gunner thought that he had to read all orders but seemed to
surprise he jumped in his player cam and yours will take full advantage of
that that's not the start I made he wants if they need to close this gap
Kino has found an opening but NJR goes down to Gavin so there is some uncertainty.
Will he attempt it again? Gavin taking a little bit of damage.
Kino not able to pull this one off. There was a gamble there. Dark Zero has assessed the situation, Jesse, and they need to wait it out.
Yeah, this Cossack Fabe is gonna be such a problem. Kino takes early damages to try to go over this plant for a second time.
Time's still unable to get it down. Here comes the third and final Caucic Fade.
That is it for Plant Denial, and actually, Kino,
it might be able to sneak one in and he can get this other side of the wall open.
35 seconds on the clock. This plant will be doable for Dark Zero.
There has to be some other form of denial for M80.
And Kino's still taking a little bit of damage.
As newer's looking for a backstab, Gavin, eliminating folds.
He's been very, very good. J9o posted up on the window.
All of these players, a bit lethargic. They're just doing their jobs.
You have to worry about the run out from diffuser. That's where Jane I know will do battle. He doesn't look the right way
It started off poorly for M80, but they salvage it and win their second round the first of the second half
Yeah, I felt like Kino was in a good spot to just play objective there Parker
But unfortunately it kind of falls to the gunfights and everybody gets into some fights that they don't really come out on top of it
Does go the way of M80 with some really nice shots being hit by both Gavin and Ashen
It's those Titans so the desk wanted to see step up and hit some good shots
That's what we're seeing now from m80 bit of an unfortunate start there with again gunners flank just being caught as he's trying to go for that
Push on to the buck. I think he was spotted. I think maybe faults caught him from the bottom of rocket
Didn't shoot and let gunner go for that flank because newers was straight up just watching for it as the flank came in from
Gunners though a little bit unfortunate timing for Sean
But ultimately it doesn't matter his teammates have his back to fuser gets active to double his kill count
Asha and Gavin hit some good shots too, so M80 are back on the boards, they win their
first defense, that is the most easy sight to win, I will say, I was a good offender,
but it's a start no matter what.
Slot of the M80 will be difficult to deal with from an information perspective, you
bring a Valkyrie, you bring the Solas, so much of Solas played by DarkZero on
the other side of the coin, do that first half.
DarkZero are not able to drone effectively, as droning was really the biggest issue in the previous round, but they certainly seem to lack information.
That's something that M80 will not have to suffer through. M80 should have tons of info here, and it's incumbent upon DarkZero to handle that.
I wouldn't be too surprised if this round goes in favor of M80. That call-out uses his timeout very quickly to try to settle DarkZero's nerves down.
if he thinks nerves are the issue.
I'm very eager to see what this, uh,
as Amaru does in the hands of Neurs.
What is the thought process here?
Going in up above to try to kill Ash.
And away he goes!
Jay, I know the lead-off pick!
Neurs unable to get anything
because Ash has already been taken care of, but...
The element of surprise, still very much there.
Four DZs, they get yet another lead-off pick.
Two minutes to go in the round.
That's a really cool little pocket strat, like just clear the guy out of the stairs and
a very nice little play out of the filter stairs.
Actions in such a powerful spot there.
We've seen Kino get some crazy clips from that position himself on the defense, so now
to take that away from the defenders, you get that smoke off the board as well.
It's a really good utility to clear out and that's basically full thoughtful control.
Defuser has flanked up to that mid-floor and Gunner never left, so there are still
some players lurking around there, but you have an entrance into the bomb site
Walking down filter now in the 5v4
Curious what did a little bit of damage to Kino there as the soul is just still on the move gunner on this main floor patrolling
You can quite literally saw
He ran away
more candelas go off. J9O used one a little bit earlier and is now just jiggle peaking for a kill.
Won't find these king otakes advantage of that. And it's the chaos in the melee.
Gets a frag onto Gavin. A bigger advantage for dark zero grows.
Neurs taking care of Gunner. That's likely a surprise. Gunner was surprised by him in the
previous round. Why don't go two for two on that one? Match point right now within reach.
They just need to take care of Savage, the newest member of M80 whose leadership has
arguably improved this team finds himself on the run on the move and in a collision course with
the dope could be a flawless round for dark zero they are three minutes away from stealing m80's map
out aimed out brained outplayed dark zero look head and shoulders above m80 in this game and
that was a perfect example in that round parker everything goes exactly to plan m80 in this match
up they've hit some good shots they've had some moments where their individuals pop off they've
They've even had some good rat spots.
Like there have been good moments.
But when it comes down to using utility,
I think Dark Zero have been so much better than N80 today.
The Amaru Ying strat to clear the stairs,
the Blitz to get it in clear between the sites,
all the util was coming out for Dark Zero
and there was just no good answers from N80.
And even after abandoning great Intel operators
like the Grimm and the Demos,
it just feels like Dark Zero have so many more strats
that they can play with,
so many more ideas on how they want to clear certain parts of the map,
and it's crazy again because DZPuck runs full-punched lair over the last couple of months.
They love this map, they've shown off a ton already, and still we're being surprised by new stuff over and over again by these guys.
Obviously, off the start, they didn't really want it to their day.
It's the only one for them and some of their players, but...
You still gotta be prepped, you still gotta be ready?
Dark Zero locked in the moment that this one started and it's been relatively even across the board from a keeper perspective.
He's been scrappy rounds, no more than two to three players surviving.
round by round which is good. M80's still bringing the heat to them even if they
have been chasing this DZ team since the very beginning in terms of opening picks
three for M80 on the side of DZ5 so just because you draw first blood doesn't
mean you win the round. The ability to translate that into a successful
round victory has not been where either of these teams who probably expected
And well, if you're newer, you're hopeful that this first pick, which is within reach, is enough to push you over the edge.
Again, Dark Zero, one round away from winning this map.
Most surprising took this long to see a stake come up from Dark Zero, one of the best operators in the game at the moment.
But J9O will start just killing off.
Now, gets the opening pick, takes down Gunner on this top floor, and General Claw's right afterwards.
This top floor clears in full effect. Here comes Newer's with his gun, and you will find Gavin immediately traded though,
though but it's still better for DZ as they retain the man advantage.
Oh good play by play there corn pop everybody seemed quite in system on attacking all at the
same time and uh last for M80 and their fans they are on the wrong side of this 3v2 still lots
of offensive threats for DZ as they fade away from diffuser as he vaults on over J9O we'll get
one on the savage and it's all up to diffuser if yous keep going down
You know the halfway point J90 and faults now to just lock this one out
It's really not the stars that I made you wanted
They are going to have to write this ship for labs unless the user can clutch out and lab
He's able to get to this is very winnable for diffuser
It's him and folks in a 1v1 what kind of veteran presence can the former world champion have the wall will explode
When diffuser gets on for the counter-disable,
Foltz needs to go, chasing diffuser off of that spot.
The goal now for Foltz is to just buy as much time as possible,
and he won't need to.
Diffuser hops on, picked apart, DZ, vanquishing, M87-2 on M80's map.
Great position for DZ to be in, as they hope for a rematch against Wildcard.
I
I mean they look that good right now and on M80's map pick they dismantle them a 7-2 win to start off this best of three
It's wild just how good dark zero look right now and maybe we talked about them being asleep at the wheel cowl
But dark zero they really just seem like they're on a completely another level right now
It does seem like there are completely another level
I'm glad you just talked on the fact that that was actually m80s Matt choice ladies and gentlemen
So that was a 7-2 and then we were like are they gonna bounce back from being down 7 up it
Well, I think they answered that in a big way
and look this seems to be a little bit of a cop-bound answer a lot of people don't like when you say
you lost your own problems but for me this map I mean dark zero was that farther or that much
farther ahead than n80 strategically the only rounds that they lost we could hear in the comms
there was not one attack around where they just had too many ideas going on and they were like
hey let's just settle down let's just pick one idea let's not get married to a certain idea
and after that it was just it just super clean rounds super clean sink rounds from dark zero
And it just shows like they're just so good.
What map do you take them to?
Right, and even listening to their comms,
I mean, even after some of the rounds that they lost,
you would quickly see how fast they dismiss it.
They understood what went wrong.
Let's focus on the next round.
Let's focus on what we can do.
And Jesse was also talking about, I mean,
they're just very innovative, where
it looks on the side of them, maybe they're just
trying to do the same thing and hoping that it works,
hoping some of those frags swing into their favor,
and then they can go for these executes.
But again, I think they're just getting a little ahead
of themselves.
And I said this in the pre-match,
I do really believe, and maybe this is a cop-out answer,
and you can maybe attest to this as well,
but once you get beaten,
once you get exposed to your problems,
and you fixate and hyper-focus on those issues,
they can be so small and minute,
but they start to snowball and manifest
and turn into something big
that then even pushes further issues ahead.
And then, that's what I genuinely feel
like watching this MAD team,
And yeah, I do agree, Dark Zero is that much ahead,
but it's also their consistency that I talked about.
And this is the level of consistency
that we're used to Dark Zero displaying.
And that can manifest itself in a lot of different ways.
Like you said, one of those ways right now, right?
Diffuser just hasn't been present.
We saw that happen yesterday.
We're seeing that again today.
Like that last round, he did redeem himself,
triple kill, tried to clutch.
But like, this is just an example
of one of the things that this team
doesn't usually struggle with.
And they have to get ahead here if they want to win.
I mean, even for a player like diffuser,
when he first joined the league, too,
he was the stage MVP.
He was the MVP in general,
and then he pushed onto a previous stage.
He was MVP, but I think he's kind of stepped back
in his role of kind of lurking about,
finding these kills, swinging into his favor.
He's playing more traditional supportive role,
and I think that's honestly affecting
his performance as a whole.
And Kyle, real quick labs, going into that as we get it.
Like, this is a map that M80
did not want to go to right now.
DarkZero have an incredible history on it,
and M80, they just lost it to Wildcard.
They did just lose the wildcard and I believe DZ just lost it to wildcard as well.
We were just trying to think about that.
I don't know why games are playing like that.
One of the most campaign was a pretty...
Regardless, I mean, this is a map again.
I've done the Telestrator, I've done the Clips multiple times.
DZ just looks so comfortable in Night Haven Labs and M80, they're kind of like you said.
They kind of have been struggling.
I'm worried for them when we get to that top floor site.
What is DZ possibly going to bring out this time?
What new way are they going to attack that top floor?
Because we're not going to see the Zothia from below again.
I'm sure we're going to see M80 do their prep work.
There's going to be someone down there about for a pulse.
There's somebody contesting that side.
Maybe we'll see DZ fake it, but that's what I love about C.
Both these teams are going to be looking at each other's map
since they did just both play it.
There's going to be plenty of counters from both sides.
Well, DarkZero with a chance to send it themselves
so the grand final can do it on their own map pick of labs
right now.
Labs, labs, labs, labs, labs.
not exactly the most confidence inspiring map for MAD to try and stave off to feet on,
but Jesse, if you want to be the best, you got to beat the best. And why not topple the
defending major champions on their map? TZ just took yours. You can surely be the same, right?
Right. Hope springs eternal and we are ever the optimists. And we are hopeful
competition to be fair and balanced here, Jesse, that MAD is able to stave off to feet
on this map. Yeah, they're gonna have to show us something pretty incredible, but I think Mint
worked it down really nicely. They have a lot of information to look back on. The desk is correct.
Both these teams did recently lose this map to Wildcard for Dark Zero. That was a 7-5 game
for M80. That was 7-2. So a little bit different results there. Not a whole loss of the recall,
certainly. I think Dark Zero showed a little bit more in that, that they have some expertise
here on Nighthaven Labs. They also have a 6-2 record overall in the season, whereas
M80 had a 1-1 record here on Night Maiden. So it's not the worst map of all time for M80,
but it will certainly be facing an uphill battle. RA's bands come out, but they focus on the walls
leading Kaede up. Expect to see quite a bit of Thatcher to try to counter that Kaede is being
left up on the board and Darkstero also has the lead focusing in on the walls. Thermite and
Ace are two hard-reached bands to come through. Would not shock me at all to see a Habana
or a Maverick follow that up as well.
Jesse, did you notice the Minion sticker on the closet of Defuser?
Does he actually have a Minion?
Parker, you and him must be...
He must love... he must really be supporting you.
That's your favorite movie, series.
While we try to inject just a bit of playful banter here
for you, the audience, while we get...
The prep fits on your screen for round number one.
For some particular reason, Jesse just sends me Minions gifts.
I don't get it.
I have never seen a Minions movie.
I've never seen any despicable means, I don't, frankly, I know they exist, that's about the
extent of my knowledge, yet for some particular reason Jesse has latched on to this and insists
that I am a huge Minions fan, so anytime I message him about something, there's not
a 50% chance he just responds with a GIF from Minions in some capacity, so seeing it on
the wall of diffusers, almost like he paid him to do that, just to talk to me.
And you know what? You don't have to be ashamed of your minions, Love Parker. We all support you. It's okay.
We understand that as part of your culture as an old person, and you know, one day I hope you will be feeling comfortable enough with us all to admit that.
For now though, MAD will be doing the very difficult task of getting IT wall open with a Kaid still on the board.
I mentioned that Thatcher would be played, likely non-stop, as long as this Kaid is up because he's the best counter to this operator.
immediately the future would jump here on to this
They're gonna have to really juggle things with two brows being brought up by newers as along side to this kite
We actually saw this yesterday in the best of three that we're watching
So we certainly know how this juggle can go it should favor the attackers if diffuser and
And Gavin can coordinate properly on that it wall. They should get it open
But it's very tricky when falters juggling the kite claws and newers is using these
Got her the very first casualty that's on the newly buffed Zofia, by the way, and I was
diffuser hoping for a kill through the window, and NJR immediately jumps into chat.
That is terrific.
He did do his credit.
Make sure to find a safe spot for him first.
Savage down dealing with the will of NJR, another one of the buffed operators that
we will likely see more and more as time goes on and then the mayor goes back to
type a I suppose you can do that when you take care of gutter and diffuser really
early in the round now it's savage taking a beating just hold it over a
minute to go and M80's buttering here on this very first attack.
Wall's gotten open but they just haven't been able to find the kill so far
Parker. Raptors control being fought over now as M80 knows this is so important for
their bush. Gavin does find newers that's gonna be the two brow going down
over towards IT. It was great Zofia Tech to get this open about too many problems, but it's still
only going to be a vault, so if they want to push this, it's going to be really important in a time
that well. How comes the shield? Savage getting one, but technically Gavin credited with the kill.
This is a good spot for M80. They bailed themselves out of the position they were in 30
seconds ago, and it is a far more winnable round, but now they need to do the harder task.
Get into the bomb site. Ash in attempt. Jaina, I know, shuts him down. Gavin will now
rotate to link up with savages they head over towards rafters. This is a precarious position to
be in for M80. A savage will slow his roll, the shield will make a ton of noise, and there'll be a
shotgun waiting for him on the other side. Can he survive it? So far he dances around it and NJR
gets two. Oh boy, oh boy, to be a fly on the wall and you can already see he's typing away. DZ's
The reign of terror continues.
It's always bad for you if NJR is giggling after the round and a big 3K followed up after
some typing will do just that.
A huge round from NJR and it kind of comes back down to what we've been talking about
all day with M80, all weekend really.
As you're seeing just some whiff shots, some missed moments from players who don't
make mistakes like that very often when NJR was typing after killing the fuser.
The fuser really should have had him dead to rights.
missed a lot of those shots with the Thatcher DMR so he kind of was struggling in that sense
and then when you let NJR live in that position, he just hides back behind the pillar and gets
those last couple kills. I don't know what the rotate at the end there and the 2v3 for
N80, right? You have to think maybe if they were able to get the pillar wall open and
can just watch that guy out. They might not have had a hard breach on it so either
way they chose to rotate over towards Raptors. They did get into a plant spot. If they
killed NJR, that's certainly a winnable round, but it's a big hit and NJR doesn't
miss those shots very often so it's 3-0 start for him and a 1-0 start for DZ.
Darkseer presumably will have their favorite side here, is M80? Or just rather.
Darkseer will likely have the unfavorite side here as M80 will start on
attack and DZ picking this map will be at a bit of a disadvantage to start if
they can run up the store in this first half. Boy oh boy, they'll be well
situated to close this one out for those that can't see. Maybe you're on a
small device. Café is the tiebreaker if needed, but that threes really won't be needed that much.
So far, we've only had a single third map played during the playoffs, and it was actually this map,
Night Even Labs, as the decider between Wild Card and Dark Zero, with Wild Card winning it,
and that was ultimately what I just tilted the playoffs in their favorite catapulting them
into the upper bracket final. It's got a 2-0 for every other contest and well it's only one around
but with the way DZ played that you got to feel pretty confident DZ fans that this might be a 2-0.
Yeah just to be clear on the sides too, N80 with the last map Dark Zero chose to start on defense
Dark Zero chose this map. N80 did choose to start on the attack. That's a little bit weird
but even like N80 still has the highest attacking win rate of any team in the North American League
while Dark Zero had the highest defending win rate of any team in the North American League,
so I would argue both teams start on their favourable side on both maps.
It just means that things might be even more competitive here and even more important through
the first six. Gavin will be the opening depth to start things off, as the Knight shot on the
IT bridge to take him out, so that's going to be awkward. Boyd losing Gunners, he shoots the
when I throw out of the air, but still a nand disadvantage early for any of you.
And Savage goes down, Gavin goes down.
Newer is the only catch that's on the side of Dark Zero,
and with how he performed in the previous map, that could be a devastating blow,
but it was just yesterday where J90 ran rampant over Shopify Rebellion on this map.
And again, when they won their major championship in Salt Lake City,
there were strong performances from every single person on DZ,
NJR having a great day so far. He's 3-0 on this map. J9-0, aforementioned 2-0.
M80's got their hands full in the final minute of this round.
He's pulsed down below, can feed information to his teammates. Bomb site is towards for those not
keeping track so this will be a mid-core site. They don't have that far to go to get towards
the bomb site. I like this rotate from Gunner. Gonna try to apply a bit of back pressure over
here on the lobby side. But there are so many players around. You have to be able to catch
Catch them on the scanner just so you know where they are.
F2s at hand can always do some serious damage, especially when you got two of them.
Gunner goes down, J9O gets Gunner easily.
Ashen's gotten a kill just moments before.
He and Defuser now working together, time slowly running out on the side of MA.
Defuser has found safe harbor inside the bomb site.
Refinks his position, his coverage is gone though.
J9O on the return to the site, nets Ashen.
And while the accuser will likely be successful, he is not long for this term.
NJR topples him on the defuse kit.
Fultz will go and DZ a triumphant moment as they go up 2-0.
NJR, we're being a little toxic today.
I don't know what you woke up with, maybe on the wrong side of the bed, maybe.
He's really nasty. He's a nasty man today, Jesse.
He's, maybe he's at the end of his term, the mayor doesn't need a reelection,
or maybe he understands that getting a little nasty with it is exactly what the people want.
In either case, it's definitely gonna start tilting M80, shoots the body a bit at the end there, but it's all fine.
I like the plants, you know, going for it from the fuser. They have a pulse down below, but of course, pulse uses.
And I just saw really early in the round.
I'm a fuckin' boa, bro.
Oh, it's really?
It wasn't a bit of a war. It wasn't a huge threat, that pulse down below. They played that well.
Yeah, I- he's term limited. I've heard- I've heard that the mayor is potentially eyeing
governorship or something along those lines. I don't know what political aspirations NJR
has in mind but there is a constituency out there that he's appealing to and I can be
I can be pretty frank with you. I bet you right now I don't have it on but I bet your twitch chat is
loving NJR's nastiness and I gotta say
it's a little bit of flair to a relatively uneventful game so far. If you're an N80 fan
this has been a torturous watch. If you're a DZ fan, you are overjoyed and probably cheering on the
action that's been going on in text chat, as it's been a little bit more heated than what we're seeing
in the server and on our screens. The Dark Zero up 2-0, already a good position to be in if you
consider they are on the weaker side, and typically the scoreline is 2 for the weaker side,
4 for the stronger side. That means M80 needs to win four consecutive rounds. They have not
been able to do that at all so far through this series. In fact, they've only been able to win
two rounds against Dark Zero going all the way back to the start of map one. So quite an owner's
task for M80. They're capable of it. We'll materialize. Yesterday map one started with M80,
going down 3-0. Today map one started with M80 going down 4-0. This game will at least start
with M80 going down 2-0. It puts so much pressure on them now to be able to pull things back,
to not let your enemy team get a full bombsite rotation.
We always talk about that.
You have to be able to win at least one of these sites
to put yourself in a decent position after this first quarter.
I think there's a high chance we'll see a Fobby and Tac time
up again after the third round if they lose it,
but it starts off strong.
Newers, the best player on Dark Zero in the last match
will go down early to a good opening pick from M80s.
So it starts them off on the right foot.
They clear out one of those top floor roamers.
There's still plenty more to find.
Nice to see a Hibana on the board, an operator that frankly does not get picked anywhere as
much as she used to.
I have a personal soft spot for that Type 89 gun, by the way, even though it does have
about four bullets in it and they go by in our hurries.
You just saw Diffuser emptying that mag.
Another kill came in for M80 just moments ago, so J9O will find his first death as
Neurs will find his third.
The Ever-Immortal may are still there, but they are coming for him, M80, taking care of
everybody and it's a flawless round to give some motivation and confidence to M80.
Yeah, I like how fast they took that one Parker.
That round is over almost before we hit the minute 30 mark, certainly before we hit
the 60 second mark less than the round.
So, the speed was a key factor for M80 on that push.
They get in, they've got insane guns, they've got Goku, they've got Snake,
they've got Deimos.
Information is flowing and when they're roaming like that on dark zero, they're spreading themselves out
They're having to extend around the map and hold so much map control and once they do that that makes it really difficult to trade
So you combine the fact that they're to spread out to trade each other with the fact that may be just have the best
Information and the best guns in the game and you're always gonna favor the attackers in that round
They played it really nice really well hit the shots that they had to while being aware of those player positions
You can't do that on every bombsite, right?
This is kind of the crux with the basements is if you're going to roam you're just gonna have to spread yourself out naturally
There's really no other way to play it. I'm gonna pull into
But it's a good round on the board it gets the momentum going and it keeps them maybe alive at a better spot than they had a map
The odd thing to say give it again, this is not their map, but they are on the right side of
night here the labs. I
think
The M80 problems run deeper than you and I can probably analyze in a given map.
They have just not looked anywhere near as good during the playoffs as we expected them to.
It's like a different team locked in here.
And sometimes squads do this, by the way. Sometimes teams will absolutely dominate from a
standing's perspective, maybe because they're best of ones. Maybe they just have a good day and they beat another really good team
and it's a bit of luck
mixed with the skill and preparation that comes with it.
And then we may actually have to play them in a best of three usually the better team wins
Best of ones played during the groups are great from a viewership perspective
But I think every team will tell you that a best of three is more competitive and a best of five is even more competitive than math
Yeah, we don't have time for best of threes or best of fives during the group stages. So
Maybe maybe just overperformed and teams have figured them out. Maybe there was a bit of a honeymoon phase with savage
But I don't know what it is Jesse, but over the last 24 to 36 hours this m80 team has not looked like the same team
We saw during the regular group stage
Well, Darby Yarrow have gone for a different dimension here around number four Parker
They will go to kitchen cafeteria for their fourth bomb site playing every site here on 9h of lab
It's not the craziest thing we've ever seen but certainly a crazy entry
Action is going to be the first one to find a pick over on Kino on the lobby side of the map taking down the
the news report easy like this bomb site they've played it five times this season
they have a 60% win rate defending on it so definitely once they are comfortable
on but it really is important the fall sale to get some value here on the glass
he started towards the top of lobby they didn't push him to find Kino down
below so now they're in a man disadvantage action goes from bad to
worse there's the value they wanted from the clash Parker but I don't know if
it's gonna matter that much if all the teammates are still dying around exactly
DZ needs to consolidate now. Come together his gunner and just assess the situation. Saw one more player from dark serum
So good information there
So as his gadget in pocket three uses to narrow down these DZ players
NJR has been a standout performer so far today
Gain I know it's been the statistical best player here on this map
But when you got both of them together they can do some serious damage the good news for M80s
They have plenty of time because of that early burst of aggression
And they'll use those gamemost trackers. They'll use those doka-be gadgets just to narrow down these DZ players.
The phone explodes in pocket for J9o and NJR as well.
So none of them able to use those gadgets. The Jageo payload now used again as Gunner has expended.
Most of his gadgets should be still a 3 in pocket. This is quite the position for him.
Maybe they've got everything working for them right now. DZ have to fear for their lives.
They're really closing in on Parker. 40 seconds of evil.
Five more, a little bit more time, but Phil, you have to get a shot to get yourself back to even.
And NJR does just that, eliminating Gunner.
Nice reflexes there by J9O as well as catches the leg.
The QB will be replugged as it gets blown wide open by MAD.
NJR finds another, this position oh so strong.
Gets two, almost transfers over to Gavin, who himself will now need to clutch.
But Fultz shuts it down.
A golden opportunity for M80, but they run into the mayor and he is just such a tour de force.
Today, DZ takes the round and another crazy round from NJR playing incredible today so far Parker.
The longest standing member on any organization here in the North American League has been
signed to DZ for more than five years and is still playing out of his mind at this level.
Just has so much impact from that position over on the bending stairs.
He gets that first kill and that's fine but then after that it feels like nobody's looking at him
The trades are not good enough to come out from an 80 clear amount of that position
He's in a spot where he knows he will die right if you can't get back to the bomb site
He's not playing with his teammates. He's just saying I'm gonna get as many kills as I can before they take me out
It just so happens that was three kills which certainly will be enough to win them rounds
They take a three-one lead here and
Again, you're looking for an 80 to be better on these clears. They have to be closer together to trade
They have to be able to find these frags when they're not going up against bad information like
They had the advantage in that round. They had the man count lead
They were collapsing in on the site and they should have known where all three players were
I think they did know but it just doesn't matter when you're losing all of the important gun play
Like I say this one's a broadcast but
If you're not able to get your shots
You lose. It's that simple sometimes, you know, and you'll hear teams in post-game interviews say, you know,
we just weren't shooting today. We'd see them and we'd body our shots, we'd miss.
It could also be a factor of it as well, though
I will say from a kills perspective, I made it a lot healthier this time around.
You can see the bottom right hand side of your screen.
They're keeping pretty even despite the score line. Very top-heavy for DZ. Complete opposite Kino, yet to get a kill.
NJR with seven.
Everybody not named NJR is for eight kills combined, so...
Strongly needed for performances leading the way.
It was Neuerson, the previous map, who was in that position, so...
Easy woke up, they chose violence, and...
Well, boy, they're finding out how successful violence could be.
Now the bomb set rotation gets funky, Parker.
And now, after they've played all four sites for Fear M80,
you don't really know where they're gonna go.
It ends up being storage and control,
and certainly they would've drawn that out.
They've got the right move to the job,
But even still this is gonna be a little bit annoying to try to plan against right?
You're gonna have to be thinking a lot about how you're gonna clear out some of these positions
There is still the clash being brought by false doing his best big bad Navy and impression here on the top floor
But you know who goes down and the opening up once again here in our five
and what I made he seems to sink their teeth into these
DZ players they come in a hurry these kills three of them in the blink of an eye
by diffusers bleeding out, but with four other players still alive, still operate from
m80, you have to get the sense that he is retrievable if they want.
There's one or two more players on DZ for them to find though, so he might prioritize
getting kills instead.
Diffuser brought back from the dead, Neurs and NJR, last two standing, Neurs numbers
on this map, not particularly good, but you know he can pop off at a moment's notice
and if DZ want to win this round, they're going to need a big performance from him.
It's legend, but there should be no universe in which dark zero win this diffuser finds new as well if NJR clutch at this
I mean just give him the title of NAL champ right now because there's no
Boy
Now not to be done another flawless round
This has been a good run from an 80 both of the rounds that they've won have come without a
Single death flawlessly done in round three and they'll do it again flawlessly in round five
So when they maybe wins, they're winning big.
They need to kind of keep that energy for round number six.
Yeah, they have to be able to close these advantages, right?
Like once they get that man count,
they need to be good at closing them out.
They've done it twice successfully so far.
Round four again, was a little bit rough in that respect,
but it's okay.
They're still batting above 500.
They need to be able to find some big success
in these moments.
I liked the entry coming through there.
Again, it was fast.
They got really good information.
They had some really nice drones in around that top floor.
They've got some M2s, they've got some of the best guns in the game.
The clash up to the top floor is scary, but you can really only watch one dimension.
So if you know the clash is over with the fish there, come in through IT, come in through Raptors.
That's exactly what they saw Gavin and Defuser doing, and they got the bulk of those kills early,
to get the bad advantage over towards M80.
So I like that speed coming out from these guys.
They were close enough that they could have traded if they needed to as well,
but of course the gunfights all went their way, and they will continue to keep this game close.
If they escape into this half with a 3-3 split parker, they're not in a bad spot at all.
I know they chose their starting side, they prefer the attack on Lair, that's obvious,
but a 3-3 is not a bad spot to be in, especially because I would argue Dark Zero also prefer the defense side.
Yeah, I mean if that read is correct, then you know,
M80 fans can take some solace in the fact that the second half is still within reach.
And the one thing I will also give credit to M84 is it doesn't look like their mental game, Jesse, is impacting them whatsoever.
Either.
It was a concern that we had about them potentially mentally checking out after map number one, and I mean it.
Hey, if you lose your map pick, especially in the fashion they did, a 7-2-drubbing handed to you by DarkZero,
there's a lot of teams that, maybe they don't even make it, but it'll get shown up in their gameplay that their mental is affecting them.
MAD are a team that are usually pretty ironclad in that regard and it's showing right here right now as they are keeping lock step
With the DZ on DZ's map a tie game within reach two minutes to determine whether MAD can keep a close or DZ stretches their lead
Problem is now we go back to the top floor right Parker in this unit the best ball in sight here on night Haven
It's also the one where Darkshire don't have to roam look at the two rounds with their shots
They lost because they get slammed on the roam clear this time they can all play inside the site
They don't have anybody down below and certainly they don't so you're really putting the onus on and 80s to make something happen to break in and cause
Them chaos they've done a good job so far that zero rafters
There's nobody playing here anymore. I know is backed on from that position
So actually like the map control so far the IT wall got open with no issues
Still converting into five players sitting in the site is gonna be a nightmare electrical is still locked down really tightly as is
Aqua so I'd like to see them get a second dimension before they go through this push
but all in all it's not a bad start for M80.
This round in particular, a good start as well. Gunner, eliminating bolts. It's only his third kill, but
most of Gunner's frags so far on this map have been high impact.
And M80 has been leading the way as of late with these opening duels.
Diffuser, Ashen, Savage, and now Gunner all with the opening kill and all of them in perfect
sequence as well. Dark Zero has been fighting down a man since the end of round two. That's not an ideal
situation to be in and it will eventually come back to bite you if it hasn't already bit you and we're
just waiting to see what happens. Ashen will get a second kill for M80. His burst of the round
and M80 are poised and ready with 30 seconds to go to conquer this final round of the first half.
He will flash his end-jairs on the warden though but he's just closing up anyway so
it doesn't matter. Shocking somehow if you lose that fight. 1v5 for J9O. Parker, he's got everything
to deal with and it's another flawless round win for M80. They will tie the half 3-3 and escape
in a pretty decent position here on their opponent's map pick. On a very difficult map for M80,
they now have three flawless rounds. The three rounds of day one out of the five total
this series have been flawless laxing it's a big turnaround we're seeing it's a
massive turnaround that's what you love about best of threes is you can lose
pretty badly in the first map second map but as long as you can bounce back you
have a little bit extra room to work with this is exactly what you want to
see from the side of M80 I mean in this round three in particular what I love
is Savage got off the shields shields weren't helping them so what does he
do he switches the dopey has a little bit of extra information to work
with the Deimos and work with the snake and then they find newer single
and then it was step-by-step how they were seeing lines these operators until they get to that later on execute even around five once again
They're so step-by-step the comms are flowing
They're working in unison with each other and they're making these rounds again flawless
But this is the MAD that we were used to seeing in group stage now
What's important for them to keep this momentum going something even more that we talked about on this desk is when savage is on
Those shields granny he did bring in that last round. They believe it is end of winning the round
But when he is on those shields, it's very telegraphed where the attack is going to come from.
So I did like to see him pivot off of that and just understand we don't need to use a shield.
Let's abuse the information. Let's take advantage of this map.
We know how small Night Haven labs is. Use the information and they use it perfectly.
I'm expecting now on the defensive half
they kind of are going to be made aware that the information is going to be up.
And then similar to what you were talking about with how DZ plays us on the deck.
Are they going to put players below to stop a buck?
to stop a Zofia to be able to open up any bit of sight from the vertical side. Yeah, I think that was a really good call from him as well
to get off the shield because obviously they were not really working today
And to be honest, I thought this was gonna be a quick DZ one. I'm not gonna lie
I'm right there with you the first round M80. I mean they go underneath with the Zofia very similar to DZ and
Didn't work out GZ decided to get aggressive and like oh, that's how we're gonna play this map
But yeah good to see M80 with the float the three falls rounds and bringing us back
And I'm gonna have to argue here just play a little devil's advocate
I think they needed those three because DZ have shown to be very strong at attacking this map again
I've highlighted it now twice and that's kind of what I'm worried about from my meeting
So hopefully they did their prep work. Hopefully they're ready for DZ to kind of pull out
I was gonna say something new, but you're obviously not gonna be ready for something new
We'll see if DZ does end up kind of pulling out anything brand new
But I'm sure it's not gonna be here in the bands at least it's probably gonna be pretty
Standard which seems to be already looking stand teams seem to be going towards the bandit
Mira bands nowadays and leaving the K'd up which is going to be there. Did you you're just going to see DZ running?
Okay, I'm just gonna say let me just stop talking real quick
Reminded we'll keep it. We'll keep a stock standard. Let's let's pull out the Mira M80. You should be seeing that every single round
Good luck opening the IT wall C4s are gonna be a plenty
the challenge here for M80 now is proving that they can take that flawless round momentum and
Carry it into a little bit more than just the three round half as you mentioned because the real danger
Guys could lie on the defensive side as dark zero now switch over to the attack
Well, we'll find out now what dark zeros attacks on lay on my haven really do look like partner
There's no doubt DZ have had some success attacking on this map. They've definitely had their big moments
They have a 52% attacking win rate drew 27 rounds
So there's been some good some bad
They look at the game that is generally favorable for the defense 52% on the attack is quite good as a percentage
So there's no doubt dark zero are strong team on the attack
Will it be strong enough to break through these defenses of m80? That is the question
I'm really interested to see what solid defense they want to play the desk talked about a little bit how dark zero started this
First half like it quite aggressive. They've actually brought up the clash
They brought the mirror as we expected
but that was just pulling a page out of the book of Troy Canadian and bringing the spots
to the top floor.
So I'm really interested to see how they try to counter this and get me again to see somebody
going down below.
I cannot believe that all three rounds, one by M80, were flawlessly won.
Have we seen that?
I mean certainly at some point we've seen it, but has there ever been a half where
a team won every single round flawlessly? My cat says no, I don't know if you can hear
him but he's chiming in. I could definitely write like a query, it would take me longer
than I have right now to figure that out. But Jesse, because you're asking Grock.
Yeah, maybe I'll give him an ass, we'll see what he knows. Let's see what Grock up to
is this. Let's see what he's thinking of this. You know, ask me a question or two,
why not just let's waste some drinking water so m80 has tons of stall
potential here on this lineup well my is usually good for holding rafters
positions on any map that has them you know if you have a zombie that's
obviously the power play operator for those spots will I also getting a buff
with the mid-season update that came just a couple days ago along with Yeager
and Zofia a slight nerf to doka became in those are the main points worth
noting, we've seen more Wamai over the last day or two than we have in quite some time.
So obviously those bots have worked, same with Yeager, same with Zofia.
We saw both of those operators earlier today, too.
Wamai, a diffuser, is in a really rough spot here right now.
He's going to rely quite heavily on Gavin because there's a bunch of angry DZ players
within reach.
There's about full connector control for now.
Diffusers in a really good spot to breach.
They just saw them as they breach into the woods.
They've got no smokes, but plenty of flashes to blind these positions.
So it's going to really be important they can get past this flash and get into a plant spot here.
Savage's the first kill, diffuser as well, Dark Zero starting this unfortunate backwards flight
as they are running right into these M80 players and not in the correct way.
Jade, I know, oh my, gets one, Neur is an ugly engagement, and that's not a flawless round
because they've lost one, but four round victories now from M80
they have given up just a single death in the process that is utter domination.
And it comes off the back of a good game plan Parker.
I want to go back to Savage on the clash.
He got the opening frag in that round and I think it really threw Dark Zero for a loop
in the midst of it.
In fact, it instantly prompts Attack Time was to come through from college.
Clash was hiding in the prep page.
Savage did not want to reveal to Dark Zero that he was playing a clash.
And it's crazy to bring out that operator when you just watched Dark Zero dismantle the Rebellion with the clash on this top floor site yesterday.
Because SR really pioneered and pushed forward the clash on this site.
Nobody has done it better and more consistently than the Rebellion playing clash on Nighthaven Labs.
So for M80 to see Dark Zero win that game yesterday and say we're also going to run this strat is kind of an insane gambit.
But because he hid it, and because Dark Zero weren't expecting it, it perfectly paid off.
None of the Clash counters that Dark Zero brought in yesterday's game versus SR
were brought in this opening round of the second half.
They didn't have the Zofia down below, they didn't have the Callie to try to counter the Clash from a horizontal perspective.
No matter what they brought, they didn't have any of those Clash counters.
So I think it was a really good call by M80.
It's a bold decision because you know easy can counter it.
As long as you hide that clash, it was able to stay up the entire round.
It made that linear burst really difficult to go through.
They had no smokes. They just tried to get a plant down.
They were trying to flash their way in, but the information was way better for a maybe.
It's a great game plan to start them off, and it gets them their first lead in the series.
A wild thing to say. They've come up with the amount of rounds they took on their own map,
and they're doing it against DZ on very familiar soil here.
You and I were actually talking about this before we got into the map and
people will surprise that M80 allowing labs to go through but
So it goes and I mean hey, we're in the cheap seats
They obviously knew what they were doing because right now the lead is theirs and again
It's not even just that they have the lead. It's how they've been winning three flawless rounds in the first half
On route to the three that they took and then this fourth round here now only giving up a single kill
Again, very good stuff. Front of the lady, they keep this off. Man, Dark Zero are going to be in some serious trouble.
And right now, the bottom left-hand corner of your screen, fragging is the big issue for DZ.
Kino, zero kills, Nurez, one kill. Foltz? Well, you get three. Foltz isn't easily the guy to rely upon for kills.
But if Kino's 0-6 and Nurez is 1-7, DZ are not usually doing very well.
Good entry from the captain of Dark Zero. Foltz will find the opening pick straight on to Ash and playing that demo.
Again, they brought a lot of information, but they're not really committing to this room here
They know one's above so the smoke can often hit straight down the Exo stairs
This will be a fast execute partner if they can get to the site undetected
They got the opening why not press the advantage right?
WRONG!
Diffuser possibly we gets two shut down by Neuers
A big kill for Neuers, especially with how diffuser had been jade I know on the board for one Neuers handled by gunner
Quick one is correct a minute 15 laps so far in the round and only four players remain so if M80 does go on to win this
It'll be easily their worst round that they've won so far
Lots of time now for DZ to slow this down and they've got their two offensive threats still up on the board and J.R.
And J.N.I. know now working together very winnable for both of these teams
No doubt the best moment diffuser has had here in these NAL playoffs now
he's put his team in a winning position. The time is still very heavy for Dark Zero.
They've got so much to play with, but they're gonna go pretty early for this
plant, at least to try to fake those C4. Still watching from above. A linear take
for Dark Zero does them no favors. If Savage still holds the cross and holds
above them, this is what he can easily do. He's in a very powerful position.
Gunner seemed quite so patient, but he's found at the hands of NJR, the
Telltale signs the type 89 easily one of the most unique sounding guns will do some serious work now savage has to choose
Do I stay up here and hold on to the top floor or do I rotate down and take the fight directly to these easy players?
Smoked off or rush on in savage still holding from above amidst the cloud of smoke and JR is hopeful
Savage has to rotate. He's made the right call and we're running the Jada first tearing strips through them
Not doing enough damage as the diffuse kick goes down, but Savage still endures for the time being.
J9O has him handled and the lead for M80 lasted only one round. DZ ties the game.
NJR and J9O, what a brilliant 2v2 that they played. Only six letters between them, but so much brain power packed into those six letters.
Parker, they initially want to go for a plant just in through XO to try to get it into the B bomb site.
But as soon as they realize there's somebody up above, they pull off of it.
By faking this plant, by showing that they want to go for the plant's clothes,
they force the rotate up to the top floor from Savage,
and as soon as that happens, they get off the plant spot.
They isolate the one guy that is still on the bomb site, and they get a plant down tank.
They are playing with their food, they are controlling the movements of M80 in these low-man count late rounds,
and it's so impressive to watch from a top-down POV,
because it's just something that requires incredible coordination
An incredible game sense as to how the defenders are going to react to your movements.
That was really cool.
It was nice to be able to nerd out over some good siege happening in front of our eyes.
Map number one was a bit of an unmemorable map, one that you can pretty soon forget.
But so far, the narrative that's shaping up around the second map
is really something to behold.
A word, by the way, that DZ hates.
They hate the narrative.
They hate talking about the narrative.
They hate it.
And we as casters nothing to it.
love it. So of course we're going to discuss it. While at one point it didn't look all that likely
cafe is still a possibility as the tiebreaker. We haven't seen much cafe here in the North American
League so if she shows up it'll be just the second time here in the playoffs that a third map
has been needed. It's been dominated by the teams that have won and a reminder for everybody
that after this match Wildcard who is currently sitting and waiting in the grand finals will face
the winning team whether it be dark zero who need just one more map or m80 who need this one and
cafe in order to get to that position and it'll be a rematch no matter what his wildcard defeated
dark zero in the upper bracket semi-finals to kick off the playoffs and then shoved m80 down
into this position yesterday with a 2-0 victory jills nearly must win for m80 this is going
It's going to be their final bomb state in their primary rotation.
You'll love to be able to go 2-1 on your first set of rotations,
so you have a little bit of wiggle room on that back half of the match.
And that 5-4 scoreline to make all the differences in this game
will continue to be close until the very end.
But it's a tough setup here on the top floor for Darkseer to break through.
The mute chambers, the mirror windows, makes it really difficult to get past this.
You're always worried about the Nitro coming out from above that mirror window,
but Gavin's preoccupied with the birds,
so there's not going to be any pressure coming into the connector side of things.
He is like kind of isolated here. He's got Savage and Ashen to back him up, but
Ashen's playing the rafters position and Savage is I guess relatively close so
they've got some decent coordination here if they want to go for a bit of a trade.
I'm curious what Dark Zero's game plan is Parker because they are initially
looking at that top floor to try to clear it out but they're only just now
maybe moving to the IT side of things maybe so much of them for that.
Bossite is storage so if they don't commit to this top floor you have to
imagine they're just going to try to sneak a plant in that site.
One man I'm watching right now is the one on your screen.
Newers after putting in a pretty decent effort on layer 12 and 6. You have to
wonder if uh if he's all out of juice at this point. Two and eight.
Far cry from what he's capable of and again one of the highest rated players
in the entire league. He's going to be playing Ash which is not
your prototypical fragging operator the way that used to be.
Defuser takes Karekino, but Folch was a little bit too slow with the counter punch.
He gets it either way. This round is flown by.
Final 30 seconds.
Right now, newer is still down below in Lounge.
Languishing, cutting around, looking for an opening,
but Gavin was there on the flank, laying in wait.
M80 catches DZ off guard.
Jdyo with one, Ashen trades it back.
All of these rounds on the second half have been so scrappy.
It's been easy taking advantage of that, but it's M80's round to lose, and they will regain the lead.
5-4.
Great hold coming out here, again Parker.
It feels like the strats are just a little bit better from M80 on this second map pick.
They go to the top floor, with that mute mirror set up up above, plus the Azami over towards Rafters.
It was just too difficult of a nut to crack.
DarkZero took one look at the top floor and said,
Yeah, we're not gonna deal with this, and they decided to just go down to that mid-floor,
try to hit the site direct without clearing those players up above.
Man, they didn't have a whole lot of map control to work with for that plant.
You saw the difficulty of the Blackbeard trying to get in from Kino as he was inside a bottom garage,
trying to make his way deep inside of storage, but he got caught from the back
as there was just a good crossfire being held by M80 as they had so much of that map control.
So I really liked that defense from them.
DarkZero, you could have argued maybe they should have tried to force the top four control anyways,
but it would have been tough with all that utility.
But the utility that they had brought to that attack, they were kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.
So, it's good defense being brought out by M80.
The final operator band might change that a bit.
With Mira being taken off the board,
they're not going to be able to rely on that,
like they had to, around 789.
So, DeZee will really need to rely on that one band
to get them back in control of this game.
It's been a rough game for Dark Zero,
unless you're named J9O and NJR,
all of their EPS is in the ground,
Kino in particular,
staying at 37 EPS right now,
which is among the lowest
that we have seen in the playoffs so far.
Again, diagnosing what's going wrong
with M80 was a challenge.
Diagnosing what's going on with DZ right now
is a little bit easier.
It's a lack of confidence, a lack of follow-up,
but again, the firepower just really has not been there.
Volts through his credit did pick up some
pretty important kills on route to a loss
in the previous round, but again, Volts is not the guy
that you expect to be fragging on this team.
He plays, well, you can maybe argue whether here, Kino plays the harder role on the squad,
but Fulcrum's not usually the guy who should be competing for the top.
Janna and NJR did spawn in, but they need some help, and they need it desperately, because
M80 is within striking distance of taking this map and sending us all the way to Cafe.
Yeah, listen, we talked about the Fuzer's poor performance in map 1, we have to talk
about Neuer's poor performance here in map 2.
I mean, he is the primary entry for this squad.
You know him as one of the best fraggers in the league.
When you isolate just to the attacking side, he has the best kill depth ratio.
any player, 176 on the attack.
So I wanna see him getting more active
now that he has more tools available to him.
He chooses the gamelos here for round number 10,
but he needs to be able to hunt down
some of these players, isolate some guns,
like pick off a couple of guys
that are roaming around the map.
That is, I think, easier said than done,
especially on this top floor bomb site
where generally everybody will be staying inside the site
unless you see a bit of a hatch drop
halfway through the round.
But if you can play from down below
or try to find a pick on an off angle,
like that could really open things up for Dark Zero,
and it can make all the difference in the world
once they can finally go for that.
You see the cube barrier still getting set up.
It was funny that you said, you know, in the previous round,
oh, these zombies playing in Raptors.
It's just a zombie spot.
That's it.
That's our home.
That's where you accept to see her,
and Ashen is very safe for the time being.
A very powerful spot to be in.
You block lines of sight from down below and the window.
We don't need to worry about the door behind you,
Usually again somebody is holding that angle.
Letcher's cell goes out, flashes have been used so effectively,
and maybe he's been firing blind and off the lock.
Letcher's cell puzzlingly does no damage to NJR.
I don't think it should have been a fable blow,
but I'm a bit surprised that he walks away
without any wounds whatsoever.
And the user will take up space and greet him
at the window should NJR awk for that fight.
But for the time being, he's still outside.
He sees the line.
The diffuser is not within range, and it's beautifully paid off!
His patience rewarded!
Got our diffuser both on the board.
GZ still struggling from that offense perspective.
Kino 0-9 right now.
This is just not helping the team one bit, Jesse.
Final 35 seconds here, and GZ might be sleepwalking their way into another flawless round for an 80.
Just feels like I'm not able to get anything going from down below.
below. Neuers is trying to find some value, but he's no 1v5.
The D.G.Flaw comes through.
It's a body shot, but it's clean enough.
Gets the final frag to complete yet another flawless round
to come through from M80, a ridiculous set
of circumstances coming through.
And they have started to run away with this game.
They'll have two opportunities to close it out
in regulation.
We're in outrageous situation to be in.
M80, round number three, flawless round.
Round number five, flawless round.
Round number six, flawless round.
Round number seven, you lost one person.
Round number nine, you lost two people.
Round number 10, flawless round.
Of all the rounds that M80 have won, Jesse,
they have given up just three deaths
in the rounds they've won.
It's gotta be one of the cleanest set of round wins
of any team that we've seen in the history
of the NA League.
This is just, when they win, they are so dominant.
GZ sprang out to a two round lead,
but since then have struggled to match M80 and Boy Oh Boy,
Cafe 45 minutes ago seemed incredibly unlikely,
bordering on the absurd.
Yet now, it is almost a certainty.
Dark Zero have no answers for M80.
They're off the top floor site
for the rest of regulation.
That's gotta be the one new little kernel of hope you can hold on to if you're a Dark Zero fan.
You've gotta deal with the basement, you've gotta deal with the mid-floor,
but those are generally thought to be weaker sites.
The basement in particular, a site to Dark Zero One,
although it came down to a pretty close 2v2 situation after an early flood of action
in through the vending stairs and through cafeteria.
It's again a pretty heavy roam game, so if Dark Zero One and Two,
they absolutely could go for a similar kind of XO rush
and try to make things scrappy early on.
We've got a lot of pressure down here by the main breach, and Savage is reading all of this, playing on the also spot NJR, he'll spot Kino up there as well.
So good information being fed to the guys on M80, it'll allow the roamers to make informed decisions. Do we actually have to rotate back to the site? Is this a fast site hit?
No, probably not. We can keep our players up towards the top floor. We play a little bit more than third angles instead.
Unlikely that Kino will be able to amass any serious number of kills for the remainder of
this map, especially now that he's playing this hard Monty role.
He's got Defuser dead to rights inside the B bomb site, but Defuser, playing very effectively
behind those Teeba barriers, isn't really in a position, unless he wants to take that
engagement.
Kavin starting things off, down goes Newer's.
Newer is also 2 and 11.
A disastrous performance for Keto and for Newer.
This is not helping this card.
Zero cards, one bit.
Now it's NJR taking some damage,
but there's been a couple kills on the side of DZ.
Far more winnable than it seemed moments ago
is Ashton and Savage have been put in the ground.
We're definitely Savage.
He goes for the run out there and nearly finds NJR,
but it's not quite good enough.
The patience is paying off for DZ.
There's definitely gonna go for just a main site
breach plant as Keto has this diffuse get in his hands.
But if they don't clear some of these players
If they can't get the Fuser out of here, they've got really no hope of getting a plant down.
And Foltz settling in, tracking down Gavin, the solos in the KMO.
Doing battle with one another, Foltz.
Here he's balled up, they're knowing exactly how those metal bars go, so he can read into the floor and get a couple shots off, but no damage is really done.
Gavin and Defuser, not at full HP, but still relatively healthy.
relatively healthy so not in a position where a single board or two can do enough damage.
NJR can't say the same for him though.
On the single point of HP final 40 seconds here, Jesse and the X keeps shaping up.
It looks like they're going to come to blows and it will come in a hurry.
Diffuser and Gavin swatting them away.
Gunnersman dropped.
Gavin goes down as well.
Diffuser, the last man standing.
Kino and J9O with Diffuser in hand for Kino as Jack will look over top.
Kino securing the kill on the gunner but it's not his own so he's still safe
at a zero on the kill feed.
If we just got 10 kills,
Kino will walk at him menacingly.
Kino's one with a defuse kit.
This could absolutely get misplayed by DZ.
Diffuser moon walking his way out of the bomb site,
looking for a small rotate,
but the rotate will not go for him.
So now Diffuser will have to go right into harm's way
and Jane I know will keep DZ in this
with a big win for Dark Zero.
You know, Parker, I know he has zero kills,
but I really want to praise Kino after that round.
Not only did he have a huge value on the Monty, taking that space for his teammates,
but he was also super patient, right?
A lot of, I think, worst players would have immediately tried to vault into that breach
earlier in the round, try to take that space over towards kind of assembly,
but Kino never went for that, instead he played a passive.
And the most important thing that Kino did in that round was he got information for his team.
You saw it early in the round as Kino drove the drone straight onto the bomb chassis inside of Tank.
That was feeding information. The entire rest of the round.
Gunner's position close on the mute was constantly being pinged out thanks to Kino's drone that he had inside the bombsite.
It was close on the man counter.
As soon as Savage dies, the information advantage goes heavily in favor of Dark Zero, and they're really able to put together a good execute because of it.
They extend this matchup by at least one round.
They bring us to the final round of regulation.
75 or overtime are only possible results Parker
This is anybody's game. I don't know how to call it
Well, just you only to call it is a good match because this one has been spectacular
so far
Bang or a dynamite moments, but they're steady as she goes again with M80 having six rounds right now
Now, four of those were won flawlessly.
They have been very efficient in the rounds
that they are winning.
Dark Zero is hopeful that that flawless number stays the same
on the side of M80 and that the scoreline stays the same too.
As DZ had their early lead on this map,
but has slowly watched as M80 chipped away
and then ultimately took it over.
One more round for DZ to send us to OT.
There is a third map if required.
It seems likely the dark zero could change that the next two minutes in around nine the big problem for dark zero
It's acting on this site where the mirror windows up on that top floor
But they banned the mirror out which means this top floor clear should be a lot easier for dark zero instead the mirror has been
Replaced with Gavin and running this denari every other operator remains exactly the same for m80
So the overall game plan is not changing despite the fact that they lost one of their best operators
Still, DarkZero will have to clear out this top floor and will have to do so with decent
pace.
60 seconds deep and they've done a decent bit of job opening up that IT breach, but you've
got players down in the basement, hunting for rumors that don't exist, you've got players
droning out this mid-floor.
I'm curious if they're again going to give up on the top floor clear.
If they do, Parker, I'm really worried for how this round might come out for them.
It's a tough moment now as Nuerz will try for his third kill.
Again, far below his own expectations.
See, he was down below.
What was that, Jesse?
It's just an insane angle he's holding.
Like, who plays this?
That's a great point.
One of those holes now is the zombie of Ashen.
We'll take up a very familiar spot
and we'll need to be redroamed.
I don't think because of his angle,
NJR saw him, he might have.
You're gonna have to take care of this zombie
pretty quickly though,
the timer just continues to work against dark zero. I mean they have some
pressure-taught floor like they've got guys coming in the meeting side they get
at least for a moment I think everybody's now exited so dark zero stalling out a
bit similar to last time they must walk away from these first two and a half
minutes with a man count advantage or this is certainly done.
Kandela's going off. Gavin there for backup with Ashton in tow. Ashton a
sitting duck but diffuser and Gavin both strike as well so the advantage
stays from 80. J9 will equalize numbers.
Gas down below gives information to Dark Zero
as they have control of above now,
but need to translate that to the bomb site.
And they haven't been able to work
through this rafter's position.
It looked like NJR would be the point man for that,
but he's thought otherwise
and he's dove off that top floor outside
and might look for a direct side hit.
None of the three remaining players on DZ
have the defuse kit.
And there's only about 15 seconds left in the round.
Foltz is in the grave.
This one might be Rapscore, DZ is NJR taking some damage from below,
Tussling with M80, it's all up to Jack.
J9O with six seconds left on the clock.
He'll take care of Gavin, but it's a pure victory for him in the site.
M80 will steal DZ's map and we will go to cafe as the decider.
Very good match to bounce back for M80.
We thought they might be a bit of sleep at the wheel here in these early
playoff games, but that's not to be Parker.
The, wow, one of the best teams in North America
have come back to play and they're in a strong spot
heading into the third map.
Well, M80, they have come alive and at the perfect moment, sending us to a third map.
They take DZ's pick right now from under them and they looked great while doing it.
Yeah, first off, I want to apologize to the DZ fans for cast or cursing them.
Instead, they were going to be really good on attack and I apologize for that.
But, I mean, in all seriousness, I'm really glad that we have an actual series
on our hand and we're going to get a best of three for these two Titans that we've
already highlighted.
Dizzy, they tried to play extremely fast.
They tried to play extremely aggressive on their defensive side.
And honestly, that gave them 80 a chance to get some frags under their belt.
We got all of their top fraggers, all of their really good fraggers,
or on the board at this point.
We have all now double digits.
They're all fully awoken from their slumber gunner.
Geveni, diffuser.
I mean, all of them are having big, big moments in this series.
And I love to see it.
I mean, when you have five wall-less rounds,
It just adds and instills that much more confidence into the team, into the players, and we're seeing whether it was on their attacks or their defenses.
Then you want to talk about the opening kills. They had 9 out of 12 opening kills going into their favor.
And then, yeah, we're talking about Titan players being able to step up, actually have the performance that we know that they can have.
We are seeing Ashen continuously do it, but we're seeing Givini step up.
We're seeing a player like Diffuser that we highlighted going into this series.
He's been a little non-existent, but coming into this series in this map particularly,
he has absolutely stepped up his performance and was a big contribution for M80's success in this map.
I mean you see it there across the board, Gavini leading the way, diffuser close behind,
and you set it five flawless rounds, a staggering amount of momentum that they built over the
course of this map. It was still close, don't get me wrong, 7-5 a two-round difference,
But it was an M80 win and in part, due to DarkZero just not showing up, right?
You have to wonder where was Kino, where was Nuerz?
Like the guy we highlighted as second best player in all the NAL, Topfrager in the last map.
Nuerz had just, what, two kills the entire map?
Yeah, I mean it's funny that we're saying M80 fell asleep and then what, DZ now that we're just gonna take a nap after map 1?
I'm not sure. I mean Nuerz was Topfragen and now he went to sleep.
He's hibernating for map 3, saving all his energy, 2 and 12.
And then Kina, who is the spearhead for the team.
I mean, I was expecting some crib shotgun out of him,
some more shield play out of him.
He's bound to get one kill, but 0 and 10 on the map,
and 0 and 4 on the entries.
I mean, 0 and 7 between both of them.
Yeah, it was very hard for Dizzy to get anything started.
Again, those three flawless rounds for MAD
is a big contribution for them not having a good game.
I mean, highlighted how well MAD was playing.
I do just want to say, I think it was just MAD
having the better game plan, the better strategy, the better refragability that they were having and always keeping the man advantage where Dizzy just couldn't get their foot in the door and that's just the nature of the game sometimes.
Just to clarify, three or five flawless rounds, how many?
Four, four flawless rounds.
Four flawless rounds.
Either way, right?
I mean, yeah, either way.
Exactly, exactly.
Well, let's talk a little bit about cafe here because obviously map picks have kind of been tossed around a little bit, each taking their opponent's pick.
If you're an M80 fan, like I'm thinking this is great on paper.
This is the map.
I mean, they 7-0 DZ on.
Yeah, absolutely.
And the nice thing is when you're going to this series,
especially in this matchup,
they didn't really have to showcase their attacks.
They did it all on their defensive half,
only needing one attack to close out that 7-0.
So they'd have that in their back pocket here going into this series.
However, they did show it against Wildcard,
but again, totally different matchup,
different stylistic matchups in its own right.
But when you have the momentum going into this series,
into the series. I said this in the beginning. I was worried about that momentum shift. They have
all the momentum now where I thought they were going to take that first map. Yeah, the momentum's
a big one, but I'm really curious and I'm so glad we're going to get this map three because what did
DZ learn? They talked a lot about it in their after interviews that they loved losing these guys
7-0, right? It fired them up. So, okay, let's see them on their defensive side. What have they
learned? Put it into practice. Put it into practice. Exactly. Now's the time. And cafe
to do it. It does feel like it's a storybook moment here. How does DZ recover the momentum
though? They were able to do it after the 7-0 and the group saves. How do they do it here?
Just like M80, just did it from map one to map two. You just got to reset and that's
the beauty of getting to the best three. Once you get to that final map, every both sides
of the team should understand where things have gone wrong, how they can correct them.
So it really is going to be a game of ideology and who's quicker to adapt, who's quicker
to punish on the little mistakes.
Well, cafe to end this series, a best of three to decide
who goes to the grand final?
Well, it just comes down to one map now,
the very map that M80 dismantled Dark Zero on not too long ago.
Let's get to it.
One map, that's all it takes in the community prediction.
As tightened up, both of these teams
play best of ones for the entirety of the regular stage.
M80 was the better team, they topped stage one,
but now they have their work cut out for them,
defeat Targ-0 and square off against Wildcard
in the grand finals.
And you best know that Wildcard team
is greatly enjoying these teams,
beating the stuffing out of each other.
Yeah, Wildcard's sitting pretty waiting
for the victor of this match.
Not only played later on today,
so don't leave once this game ends.
It's your favorite team wins.
They will be right back in action.
Jonah mentioned it. We are back in the same battleground where Dark Zero got demolished 7-0 by M-80 in the regular season back during the group stage, but I'll say there's one key difference, Parker, and that's the sides.
Dark Zero, because they had a more dominant map win, they got to choose what side they wanted to start on here on cafe, and of course, they're not going to choose the side where they lost 6-0 against M-80 a few weeks ago.
So, they'll start the defense this time.
This should be the better side for them,
and hopefully they can get at least a couple of rounds
here in this first half,
so they can move on to that attacking side
with some wind in their sails.
The Desk mentioned how Newers
was taking a bit of a sleepy sleep.
He needs to wake up.
Kino also needs to wake up.
M80 had some struggles from an offensive perspective
back in map number one,
but maybe it was just a lot of West Coast
starts for this team because they are awake
and ready to play.
Obviously a 7-5 square line gets the job done,
but yeah, it wasn't as dominant as I think
MAD was potentially hoping for, and it allows
GZ to not mentally boom themselves.
Oh, these teams lost their map mix.
That's not abnormal, but you don't see that
every single day.
And now we go to cafe as the ultimate bestider.
A very different map from both labs and lair.
Extremely vertical.
You saw a lot of verticality and how much
mattered particularly on lair? It's going to be on display non-stop here on cafe. All bomb sites
are technically viable just comes down to what they want to play. Extended deep heads all the way on
the top floor as one of the middle floor bomb sites will be the scene for round one. Yeah don't
expect dark zero to go top floor it's really not a site that they run they'll rotate through
the bottom three bomb sites and 80 half shounes they can play all four sites here on cafe.
We're in the playoffs, you never know. Easy could fix things up and try to catch M80 off-guard,
but you'd expect traditionally for Dark Zero to stick to being bought in three doors,
and it's not a surprise that he's starting mining, dining. That's a bit of a surprise from FALSE.
Goes for the run on the Goyo, but unfortunately caught by Ash, and he hears the impact
made, and he flicks over in time. Really well done. We're gonna stop that bit of aggression
from Dark Zero and M80 to take an early lead here in Cafe.
Oh, another one. Okay. Interesting. That's toxic. He's been a naughty boy today. He's
been a very naughty boy in chat. And I mean, it's one thing when he was typing away on
map number one, where he was actually doing quite well. But map two, or sorry, map three
now when he's got no case to his name come on at JR you can you can do more
than that M80 continuing their winning ways boy oh boy DZ have just two players
remaining half of the round to go the attackers made their way into the building
yet just this is a great place to be for M80 not right there though
JNL handles one pressure now over my top light needs going off push from
freezer push from piano and M80 with the final two kills to take round
number one dark zero they've been very eager to get active on these defenses
Parker throughout this series they've been wanting to show some pace to their
opponents and this time it really does not pay off a couple of early runouts
punished by Ashton in the midst of this you are getting the first one it was
savage that got the down onto the second one so after banning out both of
his shields he goes to the gun as he often does frankly on this bomb
site and we'll walk away with the success there for his team so nice to
see that coming out from M80 they get that first round on the board didn't
really have to do much in terms of clearing the map right didn't have to
take much control a lot of that was DZ giving fights over to M80 but a lot of
lesser teams would have maybe let that slip past them they would have got caught by
some of those runouts again I think it's huge strength about Savage and
Ashen who were able to catch these plays they came down. Ashen is like finish
off there but it's Savage who's threatening to kill and then once they clear through
this top floor there's just not enough numbers to really do much else in the
side it comes here so it's a good start but one that DZ should be able to shake off.
Nice boys, nice!
I don't care if I whiff, I got mine!
That's the spirit!
That's made all my ranked games, so I feel like I'm glad that the energy also reaches
this wave up here in throw play and Ashen is, Ashen's been having a pretty good day.
So far, highest rated player in my lobby is J9O's efforts all the way back and
map one and on have been really quite terrific. He's sitting at a 123 EPS, nearly double Kino's.
Kino sits at a 64 EPS right now and largely due to his pretty terrible performance on that even last
if we're being completely honest. On M80, yeah, three guys all fighting for that top spot. Gavin
Ashen and diffuser have been terrific. And again, Ashen far and away the highest rated player in
the NAL. He was thinking of 125 EPS to start the day. Next closest was a 120 EPS of Neuers.
The Neuers is going to be sliding down with again having a disappointing performance in map number
two but most of Dark Zero did it unless your name was NJR or J90. So recovery possible for Dark
Zero. Discovery phase largely wrapping up now is we're a minute into round two.
I want to briefly mention this is my band from N80 Parker. It's something that J90
He loves to play here as he extends into the top floor, kind of in this bathroom pixel position.
Even before the buff to Umai, he would run this operator non-stop up there.
So with it off the board, he's going to move to the Mira instead.
Still a really good operator to try to hold down this top floor and stop the attackers from taking his control.
But, just going to have to change things up a little bit.
Those Umai buffs are extremely impactful as we've seen across the last couple of days.
So it's nice to be able to take that off the board if you're M80.
Give your throwables a little bit more weight to them as you clear these top positions on the top floor.
Flashers will go in, the Nade lands right in the lap of Kino J90,
send Ashen out with an explosive of his own.
The Nitro Cell for one, a frag for the other, and an explosive beginning.
To this round, another Nitro Cell lined up and ready at top white stairs.
And JR, got his headphones on wrong.
I think he's hearing the gridlock, but is worried that someone might be below him now with a golden opportunity for DC
And yet NJR hesitates and because of it diffuser gets going a little bit longer
Both off-floor control. This is a good spot to be in for M80. The time is a little bit concerning
But they've got good space to try to play around with it gunner is also down on that bottom floor
So they've got lots of different dimensions to this push savage is going to want to get a plant down
really low fast vert pick it should be wide open for him to go for that fuse get full vert control
everything is in control for m80 like this is exactly what they want to go for this push
above plenty of time for some destruction diffuser finally punished by njr and jr was
helping for that kill a good minute or so um oh gutter reads faults like a book and down he goes
easy now outnumbered they'll take care of Gunner as they trickle in and NJR and Newer's double up
is Savage and NJR in a 1v1. Savage in pursuit gets him through the wall goodness gracious
this scrappy M80 team so hard to hold down they take round two NJR is doing his best in this game
he has a really nice round flanking back up those stairs to retake the top floor control
Parker, but he ends up going back down the laundry hatch and it is Savage who clutches up in the 1v1 that gets really tight
But m80 better for it in that late round
Nicely done by them after getting that control to be able to not overly focus on the plants
I think that's a big thing from Savage. He had bit of use kit
He's in the default plant spot
But instead of holding it he joins his teammates and he knows the gunfights are coming the birth control
So important as we said and then once they got more of these frags, they're able to trade things out really nicely
sleep. If Savage over commits to the plant, maybe they can't get those trades.
But they play guns up and they manage to find those kills when they needed to.
Really nice game, M820.
Wildcard rooting for these teams is yesterday Wildcard
took M8D apart on Nighthaven Labs and Caffe Dostoevsky.
Two maps that we have seen so far are good friends,
friends, links and XR Troika.
Providing the commentary for that one.
Wildcard has just been such a good team
if we can take a second to discuss them.
It is really quite a shame that Adrian
was not able to compete with them at Salt Lake,
even with hot and cold as an emergency substitute.
They still made top eight, which is really just kudos
to the team for how good they can be.
Spiker in particular needs so much credit.
Lagonas, their coach, is a brilliant mind
I'm very glad that he's starting to get his flowers a long and tenured career as a player now turned coach and well boy
Wildcard success is very much his to
They are formidable foe and no matter which of these two teams emerges Jesse. You gotta think Wildcard will be the favorite
Yeah, Wildcard a good time like I'm sitting up there in the grand finals
That's an organization that is never won a domestic stage of the North America League
They've got 0 half, it was a very long time ago, and 80 of course, 1 stage 2 last season,
so Lockhart would be our only new champion of an NAL stage, so that would be exciting
for them to be able to represent the organization, but gotta win that game first, and of course
they've gotta face the winner of this third map here on Cafe.
This will be a slow round, because it is a full anchor set up down on the bottom
floor of Cafe, and then 80 are going for a full top floor clear.
They've got Gunner on, sorry, they've got Gavin on this buck.
They've got Defuser on the ram, so.
Once they're safely secured on this mid floor,
they're gonna start working on some of this breach.
My main concern is Kino.
He's playing on this Echo.
So when this plant comes down,
it's gonna be really late no matter what.
If those Yo-Kai's in a good position,
they could deal some damage,
and if it's a man disadvantage,
that makes it even more awkward for them to aim.
They have to be ready,
and they have to be playing with Pace Parker.
If they go for a late plant,
like I'm a little bit worried they will.
Those yokai camps could completely ruin their day.
Nine of the 12 rounds back at Night Haven Labs
started off with an M80 kill here on Cafe.
The first two rounds were M80 striking first.
This is a good opportunity for GZ
to see what they can do with the numbers and damage,
something that has been shockingly absent
from their gameplay.
You have to go all the way back to Lair
where they did most of those opening engagements
on Rubs the 17 victory
that you see on the top of your screen.
DZ constantly fighting down a man
and the issues that they had fragging
really did them no favors.
This round, the whole case is that
they've managed to sort it out,
but M80 rusting into Bakery,
isolating these players of DZ,
diffuser and Ashen, both with a killer piece.
Neur is the only one from Dark Zero,
able to muster anything.
He's still alive.
Neur's already having a better game
than what we saw out of him on Nighthaven Labs.
He finished two and 12.
right now, already with three kills.
Final 20 seconds to go, M80 tied the numbers with DZ,
but now the hard task of getting into the bomb site.
Ashen's made it a little bit easier,
and Gavin is hoping to make it even easier than that.
Foltz, last man standing, he's above.
He's looking for coverage,
and he finds the shot as the defuse kit goes down.
No, Ashen, expertly placing that defuse kit
away from the waiting eyes of Dark Zero.
Now Foltz on a completely different floor
from the objective can survey the wreckage that was created earlier largely by diffusers
boogie drones.
I'll return back to the bomb site but three pairs of eyes on M80 we'll be watching for
him.
It looked mighty good steadily improving the longer this goes on in that round is
no different.
A perfect start through three rounds for M80.
Yeah, this could not have gone better and I want to give more credit over to the
calling happening from M80.
It's more great late-round decision-making from these guys where they take the top floor
control and a lot of other teams would have tried to break in through Freezer, gone for
that drop, get past VIP somewhere and get a plant down.
But instead, they go Bakery and that's huge because they know that Kino is playing the
Echo in that Bakery position.
If you can take Bait Control, that means Kino is going to be dead.
You don't have to worry about a Yokai cam stopping your plants.
He was able to disrupt the shield, it got Savage killed in the midst of that push,
but they trade out really nicely.
They equalize back down to a 3v3 and then they're pushed in sight and Parker
They've just got some incredible gunners with some incredible guns. It's Ashen with the F2
It's the fuser on the ram
They're finding some really good shots as they flood into that site in a relatively even 3v3 and false his top floor flank
It was a really good idea
But I think it's just a little bit late on the execution if he's there a bit faster
Maybe he's able to have more impact, but he ends up just being a little bit dead weight here for dark zero
so that his site players fall to pieces
to the gun with the usual action.
I don't think they expected such aggression
through Bakery as well, I mean, what,
three guys immediately just pushing on in,
and DZ and one player trying to hold it all together,
Newer's firing back from longer range,
but he immediately peeled off of that position
when they had to reassess their defense,
because if Newer's dies,
that leaves just two players on the bomb site.
DZ calling another early timeout,
these last two maps,
not going the way that they had hoped.
It's been a steady decline for this DZ team to start all of these maps
Go back to layer. They won four to start off map number one
They won two rounds to start off map two here on cafe. They've been blanked
So things are gradually worsening for this DZ team if you're a fan of theirs
You're hopeful that the culture call out is able to get these guys back on the same page
Kino, in particular, kills Snakebitten from map number two.
He ended Nighthaven Labs with an own 10 scoreline.
You have to go back almost an hour and what?
An hour and 20 minutes for the last time that Kino got a kill,
which was on that layer map.
And to his credit, Kino finished positive six and five,
but again, he plays on a role where you're not expecting him to go positive all the time.
He's one of the lower rated players on the team,
but zero kills is indefensible with the way that he plays and it is obviously
we don't expect our team to play at the top floor that will continue after the
tactical timeout. Kala will have a conversation with the guys and they
will reset back into their bomb set rotation. The reading rule is going to be our first site here in the second quarter, this was played back in round two.
Of course since that's from M-80 as they were able to push in and when a close
Once 1v1, as Savage won that final frag on the NJR, this time the mayor has moved onto
his favorite operator in the game, the Chachonka, being brought out as well as Newer's no longer
able to play that form, jumping here onto the Tuber out.
Maybe the game on this side is always going to be top floor, right?
You have to really get this control up above from the defense.
That's going to be most of the players, you know, Jane I know, and Newer's
holding this one down.
It's never an easy task to take this, but again, you've banned up the Azami,
you've banned up the Wamai.
You should be able to use some of these flashes and nades to clear it out, much like they did in the first quarter.
There you go, that's what you drove to go, not getting up his position.
This goes undrawned by M80.
This is a golden opportunity for newers to punish them and get another opening pick for DZ.
NJR will gun down Gunner.
That's over by the A-bomb site, still pivoting, playing this great spot in reed and he can cover that new hatch as well.
Defuser finds himself
Aiming for one of the targets, but he just can't find it slipping through his fingers
I mean he's got to worry about the GMR in the hands of new artist who realizes it's time to go
He wasted as much time as he could frankly pretty good hiding there
He's still up there though his flashes go out nitro cell does not connect and this prolonged fighting
Not netting any kills for the time being
Wow what a shot user blows his head clean off, so that equalizes the numbers right back to four
He was the one player that couldn't get back towards the bomb site.
Now you've got vert control with over a minute still to go.
They've already gotten a lot of the stop-reaching gun,
but they're kind of limited now on what they can do.
Gunner was that first player to die, don't forget.
So that's going to be the ram drones that can no longer be tossed out.
They've got a couple in through the skylight and whatnot,
but it is still limited on the stop-reaching that you have.
DarkZero will have to hope that they can hide from these vert angles
long enough to stall out this push
and eventually try to deny this 4v4.
Ashen has spent so much of this round outside, it's time to get into the building and do some business.
He's once again holding that, or was holding that cut angle from above, working very effectively to take care of Newers and Keno in those spots over top of the laundry hatch.
Savage has somehow found an opening to get the defuse kit, the halfway point from the common spot.
Ashen takes care of NJR and Foltz unable to handle one of his own Newers on the board.
the board. Diffuser takes care of bolts. DZ suffering yet again. M80 exploiting a blind
spot that DZ had in their defenses. Forcing Neuerson to take some fire damage as he retakes
the bomb site. That Diffuse kid a little out of reach. Paying off effectively those
air jabs from Ashen have given them info on the Kino as he trudges his way. Disabled
by those track stairs deployed by Diffuser. Neuerson now hops on the case. 15 seconds
to go. Kino overtop. Finally Kino gets a kill. Newers with one as well but they're gonna have to help on that case.
Newers off of it, pass the point and no return. Ashen takes out the trash and M80 is steamrolling DZ.
A bit close for comfort but hey, that is such a strong post-plant for the attackers and Ashen in the perfect position
clutches it up there in the 1v2. Really well done from M80. Again, dominating here on cafe.
I'm a little surprised that NJR was not able to deny that plant going down.
He is no doubt the best Tachanka player in the world,
but we don't see it very often there on that bomb site.
It's not something that he's maybe as practiced with as he is maybe on Clubhouse.
And because of that, he's not able to stop the plant going down.
This post-plant is so difficult for the defense to win,
even in the 1v2, Ashen plays that perfect.
Oh, and they're feeling themselves now, Parker.
That is a momentum that's been really swimming in the direction already.
halfway done in terms of the rounds they need to win on this map for M80 Dark Souls spiraling out of control.
I think that's already been called as well. That's your proverbial parachute that's used to slow the descent and right now there is no slow descent for Dark Zero.
It is a straight plummet at this point. They did to their credit draw blood first on rounds three and four so they are at least setting themselves up in the early portions of the round for success.
But it's those mid to late rounds where typically we see DZ flourish that they're falling short when you've got people like Ash in dropping eight kills, six from defuser combined.
Being far more than DZ has his entire team, again it really just comes down to fragging power.
And J9O has been the guy who's fallen off for this particular map.
Again, he's been top frag and top rated player for the entirety of this series
And it is a terrible time for him to see a regression in those stats. The dark zero hanging on for dear life
The auto-stitch is first out and from then on 80 for running up the story infertile
Yeah, like it's been action diffuser hitting some crazy shots
And it's also being empowered by a really good play by sports around the late round calling has been excellent from m80
They always seem like they know what dark zero want to do in the late rounds and they're perfectly countering the way that
Deez you're trying to play on these defenses feels like the read is absolutely perfect for them
And as we get into yet another top floor clear
We'll see if that does continue the vert pressure has been so good when they get this control and diffuser
They all just fall back actually Parker this is a really early fallback
They're scared
And I think for good reason with the way Mamey is shooting Ashen now sitting at nine kills one death punishing new years
Newers he's been the most formidable foe and Mamey's had to deal with on this DZ roster and now he's gone from action
This is not a great start for dark zero especially since we just said they got first one in the previous two rounds DZ and familiar territory
Unfortunately, Jesse they're battling from behind
This is crazy face as he just drops in the laundry
He's all by himself. He's got some teammates maybe backing him up too, but takes these gunfights and all ends the wrong end of a shot on Kino will flip to bed that there's burst of aggression, but that shows the confidence M80 are playing with right now.
Confidence? Or maybe a bit carefree?
Could be what could be a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. NJR with an extra stealth to keep things intact for his team. Gavin turns Kino right off on white stairs.
He's gonna lose some of the panels, we need to give him the A bomb site.
It'll be NJR quarterbacking this push, or this defense to stop the push.
She's got a long range site, and that TCSG, as long as you can control the recall,
and here for a shot or two, you can do some serious damage.
Great ball knowledge there from Savage as he gets it down through the wall,
and has another who's leg he sees of J90, trapped and isolated over by red stairs.
NJR down for the count. He's secured. Gavin will get picked back up and 80 with the numbers advantage which is 20 seconds to go.
Flash is going out. DZ completely blind as the defuse kit getting planted by Gavin.
Foltz down below with a shotgun in hand. No nitro cells. There's no way to stop this in his tracks.
The round will get prolonged as J9O's return to the bomb site heralded by defuser.
And Foltz finds himself in a spot he was in just a couple rounds ago on the wrong floor with the defuse kit down.
his team by the wayside and defuser will bury him 5-0 M80.
To answer the question you posed earlier Parker, that is pure confidence M80.
They know exactly where they're at in this game, taking full control.
Just knowing that these guys are playing scared Darkseer are giving up so much of that map control
and sometimes M80 don't even need to fight for it.
It's a really good opening pick from Ashton to take down Newers.
He may be overheats a little bit humping for Kino,
for Kino, but he gets information that his teammate then follows up on, like even if Ashton
does go down in that round, he's confident that his teammates can back him up, and he's
been doing such an amazing job of breaking these rounds open for M80.
In the 3v3, two players are stuck on the bottom floor, that's not a good spot for Dark
Zero.
They give up so much map control, and it just puts him in a really rough spot to
actually be able to win these rounds.
You've got two players down below, Fultz had a Nitro, but he wasted it, didn't
get any value from the town stairs so it just feels like these darks here guys
they're too afraid to fight for some of these spots so they're giving up a lot
of map control for free and when you give up map control to m80 man they
just have a field day
real online saying North America is a deeply competitive region and all the
the rest of the world should be put on notice.
This is to stop my thoughts here for one second as J9O is hoping for a spawn peek through the delivery door.
They're spawned in there on the side of M80 and now Jack will turn his attention towards that whiskey window by Brown Stairs.
He's got his hands full.
He could do some serious damage with that DMR, but those 11 bullets in the mag will go by in a hurry.
I think this really should put to rest.
And there is a fast team in North America.
DZ looks dominant some days.
M80 looking dominant today.
Who knows what version of Wild Cardin will show up
in the grand finals up against one of these teams.
Ashen's surely typing.
No, you just see, for a moment he was.
I think he thought better of it.
You got 10 kills.
What more can you say that your kill total's
not already saying?
Yeah, that's going to be a really important pitch.
And I know you mentioned it was going for those spawn peaks.
That feels like desperation spawn peaks to me, Parker.
There's still some roamers up on the top floor,
Dark Zero, there's an NJR creeping up the window as well.
Might have a timing there, but has to fall back as these bees go to deal his location.
Newers and Faults still roaming here on the top floor, so plenty of pressure from Dark
Zero, but they're getting picked apart.
Faults 1 and 6 now as he falls in the roam game, leaves Newers all alone.
Newers has to get a couple kills here, otherwise this game, that I just be correct.
Newers is the only real bright spot on this team at the moment.
NJR's been doing some tough work.
gone Gavin with the kill. Kino still standing and waiting against Ashen. He will take care
of him and secure the kill, which is pretty decent on his end of things, but that's really
the only thing that you can credit DarkZero4 at this current point in time.
Sloppyness from Defuser, how does he not hear newers coming? Gavin does though a third kill
for Gavin on the round and now all the remaining players of M80 will be hunting down Kino,
Now we're Gavin picks up a 4K and it's a perfect 6.0 half for M80 already on match point.
I feel like I've been here before.
M80 absolutely stomping dark zero on cafe.
One round away from the flawless.
We were here, I don't know, three weeks ago in a very similar spot asking the question,
can DZ make this comeback right now?
I don't know if we have an answer lax.
I'm gonna be completely honest, I mean, nothing changes about the weather for the side of M80.
I mean, we saw it the last time they did it on the defense as a 6-0 half,
and that's the time they did it on their attack.
They just need one defensive round to put the nail in the coffin,
but something to be highlighted, especially when we talk about listening in on comms,
this is really the first time where I've heard Dark Zero kind of just sound dead in the water.
You notice it as well, and M80 is absolutely riding that momentum from the last series
and bringing it into this map.
Yeah, it's very clear.
I mean, the comms are just dead.
We've heard from Call-Out and their timeout.
It was his attempt to try to wake up the boys.
And they're just not responding right now.
I mean, that's 13 straight rounds for M80 on Cafe.
I think we know who the best Cafe team is in the NAL.
And this is a map that I also think we own as a region.
So it's just a little glaze right there.
And what's kind of been the story for M80?
I mean, Ash is finally getting some help.
I mean, he's having a great game by himself.
But the diffuser, even though they call him D,
his real name is Aiden.
I apologize to you right now.
because we called him out Map 1 and he's been popping off ever since.
Gavenny, we already know what he could do.
He's also alive and well and they're having a lot of fun right now.
I mean, yeah, the momentum is very strong for me.
It seems like they cannot be stopped.
It's like any every little thing that's going well in the round falls their favor.
Like the momentum is something we talk a good bit about,
but here it is on display at a level that we don't normally see.
I mean, no, definitely not.
But for the side of DarkZero, it starts with any single round amount to come back.
And the reality is they have to have rounds similar to the rounds that M80 had,
even in round two where Savage wins that big 1v1,
that instills the momentum for them to continue what's happening.
Now, they need to have rounds like that for DarkZero that they can get behind.
They can look like all things were lost.
They miraculously win the round.
They start feeding into that, and then it starts instilling hope.
And that's the last thing you want to give a team like DarkZero is the hope.
the chance that they can believe in themselves,
which is why I'm emphasizing that I may really
need to put the nail in the coffin here on their defense
and just shut it out and not give them a chance.
Yeah, you need that.
I mean, they're a big mental team.
You need them to be able to close their eyes,
meditate right now, and say it's 0-0.
It's a brand new half.
And we'll just call out saying during the half time,
don't be slaves to the outcome, right?
That seems to be their motto kind of going
into this second half is, who cares what the outcome?
Who cares what the score is right now?
They're still playing.
It's time to have fun like Kino says.
There's always a chance.
And I really want to give respect to MAD.
I mean, this was the bounce back.
This was the resurgence that we wanted to see for them.
Because for myself, I was pretty disappointed
what we saw throughout all of playoffs.
But now they look all awake.
They're playing in unison.
It's exactly the MAD that we want to see potentially
going into a grand final.
Well, I mean, they're coolly feeling good.
And for Dark Zero, I know they don't like talking
about the narrative.
I know they don't like thinking about results.
But how can you not be replaying in your head that feeling of being 7-0'd on this very map just a couple of weeks ago?
All they needed one round to prevent that.
Dark Zero in the last two and a half years have only lost 7-0 across multiple different rosters a single time.
Parker that was two weeks ago versus M80 on this very map and now
Repeating the circumstances against the same opponent on the same map. They could be facing another 7-0 loss
The devastating position to be in
These teams are qualified for EWC which for many was the ultimate goal of stage one
The only team that isn't playing today that also qualify for EWC's Shopify Rebellion
eliminated by Dark Zero and a 2-0 yesterday. You and I actually casted that game and it was DZ
just demolishing them. All of these teams have been very good and I will go back to a point that
I said even if DZ falls flat on their face and loses 7-0 here, some of them have a big historical
bad result for the squad. There's still a great team. They still just want a major championship
and there's no reason to believe that they will be re-claimed when it comes to the Esports
World Cup in Paris next month. And Steady obviously was the big concern for the previous matchup because
Shot of Fire Rebellion lost in the lower brackets. Yesterday they are the team that will have to
play through phase one of UWC or whatever specific or any phase one stage or whatever
interchangeable word they used to describe it. Phase one is correct. Thank you. I know.
You're losing a lot of Cabana Xcaros here Parker. NJR has just wasted 12 of those 18
pellets they're not able to break open here windows a lot of you still being
committed to this and now Gavin blows the head off of NJR it's all falling apart
Kino goes down it's a 5v3 advantage for M80 hoping to close this one out in
style changing mags well any hope on the side of DC might have just gone up
with that nitro salad and kill coming in here is it's gonna be quick to the
punch you can catch one of these players from M80 off guard there
There might be an opening shot, no, Gavin and Gunner with two kills and with a minute twenty still on the clock, it's all up to Foltz.
M80's at a bevy, Avfallas rounds. They won't have one this time.
This Foltz takes care of diffuser. Ashen hits the GG in chat. No hope whatsoever that the former world champion Avfallas will be able to clutch a 1v5.
We require an ace. An impressive set of mistakes would need to be committed by M80 to give Foltz that window of opportunity.
At this point, I mean
You just kind of delay the other
What's happening and
Yeah
No, just use that either so we can't even go for a plan because it's like control. It's down to cross the map on the mid-floor. I
Mean we can try to hide this up, but we all know if the end result is gonna be here, right?
You'd be honest with the people
M80 will square off against Wildcard as Foltz looks to come to blows looking towards the B bomb site
M80 giving him no quarter whatsoever. Gavin the final kill and M80's
7-0 dark 0-1 map 3
Nipple square off against Wildcard in the grand finals, up next
and we are back after a one round all was needed between M80 and the grand final.
Wildcard awaits and M80 move on to see if they can play an NAL title of year in stage one,
technically defending their stage title from stage two in 2025.
They look great this series, but Kyle, the real big story here is the bounce back we saw,
the shift in momentum from map one to now from a team that looked like they were asleep,
maybe literally, to a team that woke up and destroyed Dark Zero on a strong map remote
team.
Yeah, we just hauled out a warm-up map in a festive ring, you know, you can throw
that away, but you still got two more.
And I looked back specifically to round five in that second map series, Night Naked
That's when the flawless streak started happening, right?
It was 3-1, I believe, for DZ at that point.
And again, they started getting aggressive.
They started getting a little bit cocky, I might say.
And I made it to guns.
They started getting some kills.
Confidence kept blowing through every single frag
they were able to get.
Ashen started getting a little bit of help
from all his fraggers in a cabinet.
That's pretty much the story, right?
All of labs, everyone started showing up.
And they took that confidence.
And maybe DZ wasn't thinking that, hey,
we got seven-0ed on the cafe.
But you know, I made it was feeling pretty good.
Like, hey, guys, we made it to the side of the map.
We just destroyed them here just a few weeks ago.
Yeah.
For DarkZero, maybe they heard us say, man,
they're still innovating.
They're still bringing all this creative stuff
and realized, wait a minute, we shouldn't show this up
ahead of EWC because they really shut down.
Like, the team that we saw at the beginning of that series
and the team that we saw at the end
seem like completely different rosters.
Right, but I think that's what I was talking about
or, again, when you even look at that round
to when Savage wins that big 1v1.
That could have been a big momentum shift for Dark Zero,
because it looks like they were going to win that round.
You weren't expecting Savage to hit that wallbang into laundry,
and then he hits it, and then it kind of comes back to you.
Just, we're losing this.
We need to be able to get this back in our favor.
And then it just starts trickling down again.
You're losing man advantage.
You're losing the round.
Then it falls into the next round.
You're losing the round again.
And then just kind of picks away at your mental.
And I know we talk about DZ as a very strong mental team.
But again, when we listen to those comms,
They almost sound very delighted, essentially.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes the Siege Gods favor you
and sometimes they don't in a best of three.
Absolutely.
Today they were not with DZ.
And now I maybe have a really great spot.
I mean, to go into a best of three against a team
that will be cold, coming off a 7-0 victory.
We talked about the momentum.
I mean, Kyle, that has to be so influential into how good
that could start for them.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you, Lacks,
but I find that to be a huge momentum swing.
right on the side. I mean they're they're now completely warmed up and they have a problem with what?
Slow starts. They got that out of the way. They already had their warm-up now. They're fully warmed up.
I don't know how long this break is in between but I know they're going to be walking around
trying to stay warm, trying to stay loose and they're going to feel this momentum just go into
this next series. I think in most cases if you were to ask any single pro player would you
rather coming from you know becoming from a lower bracket into a grand final or would you
rather be the grand finalist waiting for that matchup to finish and I would I'd argue every
Every single player is going to say they would want to be coming from that lower bracket
into that grind final because they have the experience, they have the performance, they
have the drive and the game that just got them to that, where Wildcard is going to be sitting
on ice.
But again, they have this head to head over M80 that does kind of help them at least in
that mental aspect.
And I guess with that in mind, M80, we will not be speaking with them now because
they're going to prep prepping for their game against Wildcard.
So we have Fultz standing by after the dark zero loss.
Fultz, thanks for joining us.
I know it's not the circumstances that we wanted to be speaking right now.
But before we get into EWC and looking ahead, you guys have had an incredible stage.
But can you tell me what went wrong here in this game?
Like what what changed between map map one and what we saw on map two and three?
Map two, I think was we were playing like pretty solid, but what really bit us
today was like the kind of the small communication, a little bit of communication
getting like either bottlenecked through a few people or
um problems overall just getting a little bit chaotic and not like their direction um and they
took full advantage of that. Well, Foltz, I mean regardless congratulations on making EWC nonetheless
obviously I know that's a big contention point for you guys especially given the fact you guys were
top four last year very close to making the grand final. Now the road ahead obviously being EWC
is there going to be a lot going into that for changes from that you take this throughout
this stage and throughout these playoffs or is it going to kind of be the same same progress
and same approach that you're going to be going towards EWC?
Yeah, I think for us, a lot of the progress you're going to see is be going to be like a lot of internally focused.
There's still a lot of improvement that we need to be honing in on.
That's been a big focus of us for us after the last major is not really getting complacent in that sense
and making sure we're really ironing out all of our weaknesses and not just thinking because you're winning,
you're doing everything right.
Well, full to probably more of a narrative question here as always from me on the couch
But cafe seems to be a little bit of an issue for you guys
I think one in three in the past couple cafe games losing a wild card losing to m80 twice. Can we see maybe some map pool?
Changes possibly going into EWC. Is that something you guys we also be taking a look at?
Yeah, I'm sure our staff will take a look at kind of what's going on for our cafe. It's I mean
And historically, we have been very good at it,
but yeah, you can argue that there's
been some problems on that map specifically for us recently.
So I'll leave that to the coaches and say yes, sir.
And that's about it.
I guess I have one more follow-up question.
Obviously, you're talking about just the microcoms
trying to not be in there or being cluttered or missed.
Just for the viewer players, people that look up to you,
I mean, when you're in those situations,
how do you alleviate that?
How do you fix those in those moments
to try to make whatever you can out of it?
Yeah, the best fix to it, it's usually a result for I guess the reason it happens is because of tunnel vision and obviously adrenaline and anxiety is a little bit higher during a match.
But really the only thing you can do is first identify and then to just get loud, just let it yell like the macro plan of the round and, you know, force a force I heard out of all the guys and hopefully that pulls them out of it.
But, um, yeah, it's more something that you're gonna have to build up over time, but I think we need to keep focusing on.
For sure.
Well, folks, last thing for you before we send you off here.
EWC coming up, you guys take the international stage again after winning in Salt Lake City.
Anything you're looking forward to, particularly about that event? Anyone you're looking forward to playing?
Um, no, nobody, nobody in particular.
I'm just excited to travel do what I love and
Stay focused on the process
Amazing love that. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you hopping on with us
Congrats on a great stage and yes the impairs
Thank you guys. See you well dark zero close off a stage for the loss
They will be the third seed here going into the eSports World Cup the top two seeds and 80 and wild card
They will now battle it out in the grand final as our final two teams as they've worked their way through the bracket
Have finally been decided. What a road it's been and maybe starting there in the top left
They lose two wild card in that upper bracket final and they will have a chance at redemption
In just a little bit
We're gonna give M80 a few minutes to recoup and get ready for their next game and we get our map vans done and all
of that. While we do that in just a few minutes, we're going to be bringing you our first ever,
I think, NAL awards show where we're going to award some of the highlight plays from stage one
and MVP, the play of the game, the width of the stage, all that and more coming your way next.
So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.
I'm breaking next and I'm partyin' out.
Throwin' up and I'm blowin' stuff with my money out.
Cause I can't make it down so let's run it out.
I'ma keep it goin' till the end of the night.
I'ma keep it going, I'ma keep it going, I'ma keep it going, so I won't let them down
Welcome to the NAL awards show to wrap up the stage where we're going to be talking
about some of the best and maybe not so best moments throughout stage one.
Moments we want to remember going into stage two the way we did this is we kind of had a discussion amongst ourselves about how things should fall out where necessary
We consulted with the producers to see what they had to say if they had to break a tie
And that's where we're gonna begin by issuing the award for the most
Improved team and we had a little bit of a discussion and disagreement about this because Cal
I know there's one team near and dear to your heart that I have been informed did not win the award for most improved team
They were robbed they apparently a hundred thieves an honorable mention in this category
Why do you think they deserved this award most improved team hundred thieves?
I mean we're talking about a team a kickoff that didn't win a single match
They went oh and four what'd they get they got hot and cold they got casein boom their imply off one game away from making
EWC that's not improved. What is and there's no no no bias at all there
You have no relationships with anyone on that team. I've never heard of them
Well, uh, we will get into the actual winners of our most improved team.
So the winner in stage one of the award for most improved team is...
Cloud9!
Lacks, I know you're a big fan of Cloud9, and I know that you were advocating for them to win this award. Why?
I mean, just for the simple fact, when you just look at the history of Cloud9 in the North American League,
with American League, they weren't really that much of,
they weren't a competitive team.
They weren't a competitive roster.
And this brand new resurgence of the team,
bringing Pamba onto the team,
really allowed newer players like Poozy, like Sensor,
and especially like a new player like Monk
that came into League to really thrive
and develop as players.
We highlighted their defenses, they were really strong.
The biggest struggle for them was their attacks,
where you get a little more time as a team,
you get more reps earning 2-0,
you go into the next split and you fix those attacks.
They can be a qualifying team
And they weren't really close.
They were one game out from being able to be
in contention or to be in the qualifiers.
Back to the matters, they just need more time.
And for that alone, in comparison to a team like 100 Thieves
where there are far more experienced players on it,
I have to give it to Cloud9.
And it seems like I know you don't agree here.
But when you look it on paper, right,
they don't have hot and cold.
They don't have that level of experience.
I don't have hot and cold.
I don't have hot and cold.
We want to talk about bias.
Were you on Cloud9 at one point?
Long time ago.
I think you might love that org.
I do agree. I think they've been they're super improved obviously. I'm looking forward to seeing them in stage shit
Where I think they would rightfully deserve the win it all right well that's it
All right, that brings us to the play of the stage
This one was a moment that we've talked a bit about already, but it is truly worth mentioning again
It was m80 and wildcard
77 heading into round 15 on clubhouse when spiker did this
Yeah, I heard that bro, I might just like drop kitchen randomly and just hit side
I'm not gonna lie. There's nobody can I bro, bro. I'm going to you guys make noise
Intro just get a little kitchen with me. Okay, let's do this shit. Are you guys ready?
I'm gonna walk box three, okay three two one dropping
Can I done
Yeah
Call the player, call the player.
He's searched, searched, I'm a blue.
I'm a blue.
I'm a call the player.
I'm back.
Hey, Blitz.
Call the player.
Hey, come on!
Oh, my fucking girl!
I'm a blue!
Oh, my fucking girl!
Nice, man.
I can't hear you, bro.
I mean, I was celebrating with him when that happened.
I mean, you have to give it to Spiker.
It was a great heads-up call.
It was a great triple kill.
Now, the first two kills, maybe I was questioning.
I was like, OK, SMG-12, but once he hit that third kill
and blue, that's when I let out the honorable.
Oh my god, and I celebrated with them hats off to spiker wonderful play for me
And not only playing at the stage, but also called all the stage right? I mean now that was impressive
That's an IGL by the way
That's being able to drop down that hat and use the SMG 12 the recoil control
The first shot was pretty impressive as well and I'm a SMG 12 hater personally, but I still thought that was impressive
Well, let's talk about the other side of recoil control that brings us to the whiff of the stage
So our whiff of the stage goes to
And the moment on bank that he may be wishes he could play again.
A moment that I think he could get.
Oh, man, congrats to Andy.
Look, I had to highlight.
Yes, he's still in my opinion, the best fragger in North America.
I mean, he's as good as it gets.
But look, even Andy is going to miss a whole 50s bullet magazine of gold.
Yes, I know the gun.
It tickles a body shot.
So you're only you need to hit a head shot, but he thought he was
so confident in his headshot to flick shot ratio that he jumped out that window and
You're gonna get the whiff
That was on on bank that was layer where he made that happen in a map that I think he likes
But maybe a play that that that he didn't like that brings us to the
Interview of the stage because yes, we have an award for that. We make them up. We can do anything we want
So we'll take you through this one right now
Sometimes like my specialty is Spanish. I'll say trace those uno and then we do
I love it. It's contributing to the vibes. Oh, it's good to see the dark zero guys letting
loose a little bit talking about what goes on behind the scenes. I feel like we never
get really in depth answers for them, but you know, good to see the personality there.
That's the best thing they get. Yeah. I mean, gotta love the personality. Gotta love the
vibes. You always know what to expect from these guys. However, in the most recent
series, it wasn't what we expected, but good to give J9O that praise for those
interviews because they are pretty fun. Yeah, well let's get into the meat of this award's
presentation. Let's talk about the MVP because this could go so many different directions,
whether you want to look at stats, big moments, big plays. There are so many people, Kyle,
deserving of this award. You could go so many different directions. Yeah, and I'm not seeing
Dream up there. That's kind of questionable. But yeah, there's absolutely so many. We say
So many people are top fraggers, newers, Ashen, Gavini,
spoits come alive again ever since the SLC.
He's up there in the category.
J9-0, I mean, realistically, we could have went back and forth
on this all day long.
I mean, there's so many players to pick from here,
but we have to decide one.
And the reality, there only can be one.
And do you know who that one is?
We'll find out in a second.
That brings us to the MVP of stage one.
And the award goes to.
Ashen is the MVP of stage one, statistically the most
valuable player he's showing up when it matters for MAD.
I mean, that last series was a great example.
Yeah, consistently, he is putting up a performance
and putting MAD in the pinning positions.
Even in this round in particular,
I remember listening to their comments.
He was getting fed every little piece of information
right there and pulls the clutch out of his hat.
But it's this performance from Ashton again,
that we just need to highlight time and time again,
because whether he's waking up at 8.30 in the morning
or later in the evening, he still puts up a performance
for this team, and notably and arguably the best player
out of the NA.
I mean, they dropped 25 kills in the map
for literally watching right now,
which was just so, so impressive to see.
And again, he showed up today in a big way.
The reason they even got over the finish line,
the reason that they are even in the grand finals
here and it's hard to stand out on a roster that's as talented as M80.
But I love now that with the addition of Savage, he's on the right roles and
we get to see the generational talent.
We get to see what M80 was hoping for when they first got Ashton to the roster.
Well, M80 have a lot of star players and in making of the fractures series
that we've already had a couple of great interviews with,
our team had a chance to sit down with Gunnar ahead of this stage to see
how his journey into Siege began.
My name is Gunnar. I play for a Mady, and this is Fractures.
Let's go!
Wow, I'm the best team in the world.
I'm a top tier player.
My confidence was through the roof.
I was in love with the game.
Like, I played the crap out of it.
It's stupid as that all sounds.
I mean, I was going hard, and like, this was my life.
And then turn into a very successful career
that I can look back on proud of what I did.
It was generally the greatest feeling
that I've ever felt in my life.
I'm Sean, also known as Gunnar.
I was born and raised in Fresno, California.
It's been a very long dream to get here.
My parents, they bought me an X360 when I was pretty young.
My dad was kind of into it when I was growing up.
He bought me my first, you know, FPS game,
and that's where it took off.
The name Gunner came from, actually, my dad.
I had, like, an Xbox 360-generated name.
I don't know what a new name.
And then my dad had this bright idea.
At the time, my brother, who wasn't even born yet,
they had the name for him already.
So technically, he was named after me.
It's the name Gunner came first, so unfortunately for him,
I'm still the favorite.
How I got into Siege was pretty funny.
All my friends at school were talking about it,
and I wanted to be a part of the conversation
because anything was, I just didn't have it yet.
So I lied and was like, yeah, I have the game too.
And we were all talking about it,
and I was just going off like pure white lies.
I didn't know a thing.
I said someone had a gun that didn't exist at the time yet.
The same day I went home, bought it.
So I felt bad for my lie and I didn't get truth.
Outside of gaming, I played a ton of sports.
I ended up being a pretty good basketball,
and I stuck with basketball all the way through high school.
Eventually, it was just like I want to play CCS,
which was the biggest T3 tournament of the time,
and practicing for a Siege and practicing for a basketball
became impossible.
I thought, my mom, I don't know.
I just want to quit basketball.
But, no. Sorry, mom, but it was done.
I went full into Siege right after that.
In the early days, my first was making my first LFT post.
I went to South for media.
I ended up making a host saying that I was looking for a team,
and I got a couple DMs.
I was able to find a team,
and I can't remember what the team was called.
It was terrible.
When I was younger, I had no loyalty.
I wanted to play with the better players.
So if there was a team I thought was better at the time
or a player, I would go for it.
Keep winning.
I joined Ariel for my first breakthrough.
And from Ariel on,
I was on pretty much the best T3 teams there were
there weren't until Pearly.
The moment that I knew that I would go to Pearly and see each was the first game of CCS
it was probably against the best team.
We beat them, I mean I can make Pearly, I can do this.
So it was my Pearly career, I had joined Pearville and I had an incredible stage.
I think I was top three rated.
I only stayed on Pearville for one stage and the next stage saw me spot me out.
It was a weird situation because I joined a much better team
but I wasn't the superstar of the team.
I needed to learn how to, you know, be support.
I finished one more year of Sonics,
and then I was unfortunately dropped,
and my play wasn't great, and in that moment, I cried.
I was, like, literally devastated,
put all this time and effort,
and I think now I might be over.
I reached out to all the coaches,
and the only team that really wanted me was Beast Coast.
Beast Coast!
When I went to Beast Coast,
there was absolutely zero expectations.
It was just something I wasn't really used to.
You do this 100% we can obvious guys. I mean there was no work pressure. There was no player pressure no coach pressure
It was just working as hard as we can having fun knocking around and really became close friends and it worked out for us
Are we winning the Manchester and then falling short after we gonna make the events and and maybe
bought me and hit me like and me for me was
hardest you get that feeling of like while like it feels so good to be like
top dollar at the time and so you can't say it was a fluke you can't say oh they
have an easy bracket I mean we went through the gauntlet that is the greatest
feeling you possibly feel as a player the man man himself gonna you've done it
again and you fought so hard for this one not many parents get to see their
kids win on the stage with people cheering and doing what they love so
that was a very special moment for me and in my parents for sure I'm very
blessed that that had happened to us.
This team is so hardworking.
They believe in everything that I brought to them.
And the way that we work, it's not because of me.
It's because of all of them embracing it.
My relationship with my coach is very special.
I mean, I had a good listen to his heavy metal history
songs every single day in his track, which was horrible.
But he cares for us.
He's a funny guy.
I didn't pick things too, too seriously.
And really happened to have him as my coach.
These like, definitely us national team was like, me crying.
You know, it's the first time I've ever done this
and it'd be like the first ones to do it
and hopefully like set the tone for like the future of it
with what we do.
The kind of legacy that I want to remember
is just how annoying it was to play against me.
Thank God that he's not playing anymore.
I'm glad he's gone.
And with that, it is time for our grand final,
M80 and Wildcard.
In the moment that we've been building to
over the last 40 days, we are finally going to crown an NAL champion.
Boy, it feels good to get to this point.
These two teams who have already played in the upper bracket final.
It feels good that this one is a rematch here, Kyle,
because it's a matchup where M80 is looking for redemption.
Wildcard are looking to prove that they can be NAL champions
for the first time, that domestic success for the first time.
There's so much on the line here.
There is so much on the line here.
And I'm glad we had Gunnar on that graphic.
I mean, he's going to be attending his first ever EWC.
I know that's going to be exciting for him
and a few of those guys on M80.
But yeah, this is a chance at redemption.
They just played each other yesterday,
and it was a game that we were just saying
that M80 was a sleep at the wheel, that entire game.
They didn't even have a wake-up phase that they had today.
Well, right now they've seen a wake ever since that DZ
series.
Again, round five and map two,
it seemed to be really the turning point for them.
And are they going to be able to kind of carry
that momentum into this series or does Wildcard have something up their sleeve?
A potential Wildcard perhaps where they could slow down maybe speed bump and 80.
Well, that's the thing with Wildcard is that their big speed bump,
the obstacle that's been blocking their path in the past, has been JJ.
Spiker told us as much in the interview yesterday,
not going to be a problem this time for Wildcard.
They don't have to worry about JJ blocking their road.
Yeah, JJ isn't a factor anymore.
There should be no excuses on the side from Wildcard,
whether we heard it from Spiker,
whether we heard it from Baby Shark.
JJ is no longer an obstacle in front of them.
And the only obstacle in front of them right now
from winning that title is M80,
which is the team that they have arguably had the head
to head over in the past three matchups so far.
So again, there's no excuses for WildCure,
why they can't close us out,
why they can't be the NA L champions.
And they've wanted this so badly,
they've pulled us in much.
And the reason is, international success,
Wildcard has been accustomed to,
but domestic success, this has been a talking point all year.
They have just not been able to find success
against their NA rivals in the same way
that they do on the international stage.
Kyle, I mean, this is that opportunity to finally prove
that they can make this happen and get the win.
Yeah, you would think that you would really only care
about international success,
but they definitely care about
what their regional results are.
They are sick of hearing it.
If we could look back to the NAL stage one,
2024 seventh place, fifth place, fifth place, fourth,
and then a kickoff.
I had to throw a kickoff in there just because they
did go against JJ.
It was there.
And he was there.
And he was there.
They're getting closer, right?
They've always been that fringe team that just
seems to barely make it into playoffs
and then hopefully win one game or maybe the lower
bracket game and kind of make it to those events.
But again, we talked to Baby Shark yesterday
and he said the differences.
this stage, they came in and they talked about what their problems were very
honestly. We've been a part of many of those conversations as players, right?
They sat down and what where is the problem? It's in scrims and practices.
We're not taking it seriously enough. We're just joking around or we're
throwing different rounds, right? We're not listening to our coaches. So
they just have that very serious conversation and it seems to be
paying off big for them because this is a brand new wild card. I have
never seen them this number. Yeah, I mean, they ironed out the
imperfections and that's what we're seeing exactly, which is why
they're now at the shot in the grand final.
Right, we can't find those imperfections.
I mean, you look on paper, you're trying to find
where's the weak spot?
Who's not contributing?
This team across the board has found their stride.
Everywhere you look, this team is playing well.
Yeah, that's just the thing is we've highlighted.
And I like the wrong people.
We've highlighted the wrong people.
We've highlighted Baby Shark and Bay in the path.
Love me some Storm.
We've highlighted all roads leave the spiker,
but the two we left off have been Adrian Kansen.
If you look back at the playoffs,
these are actually their two highest rated players.
So yes, we already know how good they is.
We already know how good the rest of the team is.
I mean, this is a complete team at this point.
And it makes me wonder what this team could have been like
at SLC if they had Adrian.
I mean, they had that guy.
Who's hot and cold again?
I mean, if they had Adrian,
they might have won that entire thing.
Who knows?
It's very possible.
But now as they've been waiting in the wings,
watching the lower bracket final,
they have and they need to go up against here and the conversation is,
and this is always a talking point in this kind of bracket reset situation.
Who would you rather be in this situation?
You guys have been there before lower bracket coming back up,
watching other teams play lacks.
Give me your thoughts on this.
If you're in this situation, your wildcard able to watch the opponents
play the game, you're sitting back.
Maybe you got some scrims in this morning to warm up, or would you rather
be and they, there's no scrim on the board.
that is going to get you more
prepared for a match that you need
the game day reps and that's exactly
what MAD has going into this series.
So I would choose MAD 110%
of the time. Well, let's get into our map
as to see exactly if MAD
can keep up that momentum and
where it's going to be.
Wildcard feels
like a bold choice here to go to labs
right off the bat Kyle. What do you make of this?
Yeah, I'm surprised. I mean Consulate
was kind of up there in their pool and they've been big
fans of consulate, but we are going to see labs.
We, I mean, we're going to see two maps that we just,
and maybe just played, right?
And I feel like that works in their favor a little bit.
They are warmed up specifically on those two maps,
but labs, I mean, it is a good map for Wildcard.
It allows them, we've seen them with the info.
We've seen them with the C4 max.
Again, we're kind of hearing about it,
but guys, it's going to happen again on this map.
Don't be surprised when we see four or five C4s,
but I really do think we're going to need to see Wildcard.
They're going to need to kind of get their map here.
because again, two of those maps in cafe being how good M80 just looked on that. Yeah, I'm a little worried.
All right, M80 and wildcard. It is finally time to crown a stage one champion here in the NAL.
We go to labs to get things started.
Thank you very, very much.
I'm not going to be frozen for a second there, Jesse.
Oh, good stuff all across the board.
I am so excited to see how this unfolds.
MAD were slow to start the previous best of three,
but then they picked a part Dark Zero.
Now they're going to be coming in white hot up
against Wildcard.
Wildcard be warmed up to deal with the theory
that MAD will bring them.
It all comes down to this Parker and what a matchup that it is.
N80, one of the most well funded organizations in the scene
and Orc who had consistently been at the top.
They've won majors before the course champions back in Munich.
You saw that excellent video of a gunner
before this game took place
where we got to really dive into his journey
that was awesome to see.
And then on the other side, you've got Wildcard,
a team who have really come up from the trenches.
This is an organization that when they came into the scene
back in 2023,
when they joined back into North America.
They really were not a top team.
They had some rough results.
I think the graphics at seventh place,
the first stage of 2024,
so they really had to build their way back up,
consistently doubted, consistently the underdogs
and consistently overperforming people's expectations.
This is a team that I think are tired of being counted out.
They're tired of everyone just assuming
that the other top orcs in the team,
the Dark Zero, the K-80, the Rebellion,
should be favorites against them,
and they're ready to prove it
that they can be the best team in North America.
The graphic showed it, right?
All words and upwards.
Steady improvement with nary a step back
for this wildcard team.
This organization's been in here for a while.
You'll recall that wildcards sent a team
to Sixth Invitational playing out of A-PAC
way, way, way back when they used to have
the old red logo that was like the W, et cetera.
And not to claim it because it's not our job
And frankly, it doesn't really trouble new eSports, or it's really new.
The Wildcard rebrand, I think, is one of the best that we have seen in eSports.
And it's a beautiful thing.
And with it, they have found a lot of success with the steady improvement here in the NAL.
They are competing at EWC.
Both of these teams are, if you have not tuned into the playoffs.
Stage one, the stakes were high, but for most teams,
the goal was to make it to Paris next month for the eSports World Cup.
M80, Wildcard locked their spot.
The other two teams not competing in the grand final.
Shop of Fire Rebellion and Dark Zero will also be joining them as they leave in just a little
bit under a month's time. So for here though, our friends, for God's End for Glory, which
team will be crowned the victors of stage one and the champions of the first stage of the year.
Barker, I really like the Operator Bands coming out from Wildcard. They bandos the Thermite,
you usually think, all right, it'll probably be an ace to follow this up, but they band the
Thatcher instead gambling that m80 will leave up the kaiid and that pays off
It makes this wall really awkward to open up
They aren't gonna have that thatcher available which is so common
They do manage to get it done Ash and opens up that wall without losing anything so that's great
But it took them over a minute to make this happen and now the clock is a little bit tight as it was wrapped
This is quite the battle now as Savage has his hands full but amidst the smoke firing away
M80 still hitting their shots just like they did against dark zero wild card will feel as the wild card answers right back
Ashen finally traded out by none other than kanzin
2v2
Savage and adrian once teammates all the way over in Europe now adversaries
both trying as
Imports to be the champions of stage one all this action occurring in the first minute 40 seconds
Leaving plenty of time for both of these teams to figure out next steps pretty good utils still on a native as well
Parker like to go out savage of course up here on the black beard
He's got no nades, but you've got gavin with two smoke bolts and still some cannibals to play with lots of time diffuse hidden hand
I'm a little worried how low HP savages if he goes for a plant
He could die just to a tickle of a nitro cell or that last toxic babe
So I want to see m80 beta this utility try to make
Wildfire will throw that missile before they will be executed.
That's the Nitro baited out if they can get past this toxic bay,
but plants could be in the car.
Here's the movement right now from Savages,
even a single tech of that gas canister.
The last one now used by Adrian will fell his former teammate.
Both Adrian and Canberr are looking to capitalize off of this.
Adrian will take matters into his own hands with the SMG.
Takes down Savage.
I have in the end of the hour.
The two players still live for Wildcard, just waiting this one out.
Gavin uses some smoke for concealment, still one in pockets.
And he tries for the kill, but it's a great timed push.
And Wildcard take round number one.
I like that on the defense from Wildcard Parker.
They don't just sit back and let that push come in.
They get aggressive with it.
They recognize that Saban and Gavin are a little bit disconnected, so they aggress
onto the Blackbeard.
down that diffuse get inside of IT and they put Gavin into a really difficult
position in the 1v2. I love that late-round play coming out from Wildcard.
It is quite poetic, isn't it? I mean, Savage versus Adrian, two players who not
only teamed together but won the eSports World Cup together just last year.
These are the two-seat players who won Secret. We're able to lift that trophy.
That Secret team kind of got dismantled and different players have gone
different positions but all five of those original members have now made
Max is qualified for the eSports World Cup, so they will be meeting up once more, a little reunion in Paris as they all try to fight for their spot once again to repeat as champions.
Team Secret, of course, is not making it through the EML, but getting a spot back as the champions from last year.
We'll be really excited to see that play out next month. Almost a little preach next year for Savage and Adrian face-off in the server.
They're both really terrific players. Savage's numbers aren't anything to sneeze at. He's the
worst rated player on this team all the way down in 35th, but again, I know that you
can argue he is playing the toughest role on M80. He is not responsible for getting
a lot of kills. He just shuffles them off to Ashen and Gavin, both of whom are well
into the hundreds in terms of frags just this stage. We reference these numbers back
in the previous broadcast, but for those that didn't watch it,
Ashen is the highest rated player in the entirety of the NA League.
He did with the MVP award that was just on your screen moments before we got into this match.
Gavin sits in fifth place.
And then right below him is the weapon, Bay 94, sitting in sixth.
Kansan rounding out the top 10.
And Adrian and Spiker really not far removed at 14th and 16th.
The worst rated player on Wildcard is Baby Shark.
and he sets a 20 second to 50 and if your worst rated player is 20 seconds, you're probably doing pretty well.
As a team, unfortunately, we seem to have passed or cursed him as he gets picked apart really early in this round.
Wildcard will stare down at disadvantage in numbers.
Yeah, you know, I praised the operator fans forcing this Maverick to come out from Ashen, but I have to say N80 have played really well with these constraints.
The map play has been perfect so far today, Parker.
They get to pick off on the baby shark partly because of it.
Because of it, as he was playing around that IT role and they get hard punished, now Spiker, the captain of Wildcard, will also fall.
So this mid-four bomb site has become really exposed.
There's nobody left inside the site to try to play this anchor position.
Everybody from Wildcard up above, and there's a lot of players, all three of them, rowkitting down the fish stairs.
So they're all grouped up.
M80 in action, ducks fly together, Jesse.
And they are all flying right now.
Diffuse kit in the hands of savage getting planted nitrous health goes out
Connects on the ashen but doesn't get savage that was the intended target a good lockout from above his m80 paralyzed wildcard down in the site and answer back
Generally just a perfect attack spiker was the one player that was again down on that bottom floor
He was playing sort of around lounge when he goes down
It was baby shark near the breach the first one to die in the midst of that round and then gunner finds an angle onto spiker
just playing, I think, over by the kitchen cafeteria side of this map.
So really good isolated picks being found by M80.
They were able to really get that man count advantage, of course, favorable on their side.
The wall has not been a problem.
Despite the fact that it is 1-1 here, and of course, I don't want to downplay anything the wildcard did there on that first round.
I think M80 have had good control of this game so far.
They've been really playing well despite the more difficult side that they're starting on.
I'm just going to go back to
the game. I'm just going to
go back to the game. Just a
brief tech pause right now as
I have to imagine the question
we asked earlier prior to the
facecams coming on was that
Savage managed to have his
visa issues worked out so that
he can join the team in
America given that you still
playing in the classroom just
outside of Windsor, Ontario. I
guess the answer to that would
be. No Windsor known as
South Detroit, one of the few
places in Canada that is
team. He's enjoying it. A lot of his teammates were there as well, but it looks like they've all flown home as the stage comes to a conclusion and teams are now going to be gearing up for those. Not as lengthy flights as it's no longer in Riyadh, these sports World Cup moved to Paris for this year for how long it stays there remains to be seen, but.
For some of these teams, I know Adrian said it in an interview semi recently.
He said that he was hoping to go back to Riyadh because as a European, he's been to Paris a number of times.
And hey, for a lot of these players, they were there back in the spring, as that's where SI was most recently held.
Obviously, that team's secret squad on which Sam and Adrian played a huge role made the finals,
but ultimately fell to phase plan as the Brazilian squad won back-to-back world championships.
And now teams will get to lift another trophy on that same soil.
Oh, be it!
Here, I'm not as cool as the Hammer.
Certainly not. Nothing quite compares to the Sixth Invitational partner,
but these other tournaments, Major, need to be seen there.
We have around the year so very important.
Teams rate them very highly, and certainly,
M80, the four of the two of those majors, will hold them in high regard.
Last time they were in Paris, they thought they still love for M80.
they lost immediately in the playoffs falling to Stompens G2 in the lower bracket.
They're in the first round while Kirk a lot more success
but eventually fell to the grand finalist team secret in lower bracket for the finals.
Some of these players at least were having good times back in Paris.
Again, Savage and Adrian on that team secret squad
that dominated so much of last year.
It's really a shame that they were not able to stick together.
They've all kind of fallen separate ways.
In North America, at least we've been the benefactors of that.
Absolutely.
Some more passive holds right now from wildcarts as they are situated very well.
Only one of those Selma charges went off before electrification kicked back in,
so there will be no easy access.
If there's any access at all, that's obviously quite frustrating for this M80 team,
but we'll have to figure out ways to get around this.
M80 did get a bit creative,
the tail end of their series against Dark Zero,
but creativity wasn't even the big story.
It was the confidence and you touched on that as well.
I don't know if you can show that level of confidence
against a team like Wildcard right away.
Not that Dark Zero won't punish you for it,
but Wildcard are a team that has proven time and time again
that if you give them an inch,
they will take a mile against you.
So a little bit of sluggishness from M80
as they figure out what this defense is looking like
with half the rounds still to go.
Ashen holding the flank under the table,
I really like that.
This is a telegraph push from M80.
They've already pushed in through Exo to the bomb site.
They don't need to go to enter the main breach
because they've got their crossfires.
And Savage is looking around saying,
guys, there is nobody straight on site.
What you're worried about here, if you're Savage,
is the birth plate.
Do they have control of storage just above this plant?
Well, back is going to be the critical factor
for who wins this round.
Gavin holding this position now
as Savage looks for safe passage into the bomb site.
He's got a smoke to conceal him, he's out by the flashes, there he goes, nitro-cell tossed, it does a little bit of damage, but just a lick.
As right now, you see Wildcard doing a great job, Kansan and Baby Shark with two kills, but they miss the defuse kit getting planted.
Wildcard down in the post-plant, scrambling, doing pretty well from a fragging department.
It's Defuser and Gavin, the last two standing from M80, 15 seconds of run off of that defuse kit.
Defuser almost had his self-casing block and as he gets down going out the window, I believe that's from down below and Gavin, in a really good spot.
Surveying the damage that his Selmas had done to the wall earlier, he just needs to play time.
Three bodies still up from Wildcard. They're going to dog pile Gavin at some point and get to the defuse kit, but they are running out of time.
Spiker on the case, Gavin might not know this as he pops up.
Great coverage from Kansan, and Spiker sticks the plant.
Wildcard, regain the lead.
Nice post-plant, that's a really tough one to win for the defenders.
The fact that they got the fuser hopping out that window,
certainly gave them a bit of an edge.
Gavin's in a tough spot there, of course,
an insane position to win the post-plant in,
but 1v3 is always going to be difficult.
He tried to just play last second,
get that down onto the person sticking to the stable.
sticking to disable. He knew that the time was on his side, but ultimately just too much
body blocking going on and the kill came way too fast from wildcard. So beautifully played
out by them. Here's the kaid band that is absolutely necessary for MAs. They don't have
to keep playing Maverick. They will be happy to take that operator out of their pool.
But even still a 2-1 split, I think for wildcard coming out of this first quarter will
feel pretty good for them. That basement bombsite could have gone way, way worse
with Kansan not being able to deny the plant from inside a storage.
That's usually your win con.
If you don't get denied in that bomb site,
that is really, really tough to lose for the attackers.
But again, big man count disadvantage and a wild card pull through.
You gotta give M80 credit for how much they're able to open up these rounds.
You know, if you go back to the best of three that was just completed,
M80 defeating dark zero.
It was map number one where DZ was firmly in the drivers,
just to have every single metric.
But then he turned them out number two and that's when the tides started to shift.
And you ended up with Nighthaven Labs going in favor of M80 and they led the way in opening
duels.
Nine of the 12 rounds played, M80 struck first.
You turn your sights to cafe, granted a much smaller sample size because it was a 7-0
victory for M80, but they amassed five first bloods of seven possible rounds.
so far they have all three so say what you will about this m80 team i do think that confidence
is still at the high level that you noted and if they continue to get first ones over and over
and over again they are constantly putting themselves in advantageous spots fixing the rest of it
into the bigger focal point especially now that they are chasing wild card for three rounds
but the underlying numbers for m80 have been really good so far which suggests that this
This would be a really competitive first half.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a 3-3.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
I think this has been really close so far.
M80 ended up a bit better in the early game.
Blockheart had been a bit better in the late game,
so we really could go either direction.
This top floor bomb set would always
be quite favorable for the defenders.
They, of course, moved away from the kite.
Two brown combo, and instead, we'll
bring out the mute.
And the sentry from Spiker.
You don't see the sentry very often,
and certainly not from Spiker on this top floor.
He's got impacts and a C4, so I
I think he's trying to keep some of these walls closed, expecting there to be maybe an ace coming through.
It is the Habana from Ashen, so that might be a little bit less than effective, but also good counter to this.
Monty, of course, is being brought by Savage, so I like the util that's bringing out.
Detonating. There it goes. Nitro. It's gonna deal about half damage. It's not bad at all.
Onto the mountain.
Impact grenade.
Spent a good 20 seconds talking about it, not longer, but how good M80 is at first bloods.
and Baby Shark goes up, completely blows up my narrative.
So thanks so much, Baby Shark, really appreciate that.
As he's pushed back by the mountain,
as the mountain does indeed move,
that is an, that is a forced error.
My goodness, Gunner killing Savage and Baby Shark.
No Europeans allow, says Gunner,
as he takes down his own teammate,
but it sets up Wildcard really nicely here.
These missteps by M80, once again,
are going to be punished by this Wildcard team.
They have shown time and time again
they can do that one minute to go and it's a 4v2 favoring wild card.
That's a brutal spot to be in.
4v1 now is going to pause to Kansan and it's the perfect to finish things off.
And you can see the momentum starting to build for this wild card team.
Coming into this grand finals a little bit cold.
The desk was saying they'd rather be M80.
But the early lead is favoring the team from the upper bracket.
It's been a great start from them.
Certainly some mistakes in that round.
Parker, the team kill onto the Monty is unfortunate.
It was a headshot straight onto Savage 2, so the earlier damage not contributing to that one, but
I still don't think they're in a terrible spot. Wildcard winning the bomb sites that they should be winning.
I really like the Nitro play. That was a big reason why they were able to win that first game yesterday.
When they beat M80 never back in finals, the Nitro cells were talked about non-stop by our desk
and rightfully so for all the impact that they were having.
We're seeing it again early in this game. The C4s are coming through.
Everybody's playing well and the confidence starts to peak when you start with the grounds like that
Incredible stuff and it prompts Fabian to slap the timeout button as he's gonna talk M80 through this situation
admittedly
This is not an unfamiliar spot for M80. They were you know quite sluggish and they're slow starters against dark zero in that
very first map it needs they just need some time to figure out their opponents and then once they can
do that and put their game plan together then they continue to improve. Savage obviously
is still acclimating to North America I know that we've played a number of games at this point but
you're going up against a team that is ultimately more experienced as a full roster they haven't
needed to make the same changes that M80 did when you swap out your IGLs getting rid of hot
bring in Savage there will be big changes to the team and I have to imagine
I didn't all fall on the shoulders of hot and cold either I've no doubt that the
coaching staff Fabian in particular is driving some things on me to be at the
difference though the fact they were able to win stage one with Savage coming
in as a wiki I yell in North America not a rookie I yell in period but just
in North America just to show how good this team can be and of course
they've made up to the grand finals right now you don't earn a birth in
in the grand finals unless you are deserving of it.
So, M.A.D. just needs to figure out their situation.
The timeout should hopefully pay off for their fans.
And they need to keep it close
because if we set it through 3-1-2,
his book was most likely,
M.A.D. is gonna be perfect for the remainder of half point.
Both these teams playing with very young IGLs,
Viker and Savage, 21 and 22 years old,
respectively, Savage, I think really broke into the scene
after playing for years on Team Secret,
really rose up through the ranks
with the same kind of core.
He talked in interviews with how it's a bit of a bit different now moving into a team like M80, where he didn't grow up with them, he didn't evolve as an IGL with these guys.
He's said it's been a bit of a learning process for them. They've had to learn to adapt with him, he's had to learn to adapt with them, and it's been a very long process of everything so far.
Good impact to start things off on the IT wall, which clears not only the second half of the Selma, but also a bookstrum that has gotten a breach.
Avery will take care of Gunner, first blood going in Wildcard's favor yet again.
I fear I have cursed them at this point in time, and there's just no way around this.
That's a shame on my end.
Sorry to all M80 fans.
The timeout you hope converts in your favor.
That is not the case.
It has not come to pass Ashen after an incredible free map series against Star Zero.
right now towards the bottom of this team leading them in deaths the only pick
so far that's come on the side of m80 is bay who himself not performing up to
snuff 0 and 3 today the best way to perform upon this team will need to be a
little bit better but for the time being while Carter is still in control here
they're inside the bomb or they're almost inside the bomb side I should say
and they just outside the doorway they could start planting but they don't
I have top control partner and this tank is going to be really tough to get down with Adrian above.
Linear plant, savage, getting the job done. No, he bales off the last second.
His show looked like if he'd stuck it he would have been in good position.
Takes a bit of a beating and will attempt again.
And he sticks the landing this time. Wild card has four players upright.
Adrian on the vault out red still effectively by Gavin.
The striker goes down two.
M80 reduced to just diffuser now in the post-plant.
Kansan and baby shark will compete for that final kill
while also turning their attention towards the diffuser.
Get a good greed by Kansan, a pre-fire goes out,
Deegan, ham, dancing around the ace.
Diffuser gets one, but he can't pivot in time.
The Frenchman will get the final kill.
And with one round remaining, Wildcard will take the first
half for one, the scoreline.
A late round continuously dominated by Wildcard, really well done by Baby Shark in the end
there to win that 1v1.
It's good team play all around from Wildcard, baiting around with that time, finding those
last couple of kills.
I do want to mention Savage, not pulling off of that a fuse kit on that first plant
attempt.
It was Spiker that talks one of those Gersmot mines from Ella that actually forced him
off of the plant to the initial time that Savage was going for it, so not intentionally
pulling off.
He did eventually get that plant one way or another, so Savage was able to do
his job but it just took a really long time and that kind of allowed wildcard to get into
better positions to move themselves around the map and that big advantage that they had
thanks to their early couple of opening picks.
Hamedi had been a bit isolated it feels like on some of these entries Gunner in that round
going inside kitchen all by himself and losing a gunfight, Ashen going in by himself as
well over towards lounge and losing a gunfight so I'd like to see Hamedi group up a little
bit more. This wildcard team are really showing up ready to play on their own map pick of
Nighaten Labs, so MAD will have to be a bit better in these tight contests. They've been
close rounds, no doubt about it, but the score line is starting to run away from the
mirror. Yeah, I'd be a little concerned if I was a fan of MAD, and then this is wildcard's
map. We're not going to see any Tom Foolery like we did in the MAD-DZ match right
before this where the teams win each other's respective map picks. This is
just wildcard doing very effectively on a map that they are comfortable on and
seem to have M80's number for the time being. Things can change when the
sideswap comes in but obviously remains to be seen. Right now wildcard have
spawned in quite viciously and that's with two of their highest rated
players and Spiker and Bay currently kill less. That is the most concerning
time for me to find M80. Spiker and Bay have largely been non-factors. They still obviously
mattered from a utility perspective and they've got a couple assists here Jesse, but they are not
needing to get the kills to win this. Oh my goodness. That is a rough one for Bay. He gets
isolated and pulverized as he loses his window and M80 draws first blood in the final round of
the first half. I've got to be a move miserable around the seeds I've never seen, but Baby Shark
is right around the corner he gets a huge multi-kill there ties up with spiker for three kills total
at the top of rafters and that changes the entire dynamic of this round even if bezgoat
oh and four parker it doesn't matter when baby starts hitting shots like those
i'm in a clears up they're just gonna continue to kill her aren't they
submit at 45 still left there's like three players up in the server right now gunner will
need to clutch out wildcards steadily chipping away at this advantage that any got so early on
Again, M-80s, sensational at getting these opening picks and setting themselves up for
success.
But it's the mid-round that's been there undoing 9 kills for Baby Shark, matching Kansans total.
That's 18 kills between two players on the side of the Jesters and that is really something
to behold.
Gunner's going to draw this one out.
He's on a great operator to scout out this info before he tries for one of these
final kills, but they have the eyes on him the entire way down, Jesse.
Could go back up for some need, so that he doesn't want it. Instead, straight for right
past the door, very low HP now. They saw him in no exact position. Plenty of time to play
with and the fuse kit and info, but it doesn't matter.
Micers just swing in. You need your gun up, and Wildcard have been pumping the
gas here, not letting anything slow down. It's a domination through the first half
and a 5-1 scoreline for Wildcard.
They get strong start for Wildcard here, 5-1 right now at the half, looking like a repeat
of what we saw just the other day.
They took a word out of our mouth, it's absolutely looking like a repeat of what we saw yesterday.
I mean it's the information that they're utilizing, but even in this round 4 I had to highlight
this because this was a big play for the side of Wildcard, of having the Montaigne
be team killed by Gunnar and then the round falls apart from there, and listening
Coming to their comms, you would hear Savage immediately after they tried to rally the
troops, try to get the composure back and say, hey, we're going back into our old ways,
which that's a little bit worrisome thing given the fact they have all the momentum
coming into this series just based on our last game.
Yeah, it's definitely not looking good.
But then we have to look at the retakes, the round three and five from Wildcard.
I mean, those were beautiful.
We mean similar to what we saw in cafe.
Yeah, I mean, it's going to be all that information again.
I mean, baby shark on the yellow as well.
But when Wildcard, this is why the information game is so strong.
There's going to have a lot of those Black guys available to them in the late round.
I feel like we just watched a round very similar to that with Adrian on Thorn in the previous
game yesterday, where they were wrapping around cargo, did a really good job of waiting for
Baby Shark to come help them.
And that is what I love about Wildcard, is just how in sync they are.
We say the word sync a lot, but how in sync they are with each other.
And it's the information, again, they've used Valkyrie six out of six times.
What is M80's game plan?
What we're gonna run the IQ five of those times well you kind of just fell right into wild cards trap
Yeah, IQ sure you can you're gonna sit there and you're gonna look for the information
But guess what that's gonna slow you down. You're not putting your fraggers on IQ
You're putting gunner on it three of the rounds. You're putting ashen on it twice
What are they good? They're gonna sit on the roof and they're gonna be looking for those cams
And again, it's gonna take like a minute plus off them off the clock just to even find that information
Which is what is struggling with that many right? They can't even get into the map right now
And then when they get in there, it's baby shark waiting for him.
What can M80 do here to avoid the exact same thing that happened yesterday?
7-2 on this map to open up the series.
Is there a solve?
I mean, the good thing for them is they're flipping sides, right?
I think that is the wild card's really strong side.
I keep glazing it with their infos.
I keep glazing it with their C4s.
You guys are sick of hearing it.
But look, right now they're running away to an NAL championship right now.
So we have to glaze it for a reason.
But yeah, I mean, M80, they are going to be on the defense side.
And it's their turn to abuse the information which we seen earlier.
They like to pull out the pulse as well, the Valkyrie as well.
And even a little bit of echo sometimes.
I like the clash that we just saw recently.
Yeah, when he did.
Yeah. And of course, was Wildcard scrimming or were they paying attention to the game?
Probably paying attention to the game.
So I'm sure they've seen that clash.
But yeah, very typical bands here.
We'll have to see what they're going to do for their top floor.
I really want to pay attention to Savage's operator here.
This is what's going to change up their bombsite for me.
and smoke is going to tell me that they're gonna play a little bit more
default. Okay, he's all over the place. Yeah, he's gonna lock it. It's kind of the smoke.
So normally he's the one that kind of switches his operator between the pulse,
the echo. I even see my from him. Now he's gonna go in something a little bit
more. Well, I think it's very telling that when I ask you both the question,
what can M80 do to win this? You both looked at each other and shrugged.
We've seen him do it before. Because that's the situation we're in.
And let's find out if they can do it.
While 7-2, it seems to be the high water mark
of the deaths just perfectly broke down.
Parker, both best of threes that M80
has played so far in the NA out playoffs
has started with 7-2 losses.
One of those, they were able to come back
and win that level.
We just watched versus Dark Zero,
the other was the upper practice final versus Wild Guard
where they were not so successful.
I suppose they did also have the best of users
So it's not all the best of three's they've played here in the state one playoffs
But the last two certainly have started at a poor pace
Wildcard now over to the attacking side will do their best. They just need two more
7-2 the score line of course when they did battle in the upper bracket finals here cafe was the
Decider of that series and when I say decider what I actually mean is it was the second map because that one decided the score
I mean that funny how words work and that was a 7-5 victory for wild card as well
Chalet was map number three. We just left those Jesse Chalet will be played next
No matter what if cafe is required it will be the third map in this series
Which of course does vote well for wild card though
We did just the m80 taking the DZ
of art, gaining 7-0 to get into this grand final burp. So, exciting times ahead of us, whether we
need a third map or not, remains to be seen in the meantime. Let's get through Night Haven Labs,
second half underway, M-80, on defense hoping to close this gap between them and Wildcard. Right
now Wildcard only need two more rounds. Another two-brow being brought, so these walls will
be open relatively easily despite the Kai'i thanks to Kansan playing on this Thatcher. They
they will now put pressure on the Raptors too. This puts Ashen into a really awkward spot.
What is he going to do with this monkey coming through? He could just fall back and reinforce
behind him with that cap tablet that's exactly what he'll have to do. Might not be willing to
gamble to reinforce him if that's okay. His base is gained by a wild card. He'll start to come in
with these Candelas. A lot of times we see these teams, particularly on this map, Jesse,
use those Candelas as a faint, as if they were going to pull something off
just to get the attention of the defenders that what might have happened here is wildcard
now inched their way to this bomb site one minute left to go on the plot with good pacing for the
attackers as they have cleared out rafters they see the asami on this one ping and they're hoping
for a deep angle whether it come from it or outside of that rafter store but nobody from
wildcard is able to hit it the monty of spiker giving information for this team
Bay's still chasing his first kill when the entire first half without it and yet if you look at the scoreline, it didn't matter at all.
The wild card, firing away now, picking apart the defense.
Bay's still hunting for that first kill, he'll find lots of value, but not a body in this particular situation.
RU Protector also will help.
Bay goes down to Gavin, he'll have to wait a little bit longer.
Bay shark in the ground, Gavin and Ash in book bleeding out too.
The Monty now tussling with diffusers.
Spiker is great shot, and Savage is on the board.
Kansan will clean up.
Savage is last man standing in a 1v2.
Kansan and Spiker competing for the final kill.
Kansan finds it.
Map point for Wildcard is Baby Shark.
Can't believe it.
And frankly, neither can we.
What a round.
I mean, you've got the Sen's wall making a huge distraction in the middle of it.
They're really pressuring in from Rafter's Parker.
It's Wildcard full control.
They are down to 5v3 a one point in that round, but they pull it back with so many good kills
It felt like half the lobby was downed in the midst of that push
But they're able to just get really good picks as they're aiming into the site for so long
That's the biggest thing for me is that we saw Spiker on the Monty staring into site for a really long part of time
And it just allowed them to get solid information as to where everybody was at
Arian was the one player not really pushing with the team
He was over on the fish stairs and of course was in a bit of a utility battle with savage the candela's versus the toxic babes
Can you get into the doorway or are you just gonna be stalled out?
He was stalled out for the vast majority of that rounds didn't end up getting any kills in that push
But was such a good distraction that allowed everybody else on wild card tool to find their picks hunting into the bomb sites
Good breaching happening from them in the garage wall as well
It's just kind of set them up to get those picks really cleanly looking in towards the site
6-1 now and there will be five straight opportunities for Wildcard to close this one out and send it to their opponent's map pick.
I suppose the one silver lining for M80 is that they are not getting blown out on their own map the way that they did
against Dark Zero. That makes the job a lot harder because then you have to do this thing to your opponent which to their credit M80 did do and again
count out this M80 team at your apparel. The Wildcard just seems to have the answer here.
They demolished M80 in the upper bracket finals, and right now this matchup is looking eerily similar.
It was a 17 victory in that first match where Wildcard defeated M80 on this map.
They might even clear that if Wildcard can win the next round.
They are more efficient at this map than the first time they did battle.
Usually the rematches actually favor the team that lost the first time.
M80 simply must not have gotten that memo Jesse, but it'll arrive in the mail.
Well, we need seven points. I have to imagine.
Yeah, I mean, M80 already got their rematch lopsided win too against Dark Zero, so the
world didn't hold true in the last series. It's not holding true in this series. Maybe
just something weird going on today, because you're right. Usually the rematches swing
the other way, but today it has been all, according to history, down to the bottom
floor for M80. They will need to win this site if they want to repeat their
7-2 loss that they've had in map 1 of the last two series, but of course they're
hoping for a bit more than that.
Spiker already in through XO in a plant spot.
This will not be seen.
This is very fast from Wildcard.
Everybody is still alive.
Bade did manage to get one kill in the previous round.
10 players up.
The round now shortened from two minutes down to 45 seconds.
M80.
It's dawning on you, isn't it?
This map is going to go bye-bye.
Gavin doing the scariest amount of damage,
but not able to secure the kill.
Baby Shark and Spiker both taking care of suddenly.
M80 has the advantage and it will continue to go as it's Adrian and Kansan now last two standing.
They've spotted the diffuse kit. Kansan far enough away. This is the exact same situation that Gavin was in
when he was on attack and now he has to deal with it as the defender. Kansan swinging away.
Diffuser on the diffuse kit. Kansan shuts it down but they're out of time! Oh, heartbreak for M80's
Savage cries it, but it's Wildcard to take it.
Heartbreak for M80.
Seven won this storyline, Wildcard.
Take that one.
I'm breaking next and I'm on it now, reckless and I'm never signing out, I'm a cubit going
to lay none out, I'm breaking next and I'm on it now, for my elbow stuck in my money
If I can't get down, I'm just running up. I'ma keep it going today.
I'm down.
I'm going somewhere else.
slightly better than their performance against Wild Card yesterday to open up the series.
But no, Wild Card did even better, a 7-1 victory to open up this best of three, exactly the
way they wanted to start off this series.
Yeah, this is like a story of when momentum meets plot armor, because Wild Card, everything
is going right for them.
I mean, even on their very first attack, they bring out the sets, they get rafters
control, and after they get rafters control, they just roll a random sense, and it's
straight-up depth match right back at each other they end up getting the
kills on their favor and then right after you hear baby shark how do we win
that round we've never won that round before like that if you pause that round
and you had to guess who was going to win that I could not have told you who
was going to walk out as the victor in that round particular but then you
pivot into the very last round that sealed the deal on this map even then
we lost feed back in the green room and I'm listening to spikeers comms
and always here I'm going for the plant we get the feedback and it's a 5v5 post plan
I don't know how they just managed to walk down XO walk into the site get the plan off
But then it's spiker or whoever the last alive was able to save it
But it almost reminds you exactly what happened on cafe in that round 11 and maybe gives up all of sight
Spiker takes initiative to go into mining get the diffuser down and then it's just three players playing vertical pressure
winning that round there again it really looks like this M80 is coming into
the exact same issues that we were seeing previously in yesterday's match
against Wildcard. And again it's the plot armor and of course I'm joking about
it what it is it's just Kansas I mean we highlighted them in the pre-match
he's been the performer for them for the entirety of playoffs and again 12 in
four and what did he get to play on defense every single round he got to
play the Valkyrie which is Wildcard's favorite opera in the game
It's their comfort off and he looked mighty comfortable on himself now
This is where we have to talk about can and they
Regained the magical momentum they prompt in the last series. We're in a very similar position
We were in just a couple hours ago and maybe get trounced on the opening map and need to find a way to come back
They did it against dark zero earlier today. Why can't they do it now?
And that's the big question. Why can't they and they absolutely can I mean when you look at the next map
we're going to at Chalet, who just recently played it, Wildcard.
They got smoked on it by Darkseer.
They're actually on a three game losing streak on it.
And thankfully for the side of Mady,
they haven't played it once this stage.
And especially with what we've seen,
Savage being brought onto this team,
what he's done for some of their map pool,
it's a brand new map for this team.
So they should have all of the leverage
going into this map in particular
and have that advantage over Wildcard.
All right, Mady.
It's a momentum game like it was for them earlier,
looking to bounce back on map two.
They go to Chalet to see if they can find that magic again.
This could be a quick grand finals.
Jesse and Wildcard pull off a victory on Chalet,
which does seem a bit improbable.
They could be the grand final champs.
The champions of stage one
and a very nice feather in their cap
as they turn their focus towards Peri next month.
at EWC for M80.
I know we talked about Dark Zero doing this yesterday,
but they're gonna be their own BGs
as they hope to stay alive.
This is a good map for M80 though,
so a third map does seem a bit more likely,
even if we haven't played a single round yet.
Yeah, it's a weird map for M80, Parker.
They've only played it a single time this season.
That was back before Savage even joins the team.
But who was it against?
Well, of course, that was versus Wildcard.
in the first round of the kickoff playoffs, and that went the distance through 15 rounds.
Those two teams battled it out, and in the end, Wildcard came out the victor.
That was a great, or sorry, I should say, M80 came out the victor.
Now Wildcard did.
I'm confused.
Parker, that's okay.
Since then, Wildcard have really struggled on it, though.
Four losses, one win since that matchup, so Wildcard have not been able to replicate
that success.
Neither of these teams have much of a history, but the fact that N80 picked it makes me think that they've got something ready for us.
I mean, hey, sometimes you save maps that you wouldn't think of until the biggest moment possible.
And while this is far from the biggest moment of wild card, they certainly want to be crowned the domestic champ.
They have never been the best team in North America.
I know they have finished very strong at a variety of international events.
Being able to say you're the kings of NA's got a pretty nice ring to it.
Especially when you've conquered just about every team on the way here.
They beat N80 yesterday, they beat Dark Zero a week prior.
Wildcard have been beating the best to beat the best and now it's incumbent upon N80
to win a map that is very good for them and one that is, again, historically not the best for Wildcard.
If they're ever at time to pull off some pretty nice parlor tricks, it would be now an ashen.
Was that a spawnpeek theme's going for?
And so, the weapon has arrived.
Yeah, that was the game's window that Ashen was peeking his head out of, and Bay will shut it down.
So a common spawnpeek here on Shalloway, very far from the bomb site, hoping to maybe catch them off guard.
But while on guard, they have been ready to have all the opportunities throughout these playoffs.
They've just been so good, and with these airjabs coming out, this might be another quick play in.
Baby truck nice to the barbwater, okay.
Oh, everybody dying left and right.
45 seconds into the round and we might well be seeing it end.
Gunner, watched by Spiker in cans and three kills for cans and by the way.
That'll be all she wrote as Spiker will now need to clutch.
Gunner's got two to his name. He gets it done with the dig in hand.
Now a pause from Marilla of the MPX.
Spiker fishing for a potential peek on the window,
but nothing given by MAD.
I think that was Gunner knocked over by an air jab
used by Adrian, and now Spiker will have minute and 40 seconds
in his 1v1 showdown against Gunner.
Just say, I think they should really just pull out their pistols
and try to shoot each other with that.
I think that's what's fair at this point in time.
Very similar in overall bullets, both in their primaries.
Not great information for either.
Gunner knows that there's a lot of time
that he has to stall out, so falling back deep
into the bomb site might make this a little bit awkward.
Spiker does not have a can opener,
He's got MPs instead, here on the capitol, so he's not able to breach in to go for the safest plant inside a plat wall.
No knife to sell either from Gunner, so it's really low utility on both these players.
Alco, the smokes, Deig still in hand, you can see the picture in picture right there.
Deagle does do quite a bit of damage.
Spiker, the bull, kicking up the sand, waiting for the charge just to push Gunner off of his position.
This is the final minute now, fire away at the wall, he sees the elbow, that was a tricky
one for Gunner that could have easily gone in Spiker's favor.
He has a defuse kit, depending on what these black eye cams are he might find a window
of opportunity here, he'll attempt the plant and listen intently for the sound.
I'm stunned that he pulled that off, Gunner getting ever closer, Spiker knows it and
wins the duel leading by example it took some time to get there but Spiker on
that scenic route still gets to his destination all the same wild card
starting off with a round victory an incredibly entertaining grand finals
despite how lopsided map 1 was Parker it was really really close in a lot of
those rounds we saw some crazy ideas and again here in round number one of
chalet it is madness it's a crazy spawn peak that goes punish then it's
a rush strat coming out from wildcard we trade down to a 1v1 between the
star player Gunnar and the captain of Sbiker just so well played and he's crazy with it
Parker because he waits so long to commit to that Sbiker checks every angle he had a
couple different opportunities where he could have maybe just hit a shot on the
Gunnar and won that round Gunnar was playing it was really passive I think he
maybe put it on a little more aggro with it but you know it's a crazy
mental game there in the 1v1 right that could have on either direction the
doctor spiker commits to a full plant in seven seconds is kind of wild gunner
doesn't expect that so he gets it down and then it's just a really nice shot to
end things out for the captain so great start for wild card and the great start
to shall I look for a close game
five seconds remaining don't really envy the desk having to break down what
transpired in the thick of that, but I mean, you know, all hell breaks loose, literally,
inside the sides, while cards starting off with around the bay needed, they get it, still
in the discovery work, as we see Brava, the operator that's portrayed as non-particularly
high these days.
When we integrate information, you can reference certain operators like Flores, you can talk
about Brava because their drone can be more intel, Twitch is really good at the moment
because of the F2 as well.
But I mean when you got Demos and Snake and all that on the board, these drone info-offs
tend to be less desirable.
Why not bring both, we say?
A Doka be a Twitch or Brava and a Demos.
Lots of information here for WildCurt.
Often you see maybe like Flora being brought by Adrien on this bomb site, instead the
Brava being brought out, so you're right.
It is a little bit rare to see, but it would be good counter to the Gagor ADSs,
The defender reminds the, well my magnets, I mean, there is a lot that you can counter with the brava on this defense lap, so I like the call being both brought out by Adrian.
This is a little bit more standard of around back control being gathered by a wildcard. They have full control of the basement at the moment, so they're certainly pressuring up above with kitchen control under their thumb as well.
The top floor is of course the most valuable piece of back control, and that is still held by the defenders, but with all this other control being held by a wildcard, you've got to think of only a matter of time before they force a player out of position.
and hopefully find themselves a frag. Here we go.
Top of a magnet trapped in the corner, that's a very common spot.
There's a period of time long ago where players would play dock in that position, if you recall.
It feels like a lifetime ago, though, as Adrian will post up on the other window.
This cross is not as easy to hit as you'd think.
It involves you to ball it in, and if Adrian doesn't have proper coverage, it'll be a rough one.
when they smoke off savage in this position as he crouches down defuser takes care of
Adrian and does double duty to get Bay as well. Ash and Reba, the baby shark cans and dies.
Spiker, who's saved in the previous round, will deny a flawless victory for M80,
but they are watching him on a variety of cams. He's got the defuse kit. Does lightning strike
twice? Does he find a way into the bomb site to get the case down? Big difference.
There's one person alive last time now.
There's four.
That's gonna be a rough one. Final 40 seconds now, ascending those blue stairs.
Just underneath library.
You might have heard that...
...Logic Bomb now called the Jageo Payload, as it's been renamed, going off from Diffuser.
Just right next to him.
But honestly, it looks like Spiker is gonna call a timeout of sorts.
He takes the engagement. And he wins it. Advancing onto the smoke. But there's less than 10 seconds
to go. Holy smokes. How many cams can one team have here? Spiker will attempt to get
the defuse kit down, and he's pressured by Ashen and dies. And maybe answers back and
we've got a tie game.
Well, Parker, it was the man from New York who caught a lot of flackabove yesterday
in the early hours of this morning as Defuser was not having a great game. 7 and 18 yesterday,
asleep at the wheel for map number one in their first series today, but he really has been showing
up these last couple of maps. And Defuser's made all the difference. It's his smoke play that
really shuts down this rush of 60 seconds left in the round. He does a great job of walking
this down. And this is maybe the first round where we start to see the fear that some
have had of us falling back into the utile meta coming around to reality. The
Jagger Womai setup inside of library was just impossible for wildcard to clear
out. They didn't have enough throwables to burn all of those magnets, but they
never had top-four control. Library was consistently held by M80 and that meant
that the user had the space down in the site to position himself where he
did to play close to the shotgun on the big window. It was really well
played by M80, leaning into the meta as it's rapidly developing in front of
our eyes and also great gunplay from the user with the long that one has a
dominant showing for round number two. More rounds like that from M80 in this
map becomes infinitely more winnable for them. They are the favorites. They did pick
this map ultimately in Wild Cards. Numbers are nothing that gives us full
confidence that they'll be able to take this but at the same time sometimes
you can look at a team that's got a one in seven record on a map but if
there's such a disparity whether in their play or potential score line
doesn't ultimately matter because that one and seven can still end up becoming a two and seven if you were just
objectively speaking a better team
People are quite at that point in Wildcard right now though they are definitely a cut above everybody in the NAL based off of the playoffs
But with the way that M80
Completely punished DZ earlier today. I think it's gonna be a very fair contest
It's gonna ignore this 7-1 drubbing that Wildcard gave M80 back in map 1
It's just par for the course for M80 that they get better as the series goes along.
So this tends to be where we see them start to tighten up a bit.
Hunting for this electric claw is Baby Shark.
It wasn't able to see it, it's down low, so it was being covered just a little bit
I think by that bottom part of the wall.
Back in the pocket does it go for a runner and he's trying to juggle this one.
There's really only the ace charges to be brought for a hard breach.
That's really susceptible to being tricked by those electric claws.
So you've got to be sure that you can clear that out before you go through this breach.
Right now the attackers have library control, they've got fireplace control,
but they haven't really tackled this whole flotant floor being locked down by the Kaigi to
buy the Asomium. All these players inside of office.
Good information here now as drones are going. You also hear the drone above in the sky.
The E1D buy cans have used the savage, finished off by Adrian. So Wildcard will get on the board
first at the halfway point of this round.
I know we're only in round three,
but this has been far and away the slowest round
that we've seen so far.
Still plenty of time to turn that around.
His wild card has to knock off these M80 defenders
on the top four.
It looks like Spiker is positioned
over by the trophy window.
He's going to wait for the all clear for him to ball to him
and get a plant down in the A bomb site.
That is my assumption.
But he has to ensure the trophy is clear.
Solarium doesn't have any players over there.
And that anybody who's playing above
do not have eyes on kitchen.
He'll smoke it off and take matters into his own hands,
fashion get flattened over by piano.
The advance continues for Wild Carter's baby shark
is leading the charge.
45 seconds to go, Jesse, and it's just prolonged action
as Adrian gets in on the board as well.
What an oddly paced map we're seeing.
A night for a stop from below, we'll collect Kansan.
I'm continuing to work against this M80 team,
but Wild Carter sharpening their spears
and they are aiming for these bodies as Gavin
Gunner on the run, Bay on the board now too, and Gunner in a 1v4 he had an opportunity to clutch
up the 1v1 back in round one but was out and doing by Spiker. It's Bay who finds him this time and
Wildcard go back to the lead. Patience Parker, patience is really what's been defining this
map for me so far from Wildcard. Of course they started with the rush and you don't usually
associate a rush with patience but they that rush devolved into a 1v1 that Spiker played
the game. They're waiting for
the ball to come in. They're
playing extremely slowly and
patiently and resulted in a
round when because of it round
to again, spiker late in that
round, played it quite patient
and then even here. They're
waiting out the utility. They
are clearing up that electro
claw on the top floor. They're
waiting for all of those
photo canisters to get burned
out by the tuber out. They
were fine with that as it
came in and just as that
clock was ticking down, they
were slowly but surely getting
their picks finding savage
down on that jump in and it just felt like the bodies from M80 weren't able to accomplish much.
Because M80 are trying to play this stall style of game with the two brow and the kaiid by delaying
as much time as possible but not be able to go for these aggressive moves and catch wildcard off
when they're maybe setting up and waiting for these plays to happen. It's been really good
because she's gameplay so far from wildcard it will get them to lead after this first quarter
and the next set of operator fans comes through who will lie to be taken out at Dokubi
as well. Expect to see more of that if he gets out of the kitchen site.
Two more fights, we're gonna be able to go forward.
It's been a great day so far in the NAL and M80 DZ matchup was extremely entertaining for M80 fans
but I think for DZ fans it'll be one that they will be soon to forget.
DZ, no championship hangover, they still look in the mighty fine form. They finished stage
one in second place and we'll have to settle for third as they got knocked out by M80 just
an hour prior to this match starting. Now it's about crowning the champion. Wildcard yet to be
the best in North America they are hoping to change that. As M80 team, well they've tasted victory
and success before and I mean they won the Munich Major didn't they? Victory has come for M80
before Wildcard looking to start writing their own legacy and not just finishing
with the top three or the top four in events or their own region Jesse.
Diffuser has somehow been finished off really early on. I have to imagine that
Adrian was going to down him and then secures him with an A2. Very early kills
coming in for Wildcard. That's something that I think he was really good at but
it's unfortunate that the tide has turned. And it's the information for
me Parker that does it, right? They caught Diffuser on the drone walking
over towards Piano so Adrian just pops on the window says I'll wait for it and gets
that perfect replay and I love this Thenswall as well as getting a little bit of tight angle
into the Piano window and pays off a brilliant shot straight onto Savage as the teammate
takes down Gunner. 2v5 now for M80 as they need to bail themselves out of this bad situation.
Wildcard starting to run away with this one. M80 the kings of flawless rounds. Do they
know what it's like to have them to them? Now they do. Adrian gets the final kill
wild card don't suffer a damn thing in that round and they stretch their lead now up 3-1.
Parker yesterday was Adrian who went absolutely nuclear to take down M80 in the upper bracket
finals 24 and 11 was his final stat total yesterday and today it seems like he is following in his
own footsteps a really nice round to start things off here on Chalet round four he's
able to use those sends walls so beautifully just to set up nice lines of sight he's
He's being fed information for his teammates too.
It's not all on him, it's a team effort coming through from Wildcar, but he's the one finally
hitting those shots.
He's the one that gets credited with that big multi-kill.
It's a 4k from Adrian around number 4, and Wildcar now a 3-1 lead on their opponent's
pig are starting to look like this will be a foot grand final.
It's definitely shaping up to be, and I mean you can hear the laughter on the
side of Wildcarts they feel pretty good about this one. It's been a slow day for
Bay and yet it doesn't matter. Again, when you get to the top the depth is what
really stands out more than anything. Bay is the lowest rated player on Wildcard.
Really the first map and these five rounds which again, very odd, he's the
highest rated player on Wildcard heading into this game. Everybody on the
of M80 is some pretty brutal numbers. Diffuser is 10 and 10 across both maps. That's the
best that you're gonna get. And he has an EPS of 105, which would put him just a hair
above Adrian, who trails Spider-Badie Shark and can stand out performer. And I mean,
this looks like vintage playing in Gene's Sonic's hands. He got that incredible clutch
John Bank and a pair of jeans!
That's pretty pretty beautiful.
I'll play that as an immortalized skin to games that has its own scene in the shop, which is really cool to see.
We thought a lot of those high-level plays that have happened throughout the years
being represented now in the game store, which is super, super cool.
Some of the best skins in the entire game, in my opinion.
I agree.
They really... I will give credit for credit this too, and the thing is, it's tough.
We're not paid to rep these skins, but...
If they're nice we'll talk about it and if they're in anime skin I will make fun of it.
That's just the way things work here.
Dan and the player that we discredited is the first casualty and with him will go the EE-1Ds.
So information from Wildcard will be a little harder to come by but they still got the demos there for backup.
And of course drones to help.
As well, nearing the halfway point of the round, I'm all seemed almost certain that Savage would die.
He's still fighting Fit.
5th. The nitro cell from Goddard will blow up baby sharks and wildcards, not showing the
same prominence that they did in previous rounds here in round 5.
The thing to see last time on this site is that none of them brought up with Fenrir.
It's a new adaptation being brought up by M80. It's completely caught wildcard off
guard. The information has been so good for them in this bottom floor bomb site, or
I should say the bar bomb site. It's been really difficult for a wildcard to
crack. They lost it back in the first quarter. It was the only site they were unsuccessful
on. Now in a two man disadvantage, how could they possibly bail themselves out of it?
They bailed themselves out of it.
They're looking for the hop in.
Wildcard are a little bit behind the 8-ball when it comes to this timing.
I think that's Ashen who they would be on a path against.
I mean, good patience for a matey. This is what we expect out of them, right?
What do you do here if you're Wildcard?
This area of shield might pop up at some point, but he's making some space elsewhere on the map.
Hold on, just walks in library for two, Adrian eventually loses that fight, but hey,
Bayes brought them right back into this round. 30 seconds full top floor control partner.
This is beautiful, but it will be tough.
Yeah, I mean, Savage also just on a single pin with HP.
That is something that would be concerned for me if I was M-A, be a single bullet, and now it's a 2v2.
You gotta wrestle your way with the guns, with the sight.
With the sight, there goes Spiker Bay.
We need to clutch off as Savage now looks for the flank.
He's gonna go this entire time,
which is the single point of HP.
Bay has to stick the plant
and now it's up to Gunner and Savage.
Time runs out, Gunner pulls out the dig, he wins it.
And we're closing in on a tie game.
M80 trailing by just one round.
Got attempt to bail themselves out
on the side of Wildcard from the 3v5 position
They had time but really not a good number of map control. It felt like that was going to be an easy round for M80
Got a bit more difficult thanks to the weapon making some good space there on the top floor and during the execute
But ultimately that was M80's bombsite through two successful defenses now
I like the different ways they played it right the first time back around to it was very focused on the stalling things out
They had the library corner locked down with Yeager. Well, my this time it was similar
They certainly still had the Jagger being played, but they had more tricks up their sleeves.
That Microsoft and Gunner absolutely critical to come through.
They would early pick on the Kansan for the Captain of Savage as well.
Keeps them alive, but my concern, Parker, is that's the only bomb site that N-Media been successful on.
So now they're going to have to play these other sites.
They'll have one more chance to win a defense, but it's going to have to be somewhere where they haven't won yet.
It's just a slight tech pause here where teams are not supposed to be talking to each other,
so you wait to get back into the action.
I don't know what the culprit is, but we will update you as we get more information.
Looks like everybody from Wildcard is in, unless my eyes deceive me here.
It's a little bit of a man on your screen is a terror by the way.
Who was it?
Who's Kanzan?
He really is.
Florida's finest, as I like to say, but he's not what you say.
It is what I say.
I like that little McDaniels for as many players as we can, and I think it's a good one
for Kanzan.
I think pro players are from Florida.
It's just pants.
There might be one more.
I think, oh, Eddie as well.
Eddie's from Miami.
We are being told by the way that it was a disconnect.
So we are waiting for them to get back into the lobby and then we can go back into action.
I have a question for you, Parker, while we wait.
Obviously the players, they can't be discussing this, but they can certainly be thinking about it,
and I'm sure the call will come through from the IGL, but if you're N80,
what bomb site do you go for the final round here on the defense?
Because everything is open except for bar games here.
Honestly, it's a great question.
The one bomb site we haven't seen get played is the basement.
I think it's quite unlikely that we will go there.
I feel like you could like maybe try to run the basement if you like heavy
commit to the to the Rome game with a strong anchor.
You could rock the Kaid downstairs or try to keep that wall closed for a good
amount of time, maybe two bra as well.
I think the basement's a gamble.
I mean, if you look at the if you look at the kitchen bomb site,
it was played one time. Wildcard only suffered a single loss there. Master Benjamin office
upstairs. First time they played it, it came down to the 1v1. But then the second time they
played it, it was a flawless victory for Wildcard. So it's not trending in the right
direction for you. Operator bands wouldn't really impact that bomb site as much, especially
since it was played after the first set of operator bands. It's a tough question.
I mean, I'd probably gamble on kitchen dining.
Sure.
I think that's the safe pick.
I could see the basement, though.
Like, I don't want to see the basement come through.
It's kitchen.
Well, Alas, you are not given your wish.
Fine.
But I'm sure you'll be OK.
It kind of opens the question, though, right?
Like, this is the most predictable bomb site
that N80 could have gone to.
What did they do different this time, right?
Because the last time it was a slow and steady burn
from Wildcard where eventually they cleared up those kaip claws thanks to some twist drones.
They installed out the Zodo canister from the tube brow up above and they eventually found a couple
of picks including the savage down on that bottom floor and clearing in through up above too.
They dropped tube brow here which is a big surprise to me. They swapped action over
to the thorn, they drew the thorn from savage to him and he jumped on the castle this time
instead. I'm a little surprised it took this long just to see a castle because he's so
powerful on chalet to keep a lot of those outdoor windows closed but savage you'd be using
some of them inside the building the lockdown lines the site lockdown angles in and around that mid floor that's kind of interesting
That's a good point
This is a great map for two brown for a couple of reasons the Zoto canisters are obviously great for slowing people down
Especially if you get bottom floor bombsite get played by the way to keep that one wall closed
Towards big garage and of course keeping the snowmobile garage panels closed as well
But the other thing that I think people often underestimate about to brown on this map is his fragging power that DMR
It's like a truck and because it's good at caliber based destruction and because it's got a great scope on it
You can play really far back and pick away at the attackers and give you a fighting chance because
Chalet is often played from the exterior inwards. You're seeing through windows. You're seeing through walls
You're seeing from floors down those dollars very rare actually that you can
Remember what I said about being played from the exterior inwards?
And Begus does swing and snipe as the keys are cut him down?
M80 gets three kills!
I'll have to pause my thoughts for a second here as they're wiping the floor with Wildcard!
A swing in from Spiker as he takes a bunch of damage!
They know exactly where he is.
Who on an 80 will be the one to get this pick?
Gavin in the bathroom is closest.
You have to imagine he'll be the one and he does it with the Deegan hand!
That was a fast one and with it an end of the first half, 3-3, the score line, M80 equalizes.
Great recovery there for M80 after it looked like Wildcard was doing a similar thing to
what we saw on that first map.
They tie us up at 3.
What are you seeing right now in this matchup?
Yeah, it wasn't really good recovery.
I mean Wildcard, they had the Reads on attack.
They knew M80 was playing a little bit more extended, a little bit more aggressive on their
kitchens and on their masters.
So they were playing extended onto the library side.
So what did wildcard do?
Well, they just did solar hits, right?
We seen them go for a very fast play on the solar side,
which split the defense and they ended up winning out the trades.
And the second time they went to their kitchen,
they were kind of pulling heavy on that side
and forcing those roamers that were extended
onto the library side back to site.
And that's where they were getting all of their kills.
Now, for M80, they did a good job
of realizing what was working for them as well.
It was the two-bar defenses.
Why?
Because bar is the site that you
can play very bunkered, very compact as a defense.
So then that was a very good read for them on their last defense there after the tech pause to go kitchen and they got rid of that
Exgressive extension and instead they ran a little bit more of a bunker
They brought the cave they brought the castle and they waited for them to do the soul hit
Which we just saw wild card do and it worked perfectly
So very good read from m80 on their defense app in order to bring that back and again this close
It's the little things that can make all the difference moments where you maybe look back and say man
And I wish we won that for Wildcard that first round.
Spiker 1v1, big difference maker.
Yeah, we talked about momentum shifts.
And even again, with M80 in the recent series,
that big 1v1 on cafe, where it ultimately came down
to Savage hitting that wall bang.
This could have been a completely different narrative
if Gunner ends up winning that round.
And then maybe that momentum shift,
and we possibly even see a 4-2-1-2-5-1-2.
But what I am worried about now
that we're getting on this defensive side for Wildcard,
that's where they were punished the hardest
in their Dark Steer game.
They were getting caught off guard,
whether it was due to just not being aware
that the windows were primed open,
not being aware that players were being able to find gaps.
We saw newers many times being able to walk up Westman
or walk up any of those staircases
and just find these picks,
which you know that's what Ashen likes to do.
Ashen likes to creep around the map.
And if you're gonna leave yourself exposed,
you can guarantee yourself,
Ashen's probably gonna be lurking around,
trying to find that gap, get that opening kill.
And then both these series with these teams,
It's never really been about opening kills,
but this is the game, however,
where whoever has been getting the opening pick,
they have converted it into a round win,
which is why I'm emphasizing
they need to pay attention to their gaps.
It sounds like, if I'm hearing you right,
it sounds like M80 are potentially set up
for success here.
I think so.
Given Wildcard struggles, Kyle, do you agree?
Do you think that Wildcard are now the ones
that kind of need to put in the work to get this win?
Yeah, I mean, I do think this is a map
that doesn't kind of favor their blueprint
that they have been.
I mean, we're gonna see them pull out
a lot of the vision operators,
But there's a lot of cutoffs on this map that make it really hard to do the defensive playstyle that they want.
But my biggest question mark for is we haven't seen M80 attack or really play this map.
This has been a map that's been hidden in their map until now.
And I was paying attention to their defenses.
It looks very similar to their old M80 defenses when hot and cold is on the team.
But really the changes are going to come on to the attack.
How is Savage going to change their attacks for this M80 squad?
Is it going to be a lot like Secrets?
That's kind of what I want to see.
Oh, I have a chance to see that right now as we dive into the second half again.
Like you said, could go either way tied at 3-3 right now, but maybe Wildcard are gonna
have a little more work to do to get over their defensive struggles here.
A close contest in the Alps.
It's been 3-3 within a locked step between M80 and Wildcard, but the desk seemingly
favoring M80 on this second side, and I have to agree with them, Parker.
It does feel like this map of Chalet will be needing a little bit more towards the attackers,
but it's also a big question.
We don't really know what NA they're going to look like on the attacking side of this map.
They chose the map, so you have to imagine they're confident in their own attacks, but
that doesn't mean it's going to come into practice here on game day.
It'll be the real test to see what these pushes look like if they can find the
angles that they need to from outside the building, banning out the castle, banning
out the mirror is an interesting set of bans here for them, and they hope
to make it a little bit easier to find those player positions inside the site.
Absolutely correct, yeah. I mean, M80, this is their map pick, and now they presumably get to go to the side
that they'd like the opportunity to build up a nice nest thing that Wildcard could hang their hats on,
maybe the retirement is unlikely now, and just out of reach as we now turn towards this second half.
So with that cafe becomes quite likely maybe more likely than what we saw after the first round or two
As you always like to suggest you there's two house of these so anything can happen here wildcard win two scrappy rounds
That maybe they don't deserve
That could be enough to toss this m80 team off their stride
But how do they handle the first bit of aggression?
M80 bringing lots of info tools. The twitch can work as an intel operator. You got the demos. You got the lion
And then maybe it's really not a problem getting in the building
Yeah, they're kind of forced into these maybe off meta use of operators could be banned both the snake and the dope
It'd be two of the best interlops in the game right now
So smart fans coming through from wildcard and maybe having to adapt around them
It certainly looks like they're gonna be positioning themselves over towards some kind of a solar push
They've got really good info on that at the moment
Savage with a few kit is across the map though, so don't expect a quick rush in with the plant anytime soon.
It does feel like there are still some players taking map control elsewhere, whether that's Library or of course Gunner.
Down here in the bottom floor being droned by his teammates, but the one rumor that was down there, Spiker, has fallen off.
So there's nothing for Gunner to find. Instead they're gonna have to shift their attention a little bit and try to hunt them down below the bomb site.
Spiker and Adrian walking down this mid-floor and it's a drone straight under Spiker, so the information is good from M80.
The smoke tossed in by Ashen to get the attention of the team over towards trophy diffuser,
coming to blows as well, doing some damage to Adrian.
The Polish player on the Polish operator, always nice to see.
The Ella does get away with her life still intact as it's now its baby shark,
very firmly in the sights of M80.
Adrian and Bay firing back.
Adrian gambles what little remained of his life
against Savage, but Wildcard dominating
and M80 struggling and cut down from their wires outside.
Spike are settling down the team.
As I say, much needed round victory
to give Wildcard a one round lead.
It's a good little first try to come through
as they did buy the trade back onto Adrian,
but Parker at that point the damage was too far gone.
Really like that coming out from Bay. We talked about it a little bit today
It's been a bit quiet to come through from the weapon, but Bay's been just fantastic
I think over these last couple of rounds really finding his footing here on Chalet
Will up his stat total now
Do I believe 8 and 4 if I'm not mistaken with how good he's been doing these last couple of rounds?
He's been finding them all over the map. It just feels like they're stalling out for an 80
They're not giving up any easy picks and that's the key to defense on Chalet
You have to at all costs avoid dying to these players outside the windows if you give up freebies
It's just gonna be the attack running over you in that time
Wogguard didn't do anything of the sports the key bus kept some of those windows closed
Spike her on a far off Rome was not getting giving his life away for free
They played that really passive and smart and only once they kind of knew where the attackers were at
They start going for those things
Yo, yo, let me talk, let me talk.
Using that brief window of opportunity, where it's usually filled with
celebratory yelps and shouting, etc.
The center of this team.
I don't think anybody's doubting the capabilities of a player like Spiker.
He is a fragging IGL, and is the third highest,
or fourth highest rated player on this team.
And yet, he's a 16th of 50 players.
Oh, he detected!
Doing a pretty good job from his position.
113 kills.
That's nothing to sneeze at.
And again, this big stylistic difference
how a player like Spiker and a player like Canadian play.
Canadian funnels kills to his teammates.
Spiker allows them to do that but can be quite active himself
both while still leading this team forward.
And Spiker's growth as a player has really been something to behold.
Yeah, no doubt about that.
He's really evolved and has, I think, cemented himself.
is one of the best IGLs here in North America.
Wildcard will go to kitchen for their second defense
of round Parker.
Wildcard had a six round losing streak defending this bomb site
going back over the last couple of months.
Three of those losses to dark zero earlier on here
in stage one.
Three of those losses happening back at the major
when hot and cold was subbing in for Adrian
who didn't have his US visa.
So they've got a bit of a history
of struggling on this bomb site.
Haven't been able to lock it down too much
over the last of a while,
but this does feel like a bit of a new and improved wild card.
It feels like they're playing a bit of a different game now
on Chalet.
So I'm sure to see what they're going to pull on the defense.
So a lot of that stall still coming out from the might.
Baby Shark playing on the smoke.
We've got Kansani even setting up some of these Malusi
banchees, too.
So there's going to be a lot to work through on the side
of N80.
So you didn't get any slower rounds
than what we were just treated to.
As first half, most of the kills
occurred within the first minute.
The latest kill that we saw was a minute seven
still left on the clock, which is,
I guess that one's pretty slow,
but two minutes and 50 seconds, two minutes,
20 seconds, two minutes and four seconds.
These are some very, very fast bits of action
that Wildcard were quite eager to knock MAD off,
and not until they come ahead with that victory.
Now it's MAD who don't wanna be
a little bit too quick themselves.
What did I say?
Wildcard can win two really quick scrappy rounds.
It'll turn all this on its head.
Gunner with the only kill so far for M80.
His Wildcard has wiped out three of his teammates.
It's him and Savage still alive.
And Savage is outside on the roof,
fishing for kills by the library window.
Last one is Gunner with the F2 lined up.
It can do extensive damage,
but he runs out of bullets and he runs out of time.
Wildcard two rounds away from being NAL champs.
Parker, I said it was the patience that really defines the attack from Chalet on wildcard and it seems like exactly the opposite that is defining their defense.
It's been aggression to come through from wildcard. The second they get a read on where this attack is coming from, they swarm onto that position.
They're always ready to trade each other. They are going for big swings and hitting the headshots that they need to.
They're playing a pretty aggressive style of Chalet defense and that is how you have to play Chalet, right?
This is not a map that lets you hunk bunker down and try to win on time very often.
You kind of do need to lean into that more aggro playstyle.
Despite the fact that it has historically not really worked out for Wildcard.
Again, three game losing streak on Chalet, a four in one record through to the last five, one in four I should say.
They've really struggled on this map in the past.
It feels like up against M80, they've been able to unlock a new level of their game.
I don't know, right now, here, dominating North American League domestically for the first time.
It feels like we're seeing a brand new era of wildcard.
It forces the tack time out of Fobby, and I think this is the right time to use it.
He has to be able to relay to his teammates what's going on in these rounds, what style
of defense wildcard are trying to play, and how they're able to counter it, because
it is not easy when they're shooting as good as they are.
Fog, they can't.
Not entirely correct.
location of above. Adrian added to this roster right before kickoff and well in a matchup that
will live in infamy for quite some time five years became the best team in North America
before the Salt Lakes City Major by toppling Wildcard 2-0. They were both very close maps
they went 7-5-7-5 so ultimately Wildcard round or two away from a victory or at least
a fighting chance in overtime still a second place birth for Wildcard with Adrian newly
added to the roster. Nash wanting to go back home to Brazil for a variety of reasons left
a hole in that team. They picked up Adrian. Unfortunately, Solick sitting again, played
with hot and cold as a substitute. So, we never got to see them at their full potential.
But even with some inconveniences, when it comes to roles and hot and slotting on
the team, this was still a squad that made top eight with four of their five starting
members. Now here with Adrian settled in, learning the team more, they had more time
to gel as a squad. Improvements made by Lagonas, the coaching staff, and
Spiker as IGL. Wildcard are primed to take first overall in the region and
what a triumph that would be for a squad that as we say always tends to do
better internationally than domestically. But Jesse, tell me, what is
above first? Because if they're the best team in North America and they
to do better internationally, how do they win it twice?
Either way, I think they'd be pretty satisfied just winning
it once, Parker being EWC champions.
I'd be back to back for Adrian.
He was the MVP last year in a Riyadh when they won that
tournament, and as a player who himself kind of had a bit of a
chip on his shoulder known as a bit of an online player, that
is kind of his breakout land performance back at EWC where
people realized, OK, this guy really can show up when it
matters the most.
us no doubt his best event of his career and he's hoping to go back and repeat such a performance.
Tenon 6 leads the lobby right now in terms of overall kills and is hoping to shut down
M80 on this round. It's a critical one for momentum, right? If M80 after using their
exact timeout fails to convert this round, it will be match and series point for wildcard.
You have to imagine it will just deflate after a round loss like that.
I mean he's gonna find some signs of life right now they've lived and died off of Gunners heroics
but everybody else sitting at negative KDs which is incredibly dire ashen in particular two and
seven the bottom of this team only Gavin is really contending with him down there and that
That is just not good enough.
Ashland with a 51 EPS.
He's at 125 before the start of this,
but he's hurting our calls.
Ashland finds few very fast kills.
Gavin is on the board as well.
MAD able to deal with this wild card team,
but hold on a second here.
Gavin now on a single point of HP.
Defuser and Gunner are gone.
There goes Gavin and Spiker will need to clutch
as the pendulum swings back in MAD's favor.
Spiker on the fade away.
He will have to stop this defuse plant in time or else the job gets even harder.
As he'll ascend the stairs.
That mate he has scrambled completely out of the site, Jesse.
Specker's got his work cut out for him, he knows that.
So wait on the call.
This is one of the hardest bomb sites to deal with in a post plant,
and they now know the unholy racket made by his shotgun that he's down below.
It's a Claymore to get the job done.
You don't see them all that often,
but it's always wonderful when they make their presence felt.
M80 denies wildcard match point championship points
and closes the gap between the teams to just one round.
Spiker knew that Claymore was there.
He saw it on the Solis scanner,
but it's a high pressure situation, 1v2.
Easy to forget when the pressure is as high as it was.
So we'll let him off the hook for it.
Of course, Spiker is a great player.
We'll let him off the hook for it. Of course, the biker, the fault in that round will not lie in him.
It was his teammates that went down early in the midst of it, and it was really Ashen who took control of that game
and exploded into that top floor in the roam clear.
That bar bomb site was one that just could not be cracked by Wildcard on the attack.
They really tried to lean into their U2 play.
Ashen said, I'm not going to run that way. I'm just going to jump in and try to get these kills alongside Gavin.
They perfectly timed it so that all that pressure would come in together.
They forcefully jumped in through that site,
took the control they needed across the map,
not a whole lot that you can do for spikers,
so really well played coming up.
Defenders, protect your bombs
from being defused by attackers.
We got ourselves a ball game here.
M80 can still win this in regulation.
Three rounds remaining, this one,
and then two more before we reach the end of the road.
M80 putting up a very spirited fight.
In order to get to this point,
This is their map, so they should be comfortable on it.
I do think it's funny that a prospect of the same map scorelines from yesterday emerging,
but just a little bit better for Wildcard is possible.
Yesterday Wildcard won map one against M87-2, they beat 7-1 today.
It was carried out by Samkis, all of the different maps, but map number two was won
by Wildcard 7-5, that was a bit of a dogfight and a heartbreaker for M80.
Wildcurt could win this 1-7-4, just a little bit more efficient.
Again, we expect the teams that lost the first match to fair better in the rematch.
That is not the case at the present point in time for M80.
They've got their backs against the wall.
One more round for Wildcurt.
You find yourself on the razor's edge, but even if Wildcurt can't close it out in
regulation, they guarantee themselves a path through overtime at worst.
So a daunting situation for M80.
A little bit surprised to see Bay pulling off of the Azami. He only ran it once back in around 7, but it was him on this operator that had the most amount of value on this top floor defense.
They've really changed up quite a bit in terms of what this hold looks like. So clearly just a new strat coming out of the hook from Wildcard.
And M80, they might be looking to go quick with this Parker. Savage is not holding the fuse kit, but Gunner is right behind him.
So it's gonna be on savage to make this space force the defenders back and then gunner will be holding F in the site
Oh, how'd they go baby shark does get one?
How did he get them both?
Goodness gracious
Shark bait for M83 players now remaining. They wanted to go quickly Gavin at least gets one
That's the remainder of baby shark found all 12 kills by Adrian will now be gambled on the trophy window as he holds this tight angle with the scorpion
down below the bomb site, hoping to give himself a line of sight to the ceiling above.
M80 strategy now has gone completely belly up and they need to pivot quickly.
They also need to get the diffuse kit, which has been surrendered.
That might be the tricky part for this M80 team.
Baby Shark, what a moment from him. He does exactly what he needs to, playing the site with
Warden. That diffuse kit, it's dropped over on the office balcony, nobody really
to grab it and maybe action. It's a brilliant headshot from diffuser. Numbers now equalize.
65 seconds still on the clock. Plenty of time to work with. I'm worried about some pressure inside
the site. I'm worried about getting in and actually going for a plant because there are still
very much hunkered down on this bomb site with Adrien being the only roamer down below,
but they've got time to play with them inside of NA to pull this one back.
It's almost unwinnable after they lost the shield, after they lost that first bit of action.
But again, never count out, M80.
Nade in hand, Ashen walks in a golden opportunity, just evading that kill hole from below,
Metrosol goes out, it misses, it gets Ashen off of the plant though and he will have to attempt again.
again. Spikers gambled buying lots of time. Great cover trash and as he does it all himself.
Adrian and Kansan now to shut this down. Adrian goes and Kansan caught Gavin with the cross.
It looked like it was curtains for M80 but that man on your screen from Tennessee
keeps M80 in it and we've got a tie game. It's so close down to the liar every time
but since the tack timeout M80 had been firing on all cylinders and for me Parker it's all
about Ashen, what a ridiculously smart play from him to go grab the defuse kit, get into
a plant position, but he knows spikers down below, so he doesn't just hardstick the plant
like a bot, he's washing through those floorboards, he's waiting for the play from Spiker, and
he's holding the angle as he comes around straight into his crosshair, that was beautifully
played by Ashen and Gavin as well, holding the cross just does his job, making sure
that Ashen can get that plant down safely if he needs to.
well played I think all around by M80 and since the talk timeout since talking
with Coach Fabian they have really been able to get their attacks back in order
and now it's gonna fall onto the shoulders of Lugonis the Brazilian head
coach of Wildcard to get them back into this match it looked like they would
run away with it in the second half with a 5-3 lead but now after two
decisive rounds it is all tied up at 5 and still anyone's game this was a
crazy moment from Dave Shark by the way I cannot believe it wasn't enough to win in the round
All right, bye-bye.
You and me both, Jesse.
That's just, yeah, that's a fascinating one.
And one that will likely frustrate this wildcard team
is they got such a leg off in the opening moments
of this round, but then were picked apart
very effectively.
Huge credit to Ashen for the way
that he played that post-plant.
Or he played with a pre-plant, rather,
and then Gavin for the way that he played the post-plant.
That cross position, mailbox, cut, whatever you want to call it, it's incredibly important.
You hold the avenue that you know that either attackers or defenders will need to go through
and you're just situated there stopping them, usually holding a high power rifle of some
kind or something that doesn't offer a lot of damage.
Gavidou is five kills by the way, but the three kills that he amassed in the previous
round were integral at tying things up.
So again, just because somebody doesn't have a lot of kills, and this is while the
organic expectations of himself doesn't mean that those kills are not of immense value.
So, M-A be able to draw even my favorite round in siege now, Jesse.
The winner of this round goes to match point.
If it's wild card, it'll be championship points.
That's crazy.
Out of attack time, the Laguna's feds guys run the exact same site, a very similar
off-lanet, but maybe he said play a bit more aggressive, spikers in the basement
and more importantly, Adrian, the man of the hour,
the best player on wildcard today and yesterday,
able to get a spawn peek pick on to Ashen.
It has been his heroics that have kept M80 alive
in this map, in this series, really,
the highest rated player in the North American league
down early in this critical 11th round of the game.
What do you do to pull this one back M80?
How will they recover?
The push looks very different than just the previous round,
Despite the fact that we still got Savage on the Blitz,
and these roamers have pretty much gone back to sight.
They're droning down below, but it's only Adrian and Barr
who remains off of that soft floor.
Halfway point of the round now.
Still plenty of time for M80 to do some discovery work.
The man that you were singing the praises of
being the first casualty with the demos gone
is devastating for M80, but the last round,
Losing too early was equally devastating, and yet they were able to recover with Grace.
And maybe he's a tricky team to beat, Jesse.
And if they can get information and get a read on these wildcard players, they've always got a fighting chance.
Wildcard have read this push really nicely. They know that it's coming solar, but a blitz and a send will be really difficult to stop when this push comes through.
The Fusure also finally trades back once at Adrian. Both of those niters now have missed.
it's only Bay on the Wamai with the newly buffed C4 in his pocket that will still remain
with an explosive, less than 60 seconds still to go for M80. They have to be able to convert
this to an execute soon.
There goes Savage. Spiker will give Wildcard a numbers advantage even with Adrian down.
This is still a pretty decent spot for Wildcard to be in because Kansan and Bay have been
decently quiet and always know Baby Shark and come out of nowhere and make his presence
speed valves. They spotted diffuser outside on the balcony by the bathroom window. He takes
some damage and will have to go back under a Pelt to link up with the rest of his teammates
and do his job. As Gunner, who's been a sensational player, has dealt with quite easily by Baby
Shark. Gavin's success in the previous round was integral, but he's got four targets
to find now. If diffuser dies and is swinging from Gavin, he will get cut down by Kansan.
card, one round away from the championship here in North America, stage one.
And you just have to talk about the impact that one player going down has on a push parker.
After Ashen dies, it feels like M80's stall out a little bit, doesn't it?
They're over towards solar, they're baiting out nitrous cells, it's not like nothing's
happening, but they're just bleeding bodies slowly and surely that round slips away
from their fingers.
They try to find different entry points, but once that tip of the spear goes down,
It feels like Wildcard just have every advantage in the world.
I'm sorry.
It's particularly worrying to see that coming out of M80, who shouldn't be just relying
on one entry threat.
This is a team that has Gavin who are the best entries in the entire world on the squad.
The Fuser who's done so well for this team and the organizations in the past.
Even Savage playing on the Blitz is able to be a spearhead and take some space but
none of them were able to get that push going and because of it, it is Wildcard
as you say, one round away from their very first domestic stage title.
They've been on an upward climb. They went from APAC to North America. They underwent a rebrand, different locks, different players, but they have settled in on this core.
From all over the world, frankly, they're coached Brazilian. Their support player used to be Brazilian now.
Hello, class of the Riddick.
You've got an American in Spiker, an American in Kansas,
an American in Bay, and a Frenchman in Baby Shark.
Truly a melting pot.
Of all cultures here and with it, Wildcard have never been the best team in North America.
They are one round away from changing that and to do so
over not one, but two of the best teams domestically.
Both DZ and M80 would be an incredible accomplishment for a team
that is just continuing to improve.
of like a fine wine getting better with age.
M80 can play spoiler by winning this round and sending us to OT.
Suck with full of personalities on this team.
And this spiker has been grinding since forever.
It feels like he's 18 years old to make this happen.
Here's a runout from Kansan immediately shut down by Gavin.
Kansan, another guy who's been at the top of North America before,
has been punting to get back there.
He will not be part of the Round 12 victory if it comes in this one
for Wildcard as he early goes down.
Trynna play with a bit of that momentum. It sucks losing a 2 brown. That's a lot of your stalled on and a nitrous off the board as well.
Devastating loss for this team.
And Kansan is a terrifically clutch player as well. So if he's still up on the board even when he's outnumbered, outgunned, etc.
There's a lot that he can do to help your team.
I guess the one credit here is that he is the second least amount of kills on the squad. So...
You've got the more offensive threats, it's still upright.
They'll trade and all future trades will benefit this M80 team.
As down goes Baby Shark, you lost your smoke as well.
Adrian knocked out of the building and out of reality.
As Biker takes one down before being traded out himself.
They over by Piano, retrieving that nitro cell.
There's one on window as well and it'll be the upside down repel to deal with him.
a diffuser as the cross and away we go to OT at least two more rounds between these teams.
Well you couldn't have thought it would come that easy wildcard it's two runouts out of the
big garage door parker that comes out as the end of them both Kansan and of course
Adrien dying in that position. Adrien gets one kill for his troubles. A crazy air jab that
does eventually fell Adrien. I don't think I've ever seen an air jab like that hit someone
in that position, but regardless, they do manage to punish that aggressive move coming
out from Wildcard, and it's good for them to keep their cool. A lot of worse teams would have
faltered in that moment. They would have let the aggression get the better of them, but instead,
it's Wildcard who played a little bit too fast, a little bit too loose, hoping to secure this one
quickly, but it just doesn't come that way. So now they've got to deal with overtime. And for
me, Parker, this might be the most stressful part of the entire night, because Wildcard,
If they lose at this position, after going up 6-5 in regulation, after going a little
bit loose on that final round, falling in overtime, now you're facing an entire another
map.
That is how mental starts to get broken.
M80 have played a long, grueling day of siege.
It's only 1pm on the west coast, but still, they'll be headed to their sixth map if
they can win this overtime, but it feels like they have the stamina, it feels like
like they have the momentum if they can win the OT wildcard desperately need to
close this one out in overtime. I would be worried for their mental if they have
to go to a third map.
Completely agree with you here. The amount of hours just today alone that
have been logged by this wildcard team. It's really something they did get a bit
of a reprieve between their match with dark zero and now hear the grand finals
against wildcard. That's when we did our very first NAL award show, which
by the way, I hope people did quite enjoy the gentleman on your screen
right there. Ashen, he was the MVP for the stage. A bunch of different awards being given
out in another player that is currently present in this lobby. Spiker was given the best clutch
slash best play. And there he is with his clutch on clubhouse walking in slaughtering
three players getting the diffuse get down. He's really shown some brilliance here for
another tech pause. Once again, I imagine it's likely a rehost due to overtime parameters
that tends to happen from time to time. So teams are not allowed to speak. They can sit
there with the long face and just get ready for some more violence. Cafe Jesse is the
decider. Sounds like we did have somebody drop from the lobby. So we'll just work on
getting them back in. It might not be as long as a rehost sometimes does go through.
So we appreciate your patience. It shouldn't be too long. Cafe again, one of those maps
where you start to get a little bit scared if you are a wild card. Well, maybe you
have two 7-0 victories on cafe over the last couple of days both versus dark
zero but also they've played wildcard twice on that map and have lost both
times wildcard a 4-1 record on cafe it's one of their better maps for sure so
you might think on paper they'd be the favorites but again I'd worry about
momentum I'd worry about the mental at this level when you're at the grand
finals of the of a domestic stage you know you're on the third map of B03
You have to imagine it's gonna be pretty even on paper if teams would let it go that deep in through the band phase
6-6 now as we load into overtime wild card will start on the defense. This was
M80s map picks so they will be choosing their overtime start side
So M80 thinking the attack will be better through regulation
It was six attack wins six defense wins
So there shouldn't be any favorites coming into this second coming into this overtime
Defense for Wildcard. Attack 4 and 80. Early. Badly decided advantage here. Would you rather
attack, would you rather defend? I think attacking is easier on Shelle, but also if it's a high
pressure game, I think attacking is generally harder because you've got to be the one to
move. There's something Pengu's talked about a lot in the past where it's like when you're in a
nervous game whether that's like the first round of a big tournament or even like an important
one like this. Sometimes it's easier just to sit and hold your angles than it is trying to force
a push somewhere. Wildcard will choose this top floor bomb site as their first of two sites
that they'll choose to defend here in overtime. They were successful on the site back in round
number seven and in round 11 they lost it in the 10th round. It was right after their
attack time mode actually that they were able to bring this one back replaying
with a very similar operator lineup it's again almost identical to the all
plan of living playing non-stop since round 10 out comes the blackbeard in the
hands of savage work very effectively before ashen takes down to Bay and Adrian
die in a hurry what was that and you can see its business as usual for M80
nothing typed in the chat by Ashen.
That's a devastating blow to Wildcard's chances,
but Gunner walks in haplessly.
Spiker punishes him.
A walk away as he knows there's a target on the window
and knows that there's one over by Trophy,
so he will get below and hope to greet him
with an explosive fate.
Deathmark goes off, but it's the opposite side of the map
and he will abandon that nitro cell.
Spiker on the run with M80 having a number's advantage.
It's gotta be so frustrating.
Wildcard do another aggressive move
with a double run out from Adrian and Bay,
but it's caught on a drone before to even make that play
so it gets hard punished by Ashen.
These are really frustrating ways
to be going down early in the round
that it puts so much pressure on your support players.
When guys like Spikers, you'll clutch this one up
after that spot.
MPS gonna do some serious damage.
Kanzan wins that one.
That's a bit of a pipe way.
Go on Spikers now on the board as well.
Lots of damage being done.
How does Kanzan pull it off?
Spiker 2! Wildcard had no business winning that one, but they get it back from that one
round where they took two members of N80 out early and lost it. This time they sacrificed
to win it and go back to championship point. Listen, it's a lot of pressure on those site
players if you lose two players running out early in the round, but it just seems like
Like this wildcard team thrives under pressure.
A miraculous clutch to come back up.
Kansan and Spiker putting the kills together as M80s struggle to get into the building.
The two oldest and most experienced players on this wildcard team standing up and making
the play happen.
Just ridiculous gunplay from both of them.
We watched Kansan's POV.
But Spiker was absolutely insane too.
We saw these teammates look at this good aim from me. Yeah show that off get excited because that might be the moment that makes wildcard and ale champions
Just some seriously phenomenal stuff here from
This game and again wildcard just
Continue to get better and better and better
Even though it's been two maps m80. I was really impressed today
I know that they will be frustrated if this is the end of the road, but the way that they were able to recover after a tough start against Dark Zero, and the way that they've recovered here as well against Wildcard, as you can see, 7-1 the scoreline for map 1.
Wildcard not really having any problems whatsoever on that Nighthaven Labs.
Now, here on Chalet, it's been a very close game with huge moments for multiple players.
Gavin popping off, Gunner popping off, Spiker, Adrian, there's been no shortage of fireworks.
And if this is the end, my friend, you'll be a well-deserved victory for Wildcard just
here in stage one.
And then, of course, they'll be riding that high as they look to go to the homeland
of Baby Shark for EWC next month.
moment that would be the play in front of your home crowd coming in as a North American champion
at that you know baby shark is hungry for it this whole team have been waiting so long to be at the
top of North America and now it's m80 you have to do the impossible now this is a bomb that's giving
successful on fake the name pullout but it's not a good enough aim gunner finally caught off
it's baby shark who hits it immediately trade it back though 4v4 still action pulling back
They clear through these hallways, keep the barriers, keep them safe, that's a trade M80 will be happy to take.
They clear out an important player in terms of Baby Shark, that's going to mean that those Dockercams will continue to persist up and around the map
because you don't have the information to clear them out to an M80.
It's early, there's still a lot of time I think for Wildcard, but a 4v4 is definitely a good spot to be in.
Yeah, I mean obviously the question needs to be asked is how much of this was Baby Shark able to do with his information and his gadget?
gadget. This is a very quick one from Adrian. He doesn't realize there's another player inside
the library dancing around the bullets. M-80 outnumbered Adrian will need to clutch down
his savage and diffuser to a great job of turning this one around. He's got a player
over by Chimney, but Adrian is sweating bullets. The weight of this championship on his shoulders.
One more round for M-80. If we go to full distance, he needs to go for the reload,
care of diffuser and would you write a better story? Savage and Adrian former
teammates they won EWC together last year. They made the SI Grand Finals together
earlier this year and now for the championship Adrian will need to kill
his former teammates. He's got Savage on the ropes inside of library. It'll be
a bare knuckle bout. But hold on. Adrian's changing his mind. Down he'll
go to the bomb site, pass the defuse kit, and Savage will get him through the wall! We're
going all the way! What an incredible end! You could not script a better final round.
Not quite enough to close out the map, but in round 14, former teammates in the 1v1,
just a miraculous game, and that's not an easy one to win out for Savage either,
of course. He's the IGL, he's the hard support captain of MAD, going up against
one of the best fraggers on his former team at Adrien.
That's a tough one to win, but he falls back to the sites.
Just a ridiculous chain of events in the midst of that.
Adrien had like nine different opportunities
to kill the fuser as well, by the way.
He just could not find the kill.
Finally, the pistols of the foot is what does it
and gets him into this 1v1.
What a miracle to come through the savage.
Let's go!
Nice, Lucas!
Chaotic.
Final moments as we got down to that 1v1, but none of it will be remembered if this game ends right here and now it could all be for not if they can't close it out in round 15 and force us back to cafe.
Wildcard will have one more opportunity to 2.0 and 80 and crown themselves champions otherwise we are just getting started in this crazy series.
We are either three minutes or an hour away from the champion.
Being crowned cafe is map number three.
It has been incumbent upon M80 to repeatedly close this gap.
You don't know if they'll be able to pull it off.
I don't even know if they know if they'll be able to pull it off.
Baby Shark will gamble on a spawn peak with the pistol of Ella.
Oh my.
What a start to the round.
would have been instead he'll now go over and do the exact same thing. Nope, they'll put down some
barbed wire and await the advances over an office upstairs. My heart's racing and I'm not even
playing for either of these teams. I can't imagine what's going through the minds of the players.
I like seeing Wildcard keep the aggression up, Barbra. It's kind of come back to bite them
in the last couple of rounds, but they're still willing to go for these aggressive feats.
They know that's just how you have to play Chalet so they can't let their confidence get
shaken just because they've had a couple of bad rounds. Now they're here on the
defense for one final time. Barring games will be the place where this map
end one way or another. They know that Baby Shark is still aggressive over on
that West Side map. Of course, hands and inside a piano you've got Baby Shark over
inside of office as well. It's these two players sitting with scorpions
inside the top floor who'll be hoping to lock down this Rome game. No
library control either. Both these teams have really leaned into kind of
The Yeager will mine meta trying to lock down this room above the bomb site, but Wildcard
choosing to be a bit more aggressive with it.
This side is going to be so smart because they'll get a couple of early picks off it or it could
come back to bite them hard.
Target baby shark now with that death mark.
Half of the round is gone.
Wildcard's still quite spread out.
You have to be concerned with these isolated gunfights.
these 50-50 engagements.
Hanson is within steps of Baby Shark,
but I don't know if he's there suitably enough
to get the refrag, so he needs to watch his own position
inside a bathroom and hope that Baby Shark
learns whatever engagement may come.
Outgrows an aide to clear any utility,
wayward utility that's been placed by that office door
as Savage is exposed for a second,
taking care of Baby Shark.
They knew he was there, they read him so well.
A huge investment and wild card are punishing him, 80,
But hold on, Gunner and Ashton are here.
Here come the two Americans trudging their way inward.
One minute remaining in the round.
Wildcard with the advantage.
Spiker on 14 kills.
Adrian on 16, Ashton 11, Gunner 11.
All the heavy hitters still up.
They'll chase M80 from their position.
A gas canister tossed from the top of library stairs.
Baby Shark is the real Wildcard here,
living up to his org's namesake
as he lurks down below.
30 seconds, this game is really tight, they just picked up a few skits too.
And they know exactly what they need to do, you need to walk that down to this bomb site,
but baby shark and adrian are going to play full court trash, catching ashen, gunner in
a 1v3, wildcard chasing their first championship and they will get it!
The Kings of North America!
Congratulations Wildcard!
Very well earned, very well deserved, and what a final map for them to be crowned Kings!
I'm just letting the wildcard reaction speak for itself.
The boys take the title for the first time after chasing it.
For so long they come out the other side with a win all the way around 15 to do it and they
deliver the victory.
Honestly moments like these my heart is like racing like I was in this moment.
I was not in this moment.
I don't know how you're feeling but I was most hurting.
The emotions that are going through this, I mean, we had the script, we had the script
in round 14, if Adrian wins that fight, he deals the deal there, I mean, something with
speed, we just always have the best script that we just missed out on that opportunity,
but still nonetheless, I mean, what a series from both of these two, you really got to
give commiserations to both the teams, all the players contributed, all the players
put their foot forward, the best foot forward, ultimately it comes down to Wildcard, sealing
the deal and a much deserved NAL championship title.
Yeah, it does come down to them sealing the deal and the N80, again, they were starting
to wake up a little bit there.
We had a game on our hands.
We were thinking for a second there, this might be going to mat 3 in that cafe and what
that might have been.
But unfortunately for them, again, we talked about the wild card plot armor kind of coming
out on top just a little bit.
All these close rounds kind of going into their favor.
And yeah, ultimately in this last round again, it just came down to a big TDM
moment and wild card they knew what their condition was where they call checkmate.
They got into their checkmate position extremely well and I mean hats off to them yeah JJ not
in their path look what they could do.
Look what they are capable of when they don't have to deal with them I mean can's in the
MVP of this one but up and down the lineup everyone on the wild card side made their
contributions in moments.
Take baby shark for example right is not leading the way but they were some absolutely
Vital moments where we saw 1v2's getting multiple kills. I mean without him that they don't win this game
Right with stats don't always paint the pictures even if baby shark was statistically maybe the lowest rated in that series
He had big moments that contributed to them winning rounds even in that last round
Particular where we would see savage push towards that canine hit that LMI
We immediately was baby shark swing get the frag and then try to go back ultimately
and they do bring it back into a 3v3.
But it's getting those initial picks
that he was able to do time and time again
from that canine position.
Pay dividends.
Lash, you're telling me the lowest stats,
doesn't mean you get dropped.
That's what Bennett tells me all the time.
What are we talking about here?
I mean, why get him off the team?
I mean, he did have some big moments.
Another round where he was on Warden again.
Same thing.
Same thing.
They didn't see he was Warden.
They run the Blitz at him.
He opens up the round for them.
That's what Fraggers do.
They're not always going to pop off with the aces
with the 4Ks.
But they're going to open up the rounds and baby shark very good at doing that wild card a moment that they have been looking forward to
From quite some time. I know spiker has been waiting for this moment for a while spiker
Congratulations, man. It is a long time coming and it is so well deserved your first NAL title wild card
Have finally done it. Take me through the emotions right now what you're feeling
I know how badly you wanted this right you told us before that EWC wasn't enough
You wanted to go all the way
How are you feeling this moment? Let's see the tears
No, I mean no, it feels great. Honestly these last like my knee is messed up
So like the last four days last like four days like I've been like kind of like doing my like in my own zone
Like it's so like it feels great. It feels fantastic. I got a fear. I was going out on my knee
That's like kind of my main focus. I just want to be very free to be see
But you know it feels great. You saw the rest of the boys stand up and celebrate
I I stood up my own pace, you know five times exactly very good reaction from you there
Yeah, yeah, you know I gotta put my leg like fully stretched out. I can't lean in
I'm good for my mouth normally like the rest of you guys so like it's tough. It's been tough
You're getting old buddy. You're getting old. I am bro. That's what that's what super city
I said it's super mighty hurts. He said he said bro. Let's just go again. No
Well spiker congratulations. Oh
Oh, yeah, here I am, okay. I don't know. Okay. I was gonna say I don't really have much of a question for you
I do want to just say congratulations. Obviously I teamed with you seeing your
Just influence in the league your influence on the team and what you continue to replicate time and time again to finally get an
AL title underneath your belt
I'm super excited to see what we get from you more in the future and especially going into EWC
So all thank you congratulations to you. Thank you man. I appreciate it. Thank you. Well lacks. Good cop
I'll play the back cop here first. Oh
Congratulations spiker JJ not in your way. You guys were able to get the title now
I want to know what in your guys mind at least what change for you guys because we pulled up a graphic
We looked at through the stage of wild cards. You guys were consistently that seventh place sixth place fifth place team
What changed in the last I don't know three four months for this wildcard team to now you guys are competing domestically is neat
Yeah, you know my knee. Yeah. No, I mean I got no clue honestly
Like I think it's really just been like everybody's just putting in like so much effort like day in day out
Everybody's trying so hard like we knew that we would get to this moment
We seem to figure out how to kind of translate our international system. That's okay
Which is weird because normally it's
Internationally exactly so, you know, we need to get here eventually we knew the talent that we had we knew the players
that we had the you know the group that we have is fantastic so you know
it's just about staying on the grind trust in the process and you know no
rear yeah and 100% and love me some hot and cold I thought he performed
fantastic for you guys at SLC but Adrian's playing right now I wonder
if there's any question marks in your guys head what you guys could have done
at that event with Adrian because he's playing out of his mind yeah it
definitely sucked the week though like you know lean the practice lean to
solid city was really good too so you know definitely it definitely sucked
Especially losing to DZ in a pretty close game and then they end up winning the event definitely sucked
but you know
Whatever there's nothing we could have done about it
So you know we're just taking it you know how we could learning as much from Matt as we could you know
It's a great like veteran person a great just a great dude
Honestly, so just learning everything in game in out of game that we kept from him
You know taking that experience and it was kind of you know our kind of goal with that
The chalet pig here
I'll kind of ask a question that they would normally ask but like we heard you guys going into that map
map with a pretty bad recent history on it. We heard like the
Legotenus, right? We heard Legotenus say, let's win this map.
Like we are winning Chalet. What was it about Chalet today that
you guys were particularly prepared for?
We just kind of, you know, took our game last week and, you
know, change some stuff up. Just kind of, you know,
improving on the map was kind of our main thing, you
know, every game that you, especially the games you
lose, you learn a ton from, right? So I think we've learned
a ton from that easy game last week, both on attack and
defense and we try to implement those things as we can practice and it worked out long and
good.
Sweet Spiker, thank you so much for your time.
Congratulations again man.
It is awesome to see you at the top officially.
The best team in the NAL.
Congrats man.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
What a way to finish the stage wild card to go all the way through upper bracket
run.
I called it!
They did not have to get up on the bracket.
We called it!
Nope!
You said that it was going to be DZ.
I said it would have had to go through the lower bracket, but they did it in the upper bracket. Look, I'm just happy
We don't have to see any more tweets from JJ Blas saying he's the NA L champion no longer now
I am happy. Yeah, I'm happy to say and they absolutely earned it
So I'm happy to see some spikers of Bay some baby shark. They got so many personalities so much great talent on that team
I love it and now here's the question right they go into EWC as the team to beat in NA a
a very different position than they're used to seeing.
How does that change their prep?
How does that change their approach?
You know what I mean?
Adrian's looking extremely comfortable on the team.
The team's looking comfortable.
They now have domestic success.
I mean, do they win EWC now?
Is that the recipe for this team?
Yeah, I mean, you hope that they didn't get cursed
and now that they won domestically,
they're just going to get grouped or something.
Obviously, NAA team is winning.
Now they're the favorite to win the whole thing.
They are the favorite to win it.
But what that means is there's
going to be more footage on them, more maps out there.
I think everyone in the in world is going to know info maxing and C4 maxing.
So I'm expecting a lot of counter prep on them.
But from what I've heard, the coach, he puts so much work in,
and he's going to be changing their game, gameplay over the next two weeks.
They're going to be evolving, they're going to be learning, even though they
won, they're going to be changing so much stuff up.
So yeah, I'm not worried about them at all.
Expect them to be some happy favorites.
I want a way to finish stage one, got here to Copenhagen.
We've been living here full time, by the way, for the last 41 days.
in case you weren't aware of that.
I did go over a week.
Truly, it's been a wild experience here.
You guys have been such a great to have you on the best
aisle.
Really, a great addition.
Your frontage as an analyst ever,
you do it here in Copenhagen.
How was it for you?
First of all, just giving impressions to the world.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie, guys.
It was pretty shocking when I got
to see all the stuff that you guys are doing behind
the scenes that no one gets to know.
And people kind of give you a little bit of shift
or maybe behind the scenes.
But yeah, it was, you guys were super helpful
to kind of get me up to speed,
still get nervous from the camera,
even though I'm streaming all the time.
But I had a ton of fun.
Who knows what the future holds,
but again, I really enjoyed my time.
Appreciate you guys having me.
Appreciate everyone kind of having me here
and giving me the spot on the couch, yeah?
I mean, I absolutely loved it.
It was been super fun working with you.
We've always been adversaries.
We've always had some sort of, you know,
team dynamic of me losing to you,
always me not wanting to be friends with you
and then now we're here on the desk,
we're on the same team.
I mean, it's just, you know,
it's competition at the end of the day,
but it's nice to finally be on the same team.
And I think you have been a tremendous addition
to this desk.
Appreciate that.
I thought about the same dream right there.
I was, honestly.
I thought you were thinking about his dream.
He's just,
I thought it was a top five rated players.
Dream was just in the back of my head.
He's a top five.
Come on, man.
Don't buy it.
I believe you.
Well, obviously a huge thanks to you guys
being a part of this and a huge thanks to everyone who's being a been a part of
the broadcast from home. We would not be able to do what we love. All these
players would not be able to do what they love without you, the viewer. So
keep watching, keep tweeting, interacting and posting on Reddit, debating
and everything in between. We love it. That's what makes the Rainbow Six
community whole. That's what makes us able to do our jobs. So we really
appreciate everything that you bring to the community. So with the final
time here in stage one on behalf of our entire studio crew, our
producer Toga for laxing for Mint. I'm Jonas Villanger. Thanks so much for watching and we will return in stage two in the fall. See you then.
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