Sauerleague #3 eCTF – Post-Game Analysis

Hello friends, it’s Bertolt!!! On the 13th of January, we had our third competitive Sauerleague tournament. It was a fantastic tournament with many friends who participated in it. I have to say guys, team tournaments are really my favourite because they involve teamwork and spectators have a chance to watch not only amazing individual gun skills but how the teams perform overall. The reasons I found it interesting are:

• Plenty of teams and more competition

• Really tight games.

• Feeling hyper and excited

• I was playing of course.

Having said that, let’s review together what happened in that tournament. Firstly the teams started with the seed process – all vs all game. The usual and successful xenon map was chosen. My clan had two teams, and it felt so weird to have to aim at your teammates, but it is what it is. The first thing that got my attention after the first phase was not my bad skills which should be the number one but the absence of certain big names from the top teams. Acuerta wasn’t there for w00p and Rexus + hadis weren’t there for sp4nk. Well even though I prefer more friends in this tournament, that made things more interesting. The reason was simple. The skill gap was a bit less, and that could possibly offer more competitive games. w00p had lagout though who is also an amazing player, so the loss wasn’t as big as for sp4nk. On the other side, sp4nk had echo-echo who was a bit rusty but still on a good level. It was nice to see him playing, and it was very entertaining watching notas stream how the team interact.

At this point, I would like to mention two awesome mix teams of this tournament. One was H who used very amusing names and the other was yesVI, a mix team of novi with some more interesting wordplays. Of course, I would prefer if novi had the original team. The big clan absence was DM which I thought would have a team and MyS which I hope they will come back soon. The first couple of games started with no surprises. The most interesting game was between sQ and sp4nk which proved my point of a bit smaller skill gap making games spicier. The first game was on forge which sp4nk won by 6-0 and many believed that it will be an easy first round for them. But they made a mistake as sQ showed them on the next game that things would not be as easy as they seemed to be. The choice of map haste was on point as with a beautiful sneaky flag from shuzo sQ scored first and put the pressure on sp4nk side. The game ended with 2-0 as sQ scored one more time. The final match was on mercury which personally I don’t like, but it gives equal chances to both teams to take the game. sQ tried an interesting tactic to score first and it worked. That again put the real pressure on the sp4nk side as it was the last of the three games. sp4nk eventually surpassed that difficult moment for them and they scored 1 flag so the game went to overtime where – unfortunately for sQ – sp4nk managed to score 1 more flag and they got the match.

The next big game was between !s and sp4nk. Even though !s didn’t have the usual play combo and they had a big absence called gangler, they managed to field a good team with savi, tamino and origin. The big benefit of !s team, in my opinion, is how versatile their team members are. Overall they are not the best of the best in one area. They are really good at everything. They can do good flag runs they can do good damage and they can play good defense when they need to. All games between those teams were really tight. Both teams started really aggressively on forge with sp4nk managing to score 2 flags and !s 1, but !s hadn’t said the last word yet. They managed to score 2 more flags and take the lead. All of that on the first half of the games. Eventually !s got the first round. The next game was on reissen which also had the same recipe as the first game. Very strong start for both teams with a sp4nk lead of 2-1 again. This game went back and forth so many times. !s managed to revert the score to 2-3 but sp4nk equalised again. Unfortunately for them !s scored one more flag and got the game.

On the loser bracket sQ had very good games against the two mix teams where they won yesVIon forge with 6-4 and H in mercury with 2-1. Apparently mercury was the map of the tournament as it got chosen many times. sQ had to surpass the obstacle named sp4nk one more time as they won DK on redemption and they moved to the next round. The bad thing this time for both teams was the knock-out process of the loser bracket. The map choice to a big surprise of everyone was mercury. It was another close game with both teams trying to not make the decisive mistake. Sadly sQ lost by one flag. On the winner bracket, w00p had an easy semi-final against !s showing that they wanted to be in the final. The second game wasn’t as easy it seems as !s was behind 1 flag for a good time. Maybe the map choice of haste helped with it. That being said !s lost the game and they had to face sp4nk once more on the loser bracket to get to the final.

If someone asks me to describe that game with 2 words, I would say LAG and PAUSES. Origin-friend had connection problems and tried to fix them multiple times with no success. His team started the game very well. They were leading 2-0 against sp4nk and it looked like they would go to the final. sp4nk was losing, and the pauses didn’t help with the momentum and concentration, BUT they managed to surpass those problems and not only counterbalance the score but eventually take the game.

The final wasn’t as exciting as many players expected. It was the usual final pair, but the absence of the many big names made it a bit less competitive. The first game was on reissen which was an easy win for w00p. sp4nk tried to be strategic and choose mercury as the next map as it worked very well for them during this tournament. This time that strategy didn’t work out though. It was w00p’s turn to win 1-0.

In overall I would say this tournament had very interesting and good games through the main duration of it. sp4nk had the hard way to get to the finals while w00p had an easy way to get there. Maybe that was another factor in the final results. At this point, I would like to thank every clan and team that participated in this tournament. Also a special thanks to notas for the stream I really recommend you guys to watch it. I really enjoyed it, and I can’t wait for the next one.

p.s Moment of glory was the sp4nk missed flag score on reissen against !s. It was a clear base with !s winning 3-2 and the flag keeper suicide before scoring. If they scored that flag things might have been different, but who knows?

Links
SauerLeague – SauerLeague Discord – Tournament Bracket – twitch VOD by notas