The championship clash for the major trophy of the CS:GO phygital tournament happened on the Nuke map. This map had been selected by the team captains by exclusion.
The Websterz players rushed into the game using quick-attack techniques, pushing on relentlessly and collecting frags. By the eighth round, their opponents were losing with a score of 0:7. Websterz made such outstanding progress in large part due to the efforts of Igor lollipop21k Solodkov who had collected 12 frags by this time. It would’ve seemed that nothing could stop this fellow, who ranked among the top 30 in the world, and his team. HOTU, however, took a moment, licked their wounds and surprised everybody with an incredible comeback. Nyurgun swiftsteel Avvakumov displayed outstanding composure. His attacks began to work and bear fruit. This success of swiftsteel decidedly lifted the spirits of his teammates. The Yakutian team thundered its way back into the match and started wreaking destruction on its opponents.
“Our attacking skills on the Nuke map are actually better. The fifth player from our team couldn’t come so we were playing with a substitute. So we were failing at first with our attacks but then we did scrape together the five rounds that we needed. We didn’t give up. We knew very well that victory was not the most important thing. The job was to score points and win rounds. So we went all out on every round. Ultimately, we scored enough,” Nyurgun swiftsteel Avvakumov said sharing the details of the most difficult part of the match that his team had faced.
With varying success, the opponents made it to the sixteenth round of the match (12:13). Towards the last rounds, the players started to exercise more caution expecting their opponents to slip up. The Websterz turned out to be more experienced in this kind of confrontation and eventually won the first part of the phygital confrontation (13:16).
The harsh but still very disciplined lasertag clash settled the outcome. The physical part commenced with the score which had been reached during the digital part of the match. However, winning a round in lasertag earned a team two points.
HOTU took a very disciplined approach to the lasertag match. They held their positions meticulously, defended the base well and kept the passages under constant fire. By the twelfth round, the Websterz had given ground in terms of shooting and movement points. The e-athletes from Yakutsk managed to catch up and gain an advantage by taking over the enemy’s base aggressively. The final score for both disciplines was 37:24. HOTU won the CS:GO+lasertag phygital tournament championship, the Phygital Flame trophy and the main cash prize of 1,250,000 rubles.
“We had a great coach who was training us for laser tag. He gave us a map so that we could establish our key positions during the trainings. So we could work out effective strategies. Our game was disciplined. Nobody was just running around aimlessly. We were holding down the fort. When the enemies made mistakes, we hit,” Dmitry mizu Kondratiev from HOTU said sharing his team’s laser tag tactics.
The match for the third place
The digital match for bronze started with a race for frags. WINDINGO at once ganged up on their opponents from 9Pandas trying to throw them off. The 9Pandas players kept cool, fought back and won the first three rounds. WINDINGO changed their tactics and evened the playing field to 3:3 by the seventh round. The players engaged in heated dueling fights, showed impressive teamwork, changed sides and captured enemy weapons. With a score of 13:13, the e-athletes had quite an arsenal. The 9Pandas players instead loaded up on devices which determined the outcome of the match. They won the round by aggressive defense and accurate hits during the finishing fights. The digital match rounded up with a score of 16:13.
The laser tag stand-off was equally as intense. Shooting from behind cover, the teams’ tactics were to send in two stormtroopers and two machine gunners under the cover of snipers. The pro gamers’ clashes were equally as breathtaking in the physical part of the tournament. By the total of the two disciplines, 9Pandas outplayed their opponents with a score of 34:27 thus winning the third place of the CS:GO+laser tag phygital tournament.