DSRack: A Blight On The Landscape

"Don’t write about fnatic again" were the instructions from Dynamic Gaming just prior to interviewing them. I reflected on yesterday… Maybe I had committed that unforgivable sin of latching on to one team and writing too much about them. Hell, I’m doing it right now… Eager to please on my Tek-9 debut I made the sage decision to stay well away from the Blight versus fnatic match, where the Finnish team were expected to lose admirably but lose all the same.

"Blight are beating fnatic" came the ripple through the players, stood up and looking more lively now that the best of three matches were here and yesterday’s ordeal was at an end. I didn’t bite… "It’s an anomaly" I thought to myself "normal service will be resumed soon enough" and so I pulled my hat over my eyes and grabbed thirty minutes shut eye in the corner, like an old dog back from a day hunting for imaginary beasts.

The plan had been to get up and interview Blight Gaming after they lost, a consolatory pat on the shoulder from an e-sports veteran, "well done boys, enjoy the lower bracket" and then fuck off to get some wake-up juice. This is the ugly reality of how the mind works when in a coverage binge; you plan the event in your head and rely on your instincts to keep it 99% accurate.

"Blight are winning the second map" the same crowd said while I tapped my toe and waited. What if I was wrong? What if fnatic weren’t going to pull this back at all? I’d have missed one of the biggest upsets of the tournament and everyone would call me a bum, a lazy fiend who was dozing in the corner of a room underneath a bowling alley when the action took place. Maybe I could say I was there anyway, make up some clever story about the game and call it "experimental" if the details were vague and fuzzy. Another option was to threaten the little guy from ArcticNova into writing it for me… "I’m bigger than him" reasoned my primitive brain "at LAN only the strong survive".

Alas, my better nature prevailed and I sheepishly limped over to where Blight were playing just in time to see them beat fnatic. They were overjoyed, hugging each other, screaming, adrenaline levels through the roof. Yes, I had indeed missed the next story but there was still time to pull it back. I eased myself into their celebrating group, as if I had been there all along, in their corner and on their side and congratulated them on their victory.

"It was EASY!" The joked at first, probably mistaking me for an admin or a player, until they saw the notepad.

Fekuj was more pragmatic in his approach, telling me in his hushed tones "We just didn’t expect that at all… I think it proves the doubters wrong, the people that said we only had online results. As a team this our biggest win."

It was a testament to two things. The first being the strides made by some of the second-tier talent in the CoD4 scene, the teams that had come here being told they had no chance. Equally it showed that fnatic had a long way to go… But I’m not writing about them an dI wouldn’t want to take away anything from the plucky Finns regardless.

I asked them how they won. K1mi explained "we just pushed them, tried to overrun them but you know what, that time-out really helped us."

He was right. 9-5 down on citystreets the time-out due to a technical issue sucked all the momentum and life from the fnatic fightback. Yet, I think they don’t give themselves enough credit. They exploited the weaknesses on A site admirably and played without fear, using unorthodox positioning and jump spots to get some cheeky picks, and using careful grenade placements to neutralise their better known opponents.

A textbook example of a win for the little guy, how to defeat the favourites in a few easy steps. Blight Gaming might have been off my radar earlier today but they should be firmly on yours now. As I skulked back to my battered laptop to write this all up, an admission of brutal failure, I asked one more question, whether they would be happy now on this result alone.

"No" said k1mi "we want to win now… Why not?" It was hard to argue with the logic. He added as a caveat "whatever happens though we will be out celebrating tonight." The column inches might well belong to fnatic but the day belongs to Blight Gaming.