While not expecting to have to fight so hard over it, Team YoYoTech still managed to do what everyone had thougth they should do and that was win the event over their local and one foreign competitors. Team YoYoTech have now secured a first team LAN win and, should the HCC series continue, hope to pick up more in the future.

mp_crossfire

Whilst Team YoYoTech have proven to enjoy playing mp_crossfire, it also suits their abilities and the way their players behave. On this map, saruz and fekuj are given enough leeway to play aggressively and get away with it, especially in the early moments of the rounds it paid off. Coupled of course with rEplan who has proven to be the most versatile and experienced scope of the event here.

This combination did not immediately guarantee a map win, of course, as Phantasmagoria is rightfully considered as the only team here that has a good chance against Team YoYoTech and is gunning to be recognized as the country's number one, shooting themselves out from under the shadow of the Team YoYoTech side.

The game started off like your usual mp_crossfire, with Phantasmagoria having good nades at B and getting into the bombsite quite quickly, yet not quite being able to plant the bomb, as k1mi was offering resistance and taking down multiple enemies each round. But it then went back and forth between them, with Phantasmagoria winning a round and then it would be Team YoYoTech who could run past the nades and the prefire to get a round of their own.

Rorz and wellie were the more outstanding players for Phantasmagoria and fuNNky usually had to give the upperhand to rEplan, but in reality, both scopes did not play such a pivotal role as most of the fighting was done close quarters near B or either in A building or light house.

Team YoYoTech only wanted to secure a close enough gap on the defending side in order to finish the map on the attacking side. Which is exactly what happened, as the score read a 07 : 05 in favour of Team YoYoTech. So already going into the arguably easier side with already a score advantage, team YoYoTech could coast a bit and were just going to play a bit more loosely.

This was shown in the way saruz just went totally aggressive on A and would get around 2 to 3 frags a round and allow the B rushers to plant the bomb without prefire coming in from the dreaded A building. The plan was perfect in its theory, but during the execution of it, the B planters got taken down too often by oncoming defenders either via mellon push or kebab spray, still allowing for some tough and hard rounds.

In the end, it all went as expected, with the halftime outcome, as the rounds kept tallying up on their side and eventually, they ended up with the thirteenth round, while Phantasmagoria only had 8.

mp_strike

Rather quickly, it was clear that this map would be a real struggle for the Outpost on Fire 4 attendees, as wellie and stubsi were defending A quite strongly and effectively, whereas the nades that came in as support were undeniably better and more prepared than those from Team YoYoTech.

Team YoYoTech tried to circumvent this by playing a sort of B fake, where both saruz and k1mi would rush out of B link, pretending to do the B attack, but would then rush into mid shops and/or garage to psych out Phantasmagoria. For some rounds it definitely worked, but Team YoYoTech tried to play that card too often and eventually, it stopped being effective.

The halftime score of 07 : 05 in favour of Phantasmagoria was more than deserved and it generally felt as if the team was more prepared on the map and just had better rotations and more communications. It also did not help the YYT side, that k1mi needed some 8 rounds to start making frags and after that, his impact in the game was limited to say the least.

Eventually, the game became increasingly close towards the end, with teams trading rounds from the 09 : 09 score onwards. When Phantasmagoria hit match point first, by playing a B fake of their own, it was only a good strategy by rEplan and playing in mid that helped Team YoYoTech stay in the game.

During the overtime, there was no stopping Phantasmagoria, as they simply wanted this map win more than fekuj and his team mates and it showed. During their defense, they did not fall in the same trap anymore and quickly took a 03 : 00 lead and when saruz was struggling with microphone problems, it seemed to distract the YoYoTech side so much, that they were not at all focused during that first and important final round. Final score on mp_strike: 16 : 12 for Phantasmagoria.

mp_crash

A small break was introduced again and when Team YoYoTech were attacking, the dream story for Phantasmagoria was looking to end perfectly. They immediately took a strong lead and it was all because of how they attacked the A bombsite. The A building was at all locked down and none of the YYT AKu and/or AK players had anything to say against that.

Luckily for Team YoYoTech, the more difficult attacking side was closed out on a high note when they managed to win the final two rounds of the first half by attacking more towards B and mid. This put the gap between both teams on only 2 rounds again and it seemed to go down to the wire all over again.

They continued in the same trend as soon as they had to defend, in total picking up some 7 rounds in a row to put them ahead by two and look more favourable towards the final stages of the map and match. Phantasmagoria thought the same and called in a timeout, hoping this could remedy their problems and keep their chances alive.

Their conclusion was that they drastically needed to slow things down and let the positively feeling YoYoTech side go for the peeks and simply outwait them, knowing they would want to push. It did work. Only for one round, though. After that, the Team YoYoTech crew adapted and sticked to their spots without venturing out too much, proving that they were still remaining calm, being so close to winning it all.

The following two rounds all quickly went to Team YoYoTech and gave them the final score of 13 : 08. They jumped up cheering and were so relieved that they had won an event and proved their dominance to the local Finnish scene. This will surely help the team in staying motivated for the future and keep on trying to attend European events and prove that Finland has to be put back on the Call of Duty 4 map.

01		02
Maps: mp_crossfire: 05 - 13 mp_strike: 16 - 12 mp_crash: 08 - 13
Phantasmagoria.fi Janne "stubz" Yläoutinen Timo "wellie" Heinonen Petri "Rorz" Nurmi Atte "dea" Nieminen Roope "fuNNky" Hokkanen		Team YoYoTech Juho "juho_O" Sihvo Kimi "k1mi" V Ville "rEplan" Ijäs Sasu "saruz" Salakka Valtteri "fekuj" Immonen

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TEK9 HCC Coverage