It's the first round of the playoffs here at Multiplay's i40 LAN event, and we have our first nailbiter.

On paper, it should have been an easy game. Fragmasters, are made up of 5 extremely talented top players, and came through their group strongly. Admittedly, they did draw against watch and learn, but that wouldn't have made anyone suspect this game would be as hard as it was.

Fragmasters' first round match was against Zero Empathy. They took a hard hit on the attacking side, going down 1-4. Echoing their problems against, watch and learn, they simply could not get into the bombsites. Zero empathy were not going to pass this opportunity up, and took the defensive side 8-4. Switching to attack, Zero.e started as they meant to finish, stretching their lead further to 10-5.

Something clicked in the minds of fragmasters. Perhaps it was the realisation that if they didn't do something fast they would crashing into the lower brackets. Whatever it was, the whole team stepped up a gear. Rounds came thick and fast. 10-5 became 11-11 in a matter of minutes. Round 23, and they were looking to finally take a lead in a game which zero.e had dominated. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Early grenade picks went zero.e's way, and pretty soon fragmasters found themselves on the receiving end of match point.

Leonidas "Killzx" Kyrkos, scoping for fragmasters, stepped up to the mark this round, and it was he who secured the overtime for fragmasters. perhaps noting their earlier folly, fragmasters set about this with a vengeance. Notching up the first 2 rounds, it seemed their earlier problems with getting into bombsites had faded away. in round 3, Dan "VAE" Ball got into A quickly, and it looked like this round was in the bag. However, the God of LAN is a cruel and vengeful one, for it was at this point that VAE's PC decided to crash. With a man disadvantage already, it took some deft teamwork for fragmasters to secure the last round of attack.

With only one round left to get, perhaps it was overconfidence that lost fragmasters the first round of defence, but after that they were unwavering and stormed through the map to take the round, and the game.

All in all, not a great showing for the second seed. At times, they showed how great they could be, racking up round after round and taking complete control of the map. However, they showed glimpses of self-doubt and overconfidence in equal measure, leading to an overall lack of consistency.

13		16
Map: mp_backlot
Zero Empathy  Jack "Mosphe" Allsopp  Dylan "dyLAN" Hemsley  Kieran "jeebs" Jasa  Riyad "envr" Lucy  Will "Stary" V.		Fragmasters Mark "Mark" Horner Chris "Stylez" Hart Leonidas "Killzx" Kyrkos Dan "VAE" Ball George "rAIVZ" Marsh