Wednesday
I had to wakeup at 5am to get the train to Heathrow, that wasn’t nice! When I got to Heathrow I met up with Zaccubbus from Dignitas who was also travelling to the event. We flew to Munich were me met with noctis and jumped on the flight to Kiev. Also on our flight was
linkin and strenx from fnatic, as well as a few other gamers including a mousesports player. We had a brief chat with linkin and strenx before nodding off for some well needed rest. We landed smoothly and met with fazz and tybalt who were waiting for us at Kiev airport.
We grapped a taxi to the apartment which was sweeeeeet!! It has 3 bedrooms, a huge living room and a huge kitchen as well as a jacuzzi !!! We went out to explore Kiev and found an Irish bar with a cute barmaid were we grabbed some food and drinks (cola for fazz and noctis!)
Then we chilled at the apartment for a while whilst the guys watched some SC2 and I had a jacuzzi 🙂
Thursday
We woke up at 07:30 and grabbed a shower and some breakfast. fazz had some dodgy looking ukrainian bread smothered in laughing cow cheese whilst I settled for a croissant 🙂 After a short while we headed out to grab a taxi to get to the event, the first 2 drivers didn’t know where the venue was and didn’t speak ANY English, but luckily the 3rd dude seemed to know where he was going so we jumped in and prayed for the best.
We got to the venue in one piece and were all impressed with it, there is a nice stage at the front with a big screen and plenty of couches to laze about on whilst watching the games.
The guys set up whilst tybalt and I helped where we could, mostly bringing drinks and acting as the guys bitches basically. After a few issues with lag and pc problems as there inevitibly is at a tournament we were underway, noctis faced the Dignitas player GoHlinK in his first match and won fairly comfortably on both maps, even after a shakey start on aerowalk. Fazz was next up and he got off to a great start against Cypher on t4 and they were tied until about the 5 minute mark, Cypher then rushed fazz at mega and took the lead, managing to hold onto it until the end of the game. The next map was furious heights and Cypher really turned it on here, he was literally unstoppable and fazz was unable to get a single kill. The match finished 2-0 to Cypher but fazz had showed plenty of promise on the first map.
Next up was the fixture none of us were looking forward to, it was fazz vs noctis as team mates collided. This was the game that if all else went to plan would decide the 3rd place spot in the group, and therefore qualify for the elimination stage and the World Finals, so both players knew it was a huge game. The maps were picked and we started off on hektik, noctis was in great form here and took the win fairly comfortably. The second map was dismemberment which was close throughout, coming into the final minute fazz was a frag up and noctis had to chase him down to stop it going to a third map. You can see what happened here. (excuse the language!)
The third and final map was lost world, again this was extremely close and went into overtime, fazz took the frag in OT which proved too much for noctis as his emotions got the best of him and he ragequit 🙂
Noctis and tybalt then went back to the apartments whilst fazz and I stayed at the venue so fazz could get some more practice in. I managed to watch some other games and got to witness Cypher beat Cooller in a good game.
Later on fazz and I headed home and grabbed a McDonalds for all the guys, we then watched Reason.QL TDM Team (deus, zyv, dibbe, ddk) beat frontline in the Full Tilt Poker Cup on the laptop before heading off to bed.
Friday
Friday was always going to be the crunch day as both noctis and fazz had 3 fixtures each. After getting up sligtly later than Thursday noctis, fazz and I shot off to the venue and left a very sleepy tybalt in the apartment to get some well needed beauty sleep.
Noctis’ first game was against the up and coming Polish player tox1c, who gave Cooller a run for his money in their game the day before. Noctis took the first map dismemberment after some hairy moments around the 7 minute mark. Next up was tox1c’s map pick lost word, which noctis had lost to against fazz the day before. This was an incredibly tight game and noctis was left having to chase tox1c down as he had a 1 frag lead, it proved too much for noctis to manage as tox1c played smartly and camped corners with a rocket launcher not allowing noctis the chance to get a clean kill. We then moved on to hektik, noctis was exceptional on this map and took it comfortably by about 15 frags in the end. Noctis knew however that dropping a map to tox1c could cause him problems in qualifying later on in the day.
