Hello!

I arrived home earlier today from my trip to Singapore for the Asia E-Sports Cup qualifiers that took place at Singapore Expo's The Game Xpo event over the past weekend. As you might have read on the site, we managed to win the qualifier and will be attending Asia E-Sports Cup in Tokyo, Japan on September 21-23.

After the Malaysian AEC qualifier which I attended with Karnal, I went over to Singapore for a two day vacation where I met up with my buddy StrykerX from TitaNs. He told me a Singaporean qualifier was taking place as well and we decided we'd try to find out if we could attend together. It wasn't easy to sort out so many details and triple check that I was allowed to play, but eventually we figured it all out and I partnered with QPAD who were great and still willing to support CS 1.6 by sending me to the tournament.

Not many were aware that we were actually preparing a little for this event, as we went over strats and setups for hours in the past few weeks. Obviously it wasn't possible to practice together and nothing can replace that, but I think it helped us quite a bit and just shows what you can do even a twelve hour flight away if you're just motivated to get it done, which we all were. In fact, you could say that I came up with the idea to host Areena #1 to get to play on LAN to prepare for this event.


Colosseum LAN center in Bugis+ mall

I landed on Wednesday afternoon and after checking-in at my hotel and freshening up a bit, we went to Colosseum in Bugis+ shopping center for practice. We left after midnight, got a late dinner and returned before 2pm the next day, this time finishing up a little before 11pm to get proper sleep in for the event. I can't say we got much good practice in because apart from one team who competed in the qualifier, we could only practice vs pugs - it wasn't worth giving away our only advantage, the playing style no one knew about.

We faced Vietnamese Legends first in the pre-qualifier and started as CT on de_nuke. After going up 9-3, I think we became a little complacent and dropped the last three rounds. We then lost the terrorist pistol round, and all of a sudden the game was tied up at nine each after two saves. However, we then stepped up our game by winning the next four rounds with solid play, but then lost an eco and a 3on2 lower site afterplant loss among others, and all of a sudden the score was 13-13. We also lost the next round, but then won the final three to avoid an embarrassing elimination and move on to round two with a 16-14 win.

It was only getting harder here, as we faced Indonesian Executioners (better known as XcN), who I beat easily with WinFakt at IEM VI Guangzhou, but whom almost took down mouz at the same event. We started as terrorists on de_inferno and went down 2-6 early, but then turned the game around winning all but one of the remaining seven rounds. As CTs we played solid defense and stayed up in numbers, gaining matchpoint at 15-9. XcN won the next two, but our adjustment in the next round paid off and we won 16-11 to qualify for the main qualifier the next day.


Warming up against bots on aim_head2k before Legends match

After an extremely unlucky draw in the pre-qualifier (facing XcN, whom I considered the toughest opponent in the entire event, in the single elimination rounds due to no seedings), we were slightly more lucky the next day as we drew a weaker Singaporean team COLON3 from the previous pre-qualifier that took place in July. They were no match to us on de_inferno as we won 12 rounds as CTs with insanity hitting 31 on the scoreboard (as we requested from him on his birthday), and closed the game with a 4-1 score in the second half.

All of us were preparing for m!x (featuring techduck, xtreme and kaya, former TitaNs teammates of StrykerX) by watching them play Indonesian NXL in the second semifinal. XcN's domestic competition prevailed however, and as it turned out we were going to face NXL in the grand finals instead. My teammates knew a little about them and seeing m!x play them on de_nuke helped a little, but they were still largely a questionmark to us as we weren't aware of their players or the like.

WCG style the first map of the grand final, de_inferno, was played on the main stage and we were then forced to move down to the tourney area to finish the match. It seemed like they had us figured out on our terrorist side, as we went down 2-9 and barely scraped together five rounds. As CTs we started well going up 7-0 with me on a roll at 18/1 until getting shot through a smoke in the opening seconds of the round, and the downhill continued from there as we didn't manage a single round before they closed the map out at 12-16.

Our pick de_nuke was an entirely different story though, as we had a monstrous 13 round CT half which possibly made us a little too comfortable heading into the second half. We all kept reminding each other it wasn't over yet, but we struggled to score our second round until the score was 14-13, when insanity's 1on3 win broke their morale, enabling us to win the following round and even up the series at one a piece heading to the final and deciding map, de_dust2.


Main stage at TGX where first map of the final took place

Things continued well there as we went up 9-0 basically uncontested, but then three big mistakes, including one stupid peek by yours truly, caused them to get scary close to a good CT half at 9-3. Luckily we then stepped up a notch and scored the last three rounds. Unfortunately second half started with us going down 0-6. It made me feel uneasy to not even see anyone in rounds 4-6, as I saved out each time. We once again adjusted then however and managed to win the next four rounds in a row to win the event, with my AWP getting the final kill to secure our victory.

It felt great to win a tournament again even if it wasn't a huge one or didn't have any top teams, because we still had to fight for the win and had many close games to get through on our way to reaching our goal. I must also say I really enjoy playing with this group of guys, we all get along well and everyone has a really good attitude towards CS. It might be hard to imagine for the average reader, but to have five people with similar mindsets and attitudes in anything in life is a great thing; just being a top CS team does not, by any means, guarantee that.

Splitting the leading duties with StrykerX also made the whole thing more enjoyable for me, as he was the one making the final decisions as terrorists while my input mostly came in the form of suggestions. I can't really say I can just turn off the focus on my teammates screens or how a strat is unfolding midround, but it's still nice to know at least I'm not the only person making sure things are happening as they should.

I also managed to get sick for the first time in over two years on the flight over and had my flu/cold develop into a fever for gameday, but I suppose hardly ever taking any medicine finally paid off because the really mild Panadol MaxFlus actually made me feel well in matches. Was still annoying to not be able to sleep though, and I'm happy I didn't have to wonder afterwards if it could have changed something in case we lost the event.


Our team in the event sponsor ViewQwest's booth after winning

Mark is going to Phuket on a vacation this week but by next weekend we hope to once again spend some quality time on an empty CS server, go over things we can improve on, build on our repertoire from the past weekend and finally just do the most boring thing of them all - dry run them as we can't actually practice. It's saddening to see how the CS 1.6 scene is declining and I can only really hope to go out with a win in Japan, as my schedule won't allow me to attend either one of the DreamHack events or the tournament in Portugal.

As weird as it may sound, I'm really looking forward to preparing for the tournament in Japan. I've always been oddly motivated by the destination of our next tournament, and Tokyo has been a city I've been wanting to visit for quite some time. I also realize it's likely going to be my last international tournament in a game I've competed in for almost eight years, so I definitely want to end it all on a good note (which didn't happen with WinFakt in the spring) and best out the competition over there.

I'll write another blog to sum up my trip to the sushi capital of the world (no, my taste buds can not wait) as well as the Asia E-Sports Cup tournament once it's over. Huge thanks to QPAD for making this possible and still supporting the best FPS game ever made, and of course to my fans who I always see posting supportive comments when I'm out there competing. Finally thanks to the team; Prasad, Randy, Daryl and Mark and hopefully we can bring home the title from Tokyo in just under two weeks!

Cheers,
Tomi

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Me with my AEC Singapore gold medal and the oversized first place check