After approximately one month of scrimming, Insomnia61 commenced and SVIFT finally got to play with a pocket that had less than 150 ping. Going into the LAN, SVIFT was expected to be the one of two favourites to make the finals, but their performance in the cups put their ability to win against Se7en into question, who were also expected to make it into the Grand Finals. During the group stage, SVIFT won all 6 maps in their group with little to no resistance except for a relatively close Reckoner game against Ascent.EU.

SVIFT’s roster for Insomnia61

The smooth sailing continued into the playoffs, rolling through Ringo, No Input, and Lowpander, with only only one round loss coming from Lowpander on Reckoner. It wasn’t until the Winner’s Finals where they’d meet Se7en, the titan that SVIFT were determined to slay. The series ended up being really close with every map ending in a slim one round lead for one of the two teams. On the first map Process Se7en had a 1–0 lead for 24 minutes during which SVIFT never managed to properly convert off of their advantages, while on Gullywash SVIFT managed to establish a two round advantage approximately 20 minutes into the game, one that Se7en could not recover from. On the final decider map Granary, while SVIFT won most mids during the game and won the first round, Se7en managed to gain two rounds in 6 minutes to quickly turn the momentum their way. While SVIFT managed to win the mid right afterwards, they never managed to cap Se7en’s final point, losing the map and series, and subsequently got put into the lower bracket.

After everybody got their night rest in, Championship Sunday started for SVIFT at 11 AM, when they needed to play their match against Lowpander. The series started on Lowpander’s map pick, Granary. After losing a very closely contested first mid fight and a flubbed push into yard from Lowpander, SVIFT quickly grabbed the momentum and closed out that round and proceeded to grind out four more consecutive mid wins into last caps, closing out that map 5–0 in 21 minutes. SVIFT carried their momentum into the 2nd map and got a 2–0 lead early into the game, while Lowpander quickly responded with a round of their own, they could never quite mount the comeback as SVIFT wound up winning every mid after that and managed to finish the map with a 4–1 scoreline, landing them a spot in the Grand Finals on the Big Insomnia61 Stage™.

Walking up onto the stage SVIFT was faced with the challenge of pulling off the upset against the team they had lost to just a day ago. With Se7en coming from the upper bracket, they got to ban two maps, while SVIFT got to ban none. Se7en used this opportunity to ban Product, a map notorious for upsets as well as their weakest map, and Gullywash, the map SVIFT beat them in the Upper Bracket Finals previously.

The series started at 3PM BST and would end up lasting almost 4 hours. The series started with Reckoner, a map that SVIFT seemed to be relatively weak on, having almost dropped it to Ascent.EU during the Group Stage two days ago. It ended becoming the lowest scoring map of the entire series ending with a 1–0 scoreline in favor of SVIFT. Neither team managed to ever convert on their advantages acquired throughout the map outside of one full uber advantage push from SVIFT off of the famous “Alle jump” through Se7en’s lobby to force Raymon on his last point. This force ultimately put SVIFT in the lead for 18 minutes, during which many more advantages weren’t properly converted on by both teams until the map ended when 30 minutes elapsed on the clock and Se7en’s push out of their own second point failed.

SVIFT managed to get the lead early into this series, but they now had to try to retain their momentum going into the second map Process. It started as a relatively uneventful map with a long stalemate on SVIFT’s second point which after 7 minutes, moved to Se7en’s own second point. After seven more minutes, SVIFT managed to break the vicious cycle of trading ubers with little frags getting exchanged when both medics died, where SVIFT managed to wipe Se7en, allowing them free entrance into Se7en’s last and taking the lead at the halftime point of the map. SVIFT won the second mid and tried to keep the momentum going into a 2–0 scoreline, but failed to ubertrade into second and ended up getting rolled into their own last losing the round and tying the scoreline.

Two more 90 second long rounds quickly got traded between the two teams putting the match into a 2–2 tie. Another stalemate ensued after SVIFT won the mid, which was eventually broken when Stark managed to chase down Raptor post-ubertrade, allowing Se7en to push with heal and uber advantage all the way into last closing out the map 3–2 in Se7en’s favour.

The third map Snakewater had Se7en leading for the most of the game, managing to establish 2–0 lead early into the game. SVIFT obtained two round wins of their own, but never managed to properly deal with Se7en’s consistent mid wins when they closed out the map 3–2 in their favour.

SVIFT now had their backs against the wall and, with Se7en on matchpoint, had to go into one of Se7en’s strongest maps, Granary. This map ended up being the most dynamic and high scoring of all the maps, with it ending in a 4–3 scoreline. Neither team was able to consistently win mids, but both teams were quite adept at converting mid wins into rounds. Se7en always remained in the lead during the map and used it to their advantage when during the final two minutes of the game, while the score was 4–3, they elected to not show up to mid, forcing SVIFT to attempt two desperate even uber pushes through choke. Both pushes completely crumbled resulting with Se7en taking the title of Insomnia61 champions and SVIFT having to be content with the title of runner-ups.

Astt proved himself to be one of the best scouts at Insomnia61 even after a period of inactivity. (Photo Credit — Matthew King/iEventMedia)

After Insomnia61 concluded, SVIFT was in a bit of an awkward spot. For one thing, two of their member joined specifically for the LAN itself, those being Astt, who at the time was actively competing within the Finnish overwatch scene and b4nny, who due to pinging 180 ms to EU servers all the way from the West Coast of the US. Timezone differences and already actively competing in an ESEA Invite team made it unrealistic for him to be able to commit the time to compete in ETF2L. The team also needed to find a replacement for their medic Raptor, who left the team after the LAN concluded and ended up joining ANTIC.

After Insomnia61, Ascent.EU completely collapsed, resulting in a bit of a roster shuffle which caused sorex to rejoin LEGO, credu and Elacour to join top5rocket (which was to become the new Ascent.EU), Samski to quit the game all together, and finally SVIFT to pick up pocket soldier PolygoN and medic babs. For the final scout slot, SVIFT managed to find Thaigrr, the scout that was supposed to be playing for ANTIC at Insomnia61 but was unable to attend the full event due to work commitments.

Looking to regain their title against Se7en, they were met with the abrupt announcement of Se7en pulling out of ETF2L Season 28, citing the lack of a prize pool and the appeal of just playing Essentials.TF’s monthly cups. Without Se7en participating, SVIFT’s motivation fell, even leading to them not participating in Essentials.TF’s monthly cups onwards. SVMZI recollects his team’s motivation in the aftermath of Se7en sitting out of the season.

Se7en [not participating in ETF2L] kinda removed our motivation to play out the season properly but other than that I personally do not really care. We wanted to play last season to give Se7en competition and once we had heard that they wouldn’t even play the season we just half-assedly played the season. ETF2L as it is has nothing besides a pixel trophy to play for so I can not really blame them to sit out for one season.

While SVIFT motivation was less than ideal going into the ETF2L season, they managed get out of the regular season as the top seed. Many close calls were had though, including trading maps against eventual 6th place team Weebtunnel Tactics (though that wasn’t with their proper roster), almost dropping a map in the first week versus 5th place Da Choke Bustaz/NUNYA Black, trading maps with LEGO and Lowpander, and almost losing Product against top5rocket/Ascent.EU.

In the post-season playoffs, the close calls didn’t stop. Every series would go to the final map, and for all the officials SVIFT had to use mercs when Alle suddenly quit in the middle of the initial series against Ascent.EU and Thaigrr was unavailable for the Grand Finals. They manage to make it through the entire upper bracket, managed to get through Ascent.EU and LEGO, and as a keen reader might have already noticed, made it to the Grand Finals in a rematch against Ascent.EU.

Ascent.EU was at first looking to be pulling of an upset, winning the first map in a golden cap and even winning the second map with quite the convincing scoreline of 5–2. But at some point, SVIFT started barely grinding out rounds and edge out Ascent.EU to win the third map Snakewater in a 3–2 score.

Due to SVIFT coming from the upper bracket, they had a map advantage going into the series, so the score was already 2–2, all tied up going into technically the fourth map of the series. SVIFT immediately went up 1–0, winning the first mid and rolling it within 80 seconds into a point on the scoreboard. A nailbiting 14 minutes elapsed until Ascent.EU eventually made their way out of their own last point all the way onto SVIFT’s last point, many ubers being dropped along the way, but somehow Ascent.EU managed to keep going closing out the round tying the score. In a repeat of the first mid, SVIFT rolled a mid win straight into last to put the score back into their favour, showing off their extremely strong DM along the way. Ascent.EU collected themselves and picked up their first mid win of the map, which they, slowly enough with plenty of scares throughout the eight minute-long round, closed out the round and tied the map back up.

With four minutes left on the clock on fifth mid of the game, Ascent.EU win the skirmish with babs dead and their own medic, Ombrack, alive. An attempt to push into SVIFT’s last would fail, leading to a counter-push from SVIFT that would bring them back to their own second point, where they would get completely wiped. SVIFT desperately attempted to cap up the second point and get into last in time but the timer went off right before they make it past Credu’s heavy on the point. The game goes into a golden cap: one more round with unlimited time to decide who becomes the ETF2L S28 Premiership Champion.

SVIFT loses the mid fight, but a situation emerges where Thalash peaks river and finds babs on one of the spools on the other side of Gullywash, dropping her with a headshot. Somehow, Ascent.EU doesn’t convert off of it, but SVIFT doesn’t manage to push out either. Eventually SVIFT forces Ombrack and makes it outside, rolling with their own uber advantage into Ascent.EU’s second point. While the game slowly stabilizes, SVIFT decides to sacrifice two players into last to attempt to force Ombrack’s uber. This being unsuccessful allows Ascent.EU to push out onto their second. Right when the combo from Ascent.EU arrives by the point, Alle jumps in to trade the ubers. He manages to find fluo during the uber and together with Funs finds both Elacour and Ombrack as they try to escape through top. Without any heals and down three players, Ascent.EU is unable to deal with extreme aggression from SVIFT and end up losing the last point, giving the ETF2L Premiership crown to SVIFT in one of the closest Grand Finals ETF2L has seen in recent history.