Team Finland World Cup 2019 players, roles and preparation

Since I was voted to this position by the community I would like to provide a certain level of transparency on what went into picking the players, roles and a bit about our preparation for World Cup this year.



--- Initial roster selection process in July:



Before the tryouts LiNkzr and BigGoose informed that they aren't available for World Cup this year.

These were all of the players we tried out for each of the roles, the tryouts and the roster deadlines from Blizzard side were in July:



Main tank: LhCloudy, fragi, Milkyman - Cloudy performed the best out of the three tank main tanks in the tryouts, he was able to coordinate hook-combos with this offtanks the best when on Orisa and his dive-play and coordination with Davin was also standing out. Fragi also brought it up that he could be interested in helping in the coaching department this year.



Off tank: zappis, rCk, Vestola - When we held our tryouts Sigma didn't exist in the game in any form, so we mostly tried our off tanks on Dva, Hog (and a little bit on Zarya). In the end the decision was between rCk and zappis, both were good with Dva, rCk was a bit better on Hog but it felt like he was more valuable for the team as a flex dps player, so zappis was picked for the role.



Main support: Masaa, Jofi - Both are great Lucio players, Masaa performed a bit better on Mercy and him having prior experience playing with most of the roster made him a safe good pick for this years team.



Flex support: Shaz, Zuppeh, Ripa - Shaz performed the best in the tryouts and was the pick, after the tryouts Ripa also let me know that he doesn't have that much interest playing in this years World Cup which made it easy to pick between Ripa and Zuppeh for the 12man roster.



Flex dps: rCk, Olu, Baito, Ricky - We tried our flex dps mostly on Doomfist, Pharah, Genji, Hanzo, Sombra and Mei: rCk stood out from the pack as the most solid player on these heroes, he wasn't afraid to make plays and was able to communicate his plans and get the team to follow him as well.



Hitscan: Davin, Taimou, Ricky - We tried our hitscan players on Widow, Hanzo, McCree, Tracer, Sombra and Reaper, I would say Taimous strength was with Widow, Hanzo and McCree but the difference wasn't significant enough to warrant instantly picking him to the roster. Davin on the other hand shined when he was playing Dive/Brawl comps and was able to coordinate plays well with Cloudy, from my point of view the upside with Davin was too big to pass him.



7th player: I had faith that with the 6 man roster we had, Davin and rCk could already play most of the comps we could want to run. The decision was between Ricky and Taimou, I ended picking Ricky because at the time Mei was played in the Orisa-Hog comps and in the Mei-Reaper comp, his upside on Mei was big and he showed good potential with Widow in the tryouts as well.



--- Promoting a player from 12man to the 7man roster in September:



Day before we started scrimming Davin informed me that he might not be able to play and after the first day of scrims on 24.9 he confirmed that he will not be able play in this years World Cup. We had one week to promote a player from the 12man roster to the 7man roster and these were our options:

- Taimou: He had already made other plans for his vacation and wasn't available anymore

- Milkyman/Jofi: We couldn't really utilize them in this roster or think of new roles for Cloudy or Masaa

- Olu: He played flex dps in our tryouts in July and didn't strike me as the player to replace Davin

- Zuppeh: We could try him or Shaz on dps



We tried out Ricky and Shaz for Davins role which in this meta in our team ended up being Reaper/Bastion, Shaz was the most consistent Reaper player and the smartest Bastion in the team to pair with rCk. Zuppeh was also doing a good job on flex support so we promoted him to the 7man roster.



--- Scrimming in Europe:



We started scrimming on 23.9 with a light practice week to activate everyone who had been on vacation to start playing Overwatch again. During the next 4 more intense weeks we would play around 14 scrim blocks per week. We mostly focused on the qualifier map pool: Nepal(39), Kings(37), Lijiang(34), Busan(29), Dorado(27), Hanamura(27) being our 6 most played maps in our 372 map total. Overall our scrims went well against the other European World Cup teams and we had good results against all but two of the teams, unfortunately for us Netherlands was one of those two teams. When we started scrimming we tried to utilize Rickys Mei in variety of the maps and kept him on the maps where it made sense for us, from the qualifier maps those were Junkertown, Nepal and Hanamura for example.



--- Match against Netherlands, map pool: Nepal, Kings, Dorado, Hanamura, Busan



We had a good idea on what Netherlands would start with in each of the maps and what their reactions would be to our comps based on their match against Saudi Arabia and some of our earlier scrims before the seeding was confirmed. I felt like we had prepared well for this match, we had already played all of the matchups that would happen in these maps against other teams in scrims, we had contingency plans in place incase we lost the first fight/point against the comps they played so we could be on an even footing or have the advantage for the upcoming fights. Here's a short snippet on what we were expecting and had planned for each of the rounds, obviously I'm not going to go too much in detail of every play we made.



Nepal Village: We were expecting this matchup and were able to get early position on point for free which in the Mei-Reaper mirror should give us an advantage in the first fight.



Nepal Shrine: We were expecting this matchup and had a preset plan for the first fight.



Nepal Sanctum: Our comp here could be questioned, but it was working extremely well for us in scrims in almost all matchups, to the point where some teams started even copying our "weird" comp. We were expecting them to run Pharah-Doom (they had Pharah-Reaper) and we had a plan what to switch for retake incase we lost the first fight, Wrecking Ball wasn't in the plans against this comp but in the end we had a good opportunity to win the round.



Kings Def: We were expecting them to pick the Pharah-Hanzo comp against our Bastion-Pharah comp and had a plan on how to deal with it, as a precaution we start on the high ground incase they are starting with something else, Netherlands got a good pick when we were rotating for our position for the matchup and forced us to use a lot of resources to try to stabilize, in the end we never got to play "our game" on first. For second we had a switch preplanned if we lost against their comp on first which would put us in an even position "forcing" them to switch 4 heroes as well and allowing us to have two fights on second even with bad spawns.



Kings Att: We were expecting this matchup and had a plan in place on how to play against Mei-Reaper in this map so the Mei doesn't get good wall value and how to setup our engagements.



Dorado Def: We were expecting them to pick the Pharah-Hanzo comp against our Bastion-Pharah comp and had a plan on how to deal with it, the fight ended up being really messy and we made some questionable moves which lost us the fight. We had preplanned switches for second based on how they would react to our switches and in scrims second point was extremely strong for us and where we were able hold most teams.



Dorado Att: We were expecting this matchup and happily played it in this map because we had played it in scrims against them before and it went well for us then and it went well for us now as well, we had a good time bank going on to third point but weren't able to pull it off this time.





Overall I was happy with our composition-flow in this series and all of the maps were extremely close, I believe there were situations where we were in position to win in all three of the maps. Netherlands was really clutch in the series and were able to pull it off when it mattered.





The single elimination qualifier format this year was really unforgiving and the circumstances were not optimal for Team Finland, we still put in the the work and tried our best, unfortunately it didn't go our way and we didn't get to show everything we had planned for this tournament.

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