Boston Uprising fell to the New York Excelsior 3-1 on Thursday to open their season. To the surprise of many, including myself, who repeatedly projected Boston as a lower-tier to dead last team in the Overwatch League, we are beginning to see flashes of excellence in this young squad. The moment where I truly realized the potential this team has in its players and coaching was during their attack on first point Numbani.

Boston had just suffered the most crushing and demoralizing defeat I have seen in Overwatch League at the hand of Pine and his trusty peacekeeper on the cliffs of Ilios. To their credit, Boston compartmentalized this defeat and attacked Numbani with as much vigor as you would have expected from the victorious team, although admittedly this may have been fueled by the knowledge that Pine would not be on the battlefield for this map.

What resulted was one of the most ingenious strategies on attack I have seen so far.

Stage One: The Intentional Feed

New York Excelsior had been playing anti-dive compositions into Boston for the majority of the series, to great effect. Boston was able to recognize this, and as a result, recognize the fact that because NYXL were running such a stagnant composition, they would lack the ability to get in onto Boston at any given point. Anti-dive compositions are built for catching the opponents dive and punishing it, and the heroes you will see in an anti-dive composition (McCree, Junkrat, Roadhog, etc.), lack the overall mobility required to punish an opponents passivity.

Boston utilized this knowledge by employing a ranked-tested and ladder-proven technique we’ve all come to know and love in our solo queue teammates; feeding.

VIDEO Link (to Twitch.tv): The Intentional Feed

Boston went into attack on this map with the explicit intention to feed. At the onset of the attack, Note was able to identify the McCree and Mercy on the upper right, and Striker was able to identify the Junkrat on the upper left. With this confirmation that NYXL was again running an anti-dive comp, Boston began to face and poke from main street, getting very little value. But that was the intention. By doing very little, if any, damage to NYXL’s front line, Boston was able to ensure that Ark would not even be remotely close to his own Valkyrie when they chose to engage. By the time Kellex had filled his ult meter, Ark was only at 30%. Ark had no chance of getting a Valkyrie up for this fight because Boston did virtually no damage until they had their own Valkyrie charged and activated. Because healing is only one aspect of Zenyatta’s kit, Jjonak was slightly better off at 40%. But again, since Jjonak was only able to charge his ult from doing damage and not healing, Boston ensured that no support ults would be available for NYXL.

A sign that this was a deliberate plan by Boston can be found by paying close attention to Neko’s ult meter. Neko is deliberately not healing. And by all appearances, he does not have a discord out on any enemy either. On top of that, he is not even going for right clicks, as has become the trademark of the popular “bloodthirsty Zenyatta” play style. He is intentionally not healing anything to avoid taking ult charge away from Kellex, and he intentionally not discording or right-clicking enemies to avoid charging enemy support ultimates to any degree. Yes, he could get a pick with a right-click, but it is just as likely that he could just do a large amount of damage to his target which will quickly be converted into support ult by Ark and Jjonak. With this strategy in play, the risk of charging one of NYXL’s support ults is too great to justify going for a pick.

The obvious cost of this is NYXL’s DPS ults were also charged at lightning speed. And this presents a part of this strategy that Boston could have executed a little better. With a DPS lineup consisting of McCree and Junkrat, the clear and obvious choice for which DPS ult you want to have to deal with is High Noon. You have a Defense Matrix, you have a Winston bubble, a Genji reflect etc. Plenty of ways for the Boston squad to disengage or avoid the High noon. What you don’t want to have to deal with is a Riptire. The one way to easily ruin this strategy is to kill the Mercy, either before or after she ults. If there is any ult in the game that can reliably end a Valkyrie Mercy’s hopes and dreams, it’s Riptire. Especially on a map like Numbani with so many different ways to either get that Riptire high enough into the air to punish her, or find a multi-kill due to the map geometry forcing teams to clump up a little more than they may like.

We can see that Boston identified this and tried to nullify most of the damage coming in from the Junkrat with the defense matrix, rightfully choosing to expose their tanks to the McCree crossfire from the opposite high ground. But as is the nature of Junkrat in this current meta, it’s no easy feat to nullify all of that damage. Libero is able to spam main street freely, and enough of his damage got through to fully charge his ultimate by the time Boston committed. I believe this fact heavily influences what happens in the next stage

Boston needed to tell a convincing story about what their intentions were, and that story was “We have no idea what to do”. Boston’s actions here screamed confusion caused by NYXL’s slighty uncommon positioning. But in reality, they were just telling a story that prevented NYXL from identifying what they were really up to; building their Valkyrie at a record speed.

Stage Two: The Cleanup

VIDEO LINK (to Twitch.tv): The Cleanup

The power of Valkyrie in the current meta has been extensively covered by numerous analysts and content creators, so much so that I feel like I do not have to explain how impactful it is to have a Valkyrie when the opposing team does not. Suffice it to say, it is team-fight winning on its own. But a little more went into this fight than just “We had Valkyrie and they didn’t”.

First, they had to choose how to initiate and who to initiate on once Kellex activated Valkyrie. Judging by the actions of the Boston squad, I believe they identified the biggest threat on the NYXL squad at that moment which was Libero. Boston knew that he either had his ult or was extremely close, and Striker actually dies very early on to Libero because he was slightly too early in his engage. This may have been intentional, Striker may have been tasked with taking out or pressuring the Junkrat on his own in order to prevent him from using Riptire. But regardless of motive, Libero was able to combo kill Striker for free here and I do not believe it was a death that was needed. Boston’s tanks were hot on his heels, just slightly behind him. If he had been a second or two later he may not have been combo’d so easily.

This death forces D.Va to engage on NYXL and create space for Kellex to successfully resurrect Striker, and this presented possibly the biggest mistake Boston made in this fight. As soon as Saebyeolbe sees D.Va use her jet pack to fly away from his angle of attack, he knows he has an opportunity to use High Noon on the portion of the Boston squad that was still lingering behind without having to worry about that Defense Matrix. If not for the heroic play from Dreamkazper backing up and reflecting the second bullet, Saebyoelbe was in a position to get not just Gamsu, but potentially Kellex and Neko as well.

Striker falling to Libero and Gamsu falling to the deadeye burns both rezzes for Kellex. Dreamkazper then makes a mistake by diving into the back line of NYXL without the assistance of his D.Va or Winston. Perhaps he thought he would get a dash reset, or perhaps it was miscommunication between Dreamkazper and his tanks. Whatever it was, it brought the fight to a 6v5 advantage for NYXL due to Ark being able to easily resurrect Saebyeolbe. But Gamsu was able to pressure Ark enough to force him to fly across the map to his D.Va and right into the waiting arms of Striker, fresh off of securing a frag onto Janus who had perhaps gone a little too deep in search of Neko.

From there, Boston was able to secure the fight and the point. But it is very interesting to note just how close Jjonak came to being able to swing that fight right back in favor of NYXL. He missed having his Transcendence up in time to save both Ark and Meko by no more than 5 seconds. Had Neko gone for a right click during the feeding stage, or had any Boston player done just a little more damage in that part of this engagement, Jjonak would have had his Transcendence in time. You can see at the 0:25 second mark of the clip that Jjonak rotated perfectly to the upper left pillar in order to get in position for it, but the denial of early healing opportunities saved that fight for the Boston Uprising.

This was my favorite strategy and fight from the week of OWL action we have had. Boston is showing stronger signs of adaptability than most give them credit for, as well as very strong strategies and coaching. One thing is for sure, Boston doesn’t believe they are a lower tier team.

Disclaimer: No media shared here is owned by me. All footage is sourced directly from http://www.twitch.tv/OverwatchLeague.