Post written by Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert of compLexity Gaming.

Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert here, just wanted to talk to the coL fans a bit about our experience at the recent ESEA Season 15 LAN Finals. It was a pretty quick weekend – we got in Thursday evening and left Monday morning – and it all seems to happen in about 10 hours it feels like, hah.

First day of arrival was pretty relaxed, because the only thing we had to do the following day was an all-star game and watch the first round of bracket play. We got the #1 seed coming in from USA so both we and Titans – the French team with the #1 EU seed – didn’t have any official matches till Saturday. This meant we basically spent the first night along with all the staff having beers at the hotel bar, and of course following it up with some in-N-out conveniently located across the street from the event.

Waking up late on Friday was pretty solid, but we were immediately alerted by our manager that we had to take some photos and do some pre-event interviews within the hour. So, showers were in order and we then quickly threw on our jerseys and went down. To our surprise, we found out we also had to play an Aim_Map match vs. the French team in order to determine which side of the bracket we are on. We set up after taking photos and were able to warm up for about an hour before playing them in a 5v5 first to 16 match on a level equivalent to a small paintball field.

Basically to give you a quick background. 3 out of 4 European team’s didn’t show up, so the seeding was messed up so that match was meant to see who got the all American bracket. I didn’t necessarily like this way of choosing, but in the end we won the challenge so I couldn’t complain. In the future they should probably just fill the seeds they replaced in order of placement, even if it’s from USA teams.Anyway, this served as a solid warm up on the goliath 27” BenQ monitors that we weren’t used to using – so that was nice. Briefly after we went and got some steaks and settled in for the evening.

Saturday morning we were faced up against “Homeless” – a top three USA team coming into the LAN. We were confident against them, but knew we had to secure pistol rounds to make sure it wasn’t close. After 2 games, we took the victory, but it wasn’t without resistance. On de_Cache – a map created by Volcano – they actually took us to overtime with some solid second half T side play and made an enjoyable match for the spectators.

Moving on to the next match against Titans. Since it’s a best-of-three format, we discussed what maps we did NOT want to play and decided that Mirage and Season would be our vetos, while we knew they probably didn’t want to play Train. We battled it out on Dust2 first and felt like we played pretty well overall, but due to losing both pistols it was tough to battle back and we lost 16-14. On a side note, the CT pistol round came down to a 3v2 and then sgares computer froze, causing it to be a 2v2 where we killed both but were left with no time to defuse the bomb. That was unfortunate for the first map, but the second map was Inferno, and we knew we were able to beat them on this map, seeing as we just did it at DH Winter. We focused up and took the map 16-4 after some solid CT side play. The third map was de_Nuke, and we felt that if we could get pistol rounds we would take the match, but we failed to do so, resulting in another close 14-16 loss.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to move onto iBuyPower, because there’s no reason to ramble about excuses for the Titans game; we slipped up in small moments and it cost us. Starting vs. iBuyPower we were confident, but maybe too complacent coming into our first game. We started out on Cache, a map that we’re fairly comfortable on, but even after gaining an early 5-1 lead, we still failed to hold on and lost the map 16-13. A crucial point was probably when it was, 12-12, I think; we lost a 1v3 to Skadoodle after a miscommunication led us to believe we had the bomb in our control. That really messed with our money and momentum. Moving onto de_Train, we had CT side so we felt if we could take a big lead on the first half, we could close it out. We lost the pistol, but we didn’t let it phase us and we stayed somewhat poised throughout and took an 11-4 first half. Second half pistol we were taken down pretty easily, but we took to a decisive eco round to make up for it. Following a lucky lineup for me, we able to regain control of the match – temporarily. We ended up in like a 15-13 situation and decided to just run out middle on T side; it turned out well for us, as Hiko and I took down three and two respectively, to end the game.

The final map was de_Nuke, which turned out to be a frustrating one after we took a 10-5 first half lead! Even though we lost the pistol and still managed to make a good half out of it. We felt like if we won T pistol we would take the game easily. We took the T pistol, and started out to a comfortable 11-6 half, with money of course. Second round we kind of grouped up in the lobby and after I got a bit too excited, with a teammate following as well, we met our demise as we got sniped by pistols and lost the save round in an amateur fashion. After clawing back for rounds they somehow took us down 11-2, as their double sniper setup was just causing us too much trouble on outside. For some reason we didn’t have an answer that game, but I know we will next time!

So, I don’t really have much more to say. It was good games to everyone involved, we know we could have played better, but you live and learn. We are looking forward to our next chance at competing!

Thanks to complexity and CyberPowerPC for the support!

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