RESULT:TEAM WISH 8 - 2 TEAM X-BOMB
TEAM.WISH PLAYERS: Wish(c), Bn, dirz, sneez, Toone, Blade(subbed Toone)
TEAM.X-BOMB PLAYERS: X-Bomb(c), Lucy, od^, NoMercy, Petez(backup for Yako)
TEAM WISH MAPS WON: Ballistic, Desertstorm, GolgothaAL, Siege][, Golgotha][AL, Desolate][, SubmarineBase][, TheDungeon]|[
TEAM X-BOMB MAPS WON: AutoRIP, Riverbed]|[AL
My Man of The Match: Wish, of course, but with Bn getting an honorary mention, not just for his play but for his occasional bouts of lunacy which were always fun to watch and to invariably point out later with colour screenshots
>> Match demos <<
-=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=-
MATCH REPORT:
It's over! It's all over!
The 2009 Assault Anniversary Cup is done and dusted with the unstoppable Team.Wish emerging as eventual winners, leaving a trail of unhappy campers in their wake. They saw off Salva's fraggers to reach the semis, Met's sturdy backdef to earn a place in the finals, and XB's patchwork team of launchers, fraggers, sneakers and laggers to claim the championship. But did anyone expect them to win the final match in only ten maps?
There were various reasons why they did. Until Yako speaks we will never know the details of the first reason which can be summed up by the question: where the hell was Yako? No disrespect to Lenneth (who wasn't there either), but Yako was a first team pick for Team.XB, having played in all three of the previous matches and doing a pretty good job every time. The match was booked and agreed upon, so for not one but two of Team.XB's players to fail them is... well, it's enough to negatively affect the outcome of the match, whatever else it is. Maybe some day we'll learn what happened to make such a mockery of all the work and commitment that so many people had shown in order to make this cup work so well. Or perhaps not. What's important is that Team.XB had unfairly had the legs kicked out from underneath them even before the match had started and it's maybe understandable that they never managed to recover. To Team.Wish's credit, they dropped Toone pretty much until Pete arrived to make it 5v5, which they were fully entitled not to do, as Team.XB's problems were not theirs. The fact that they met with little difficulty even after Pete joined is pretty certainly only fair, because how cruel would it have been if the blues had gone on to win?
Anyway, what else contributed to such a strong win for Team.Wish? Themselves, for a start. Talk about strong play, fkin ell. The red team was a well-oiled frag machine all night long and their successes almost always followed simple run-and-shoot strategies. Launches were hit-and-miss but when it came to whipping out some guns and just powering towards the next objective Team.Wish could do little wrong, especially with the captain in near indestructible mode. Wish and Bn were also enjoying the lowest pings on the server and there was no-one on the opposition team who could match them.
Add to this Team.XB's almost constant defence vulnerability, occasionally puzzling def positions, lack of decent comms, inability to attack anything as a team late on in the match, low morale, and (it has to be said) massively bad luck, and it's hard to see how Wish's team could possibly have lost this. Not that the blues did nothing right; they were occasionally great to watch in action, especially since none of them gave up until the very last round, when it was clear they had been soundly beaten. Given half a chance, they were launching at least as well as the red team, every one of them was getting respectable frag counts, Pete did a fantastic job as a backup player - if he had been previously apathetic about the cup then it didn't show in his play. It's not even as though their defence was all that suspect in terms of positions; just that everyone kept dying![:\](/images/smilies/submitted/smark/ohwell.gif "Oh Well :\")
The reds' superior frag power had the blues dropping like flies at objectives but also made them reluctant to push out, leaving the reds often needing only one run to finish an obj and start on the next one. Comms were also understandably less than great, what with Pete playing his first match, Lucy with her usual problems and Yako not even being there, which all added up to players finally ignoring comms altogether and just pushing forward on their own on attack or failing to give proper warnings on defence.
But there's no point dwelling on who should have done what, or on the flames or arguments or finger pointing which inevitably arose during the match. The important thing is that Team.Wish did their part to make it a worthy final by dominating and winning it; while Team.XB did their part by fighting hard and refusing to roll over and hand their opponents the victory, even in the face of all their unexpected problems. We all wish we had gotten the final which this Cup deserved, but at least we got a final worth playing, worth watching and worth remembering. Thanks for playing, everyone
TEAM.WISH POSITIVES:
Since the Cup is now over and there's nothing to learn any more, I decided not to bother noting negatives. Just the good points.
Wish had yet another great game
The same players who had played well in previous rounds were no less effective in the final
All six of them managed to turn up
Played to their strengths - strong running, fragging, and simple launches which mostly worked
Defence layouts were almost always perfect
TEAM.X-BOMB POSITIVES:
XB fought really hard all night, even as map after map fell to the reds
Could have crumbled with the absence of Yako, a core team member, but didn't
Got off to a half decent start in Ballistic, though they couldn't keep it going
All played well as individuals, if not really as a team
Dodgily chose about the best possible player to bring in as backup
-=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=-
MAPS BREAKDOWN
-=-=-
WARMUP: BRIDGE
Red attacked in 0:50 with no opposition in the server to stop them
-=-=-
MAP 1 - BALLISTIC
QUICK MAP REPORT:
Toone sat from the start of the round, allowing sneez to pull off an absolutely fantastic Lasers on only 9:59. The guy's a marvel. Playing 4v4, the reds pushed forward with sniper rifles boinging, until Wish had the Gate in the sack on 9:36, after watching od and NoMercy fall to the deck. The fact that XB was back at the Genny and Lucy was on the unused hill helped contribute to such an easy Gate. Next dirz began setting launches up the left cliff, on the nest side, and it was obvious that the nest was going to be Wish's favoured tactic at this point. It fell apart slightly when od and NoMercy worked together around the bunker to keep the nest from being breached, then suddenly Lucy and XB were under serious attack at the Genny, with XB saving four times in the space of a few seconds. Flak launches were being tried, someone got rockets, Wish even managed to breach the nest at one point, only to meet XB's
once inside. Not long afterwards Wish and sneez took down the nest lasers and then timed their jumps perfectly to have Wish zapped and sneez fail entirely 
However, on the next run Wish managed to grab rockets and send another two unzoomed rocket shots to the Genny on 7:10, just like he had done versus Met's team in the semis. Ironically, he thought he had got the objective but it turned out to be Bn sneaking around with a flak cannon. Owned! XB had done a good job adapting his defence to cover whatever the reds were trying, and it was some semi-decent backdef which allowed the blues to hold the Warhead until 5:40, Lucy deffing low, NoMercy high and XB and od at the back. With Wish stocking up on the armour it took a mass push on the Warhead for the captain to finish it, with the blues getting taken down steadily, one by one in quick succession. For a change the blues pushed forward at the end but they didn't do a very good job - XB needed help in the Ops Room and od arrived on the scene, only for dirz to stroll up through the main route and take the Final on 5:00, just before od could properly react. Not at all a great fragging performance from the blues to open the match with.
The second round is the sort which is pretty hard to flesh out descriptively, so I don't think I'll bother. The fact that it took Team.XB until 2:43 just to reach the Main Gate should tell you what an uphill struggle this match was probably going to turn out to be for them. Player problems aside, if the teams are even and that's how your team attacks, you are going to have issues with winning anything. Alright, technically the teams weren't even because Toone started to play with the other four reds, but on the other hand he was hitting nothing but himself
Wish had no such trouble, getting sprees and rampages and so on. NoMercy managed to breach the nest at one point, only to have Bn snipe him one as he landed. Bn then brilliantly suicided 
You already got him, you silly fool! The fact that it was now 5v4 let Wish range forward very comfortably all the time, which helped him reach 38 kills to next best luckmeister Bn's 19. The blues were already in trouble 
MAP RESULT: TEAM.WISH WIN!
SCORE: 1 - 0
-=-=-
MAP 2 - DESERTSTORM
QUICK MAP REPORT:
After a protracted argument about whether or not subs should be used, or who should forfeit, or whether 4v5 was fair, the round started with Toone once again sitting. Before when people talked about Team.Wish's CoC I thought they meant dirz
Anyway, even teams or not it's a bit sad when the red team are allowed to kill every one of the opposition unhindered on their very first run to the Scud, Wish simply dodging onto it on a laughable 9:38. Only afterwards did Lucy remember there was a belt she could hammer to, taking it and suiciding just before sneez could beat her to it. The blues fell back for some hefty Sam def. They were pumped, they were psyched, they were ready. The one thing they weren't was looking for Bn, who ran up the undeffed ramp (od and Lucy having chased Wish into the Sam room, leaving their positions - good thing Wish then killed himself for them), feigned death in the corner, waited for the blue tit twins to reappear and then ran in behind them, taking the Sam on 8:42 to the annoyance of the unwarned XB at the back. As with the Scud, the reds killed all the blues on the way through the Underground first run - 8:19 - and then followed a rocket launch from dirz which would have been spectacular if only it hadn't been completely crap. This wasn't really a problem though, because the reds just trotted up the hill in two runs and Wish took the Final on 7:47, with NoMercy's flak-in-the-backs failing to fully connect in time.
Another argument ensued, this one about Wish's birthday, his star sign, and why he had a birthmark on his arse in the shape of an arse. That was a bit weird, I have to be honest. Anyway, XB was still quite pumped, psyched and ready, so he attacked the Scud exactly the same as Wish had, just one second slower. Wish took the Sam def upon himself, staying back with constantly loading rocket spam, but XB nipped in behind him while Lucy came low to distract on 0:59. I can't help thinking that if the blues had worked harder to manage this kind of thing more often, with nicely timed attacks and good comms, they could have found more ways past Team.Wish. Bn couldn't snipe XB in time to keep him from getting the Underground on 0:42, but one thing he did do right was to pistol whip od in the back at the Final, just before the blue player could claim the map for his team with three seconds to go. Unlucky on od but the red defence had done just enough.
MAP RESULT: TEAM.WISH WIN!
SCORE: 2 - 0
continued...
TEAM.WISH PLAYERS: Wish(c), Bn, dirz, sneez, Toone, Blade(subbed Toone)
TEAM.X-BOMB PLAYERS: X-Bomb(c), Lucy, od^, NoMercy, Petez(backup for Yako)
TEAM WISH MAPS WON: Ballistic, Desertstorm, GolgothaAL, Siege][, Golgotha][AL, Desolate][, SubmarineBase][, TheDungeon]|[
TEAM X-BOMB MAPS WON: AutoRIP, Riverbed]|[AL
My Man of The Match: Wish, of course, but with Bn getting an honorary mention, not just for his play but for his occasional bouts of lunacy which were always fun to watch and to invariably point out later with colour screenshots
>> Match demos <<
-=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=-
MATCH REPORT:
It's over! It's all over!
The 2009 Assault Anniversary Cup is done and dusted with the unstoppable Team.Wish emerging as eventual winners, leaving a trail of unhappy campers in their wake. They saw off Salva's fraggers to reach the semis, Met's sturdy backdef to earn a place in the finals, and XB's patchwork team of launchers, fraggers, sneakers and laggers to claim the championship. But did anyone expect them to win the final match in only ten maps?There were various reasons why they did. Until Yako speaks we will never know the details of the first reason which can be summed up by the question: where the hell was Yako? No disrespect to Lenneth (who wasn't there either), but Yako was a first team pick for Team.XB, having played in all three of the previous matches and doing a pretty good job every time. The match was booked and agreed upon, so for not one but two of Team.XB's players to fail them is... well, it's enough to negatively affect the outcome of the match, whatever else it is. Maybe some day we'll learn what happened to make such a mockery of all the work and commitment that so many people had shown in order to make this cup work so well. Or perhaps not. What's important is that Team.XB had unfairly had the legs kicked out from underneath them even before the match had started and it's maybe understandable that they never managed to recover. To Team.Wish's credit, they dropped Toone pretty much until Pete arrived to make it 5v5, which they were fully entitled not to do, as Team.XB's problems were not theirs. The fact that they met with little difficulty even after Pete joined is pretty certainly only fair, because how cruel would it have been if the blues had gone on to win?
Anyway, what else contributed to such a strong win for Team.Wish? Themselves, for a start. Talk about strong play, fkin ell. The red team was a well-oiled frag machine all night long and their successes almost always followed simple run-and-shoot strategies. Launches were hit-and-miss but when it came to whipping out some guns and just powering towards the next objective Team.Wish could do little wrong, especially with the captain in near indestructible mode. Wish and Bn were also enjoying the lowest pings on the server and there was no-one on the opposition team who could match them.
Add to this Team.XB's almost constant defence vulnerability, occasionally puzzling def positions, lack of decent comms, inability to attack anything as a team late on in the match, low morale, and (it has to be said) massively bad luck, and it's hard to see how Wish's team could possibly have lost this. Not that the blues did nothing right; they were occasionally great to watch in action, especially since none of them gave up until the very last round, when it was clear they had been soundly beaten. Given half a chance, they were launching at least as well as the red team, every one of them was getting respectable frag counts, Pete did a fantastic job as a backup player - if he had been previously apathetic about the cup then it didn't show in his play. It's not even as though their defence was all that suspect in terms of positions; just that everyone kept dying
The reds' superior frag power had the blues dropping like flies at objectives but also made them reluctant to push out, leaving the reds often needing only one run to finish an obj and start on the next one. Comms were also understandably less than great, what with Pete playing his first match, Lucy with her usual problems and Yako not even being there, which all added up to players finally ignoring comms altogether and just pushing forward on their own on attack or failing to give proper warnings on defence.But there's no point dwelling on who should have done what, or on the flames or arguments or finger pointing which inevitably arose during the match. The important thing is that Team.Wish did their part to make it a worthy final by dominating and winning it; while Team.XB did their part by fighting hard and refusing to roll over and hand their opponents the victory, even in the face of all their unexpected problems. We all wish we had gotten the final which this Cup deserved, but at least we got a final worth playing, worth watching and worth remembering. Thanks for playing, everyone
TEAM.WISH POSITIVES:
Since the Cup is now over and there's nothing to learn any more, I decided not to bother noting negatives. Just the good points.
Wish had yet another great game
The same players who had played well in previous rounds were no less effective in the final
All six of them managed to turn up
Played to their strengths - strong running, fragging, and simple launches which mostly worked
Defence layouts were almost always perfect
TEAM.X-BOMB POSITIVES:
XB fought really hard all night, even as map after map fell to the reds
Could have crumbled with the absence of Yako, a core team member, but didn't
Got off to a half decent start in Ballistic, though they couldn't keep it going
All played well as individuals, if not really as a team
Dodgily chose about the best possible player to bring in as backup
-=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=-
MAPS BREAKDOWN
-=-=-
WARMUP: BRIDGE
Red attacked in 0:50 with no opposition in the server to stop them
-=-=-
MAP 1 - BALLISTIC
QUICK MAP REPORT:
Toone sat from the start of the round, allowing sneez to pull off an absolutely fantastic Lasers on only 9:59. The guy's a marvel. Playing 4v4, the reds pushed forward with sniper rifles boinging, until Wish had the Gate in the sack on 9:36, after watching od and NoMercy fall to the deck. The fact that XB was back at the Genny and Lucy was on the unused hill helped contribute to such an easy Gate. Next dirz began setting launches up the left cliff, on the nest side, and it was obvious that the nest was going to be Wish's favoured tactic at this point. It fell apart slightly when od and NoMercy worked together around the bunker to keep the nest from being breached, then suddenly Lucy and XB were under serious attack at the Genny, with XB saving four times in the space of a few seconds. Flak launches were being tried, someone got rockets, Wish even managed to breach the nest at one point, only to meet XB's
once inside. Not long afterwards Wish and sneez took down the nest lasers and then timed their jumps perfectly to have Wish zapped and sneez fail entirely However, on the next run Wish managed to grab rockets and send another two unzoomed rocket shots to the Genny on 7:10, just like he had done versus Met's team in the semis. Ironically, he thought he had got the objective but it turned out to be Bn sneaking around with a flak cannon. Owned! XB had done a good job adapting his defence to cover whatever the reds were trying, and it was some semi-decent backdef which allowed the blues to hold the Warhead until 5:40, Lucy deffing low, NoMercy high and XB and od at the back. With Wish stocking up on the armour it took a mass push on the Warhead for the captain to finish it, with the blues getting taken down steadily, one by one in quick succession. For a change the blues pushed forward at the end but they didn't do a very good job - XB needed help in the Ops Room and od arrived on the scene, only for dirz to stroll up through the main route and take the Final on 5:00, just before od could properly react. Not at all a great fragging performance from the blues to open the match with.The second round is the sort which is pretty hard to flesh out descriptively, so I don't think I'll bother. The fact that it took Team.XB until 2:43 just to reach the Main Gate should tell you what an uphill struggle this match was probably going to turn out to be for them. Player problems aside, if the teams are even and that's how your team attacks, you are going to have issues with winning anything. Alright, technically the teams weren't even because Toone started to play with the other four reds, but on the other hand he was hitting nothing but himself
Wish had no such trouble, getting sprees and rampages and so on. NoMercy managed to breach the nest at one point, only to have Bn snipe him one as he landed. Bn then brilliantly suicided You already got him, you silly fool! The fact that it was now 5v4 let Wish range forward very comfortably all the time, which helped him reach 38 kills to next best luckmeister Bn's 19. The blues were already in trouble MAP RESULT: TEAM.WISH WIN!
SCORE: 1 - 0
-=-=-
MAP 2 - DESERTSTORM
QUICK MAP REPORT:
After a protracted argument about whether or not subs should be used, or who should forfeit, or whether 4v5 was fair, the round started with Toone once again sitting. Before when people talked about Team.Wish's CoC I thought they meant dirz
Anyway, even teams or not it's a bit sad when the red team are allowed to kill every one of the opposition unhindered on their very first run to the Scud, Wish simply dodging onto it on a laughable 9:38. Only afterwards did Lucy remember there was a belt she could hammer to, taking it and suiciding just before sneez could beat her to it. The blues fell back for some hefty Sam def. They were pumped, they were psyched, they were ready. The one thing they weren't was looking for Bn, who ran up the undeffed ramp (od and Lucy having chased Wish into the Sam room, leaving their positions - good thing Wish then killed himself for them), feigned death in the corner, waited for the blue tit twins to reappear and then ran in behind them, taking the Sam on 8:42 to the annoyance of the unwarned XB at the back. As with the Scud, the reds killed all the blues on the way through the Underground first run - 8:19 - and then followed a rocket launch from dirz which would have been spectacular if only it hadn't been completely crap. This wasn't really a problem though, because the reds just trotted up the hill in two runs and Wish took the Final on 7:47, with NoMercy's flak-in-the-backs failing to fully connect in time.Another argument ensued, this one about Wish's birthday, his star sign, and why he had a birthmark on his arse in the shape of an arse. That was a bit weird, I have to be honest. Anyway, XB was still quite pumped, psyched and ready, so he attacked the Scud exactly the same as Wish had, just one second slower. Wish took the Sam def upon himself, staying back with constantly loading rocket spam, but XB nipped in behind him while Lucy came low to distract on 0:59. I can't help thinking that if the blues had worked harder to manage this kind of thing more often, with nicely timed attacks and good comms, they could have found more ways past Team.Wish. Bn couldn't snipe XB in time to keep him from getting the Underground on 0:42, but one thing he did do right was to pistol whip od in the back at the Final, just before the blue player could claim the map for his team with three seconds to go. Unlucky on od but the red defence had done just enough.
MAP RESULT: TEAM.WISH WIN!
SCORE: 2 - 0
continued...
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dirz who was trying to claim Hurons on 
This was followed by a nice 'n' easy Heart on 
NoMercy was the man who took Hurons, via a door launch, sniping sneez out en route to finish it on 
In order to defend the Dev panel Wish then put dirz in the window 
It didn't matter much anyway because Bn did enough to put the predictable gate launchers off, then even after he died they were still fucking up things like simple hammerjumps and weapon tosses. NoMercy finally got XB airborne with two seconds to go but even if the Temple hadn't been stuffed with red players the launch was a fail anyway. At this point the remainder of the blue team picked themselves up, walked back to the first spawn and clambered back aboard the failboat.
Pete and od then stayed back at the Docks as last men while the others pushed forward, but the front three were taking an eternity to deal with even one red player at a time, which meant they were getting nowhere near the belt and keg, or even the high bridge to shock spam the stairs. The reds had all the freedom in the world and it wasn't long before Wish had reached the Docks and flakked Pete in the face, leaving od alone to watch in despair as Bn squeezed into the Sub on 
The blues then set up a long double launch over the top, which Lucy took, to land perfectly between box and wall and noobagely hammer herself in the face, leaving only 46hp for her to limp to the Tunnels with, which she failed to do. XB then picked his moment perfectly on the next run, hiding in the undefended sniper room and waiting until he saw Pete take out two red backdeffers, then sneaking out and hammering from the box into the Tunnels on a still-worrying 
Next came a really effective Skull defence, with Team.Wish virtually all back. Whenever a blue player did enter the last room it seemed as though there were four red players chasing him or her, with Bn waiting as last man with some great flak work. Normally this kind of thing doesn't work very well because other attackers can sneak in while the defence is distracted, but it worked really well here because it's very hard to sneak to the Skull. XB came close once, twice, but only when the reds made the mistake of pushing out too far in the direction of their own spawn was he able to jump in and finish it off with rockets on 
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