WYLDE Take Home Bronze Beside Some of the Worlds Best at Gamers8

Aug 15, 2022

August 6th, the semi-finals. After both knocking down the Brazilian titans over at Team Liquid in a swift 2-0 series (7-1, 7-1) and an intense comeback run (2-7, 7-4, 7-4) against the previous World Champions of Spacestation Gaming, we came into playoffs extremely confident, with the world now knowing we meant business.

We were up against Team Falcons on their home soil, the other underdogs present at the tournament. There was certainly more pressure now than ever, with the winner of this match going through to the Grand Finals and given how well we had performed to make it this far, we had a lot of people rooting for us.

We took them to Clubhouse for the first map and based on previous hard-fought battles this tournament, it was not our strongest map. Nonetheless, we were confident going in as Falcons hadn’t shown particular strength either. Unfortunately, after an incredibly close match we lose 7-5 which was mostly due to our weak defensive half and notably Falcons played extremely well.

We could not long on the loss for very long, as we quickly moved onto Chalet. As we had once lost the first map and came back victorious against Spacestation, we were ready to do it again and we were not phased at all we have previously done well when taken to this map. Our confidence quickly became evident, as we aggressively picked up the pace compared to Clubhouse.

We finished Chalet 7-3, with some fast and flawless rounds against Falcons, it was clear they were now feeling the pressure too.

Going into the final map, it was truly do or die. We had taken down 4 professional teams to get here, Heroic, Rogue, Team Liquid and then Spacestation. Our insane performance had framed us as ‘EU’s new hope’, and the world was watching us.

Getting to this point was an amazing achievement, not only for the players but also for WYLDE as an organisation as this was our international debut and we couldn’t have asked for more from our players.

The deciding map was Villa. It was an intense back and fourth match, with many rounds coming down to the wire and both teams going even in the first two halves. There were heroic performances from both teams, most notably for us it was AceeZ who carried us to match point with a staggering 18 kills before overtime. Sadly, soon this would be the end of the road for us as we lose in overtime 6-8. Falcons put up a great showing against us, and just like us their amazing journey to this point had been an impressive and great story to follow.

Falcons would carry on the underdog torch and face BDS in the Grand Finals, where they would fall after some insanely close matches, placing them second overall in the tournament.

Looking back over this tournament, all of our players performed extremely well. Every player had an above average rating against some of the best teams in the world. AceeZ and Gsla both had ratings in the top 10 overall and our young talent Caneo managed to take home a bonus awarded for the highest KOST% overall – not bad for his first LAN!

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