I was approached on IRC and asked if I was available for adminning the match between USA and Russia, and since I just got back from watching some Champions League on TV I felt that I might as well spend the final hours before hitting the bed watching some quake2ing. It was a wise choice.

The scenario was already clear to me, that a 3rd map was going to be needed since this would be a home/away game, and when DaHanG, captain of the USA team, suggested doing 10 minutes on each homeserver if a 3rd map was needed, I felt that it was the only way to do it fair. The Russians agreed with the idea, and the only thing left to do was deciding maps and picking Russia's homeserver as USA's homeserver is pretty much TastySpleen Tourney4 for all their games if possible, as that is the lowest pinging servers for all Europeans. After trial and error, we ended up on the KTA server, where the Russian's had and average ping around 40-50, but z1u had some issues with his pak so he had to be replaced in the last second by wiwt who had 80ish ping. It was as fair as it could be given the circumstances, and the maps were chosen. The maps were obviously chosen with the ping-issue in mind, as maps were q2dm2 and q2dm5, none all too ping dominated and fairly lowscoring in general.

Dimmo made his presence on the server, giving me admin and I spent some time getting to know the basic battle-admin commands while the teams warmed up and waited for the last Russian player to get ready.

Q2DM2 :: USA's map :: Russia's server



I was eager to see how the Russians performed on this map, it's a map that should suit the Russians fine. USA on the other hand had a an ace up their sleeve in the q2dm2 master Scooby who did show a good performance in this game. The start of the game went in favor of USA who had an early lead and seemed to be able to hold the Russians back for some time, and when the Russians lost the Red Armor lift to Scooby (I think) and DaHanG put up a camp up there they had a good shot at the mapwin, if not the Russians in good style took the lift back a few minutes after and held on to it for most of the game untill the last minute. wiwt had a good camp up there, always stacked on armor and distributing his rails and bfgs to fellow teammates who eagerly used them to take down nade throwing Americans. Slasher from the USA team looked a bit uncomfortable, but taken into consideration he is primarily a CTF player he did a mighty fine job, especially with those nades he tossed around the map. Waff on the American team fought for quads against fpS and voron, but even though he caused some trouble, the Russians slowly tore down the American defenses with their quadding, allthough they didn't completely dominate it. Somehow the Americans just wouldn't let the Russians increase their lead by much more than 15-20 frags or so, and they didn't give up the hunt for the mapwin. But Russia used their liftcontrol well, and even though Scooby proved to be a pain in their asses near the grenadelauncher and mega-lift, gathering frag upon frag, the Americans just couldn't get the quadruns needed to eat up the fragdifference in the closing minutes. And when DaHanG finally took over the Red Armor lift in style in the closing minutes it was already too late. A nice match to watch, and a good start for the American teams. With only 25 frags to catch up on their homeserver they could be happy with their performance, while the Russians showed good skills and teamplay and had no reason to be ashamed of their showing either.

Then we went overseas to play the second map.

Q2DM5 :: Russia's map :: USA's server



After a lot of kicking of innocent q2-players, I managed to secure a spot on the server to follow the second map; Q2DM5 - The Pits. Changes from first map were that Randypants and Kickr0 replaced Waff and Slasher for USA, and nol1ght and atu replaced voron and char (who has a proven record of q2dm5 red-armor camping-skills I might add) for Russia. I was pretty sure the Americans would win this map, as this is one of DaHanG's clan FoJ's favorite maps, and with good quadders like Scooby and Randypants at his side and the ever so eager Kickr0 in their lineup they had ample aiming and camping-support that they used to the full effect. The Americans showed no mercy from the get go, and quickly secured the Red Armor position where Kickr0 did a very good job denying the Russians the armor needed to defend themselves from quad. While the rest of the team was focusing on quad, with Scooby in a very agressive style collecting frags like a homeless man collecting bottles. Before the Russians could do anything, the Americans had gotten themselves a 60 frags lead, and then the game was pretty much over when it came to excitement. It did go on however, with DaHanG and Scooby battling over the top-frag title, where Scooby slowly got the upper hand ending with a impressive 68-13 score. They had quad and Red Armor area covered, while the Russians did their best to keep their deaths down, but could do little on this map with their pings. Very solid play by the Americans who show that they got something going on this season. The Russians managed to steal some quads here and there, and eventually took over quad for shorter periods, but nothing that could prevent the defeat. When the game was over the score was 177-39 in favor of USA.

With both teams agreeing to play 10 minutes on each homeserver for the last map, the topscoring team (in this case USA) got the advantage in the mapelimination. After a somewhat chaotic elimination process where we ended up on q2dm1, the match was ready to continue.

Q2DM1 :: USA's server

Ouch, this was painfull to watch, never have I seen the Americans show so little mercy on q2dm1, they absolutely dominated the map for the entire 10 minutes it lasted, with DaHanG holding mega and Kickr0 camping the lift in style; "Direct hit" after "Direct hit". Randy had the railposition covered, but the Russians wisely chose to not focus their attention on that area. Scooby, being THE man of the map, showed up in all weird areas of the map chasing down Russians and having a railpercentage close to 50%, and just looking at the scoreboard you realize he had a golden q2dm1 game. The Russians could do very little, they tried to keep frags low after a while, but it proved futile, the Americans just was the better team on this map with these pings. 96-7 was the score when the time ran out.



Q2DM1 :: Russia's server

After a bit of waiting for Kickr0 to get rid of some modified models the game was ready to start. It proved straight away to be a lot closer and tense game than the previous one, but you just could not hide the fact that the Russians were up to an extremely difficult task of outmatching the Americans' score on their homemap. And when USA early on had the lead and increased it untill the score was 27-14 in their favour it didn't look good for the Russian bears. They played well from that point on though, even taking the lead 39-36, but the Americans were chasing them down never allowing them to get away with a much bigger lead. It was obvious allthough the Russians fought well, that they resigned to the fact that it wasn't humanly possible to win the deciding map with only a few minutes left of the clock. fpS did pull a great deal of the load on this map, and proved to be a valuable player for the Russians, but Scooby proved over these 3 maps that he is an even more valuable player for the American squad. Gonna be interesting to follow them in their upcoming matches! And Russia is still a team that can be hard to defeat, and both teams showed great sportsmanship throughout the games.