This evening we could assist to the very first NDML group B match which would oppose two old and used to this type of manifestation National Teams: The italian latin lovers against children of Mother Russia.

I knew it would be a high ping game which woudn?t be easy to admin because of the very bad connexions those two countries have but my masochist instinct put me in charge of that game.

Of course we couldn?t find a neutral server so we naturally took the decision to make it home/away. But those two teams have a good sense of fairplay and knew a ping 20 vs ping 150 would suck that?s why we found the solution....

Q2DM2 ? Tokay?s Tower Russia?s map / Italia?s server: XS4all

Let?s take a look at the pings first, Italians have a steady 70-80 ping while the Russians have 70-80 variating to 150 and sometimes 250.

After all the checkings, we are almost ready to start, the two national hymns were reasonating in the minds of the players who knew that they were representing their beloved country.
3..2..1 GO!

Russia quickly take the control of the RA-Lift where they set up a kind of headquarter: they were sharing their weapons and starting all their attacks from there.
On the other side, Italia secured the Quad and didn?t let many chances to Russia to take it over despite the many attempts of those ones.
From what I?ve chased, I can highlight russia.west?s actions in the RA-tower, he showed very nice RL skills.
In Italy squad, I could notice a lot of successful quadruns made by ITA|Dr3@m.

The situation didn?t change a lot until the last 5 minutes: Italy took over the RA-Lift although they couldn?t really get a grip on it because of russia.west?s steady grenade attacks. Russia still couldn?t take the quad, now that their headquarter was ruined by the enemy, the score changed and Italy came back to finally win it by 4 frags.



Q2DM1 ? The Edge Italy?s map / Russia?s server: Get2net

On this server, Russia had ping 50-60 which sometimes was climbing to 70 and peaks to 150. Italy had 2 guys with ping 120 and two others with ping 80.

After their defeat on dm2, Russia were really motivated to win this map... Yand3x prolly had a plan when he asked me ?so now it?s fragcount to decide the third map??.

And it started, and Russia sure made frags! They locked the whole map after 5 minutes and Italy almost couldn?t frag, the minutes were falling and so were Italy?s players under the deadly rails of russia.west and russia.yand3x.
But Italy never gave up and finally ITA|Bof?s attacks at Rail were successful! Italy could tool up with rails and start fragging more. Unfortunately for them, this was enough to reverse the huge Russia domination.



Q2DM7 ? The Slimy Place Italy?s map / Russia?server: Get2net
Russia had more frags and they decided to chose the server which let Italy pick the last map.
This game was very even, Russia controled the Upper-RL all the time while Italy had the advantage at the RA side although they couldn?t frag Russians a lot because of their well coordinated RL attacks.

In Russia squad, yand3x and west were fragging a lot and for Italy the men were Corona and Bigol.

3 minutes before the end, score is 97 ? 70 in favour of Russia, Italy has control of the RA and Russia is regrouped at High-RL while suddenly...
THIS F*CK*NG SERVER CRASHED !!!!!!!

Here is the screenshot I could take from the demo, 4:23 left :



I hadn?t planned such a thing and I quickly took the decision to replay the last 3 minutes and add the scores.

In this very small game Italy won but they couldn?t reverse the 27 frag advantage of Russia.

Conclusion

In this game I must say I was amazed by the very good communication of Russia (they were lanned which helped a lot of course) and the way they coped with their bad pings. On the other side, Italy proved they are also a skilled team and this will prevent anyone to underestimate them.
GG both and thanks for your fairplay and ability to cope with your bad connexions.