Welcome to the grand final of European Duel League #3!
q2rdm2 - Damiah's home map
Match started with the regular new school cat/mouse play, that requires you to shoot blindly most of the time, not actually seeing your opponent. And these two guys have really mastered this art, you better believe it. Both Purri and Damiah seemed to know their way around the map, but they were both very cautious and didn't rush it, even when they did considerable damage to the opponent. After 3 min or so Purri finally got lucky and killed Damiah with railgun. The game had really begun. Purri managed to get Damiah once more and then Damiah got his game going taking down Purri with rocket launcher. After that Damiah hit two straight rails and finished him off with chaingun. After that it was pretty much Damiah's domination. Altough Purri managed to make one extremely nice railfrag, Damiah's control was a bit too much to brake. Even when they went chain vs chain Damiah aim seemed to be perfect. Purri didn't help things by falling to the lava either, and Damiah stayed sharp until the end.
Damiah wins 8:2
q2dm3 - Purri's home map
Purri spawned to grenades, quickly ran to RL and surprise, a while later Damiah ate Purri's rocket. After that Damiah got rail and he was ambushing Purri has he was coming up the RL ladder. There Purri got two fresh rails in his face, but couldn't handle the third one a bit later and 1:1, a tie. After that Damiah made a nice move under the RL again, where he took down Purri almost instantly with hyperblaster. Then quicker then you can say "spawnraped by railgun rocket railgun", Purri was down 5:1. Damiah was on fire. He seemed to play very calmly, giving Purri serious damage while Purri was obviously too aggressive, attacking relentlessy. 9 minutes left and Damiah is already leading 10:1, and now Purri goes to unluck mode and lavadives. Three quick railgun frags for Damiah and now it's already 13:0. Things are not looking very good for Purri and the situation continues to deteriorate when he blows himself up with a rocket launcher, trying to get Damiah. Purri is in the quad lift arena when the Lord of Unluckiness strikes again, Purri slips during strafejumping and... guess where he goes? LAVA. This is starting to get unbelievable. After that Purri managed to get a nice frag when he hit Damiah with a grenade and then chased him down and finished him off with a rocket. Now, coming from mega Damiah hits Purri in the face with railgun and Purri goes to visit the hot red liquid substance thingie again. Superb unluck. As a consolation prize, Purri gets one last RL frag.
Damiah wins 18:-1
Now is the time for the map kicking. They kick all the usual nonsense maps (q2duel1? yeah right) and two maps left are ztn2dm3 and q2dm1 - last choice is for Damiah to make. Purri asks kindly to finish his last league in Q2 with q2dm1, the best duel map ever and Damiah really can't say no, altough he would probably play anything else than q2dm1.
q2dm1 - Damiah spawns at water, run to the base, gets chaingun and megahealth and tries to chase down Purri and sees him going for rail. Valiantly he jumps in the water... and gets melted by Purri's hyperblaster. Nice! Damiah soon has his revenge with the RL. One chaingun kill, RL kill and spawnkill the score is already 4:1 to Damiah. Damiah continues to dominate. A bit over 5 min is left when Purri suddenly takes down Damiah with chaingun and the score is now 8:2. Then a railgun kill, 8:3. Then another chaingun kill, 8:4. Less than 4 minutes left. Is this the comeback we've been waiting for? No. Damiah nerves don't fail him. Rest of the map is just Purri trying to take down Damiah, but he was full of armor and health... no luck today.
Damiah wins 16:4
What can I say? This is in a way an end of an era. Purri is not coming back to competitive Q2 - he will play only casual clanwars with his clan. He was a bit out of shape, with all the Q4 practice he's been doing. But there's no denying Damiah's skills and intelligent gameplay. With Purri leaving, who is there to challenge Damiah's crown?
I want to thank everyone who helped with the final - Dahang for the shoutcast, Alexye for the GTV, evah for the server. The 200 people in #edl.q2, cheering and keeping the greatest game of all times alive. And most of all, a big thanks to kicia and syanid that we even had a chance to see EDL-3.
And thank you Damiah and Purri. You've given the scene more than you can imagine. Think of all the heated discussions in irc, all the downloaded demos, all the tournaments... You guys are living legends and even years from now, people will remember your name, just like everybody still remembers Shub and Blue. GG and good luck in the future!
What now? EDL-4, here we come.
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