syanid picked ztn2dm2 & aeroq2, damiah picked q2dm1 & q2rdm2..
thanks darus for radio, dahang for shoutcast, d34d for gtv, gerdt for report and congrats to players.. gg

shoutcast can be found right here...

syanid vs Damiah - Gerdt's point of view

Yesterday night, around 19.00PM, #edl was already filled with many anxious Quake2 fans. Anxious to see the last game of the most prestigious Quake2 duel league there is: syanid vs Damiah.
While admin of the year wision got stalked with the usual "GTV???", "IP??", "when is game??" and "score??" questions over and over the clock was slowly ticking to 20.00PM. The game would start soon.

And so it did, the stars of the night joined a server where they both pinged very low: around 13ms for Damiah and 20 for syanid. Damiah picked q2dm1 and q2rdm2, syanid didn't surprise and chose the same maps as in his game versus purri: ztn2dm2 and q2duel1.
Being hometeam syanid would get the advantage of starting with his map or in other words the maporder would be ztn2dm2, q2dm1, q2duel1 and q2rdm2.

The finalists looked well warmed up and quickly went ready.

First map: ztn2dm2 - The killing machine

syanid got the start of the map and quickly fragged Damiah. His first frag was followed by two accurate respawnfrags. Syanid took full control of the map, collecting RA, MH and RL. Damiah from his side collected some YA's and a railgun. He played defensive and tried to hit some rails to break through syanid's control. Syanid got him down to very low health a few times and finally managed to get another frag followed by two other quick chainkills. Damiah started to sneak around after this and while syanid was searching him he managed to steal a RA. Shortly after this the players started a chain combat where Damiah did some serious damage to syanid. A few seconds later syanid, still confident, tried to grab his timed rocket launcher but didn't expect Damiah to show up with chain again. Damiah got his first frag with a very accurate chainaim. Syanid respawned and immediately got fragged again. Damiah now took full control of the map: MH/RA/RL and syanid took over the role of sneaking silent railer. After a while another chainfight followed where Damiah (again) showed a much better accuracy and got a frag. A very important one, which was followed by three others in the next minute. The score was equal. It felt like syanid was playing a bit recklessly, too offensive. He got fragged one more time but then quickly respawned and fragged Damiah with hyper. Score: 7-7.
Damiah, with 3 hitpoints, then got very lucky to get to the MH on time. Somehow he managed to follow this up by taking two red armors in a row and yet again he took full control of the map with three minutes to go. Syanid showed up and pulled out some insane rockets on him and amazingly made two frags in a row. 9-7 to syanid with 2 minutes left. Damiah spawned at rail and again did something only the best can: He broke syanid's control with a few rails, fragged him, spawnfragged him and fragged him again. 10-9 for Damiah with 1minute left. The future didn't look so bright for syanid and he knew that he would have to risk everything for a mapwin. So he did and with a crazy GL attack he brought Damiah down to 45 health. One more grenade would have evened the score but it just... didn't happen. Damiah fragged him another three times and the game was played: 13-9 to Damiah.



Second map: q2dm1 - The edge

I think most players on the server and GTV expected Damiah to win this map. After i saw him get chain/YA/MH in the first minute, followed by a frag I knew it would be very hard to syanid to win the game. Damiah quickly built up a big fragdifference and got full control of the map after a short while. He had the whole gamma of weapons (rail! :s), armor and health. Syanid seemed to know that he didn't have a chance on this map and just played his game. Damiah was very confident and unworried about the outcome. He knew he already secured his win. The rest of the game was quite agressive from both sides and probably very entertaining for the spectators. For me it wasn't very interesting because it lacked the 'real EDL duel spirit'. Syanid made a little comeback in the last part of the game but it was way too late to run in on the gap Damiah made. Both players showed some awesome skill and aim but Damiah just was the better player. I wonder how the game would have been if syanid had mapcontrol from the start. Who knows?



Third map: q2duel1 - Aerowalk

Syanid's second homemap, and his last shot on the title started in his advantage. Both players went for MH in the first second. The only difference was that syanid carried an SSG and Damiah was waving around with his blaster. Syanid got both the MH and first frag, followed up by two spawnfrags: 3-0. Damiah quickly took the rail and fragged syanid, followed by a few spawnfrags again: 6-3 for Damiah with 13 minutes to go. The game very open and agressive from both sides. Syanid fragged Damiah one more time, Damiah answered with 4 other quick frags: 10-4 with 11 minutes to go. What a promising start! There would be many frags in this game without any doubt. With 12-6 on the screen in Damiah's favor syanid took full control of the map. RA/MH/RG were his. With a few nice rail and chainhits the score quickly went up for syanid. His comeback ended when he tried to win a battle with ssg versus Damiah's chain. Damiah made two more frags and secured his advantage again: 14:11. Damiah, left on low health then got fragged by syanid who one more time took full control of the map. Damiah now played defensive and waited for syanid to show up and rail him. That's a very hard thing to do on this small map and he knew he needed to hit those 3 or 4 rails in a row to break syanid's control. It didn't happen and syanid, who only needed one or two railhits, made another frag. 14:13 for Damiah with 3 minutes to go. What followed were a few frags from syanid and an important timing mistake from Damiah: he did the jump to RA about 10 seconds too early and basically waited to be fragged by syanid. Syanid made 8 frags in a row after this, a bit like Damiah did in the first minutes of q2dm1. He secured his mapwin and thus a 4th map. Good for syanid and for all the spectators.



Fourth map: q2rdm2 - The chastity belt

This must be Damiah's best map. He hasn't lost this one in ages, everyone has seen his demos on it and let's be honest: he knows it better than anyone else. Once again Damiah showed some amazing skill on this map. His tactics, aim and movement were superior to syanid's. Damiah played very relaxed or how he said after the game: "rdm2 is always fun". Syanid tried his best to break through Damiah's genious but it just wouldn't work. Final score: 25-6 to Damiah and thus 3:1 in maps.



Many people would have liked to see a 5th map and that would have been ptrip in particular if were up to them. Maybe next season? Congratulations to Damiah who once again showed that he is the very best Quake2 dueler in the... world? And of course the same goes to syanid who showed some awesome skills and this season's edl.

My thanks go to the whole crew and to wision in particular for making this league possible and for doing _awesome_ adminning work. I hope you didn't get too many gray hairs from all the stress and whine! ;)