The following takes place between 19:00 and 23:00 on the day of the NDML Grande Finale.

Those events are reported in real time…

19:01: I get called for dinner; at that time, it's still pretty quiet on #ndml, I'm reinsured because I finally managed to get in touch with djWHEAT and he confirmed he would shoutcast the game.

19:19:I'm done eating, I go back to my control post and there I realise that the heat has increased on the channel, people starts to chat and make predictions, some are even already asking for the q2tv ip's.
So ok let's sum up what is left to be done: contact davve for the q2tv, take a dump, reply to random queries about "is there going to be a shoutcast?" "what is q2tv ip?" "can you get naked? Scooby told me you would" etc., stay a bit with my mum because it's mothers day, go get a big glass of Ice Tea, and err… oh shit I almost forgot… the server!

19:41: #ndml is getting more and more crowded as djWHEAT has started the shoutcast and you can already tell he knows how to get a crowd excited.
I can already hear dozens of furious polish fans screaming behind me… but on the match channel, it's way more quiet. We were having a threesome discussion with Damiah Scooby and I.
The server was decided, but suddenly, something horrifying happened…

[19:59:23] <+Damiah> atm it looks like that we dont have players
[19:59:26] <+Damiah> coz thg and provi cant play
[20:00:18] <@[NDML]Gravgon> lol?

At that moment I started to become a bit worried… the excitement on the main channel was already pretty hot, there was a news on esreality about this final, djWHEAT was casting, I just couldn't tell all those people that the game wouldn't be played tonight.

On the other hand, Finland missing thaigo and provi would diminish the interest of this game a lot.

20:07:
[20:07:01] <+Damiah> ok, jent comes
[20:07:04] <+Damiah> so we have 4

Eventually the game could take place…

Q2DM7 – The Slimy Place - 's choice



It all started on Finland's first map choice. To be honest I wasn't confident in their victory at all, I thought they wouldn't stand a chance against Poland without thaigo and provi.
But when the game kicked off, they immediately proved me wrong: Damiah was in an Olympic form, he was denying the SSG and Hyper to all the poles and collecting many frags in that place of the map while Deuce and Jent were –surprisingly to me- doing a very good job at RA.
We could notice that Poland teamplay wasn't well in place yet, they were getting outnumbered all the time at the RA fights thanks to Damiah coming back every 20 seconds to provide weapons to his teammates before the RA spawn.
The poles were attacking a bit blindly, despite they had the control of Upper RL, they were just all running around the map to find a weapon before attacking the RA one after one.

After 10 minutes, Finland already had a big advantage (like 50 frags), but at that point Poland started to figure out that they were going to lose. I can imagine a new briefing was announced by Scooby to his teammates on voice com and magically, the Poland machine started to work properly. They could finally take over the RA, Finland still had Damiah controlling the SSG-Hyper zone and distributing weapons but Scooby and his homies were obviously pissed off and entered a true hunt for frags. Poland was kicking asses now and the score margin was melting like a Calipo on a summer beach.

At the end, Finland still won but we could see a nice come-back by Poland

Q2DM2 – Tokay's Tower - 's choice



Alright, I was a bit surprised and pleased by the fins victory on dm7. Maybe the game could be more interesting than expected?

When provi.fi entered the game during the dm2 warmup, it confirmed my assumption.
However, it would still be hard for Finland to beat Poland on their homemap (only few brave people from Belgium managed to do it in this league :p).

The game began and Poland took an early lead, despite Finland having Provi up the RA lift, they had several good quadruns in a row, they even managed to take over the Lift at a point (not for long though).
After that, Finland got their act together: Provi was back at his Lift and the Fins started to get tooled up with RA's and BFG, Damiah managed to break into the Polish defence around the Quad and the score was tied after 2 successful quadruns (Highlight on an amazing action: Damiah just took Quad, he's ~25 health and has a SSG, he sees some Poles taking the MH Lift, and then double jump on the shoulders of one of his mates to reach the MH platform and kill 3 polish then take the MH… It was nice ;)).

After that Finland had the lead and conserved it until the end. Provi helped by Deuce mostly secured the RA, Damiah (for the SSG part) and Dimmo (for upper RL) focused on Quad. Poland still managed to get quite a lot of quads but they hardly managed to have successful quadruns.

Finland's teamplay was clearly better here again.

Q2DM2 – Tokay's Tower - 's choice



Round 2 Fight! The exact opposite for this newest dm2 start: Poland were the first to have the Lift control and Finland took the first quads, then the tendency was inversed and the Fins took over the lift thanks to a nice jump-ladder for their quadrunner who could lift himself up to the RA and kick the poles out of there.
Then the polish and especially Scooby managed to take quads but they couldn't have control of the zone though and they had to share them with the Fins.
Finland had a pretty comfortable lead after 5 minutes when Provi started to have ping problems and had to reboot.

When he came back, something funny happened. Dimmo picked him in the team and this happened:

provi entered the game (clients = 14)
[POL]Ib0ginE tried to invade provi's personal space
provi was picked for team FINLAND by Dimmo.fi.

Then the game started again and we had another dropout with Damiah this time who fortunately was back few seconds later.

From there, a strange scenario happened… None of the teams managed to have a real grip on any of the positions, the Lift was taken over turn by turn by each team, same for the RL and MH lifts.

However, for some reasons, Finland wasn't fragging a lot. I think the poles were well coordinated and played smart enough to hide and attack at the right time.
The deciding factor was the quad though, Poland took most of them during this second part and their quadruns were kinda successful (Scooby's mainly)

Q2DM6 – Lava Tomb - 's choice



We could spectate a real dm6 demonstration by Poland on this map, however I have to mention that Finland had many problems and I think they never managed to really get into the game because of that.

M0RPH-X quickly took control the BFG area, I think he can be considered as the best player at this position atm. Very impressive game by him, he was a real frag harvester switching among his 3 weapons, RL BFG and Rail.

Assasin did very good at Rail despite Provi's insane aim; he managed to give out many rails to his teammates.

Scooby and Ibo were together at the quad, however Scooby let Ibo quadrun most of the time.

At a point during the game, I had to go afk and told Gerdt to take over the admining (thinking he had the admin pass), but he didn't have it. Unluckily Finland had to pause the game during this time because, first Jent had connex problems and then Provi overflowed.
Overall I think Poland deserved to win this map because they did showed awesome dm6 skills but I think the game should have been closer and more interesting if Finland wouldn't have had all those problems.

Q2DM3 – The Frag Pipe - Decider



The fifth map was decided with the usual elimination system, as Poland had more frag count they could have the deciding pick. And surprisingly they took dm3 while dm8 could have been picked too. Imo it was a weird choice since dm3 is known as one of Finland's best map.

But Poland had a plan…

When you think about Finland and dm3, you immediately think to Provi's rail ownage… but Poland (just like Sweden actually) had managed to find a tactic to counter Provi:

([POL]Ib0ginE): rl gramy czy oni we 2 na rg/
([POL]M0RPH-x): 2 rg

I don't understand polish but I think we can easily think to something like "fuck RL, let's put 2 at rg".
And Provi never managed to setup his usual routine, M0RPH-X and Assasin were outnumbering him all the time (they still had a hard time when he managed to steal a rail).

At Quad, Scooby and Ibogine were forming a very nice pair and totally messed up Finland's formation there. They basically were earlier for every Quad and Invul spawn.
Highlight on Ibogine here because he performed outstanding quadruns and seemed like a fish in the water on this map.

Damiah and Deuce still managed to get quads but it wasn't enough to fill in the gap.

Conclusion

It was done, Poland had won the NDML. The IRC channel became instantly flooded and this time I could do nothing but forgive it because it was nice to see such a happiness.

This game wasn't the best final game I've seen and I think it could have been closer if Finland had been in better conditions.
However, it will remain memorable and for that I have to thank the people who helped to have such a good coverage: first of all djWHEAT from iTG Radio who provided the best shoutcast a Q2 game probably ever had, davve who got his way through with the buggy Q2TV, RM Rebel thanks to whom I could have the admin pass of the server and the people who ran the scorebots.

It's time now to congratulate Poland for a well deserved victory!