Finland wins NDML 6
INTRODUCTION
I could have come up with yet another fantasy story for this introduction or another movie genre. But to be honest, this game doesn't need anything to make it look more interesting than it actually was
Finland vs. Sweden matches have been true milestones in the history of Quake2. I think we can say those games redefine the level of Q2TDM every time they take place. This season was no exception. Sure we missed a couple of star players but after what I had the chance to spectate last night, we can say that every single player who took part in this game will now enter the history of this lovely game.
Now think a bit, you probably all have experienced the following situation: you're playing a TDM game, 15 minutes already elapsed and you failed to do anything good in what seems to be the most shitty game you ever played
bad luck for you, it's a very important match, but this damn rail! You couldn't hit anything with it until now and you don't think it will improve. In other words, you feel doomed!
Then suddenly, by chance, you manage to pick a Quad. You only have a railgun with a couple of slugs and only a dozen of health points remaining
You know it's your one and only chance to make something good out of this game and there it happens!
Your heartbeats takes a huge boost and you enter that amazing berserk mode you had been waiting for all that game, you hit EVERY single rail and all your opponents get raped before they even starts shooting you, you hear the roaming sound of the quad coupled with the powerful slug of your railgun and you wonder when it will stop.
You did it! What happened? One word: the adrenaline.
Have a look at this now: 3 overtimes, add to this heated passions that have been lasting for years between those two Scandinavian siblings, do the math
you get one of the most intense match Quake2 could offer.
CHAPTER I: Q2DM2 - Tokay's Towers - 
Finland's map choice
In my eyes, Q2dm2 has become the new dm1 over the years. With the arrival of strategy-based teams such as Poland at the top of the European scene, the other teams had to adapt to this map's particular game play. Nowadays it doesn't have any secret for anyone, the scenarios is most of the time known beforehand
One team has the control of the Red Armour while the other one has the Quad part. When a team manages to control both, we get what is common to call a rape.
The game started and
Finland established itself as the RA team (read: they won at the first spawn lottery),
thaigo and
Damiah took control of the Lift and started to wait there until the pressure would drop a bit
But it never happened and that's what made the start of this game very weird. Somehow, the Swedes never let their Finnish neighbours stacking up by putting a lot of pressure on that RA tower.
What was the result?
ZORRE and
sLONKEN were sharing the quads and were butchering the poor lonely finnish players who were trying to reach the RA lift. Once they would get killed,
PH would respawn-kill them near the MH tower.
Bubkez on the other hand was doing a good job at putting damage on thaigo or Damiah (depending on which one would manage to rejoin
Foen at the RA). Those two couldn't get out of the RA tower with enough health/armor to start a decent rail-hunting.
After about 10 minutes like this,
Sweden had a pretty good lead. Then Finland decided it was enough. They started to play more carefully and made a better of use of their RA control. Damiah took a lot of chain kills on the Swedes while thaigo and
Dimmo pumped up the pressure on the Quad zone. Sweden's quadruns were dead born and this literally froze Sweden's score. This allowed Finland to make a comeback
But during this time, Foen was often alone to keep the RA-lift and when 3 minutes were left, Slonken (I think) took it back with a quad
Now Sweden is leading again! We enter the last minute, it seems really lost for Finland but Damiah gets the very last quad, we start to hear the countdown
10
9
8
on the other side of the map there is thaigo who has a RL, he knows one swede is up the RA lift with a RL too but probably thanks to an adrenaline rush he gets that little bit of craziness/genius and decides to take the lift, spamming some rockets on the ceiling and eventually hitting the Swede before killing him with the chain
3
2
1
Damiah kills a swede below the RA lift with chaingun OVERTIME (/me starts praying it wasn't sudden death
*Phew* It's 1 minute overtime!) Finland has now the RA lift and their players have weapons while the Swedes just respawned. It's enough for Finland to close this first chapter by taking the win on this memorable map.
CHAPTER II: Q2DM1 - The Edge - Sweden's map choice
CHAPTER III: Q2DM7 - The Slimy Place - Finland's map choice
This map has been THE Finnish map since always. Whenever a team has to face Finland in a match, they're sure to have to play this rail-less map. However, the only team that Finland never managed to really handle on their own ground is Sweden.
This time, we can say the Finnish dm7 machine was perfectly in place. We could observe a true teamplay lesson.
Dimmo's position was supposed to be RL but Bubkez quickly took control of it and never let it go. I think that's how Sweden managed to, somehow, keep the score pretty close: they had most of the rocket launchers.
Instead of trying to regain his position and giving away unnecessary deaths, Dimmo just helped his teammates at the other places with a well timed machinegun.
Sweden never managed to have a good grip on the RA and I think that's why they lost here. Damiah was doing a godly performance over there helped by Foen, he just wouldn't die and every single ammo of his weapons were put at the most efficient use he could!
Thaigo also did an awesome job at the hyper/ssg place. He was outnumbered most of the time by the Swedes, yet he managed to collect many weapons and share them with his Damiah and Foen at the RA.
When a member of the finnish team was a bit too low on health, he would directly drop his best weapon to someone else. That way, no weapons and ammos were wasted.
This was the only map that wasn't so close in fact. This victory gave Finland a good confidence boost for the last map.
CHAPTER IV: Q2DM3 - The Frag Pipe - Sweden's map choice
For this map, I definitely have to talk to you about Dimmo. You will understand why later
Dimmo is that kind of player who could spend a whole game trying to pull something nice, a good action, a decisive frag, whatever
and fail all of those attempts. But when Dimmo succeeds what he has on his mind, you get something that's worth, not only a lot of "WTF?!"'s, but amazing frag movies too!
This game was a perfect proof of what I've just told you.
The game started with Sweden taking a HUGE lead, Finland was just getting hammered at every place. Dimmo managed to take the first quad but Sweden (Slonken precisely) took the first Invul and killed him quickly.
After that it was the usual rail rape you can get on dm3. The finnish players seemed really lost at the beginning of this game, nothing would work for them.
Then, after 5 minutes, they finally managed to get good weapons and to make a decent quadrun but also
Dimmo succeeded his first "good action attempt": he took the second invul and hit every single rail shots afterward. We had our come back!
From there, it became quite a big mess in fact. Finland took most of the next quads but the Swedes had railguns. The players looked very stressed because they were making a lot of crazy stuff.
A particular action needs to be mentioned: the third invul at 5' left: Dimmo grenade-jumps to get it, not spawned yet, bubkez kills him with a grenade, the Swedes tries to get it thanks to a human pyramid but they get killed. It's like both teams decided to gather at the same place of the map at the same moment.
Then at a point, Dimmo decided it was time for yet another magic touch from him
he just double jumped on the head of his opponents who were trying to have a working human pyramid (with 3 of them), he just used their heads like stairs to his heaven: the invul!
Unfortunately, it wasn't so usefull for him, he had to face sLONKEN in a railgun fight! Yes you read well, sLONKEN entered a railgun fight agains Dimmo who had invulnerability. Dimmo didn't hit one rail this time while sLONKEN placed at least 5 slugs on him
the invul wore off and Dimmo got killed.
The score was totally equal and stayed like that for the last 3 minutes. Sweden lost control of the Rail but took more quads (Pogo did a very nice quadrun at 3 minutes left). Then again, the countdown starts to be heard.
Sweden leads by one frag (128 127), the finns desperately tries to frag and when the countdown is reaching 0, I watch the score and
. Oh my god 127 127!
YET ANOTHER OVERTIME! When that happened, the players really seemed shocked, they all stopped moving for a couple of seconds, as if they need the time to realised what was happening. Maybe Finland reacted quicker because they took the last quad, and also Dimmo realised another invul would spawn and told his teammates on ventrilo about it, Damiah takes the RL and take it. Game Over for Sweden, Finland has just won their first Gold in NDML.
POL vs SWE 
Gravgon
