Banner image: Ubisoft/Kirill B.
No one expected DWG KIA to be where it is right now. Not the fans, not the casters and analysts, and certainly not the Korean players themselves. Out of 39 casters polled, only APAC South caster Michael “Guzz” Gurrie had placed DWG second in Group B. And in a pre-event interview with SiegeGG, Byeonguk “RIN” Jang had stated that his team’s primary goal at this event was to accrue experience.
Now, DWG is knocking on the playoffs door after besting Ninjas in Pyjamas and G2 Esports.
The statistics for DWG KIA's second win over NiP.
“We thought the other teams in our group are really strong, we did not think that we could make it to playoffs.” said Sanghoon “yass” Yoo over a Discord call with SiegeGG. “(Now), it’s only one step to go to advance to playoffs. It might be hard to take that step, but we will try our best.”
DWG finds itself second in Group C, ahead of G2 and NiP, after its heroics against the world champions late on Aug. 17. The Koreans had been forced to play NiP back-to-back yesterday, after technical issues on day one had postponed the first NiP vs DWG game to immediately after the second.
Despite posting a 4-7 loss to DarkZero Esports earlier in the day, it was DWG that came out on top in both matches against NiP. 8-7 and 8-6 were the scorelines in favour of the APAC North team, who took down the world champions on the same map twice. Additionally, not only did DWG win by a larger margin the second time, it also pulled off a comeback from 2-6 down.
“Before we played the first match against NiP… we had not been sure if we could take the map (win),” said yass. “And (even) after winning the first match, we thought we had performed well but also thought that it was thanks to some good luck that we won.”
The second match was also on Clubhouse, and the scenario made DWG even more uncertain of the possibility of repeating the feat. According to yass, Clubhouse is an old map at this point that lends itself to the kind of structure and counter-strategy the world champions have shown in the past. The first victory had also only been by a single round.
DWG KIA celebrating its second win against NiP. (Photo: Ubisoft/Kirill B.)
It was only after the second win on Clubhouse, this time by a larger margin, that DWG KIA felt confident. “After taking both matches, especially the second, we thought that ‘yeah, there was a little bit of luck, but [the win] was because of our own abilities,” yass revealed.
DWG KIA had expected a repeated map due to the back-to-back scheduling, according to yass, given the likelihood of a team of NiP’s calibre learning from its mistakes the first time to come back far stronger.
At first, it seemed like NiP had learned from their mistakes, and that DWG KIA’s “luck” had run out. The Brazilians had surged to a 5-1 lead that later became 6-2, leaving DWG thinking that a comeback was going to be too tough to complete. “We had to recover four match points, but the plans we had (on defense) just worked,” explained yass.
Important to that comeback was also fighting off any sense of overwhelming awe at being in the same server as the world champions -- previously near-mythical figures.
“We all know that NiP players are great players, so I tried not to think about their careers or performance. I treated them the same as just any other player,” said yass about his 17-10 K-D in the second game. “After beating them was when we thought, ‘wow, we just beat the NiP.’”
But the nerves may just be the secret ingredient for DWG KIA to make it to the playoffs later today. Prior to the first-day win against G2 Esports, RIN had tweeted that he had been feeling “nervous”. In the game he had then dropped 19 kills to just six deaths.
“That score was only possible because RIN was nervous“, laughed yass, teasing a discussion about unbridled aggression being the downfall of many an APAC team. “He didn’t [over-extend]. If he had been over-confident, he wouldn’t get that good a score.”
Now, perhaps ideally nervous, DWG KIA will be hoping for three points once more against G2 Esports, which will guarantee the Koreans a previously unthinkable playoff berth.