NA’s 1st seed of Rogue faced off against APAC’s 2nd seed in a barn burner of an opening to the Season 7 Atlantic City finals. NORA-Rengo started off strong, and could have taken the game in 2 quick maps, but Rogue recovered from their slow start to close out the series 2-1.
Rogue: Slashug, Easily, Bryan, Ecl9pse, Shuttle
NORA-Rengo: Cloud, JJ, Wokka, Merieux, CrazyPapiyoN
NORA-Rengo (NR) started the ban phase by banning the map Oregon, and then followed it up with Chalet and Border. Rogue banned next starting off with banning Kafe, followed by Clubhouse, and then Skyscraper. NR then chose Consulate, and Rogue picked Coastline, making the deciding map Bank.
Consulate started off as very much of a NORA-Rengo show, getting to match point relatively fast on 4-1, with Wokka getting several impact frags for his team, accompanied by Merieux. However faced with an unexpected map loss, Rogue then started to mount a comeback. The NA side came out swinging after a tactical timeout and came back to 3-4. On the 8th round, NORA-Rengo seemed to be able to stave off overtime in a 5 v 2 scenario, but Bryan and Ecl9pse managed to clutch it out with the help from some misplays from Nora-Rengo. However overtime saw the momentum shift fully in favor of Rogue, and the last two rounds fell to them rather easily, and saw Rogue win Consulate 6-4.
The second map of Coastline went the same way as Consulate had started, with Rogue winning the first round. NORA-Rengo, in an exact repeat, then won 4 in a row to get onto match point 4-1. Questions were being asked as to whether Rogue would be able to mount a comeback again, as they had on the prior map. However, NORA-Rengo were not interested in that repeat storyline, and won the final round to take Coastline 5-1.
Our third and final map of Bank was probably the most intense one in terms of round-by-round. While the previous maps had a lot of rounds strung together in a row for each team, Bank was the exception in that there was never more than a 2 round lead. Slashug and Ecl9pse made several important plays and NORA-Rengo tried to match them. However, some poor time management and peculiar strategies meant that Rogue managed to win Bank 6-4 despite overtime forced by the Japanese after being down 2-4.
Rogue moves on to the semifinals to play either EG or PENTA tomorrow. NORA-Rengo is unfortunately eliminated in a tense conclusion to our first match up of the day. APAC showed up today, and despite the result, gave Rogue a run for their money in a very intense match that definitely is worth rewatching.