SC vs TLB
On Kwitch, the official PCK broadcast had sat dark since the Summer season ended, with no sign it meant to come back on. Then the blue light returned—the one that meant they were live.
Of course it had. Today was the Promotion Series, the day the bottom of the first division and the top of the second would be sorted into their proper places.
The teams in it were the bottom two from the first division and the top two from the second. Most PCK viewers had no real interest in the second division, and even in the first they didn't care about clubs bad enough to be here. A promotion series could have everything riding on it for the players and still draw nothing but a shrug from the fans. This one was different.
A series people said would be lucky to crack ten thousand viewers had cleared fifty thousand before the match even began. The reason was two of the four teams in it: JG and SC.
JG first. They were stuck in the second division, and still the name everyone gave as the team most likely to go up. Their ace and starter, Forest, had announced he was stepping away with an injury, and the club had fallen all the way down. Even so, they were an old PCK institution that had once sat in the upper middle of the first division, with a hardcore following, and as the strongest favorite to finish first in this series the expectations on them ran high. His return wouldn't come until day two, but the moment Forest declared he was coming back for the Promotion Series, JG had a great many PCK fans watching.
Then there was SC. They had dropped into the Project A pro scene like a comet. H Group, a conglomerate that had never shown much interest in esports, had abruptly bought a second-division team, changed the name to SC, and taken the operation into its own hands. On top of that, Nebula—Han Seongun, former rank one of the Asia server, called the greatest prospect Korea had ever produced—had chosen to sign with them, and interest in the org climbed past plenty of middling first-division teams.
Four teams were in. Ninth and tenth from PCK, the first division, and first and second from PCLK, the second division.
On day one, PCK's ninth played PCLK's second, and on the other side PCK's tenth played PCLK's first. Win, and you went to the winners' bracket. Lose, and you went to the losers' bracket.
On day two the two winners played each other, and the two losers did the same. Take the winners' bracket, and you were promoted into PCK—or you stayed, if you were already there. Fall out of the losers' bracket, and you were relegated to PCLK—or you stayed, if that was where you already belonged.
Right after that, the loser from the winners' bracket played the winner from the losers' bracket. Win, and you moved up to PCK. Lose, and you dropped to PCLK.
And with that, both introductions were done. Key players were chosen, the map veto closed, and the first match was underway.
It had already started.
The moment I stepped into the arena, the casters came through the speakers hung all over the place. From what they were saying, SC was on defense first. The map was... Ascent, wasn't it? The screen hung huge in the center, so I knew at a glance which map had been picked. Ascent. Maybe the one TLB had chosen.
"Let's see..."
The screen was big enough to follow even from the door, but I had no intention of watching on my feet, so I went looking for the seats on the ticket.
"Our seats are over there."
I slipped through carefully, so I wouldn't block the people watching behind me, and sat down. Only then, legs stretched out, could I actually watch.
"Haaah... that's better."
"I don't know much about games like this, you see. I'll watch quietly, so if you need anything, please just say so."
Right. What is Driver Kwon even doing here...?
"Um... if you're tired, you can sleep."
Between the driving and guarding me, his days were full, so I'd offered on the thought that a real sleep in this stretch of time might not be the worst idea. Then—
Thinking about it, I wasn't sure anyone could actually sleep in an arena this loud.
"Would it be too noisy for that...?"
Sorry, Driver Kwon...
"It's quite all right. Guarding you is my job anyway, miss. And, well... if it's a game you're good at, then watching isn't such a bad thing."
"R-right. It might even be fun. Maybe. If you watch?"
An FPS was intuitive enough that even Driver Kwon, who had never played, could probably get a rough sense of how a round was going. Ah. Probably.
Haa... this was unbearable.
Why wasn't Coach Kim Sangho even calling a timeout? At this rate the whole first half was going to vanish. I wanted to sprint into the booth and start screaming. I remembered I was here as a streamer, and I made myself swallow it.
"Miss. There's something I'm curious about, if I may."
Hm? Driver Kwon wasn't asleep. He hadn't stirred once beside me, so I'd assumed he was.
"Yes? Go ahead."
"Why does the team on the left keep leaving one site empty?"
...Huh?
"If the team on the right only has to destroy one of the two objectives, shouldn't they simply keep watch on both?"
I'd been wondering what he was going to ask. He was talking about the game.
"Um... if they do it that way, the attackers are five and the defenders are two or three, so the numbers are against them."
"Then if the defense takes even two or three of them with them, it's three against three. An even fight. That seems better to me..."
Does Driver Kwon really not know this game...?
He was right. What had SC wobbling was that they couldn't get a read on which way TLB meant to hit. The way they were moving, if TLB showed on A, all five went to A. If they showed on B, all five went to B. The defense piled onto one site, and TLB, ghost-quiet, hit the other and planted the bomb without giving up a single player. It kept happening.
"That's true, but..."
The counter was simple. Don't rotate across to cover. Just hold both sites. Even if the hit comes and the players on site take one or two with them, losing the site still leaves the rest of the team in a far better spot to retake. SC couldn't play it that way, and the reason was a different one. The players left on site weren't trading those two or three. They were dying for nothing.
"This game has... skills. You can think of them as tactical gear. Anyway, because of those, if you don't have the numbers, it's hard to win."
"Is the tactical gear something only the team on the right can use? Couldn't the team on the left use theirs as well?"
Yeah. I'm pretty curious about that myself.
In Project A, three players on a site can turn it into a blood-and-iron fortress that simply does not break. Unlike the attackers, stuck to a handful of lanes, the defense can take space anywhere on the site. The skills exist to close that gap. Flashes and concusses that punish an enemy already set. Information skills that find someone you can't see. Spend them, overturn a bad spot, and take the site. That is an attacker's basic plan.
Defenders can use every one of those skills just as freely. A counter-arrow timed to the entry. A concuss stuck in the lane they have to walk. Mine skills that turn an approach into a burning hell. The moment the defense starts using them, the gap the attackers just closed opens back up, and the round tilts the defenders' way.
"The team on the left can use them too... they're just filthy at it."
Not that it mattered. SC was dogshit with the skills that actually counted. The players holding site were so clumsy that attacks they should have stopped went straight through, and because of that the players on the other site rotated off to help and left an empty one behind them. That fatal flaw—being wretched with their skills—was exactly what TLB had sunk their teeth into, and they looked ready to eat the entire first half off the back of it.
"Um, but... is it more fun than you expected?"
"Well. Yes. It's been worth watching."
So the stillness hadn't been sleep. He'd gone still because he was locked on the match. I hadn't thought Driver Kwon would start asking about the game. He'd been enjoying it more than I expected.
While I was explaining to Driver Kwon why SC was losing, they dropped another round the exact same way. Figure in that SC would have no money the next round, and the half was likely to close at 9–3. Defense first, down 3–9, on Ascent—a map people called good for the defenders. Nothing short of hopeless.
"Ugh... what are they even doing."
Driver Kwon had never played a single match, and even he could put a finger on what was wrong with SC. There was no way the team itself didn't know.
Did he call me here just to show me this...
Really disappointing, Han Seongun.