The 2023 Platform Exhibition Final: Youngest and Oldest vs. Sprout Patrol
"Haa..."
It was 1:10. The final started at two, which left fifty minutes — and as a Kwitch starter I had to be in the Discord channel by 1:30, so I really only had twenty. Even so...
Four games. That was all it took. I had climbed to Chaser.
"Huh. It actually worked."
The truth was, I hadn't expected it to. However well I played, Project A was a team game. My own skill didn't erase the chance of a loss, and reaching Chaser meant winning four in a row — not a single defeat along the way.
"Thank you for the ten thousand!"
The last game had been razor-close. My MMR must have jumped, because the other team was suddenly full of people who could actually play. It might have been different with a duo like Nebula sharing information, but alone it was genuinely hard. Up through the ranks before this, a one-woman carry had still been possible. In this bracket I could feel the limit of going by myself, and we only barely closed it out after the match went to overtime.
"Think he'll be all right with this? Not too annoyed?"
In truth, Chaser was a rank I was going to reach eventually just by streaming. As a broadcaster, the smarter move would have been to turn the climb itself into content.
The only reason I'd done it now — with something as big as the exhibition final waiting — was a single taunt from Pilluelo.
One line. You haven't even reached Chaser. It got under my skin, and I'd answered by going out and hitting the rank. Painfully childish.
It was my own little provocation, but the moment the badge landed I started to regret it. That climb would have made perfectly good content...
Nothing to be done. I'd already made Chaser, and there was no taking it back.
It was almost 1:30. Time to get into the Discord channel. The notice had been clear: players were to be in by half past one.
Ding.
"Hello~"
"Wait — it spread that far already?"
It felt like barely four hours had passed since I'd announced the climb, and the story was already everywhere.
"Haha... thanks."
I took the congratulations, we drifted into this and that, and the minutes went by.
A tournament official had joined the channel.
From Spax's briefing, and from everything we'd watched ourselves, AFS was the most aggressive of the four teams in the exhibition. Their strongest map was Haven. With three sites to cover, Kwitch — a team that leaned on me and Nebula to win the fights — was always going to be weak there.
So from our side of the veto, Haven was a ban we couldn't not make.
Bind wasn't a map we were particularly confident on. We'd barely played it in scrims. And we'd already shown it once against NPT, so a fair amount of our setup had to be leaked — banning it anyway was a choice.
I thought the same thing he did, though I didn't say it. It would have sounded conceited. If AFS trusted their aim, they'd want to stay away from a chaos agent like Yoru. Project A doesn't let you ban agents, so banning Bind — the map where Yoru runs wildest — shut that possibility down entirely. It made sense.
Ascent was the map we'd practiced most. It favored the information skills Nebula was confident in, and because the map itself leaned defense, it felt a little kinder to a team whose strength was holding. They answered with Icebox, where their ace, Pilluelo, could let his Jett off the leash. Each side walked away with the map it wanted.
For the second selection, both sides took the map the opponent had shown the most. Not a comfort pick so much as the map where the other team had already leaked the largest share of its playbook.
The fifth map locked in, and the veto was done.
"Fighting!"
"And there we have it — agents locked for both teams in the first match of the 2023 Platform Exhibition final."
"You can read each roster's identity straight off the comp. Youngest and Oldest like a stable execute, and on Ascent they've taken the most standard shell you can pick..."
Jett, widely called the best entry in the pro scene, plus Killjoy, the current tier-zero sentinel: one entry, two initiators, one sentinel, one controller. Even in pro play, that was Ascent's orthodox composition.
"Sprout Patrol, meanwhile... wow. They really never disappoint. Two duelists, two initiators..."
Their comp had no sentinel to own a site the way a Killjoy would — two entries, two initiators, one controller. An attack-specialized shell, built to spend the initiators' information and then unleash Jett and Phoenix.
"Which means they plan to play as aggressive as that looks, right?"
The game started, and in the opening round both of Sprout Patrol's entries — the heart of their attack — came out with Frenzies.
Frenzy is a monster up close and nothing at range. Buying it meant they had no intention of taking a long fight. They were going to crash in fast and force every duel into arm's reach.
"Sprout Patrol — this looks like a straight B-site rush!"
Right as the barrier dropped, Sprout Patrol's Omen sent Paranoia screaming down B Main. If anyone on our side had stepped up that lane, the nearsight would have forced them off it or killed them where they stood.
"They're running — they're running!"
Paranoia handed them the wide lane of B Main for free, but Sprout Patrol didn't stop to enjoy it. The footsteps kept coming.
Youngest and Oldest had a Sova recon bolt — Nebula's — down on B Main, and it died before it had been alive a full second. We learned that at least one enemy was there. We hadn't needed the information in the first place.
A stampede of boots hammered the lane.
The footsteps had already told us the B rush was coming.
"Jett entries, right now!"
Pilluelo's Jett came out of the B Main mouth. I was sure he'd smoke and Tailwind straight at the front of site. He didn't.
A breath of air. Then a flare of motion.
He ignored Market and CT entirely. Updraft into Tailwind, over the roof, and he was inside B.
"He just skipped the fight and crashed the site?!"
He popped the smoke as he fell, and his body vanished inside it.
Nebula's Sova and Oldboy's Killjoy, both on B, obviously tried to kill the Jett.
Phoenix's Q — Curveball, the flash you throw so it bends left or right across the front of a site.
Blinded by it, the Youngest and Oldest players holding B had no chance of shooting the Jett coming in.
"Ah, Curveball!"
If Curveball has one thing that sets it apart from every other flash, it's this: it detonates so fast that even an active pro can barely react.
"Nebula's down! Oldboy's going to have a miserable time living through this!"
"Even the great Nebula can't react to Curveball! That ability was never designed to be reacted to!"
Oldboy was pinched between the Jett already on B and the Phoenix pushing in from B Main. Standing still was death, so he swung the Jett hiding on site, trying to erase the angle before it erased him.
Pilluelo's Jett turned the duel around on him.
"Pilluelo gets Oldboy!"
"That puts Sprout Patrol in full control of B. Can Youngest and Oldest retake?"
The numbers were already three against five. Sprout Patrol had two on the site and one each in B Main, CT, and Market, cutting off every lane into B.
The bomb was already down. Youngest and Oldest were not the kind of team to give the round away for that.
Pilluelo could have simply held for whoever was coming through CT. Instead he forced a peek out into it.
Bang!
Rotating over from A, my Jett put a Sheriff round straight through his head.
"Eunha, Sheriff one-tap! Pillu dies in a single shot!"
"That was Pilluelo getting greedy. He could have just waited. The peek handed them an angle to walk in on."
"They've broken through as far as CT! Nebula's dead, but Eunha's still here. Youngest and Oldest has two aces!"
What was left of Youngest and Oldest — me on Jett, Zzangdol on Omen, and Pola on KAY/O — started in slowly toward the B site our opponents had already claimed.
We were going in to defuse the bomb. To win the round.