Is She Throwing? (Project A)
I never thought we'd end up running this comp in the exhibition.
"You sure this is all right?" Spax asked.
"Yes. I watched that tournament too. I paid close attention to your skill setups, Spax."
The pick from the match that had meant the most to me at the last tournament I played—I never imagined I would be choosing it again. And of all places, on a team where an old teammate was the coach.
"To go over it once more, the fake toward B Main is the heart of this strat. Given who we're playing, I think they'll bite pretty cleanly."
If I was being cold about it, AFS was not a smart team. On the tactical side, the eliminated NPT and KKT squads had actually been stronger. AFS played strictly around individual skill, which meant they folded the moment they lost a fight, and they burned utility on even a simple fake. Those were the holes.
"That's true. Honestly, what they were doing was way too obvious."
Even last set, the game had gotten easier the moment we switched to a default. A default forced them to take mid, and the second Nebula started controlling it, their paths onto site turned predictable.
"Whew... the confidence is unreal."
"I just feel so safe~"
We meant to pick their weaknesses apart. In set one Nebula had taken the fights himself and gone after the first of them. This time we were going after the second.
"All right, then. Go win this one nice and easy too, yeah?"
"Let's take it 3–0 and go clean out Spax's wallet~"
"What? Why are you cleaning out my wallet?"
"You said if we won, you'd buy us something good."
"Ah."
Right. Spax had promised to treat us if we won the final. Wait... does that mean we'd actually be seeing his face? It had already been three months since I last saw him. A face I used to get sick of, living in the same team house. We'd be meeting after a long while.
"Wall-X Galbi works too, right?"
"...What?"
"I'm kidding."
Part of me wanted to needle him a little longer, but Spax and I weren't the close friends we used to be.
"That really was a joke, right? I can trust you?"
"Hehehe..."
This was as far as the teasing went. He could stand to be grateful.
"He's a pro gamer on a massive salary. That much should be doable, no?"
"Come on. Win first, then talk. Win."
He was right. Nothing would be uglier than having this conversation and then losing.
"I'll be off, then. Go smash them."
A soft chime, and he was gone from the call.
"Um... is wording like that okay?"
"Well... it should be fine, right?"
The second set of the exhibition final, played on Ice Room, had just begun.
Sova — Pola
Killjoy — Oldboy
Snake — Zzangdol
Harbor — Nebula
Sova
Harbor
Killjoy
Snake
First-half pistol round. We had started on defense in set one, so this match we were on attack.
Our comp was a double-controller shell, Harbor and Snake. With that many smokes, we could avoid long-range fights on the way in and only take the gunfight once we were on site.
So instead of a balanced Ghost, I took the Frenzy, built for close range. I was the only entry who would actually step onto site. A point-blank fight wasn't a choice.
Jett's basic entry is smoke into Tailwind—C, then E—so I bought Cloudburst, the smoke that pops. Ice Room is full of high ground between the first and second floors, so I bought Updraft as well, the movement skill that gets you up there, and spent every one of the 800 credits a pistol round allows.
"Skill setup goes as we planned."
"Okay. But they've got a Harbor too."
"Hss... looks like they studied it. Is this okay?"
Harbor had been an off-meta agent until recently. Until our KZ put it on display at LOCK//IN. After that match plenty of teams would have gone and studied him, and seeing the other side pick him too, it looked like he had become a meta staple.
"It should be fine, right? This isn't a strat you can answer just because you know what Harbor does."
"True. We just focus on our own play."
"All right, one cheer and we go. Youngest and Oldest, fighting!"
"Fighting!"
"Fighting!"
"And the second match of the 2023 Platform Exhibition final has just begun. Youngest and Oldest are on the attack this game!"
"Both teams running the exact same comp means the key is which side actually plays to its strengths. Watch for that and it gets really fun. Nebula on Harbor, especially... I'm looking forward to this."
"It's a pistol round, so a rush would make sense, but Youngest and Oldest just don't do that."
Sidearms, by nature, don't carry enough bullets, so fighting one against many is harder than it is with a rifle. Plenty of teams lean on that and rush the pistol. Youngest and Oldest, though, lived on initiator info, on taking space and unfolding the attack as a unit, so even on a pistol round they chose a default.
"And the round is live."
Snake held mid. On A, Killjoy dropped a turret to watch for an aggressive defense, and Jett, Sova, and Harbor headed for B Main.
"Snake's Q covers mid, Killjoy checks for a push up A Main. Textbook start, right?"
Harbor's C, Cascade. A rectangular curtain that shoves forward, lasting seven seconds, and anyone who touches it is briefly slowed. From the defense, it is an awkward skill to play against. You want your eyes on whatever is walking up behind the waterfall rolling toward you.
Bang. Bang. Bang!
Like that.
Harbor's Cascade came pushing toward B Main. Sprout Patrol's Snake tried a smoke shot through it, but no kill came of it. Of course it didn't. The attackers weren't there.
"Ah, this is a fake. He's using Harbor's Cascade to tell them, we're going B."
Youngest and Oldest had thrown the Cascade and nothing else, and were already turning back toward A.
"It's exactly the tactic KZ showed at LOCK//IN, and from here there are several variations. Rotate to A, rotate through mid, or use the Cascade and hit B again..."
It looked brutally simple, but that single Cascade on B Main dropped the defense into a nasty dilemma.
"If you start by giving up B Main space like this, getting information is really hard. And forcing a fight through that Cascade is too expensive."
To learn anything, you either spent info utility—something like Sova's recon bolt—into the B Main hidden behind the wall, or you pushed through it and took the fight. Sprout Patrol had already been crushed last set, and they wanted no part of a gamble. Their Sova was posted on A besides, so in the end they had to sink more bodies into B.
"So Youngest and Oldest's strat has landed, to a point. The Sova who was on A is moving to B, and that's one fewer player."
"Meanwhile, Youngest and Oldest are heading for A."
They linked up with Killjoy and walked slowly toward A site. There was a variable they hadn't counted on. Pilluelo's Jett was watching A Main from a very long way off. And of all the guns, he had a Sheriff. Catch a bullet in the head and it was a one-shot accident.
"Can Pilluelo even react to this?"
From where he stood, there was still a chance they were going B. He had been holding the same angle since the round began, so the odds were good his focus had already slipped.
Bang!
The shot bloomed.
But Pilluelo did not miss the chance he had been given.
"Pilluelo! The aim is alive!"
"Pilluelo never lost focus—a one-tap! And now they're caught going A!"
"And of all people, Harbor is the one who died, so there are no smokes!"
It was supposed to be a Snake-and-Harbor double smoke, but Snake's toxic screen, his E, was already set on B. He had recalled the Poison Orb from mid, but that alone wasn't enough to erase the angles.
"They have to rotate back to B. Without smokes, this is too much for Youngest and Oldest."
In the end, changing the hit to B, where Snake's smoke was already down, was the smart call. But...
The smoke flared.
Youngest and Oldest—no. Eunha did not look like she had any intention of rotating.
"Wait, hold on. She's going in?"
No help from a smoke. No help from a flash. She had simply walked onto the site alone.
Eunha, always praised for playing steady and only sometimes showing an edge. This time, everyone thought she had thrown.
Tat-tat-tat—bang!
Ghk—!
What followed was a few gunshots, and the sound of a Jett dying.