WGL APAC-Asia Week 1 Recaps

The first game took place on Cliffs. Despite the more heavily armored tank selection coming from NUMB, Team Efficiency displayed better coordination, showing that brains can prevail over brawn. The second game was played on Ensk. Some tail-chasing from both teams ended with Team Efficiency coming out on top because Numb attempted a counter-capture but didn’t have the numbers to keep up with Team Efficiency sending back 3 tanks to engage the 2 members of Numb at their capture circle.

Patience was the name of the game for NUMB, but they couldn’t out-wait their opposing team in hopes of getting away with a draw – the enemy team would win in that case. They found a nice pick and tried diving in on it, but decision-making couldn’t win them the game without the execution. Team Efficiency takes the set three to zero.

Match 1 Winner

Team Efficiency 3:0 NUMB

Game number one for this best of three was also played on Cliffs. We were also curious about what might come of our new Taiwanese contenders. Round one wasn’t even close. At the end of the game, Intense Honking still had all of their Tier 8 tanks alive and only lost a single T1 Cunningham.

Game number 2 was played on Himmelsdorf. In this game we saw slightly better coordinated fire coming from the Taiwanese team, which gave them the same end-game results as game number one. Only a single T1 Cunningham fell for their opposing team, but still there was an attempt by the NightEagles.

Game number 3 saw the best performance from our new faces, but it was still nothing that could pull out a victory. There was a nice dog-pile coming from Haku, but it soon turned into a fox-hunt on the T1 cunninghams for GASHPLUS_NightEagles. Intense Honking takes the set with a three to zero end-score.

Match 2 Winner

Intense Honking 3:0 GASHPLUS_NightEagles

In the first game that was played on Mines, both sides rushed for the high ground in the center of the map with one key difference: Elong loaded in to the game with a single AMX 50 100 while the Aces had nothing but light-tank class autoloaders. It was apparent from the get go that Elong would have extra firepower and a little bit more muscle. They used this to take down an AMX 13 90 that rushed in to the center hill while taking relatively little damage, and then counter-played the Aces with a full-blown surround at the same location.

With only two heavily-damaged tanks remaining for the Aces, Elong’s five remaining tanks decided to end the game via capture as opposed to eliminating the enemy team, giving them a one point lead. Game number two on Cliffs was so clutch that you almost couldn’t believe how NVIDIA Aces pulled off a victory with only a single T-1 cunningham accomplishing a capture from one percent to the full one hundred. Game number three on Prokhorovka saw both teams rushing the middle of the Map, Elong opting for two T32s definitely gave them the edge over their Vietnamese adversaries as this forced the mostly T69 and AMX 13 90 composed team to take down the Chinese team’s light tanks before being chased off by the heavies hunting them down to the end.

In game number four on Ensk, the thought process of Elong was something that became more and more transparent. They have a set of conditions that they live and die by on the battlefield. After a head-on engagement didn’t work against NVIDIA Aces, they went for a sneaky capture using a T1, and then with their last tank on the field they were able to successfully bring the game to a draw, thus bringing the end score to three to two in favor of Elong.

Match 3 Winner

Elong 3:2 NVIDIA Aces

In game number one on Mines, Tedamaru got lit for a little bit more than half of the HP on his AMX 13 90. After assessing their position on the map and their control thereof, the Japanese team decided to rush with three tanks initially running over the two T32s at C4. Littlemac fell, and then shortly afterwards, the more damaged tanks on CT from that engagement rotated to a safe position while the other tanks destroyed Ayswuter. Everything went downhill from there for PVP Super Friends, enabling Charlotte Tiger to take the lead in this Best of five.

Himmelsdorf was the order of the day for Map number two, and Charlotte Tiger wisely played off of their one point lead, prompting them to camp their own base and prevent a capture from happening. However, perceiving this strategy from the get-go, PVP Super friends selected three KV5s to counter the three AMX 50 100s coming from Charlotte Tiger. Even an IS3 putting himself between the KV5s and AMX 50 100s in a decisive engagement did not deter the KV5s from redirecting their fire. With a solid example of coordinated fire, PVP brought the score back to 1:1 after a messy game. In game number three in Prokhorovka, the road to victory was fairly transparent for Charlotte Tiger. At the beginning of the game, a T1 Cunningham and an AMX 13 90 were trying to go for a capture at the same time. However, the AMX 13 90 showed up a little too late to the fight in the center of the map and could not contribute so much in the way of firepower to help out. The match eventually ended at 2:1 in favor of the Japanese Team.

Game number four on Ensk was almost too close for words. Almost predictably, Charlotte Tiger played off of their score lead and camped to force PVP Super Friends to attack them and try to get a capture. When it became apparent that PVP Super Friends could not get a capture, they had to fall back to their base to prevent it from being captured themselves. This boiled down to a two versus two among the tier 8 tanks at the top of the map, and it did not end well for PVP Super Friends. The end score culminated in 3:1, with three points awarded to Charlotte Tiger.

Match 1 Winner

Charlotte Tiger 3:1 PVP Super Friends

Mines was the first map between both of these teams, and savage it was, savage indeed. Once Elong had assessed a solid advantage after a rush, their AMX 13 90s continued to chase the remaining tanks on NUMB’s team. Their teammates’ coordinated fire, in combination with the painfully long reload time on Autoloader tanks, destroyed team NUMB in less than three minutes. Game number two played on Cliffs was a win for NUMB by giving Elong a taste of their own medicine with a rush through the center of the map. NUMB ended the game with a solid victory and five tanks remaining.

Game three on Ensk also proved to be an exciting one. Towards the mid-game it had become increasingly apparent that NUMB was winning. Elong had just a single T1 cunningham remaining that had been spotted by the IS3 of NUMB, and with less than ten seconds on the clock, said IS3 missed the shot on to the T1 Cunningham, producing an extremely clutch tie between our two teams at a score of 2:2. In the final game on Prokhorovka, Elong loaded up five AMX 13 90s while NUMB went for the hill on the east side of the map to camp with a more “diverse” load-out. When Elong went up that hill with only three AMX 13 90s, they squandered two of them to their opponents. The rest of the game was put in NUMB’s pocket, despite Elong trying to drag the game in to a draw. NUMB takes the set 3:2.

Match 2 Winner

NUMB 3:2 Elong

The first match was played on Himmelsdorf, where the first four minutes of the game were about positioning and psychological warfare. As is predictable with the amazing performance of NVIDIA Aces, the Vietnamese team conducted a very solidly coordinated rush in to the T-E base and ended the game with a capture after destroying six of their heavies with most of their own still alive. Game number two on Mines turned out to not be a complete slaughter for T-E like Game number one - their opponents were down to just four very low-HP tanks at the end of the game - but they were all eliminated as opposed to being capped (again, courteousy of that sick rush-coordination from Aces).

Game number Three was the beginning of the comeback for Team Efficiency. The one most critical moment was when two shots bounced off of the turret of an IS3 instead of detonating. The game ended with a capture for Team Efficiency; with only one T1 Cunningham remaining in the field for NVIDIA Aces, it was certainly no match for two AMX 50 100s. The fourth game on Prokhorovka was solidly coordinated by Team Efficiency, marching across the map with their mediums and heavies. The multinational team wins with 4 tier 8s on the battlefield, with their opponents trying to resort to guerilla warfare to win the game.

The best was saved for last with Cliffs being the final map of this set. Aces went with a Swiss-Army Knife composition of tanks while T-E fielded two AMX 13 90s and three T69s. Team efficiency wasted no time in capitalizing on their mobility and coordinated fire to get the win in an incredible turn-around.

Match 3 Winner

Team Efficiency 3:2 NVIDIA Aces