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My ECL experience

First of all I’d like to thank all our sponsors for making this incredible week possible for my team. MSI, SteelSeries, Slappa, uGame, Bigfoot Networks - The support where amazing and we can’t thank you enough!

 

Arrived to Manchester around 6pm, got a text from Dash saying him and Max couldn’t pick me and Fragtale up because they couldn’t find a place to park the car, (nx). So we had to take a taxi, which was fine because I wanted to see Old Trafford, so I told the taxi driver to take us there. He was happy to take us there but somehow he missed the exit and we couldn’t drive back unless I wanted to pay more. So I said “Naa it’s fine, I’m a Barcelona fan anyway” and he absolutely flipped. “Never say that in my taxi again or #@!”?!12”½!”. He prolly charged extra but couldn’t care less, lol.

Met my boys at the hotel and got a new pair of my favourite headset SteelSeries 5Hv2’s and played a few games at Gamerbase before they closed.

Speaking of Gamerbase, the setup was soo sick. Felt like playing a Tournament. Had our own little setup in the basement with a big projector we all could watch while we didn’t play which also where on stream. Heard the quality where shyte, but so was ECL’s. So my tip to you there, sitting at home watching the stream is to attend the event and experience everything in “HQ”, see all the good teams play and not to mention the atmosphere.

Now back to the 6-teamLAN, The LAN went really well for us, only dropped 13 out of 78 games. Looking back at the PreLAN now - I don’t think it benefited us as much as we thought it would. Most of the teams played really sloppy and not to their potential at all. So it was hard for us to improve and see what we did wrong because most of the time when we lost, we lost because we played bad halo, and not them playing good.

I think the team who gained most from this preLAN was TCM. They struggled against everyone and where a completely different team from what we’re use to see them online the first 2 days. By the time the event started is when they started to click as a team. Without this preLAN I find it hard to believe they would even placed top 8. Well done guys, hope to see you next EU event or even MLG.

Another team I think surprised everyone is LLL. They beat Dignitas 50-49 in game 5 and that’s when it all started for them. Dig never recovered and got 6th which is a really bad placement for them. I expected them to be in the top3, I think they did as well.

Back to us; it wasn’t till first in WB4 we had our first really challenge against Adversity, still felt we had the upper hand considering preLAN scores and mentality going into this match. We won that pretty easy with a quick 3-0 fashion, and like dignitas they couldn’t recover which was a shame because they’re a solid team.

In WB5 we had to face LLL who just had upset Dignitas. But there was a lot of BS going on so we had to wait and play really late which none of us really wanted to. But since power played their round we wanted to finish ours as well. LLL weren’t happy about this because they got told they where gna play us in the morning next day. Really bad communication between staff, no one would’ve been mad if we got told the same thing.

Going into WB finals was tough for me because I woke up and felt really sick, threw up a few times and had a really bad diarrhea. Didn’t affect my game too much, I started to feel better when it was time to play. They won the series but it could’ve gone either way, they won guardian ball with a few seconds and that costs us the series. If we would’ve won that game that meant we would’ve most likely won the series since the last gametype was Narrows TS, and that was the first gametype in Championship Finals which we won pretty easy. As I said it could’ve gone either way and they just had their day when we didn’t. Power deserved to win no question; they all played sick throughout the event.

I think I speak from everyone on my team that we’re very disappointed placing 2nd and yet played very well at times, just didn’t have the margins on our side. We had a great time, met Dave and Calvin for the first time and they’re the funniest guys. Can’t wait to meet you again boys!

Have to say a few things about ECL;

+ Best EU event by far

+ Prize fund

+Good location, a lot of hotels to choose between, restaurants and Fairley easy to get there even for me.

+A lot of people showed up and it turned out to be a big event.

-Schedule needs to be stricter, not sure if they even had one? If ppl show up late for a match they shouldn’t get extra warm-up time, that’s one of the reasons matches got delayed.

-Empty stations, most of the teams just sat around and waited to play even though the stations where empty.

-Security, Mixamps where and other valuable things where stolen. This wouldn’t happen if you locked them in the stations.

 

 

That sums it up.

Shout out to our Sponsors, ECL staff; great job guys! Neil, Anne, Fnatic, and all the Fnatic fans!