Written by: Cal "Deathanchor" Gruhlke
(ESEAnews) - Hey TF2 fans. Just because Invite LAN is finished, doesn't mean that Season 9 is over. We still have the big Open finals coming up soon. Both Team Bad v2 and Kings Crew have a earned a spot in the finals which will take place on cp_badlands. If my understanding is correct, Teambad will take first if they win badands, but if Kings Crew wins badlands they will play on gravelpit as a tiebreaker to determine the winner. It has something to do with Kings Crew coming from bottom bracket. For this upcoming match I was able to interview some players from each team. Jiao and dchow answered for Team Bad, while Tyranny and YouMustRecover (ymr) did for Kings Crew.
Team Bad v2 vs Beybladers · cp_badlands · Wed, Oct 5th at 1:15pm
ESEA TF2 Open S9 Finals - Interviews
Deathanchor: Going into the finals, what do you think of your opponent? What sort of strengths and weaknesses have you noticed?
Jiao: Yeah Kings seem like a pretty good team. We haven't really played besides the viaduct match 2 weeks ago, but they seemed to have good dm and interesting strategies as far as I could tell.
Dchow: They got a really good team.. especially ymr on demoman who is also one of my best friends in this community so it's gonna be hard to play em. Ymr is just a damage machine and tyranny and kraka are great scouts so it's gonna be tough for me and jiao to go against them, but i think we will do a good job. Their only weakness I see is KoolB on medic.
Tyranny: Team Bad has been good all season and with paladin playing the matches now its an enormous upgrade over heero and makes it that much harder to punish flanks. They will be able to easily capitalize on an almost obvious frag advantage, the matchups are mainly in team bad's favor bolstering the better dm on soldier and scout but i believe we have the advantage on demoman which can be game breaking on badlands. I feel we have a better chance of taking badlands but gpit is completely different and favors the same style of viaduct and could really swing in their favor since we have been weak on gravelpit all season.
YMR: I think that as a whole Team Bad is incredibly strong. Each player individually has impressive dm and they work off of each other's damage very well. The weaknesses that the players have individually are for the most part remedied by the strengths of the rest of the team. Dchow has made plays consitently as the utilities while at the same time Jiao has been proven to be able to handle himself as a lone scout. As far as weaknesses go I would only really comment on the fact that the team seems to be in a transitional period between switching roamers, which would be Paladin for Heero.
Deathanchor: On your team who would you say is the clutch player that comes through with the big plays most often?
Dchow: dchow: Honestly, every player on our team makes big plays during different parts of the game, so i can't really single anyone out. We all have our clutch moments, but when im snipin, my team knows ill always land that important medic pick when it really counts.
Tyranny: Kraka and Shade generally make all the plays that open the doors for the rest of us to waltz on in.
YMR: Honestly it is ANYBODY but me. I have seen everyone on the team make some of those crazy jaw dropping plays. I have seen Jnkx hit some crazy airshots and get our medic to safety in times when it really seems impossible. I have seen Shade go jump into the enemy medic in an attempt to force a pop and somehow turn it into a 3-4 kill. I have seen both Kraka and Tyranny go on some crazy sprees and get incredible medic picks. I do want to say that all four of them have pulled off miracle plays on a good number of occassions. I am sure that makes it tough on the casters since you never will know who to be watching on our team haha.
Deathanchor: Alright, now the map will be badlands, followed by gravelpit. Do you feel like these are strong maps for your team?
Jiao: Gravelpit is definitely one of our worst if not our worst map, but we're pretty confident in Badlands. I don't think our Gravelpit game has improved really, I mean we scrim it and try out all kinds of different strategies and stuff, but its really just hit or miss. Sometimes we win and sometimes we just get raped. Hopefully we can take the win on Badlands and not have to play on Gravelpit at all.
Dchow: As a team, we used to be really good on gravelpit and we're good because we played very aggressive. Then for some odd reason, we shyed away from our aggressive playstyle and started getting wrecked, but that has sinced changed and we've been doing much better on gpit. Badlands has always been a strong map for us.
Tyrany: Badlands is much more suited to our style of trying to keep everyone in front of the team, forcing them out of areas with spam and then capping, this kind of play should also help with dealing with scouts but when the dm level is high enough theres not much you can do when they're in the air. Gpit has been back and forth miss map, either they run a strat we do well against and we smash right through or its an infinte hold that we cant break and continue to bash our heads against the wall. As i understand it, team bad runs 2 engineers which can cause alot of problems for scouts.
YMR: Badlands and gravelpit are probably two of the better maps for us to be playing for this last match. This isn't to say that we are particularly good on either map, it is more that we actually have much more practice on those maps than any other. We went into our badlands match this week very cold, but it at least will have helped us be prepared to play it again. We ran into a ton of trouble pushing into last during our game against The Jabronies. We will most likely run into a similar problem when playing against Team Bad.
Deathanchor: Your only time meeting this opponent in ESEA previously was on viaduct just two weeks ago. Should we expect similar plays or results this time around?(Team Bad won 4-0) Any comments about this match?
Jiao: Shouldn't be all that similar. Viaduct is one of our stronger maps and they said it was one of their weaker ones, so it will be fun to play on Badlands where I feel like we will be more equal.
Dchow: Kings Crew is a very good team and they've shown it by making it to the finals. We 4-0ed them on a King Of The Hill map and from what I've heard, Viaduct is Kings Crews worst map and one of our best maps. Anything goes on Badlands and GPit. People are saying that we're gonna 5-0 em just because of we 4-0ed them on viaduct, but like i said before... we're playing them on two completely different maps.
Tyranny: The viaduct match was really bad and I dont recommend watching it. I expect to see some sniper from dchow and alot of w+m1 and the same kind of plays from paladin jumping into our scouts when moving into combat areas. Catastrophe wont be able to lay down as much free spam which should give our soldiers some room to breathe on both these maps which should be a big plus for us.
Deathanchor: Time for some lighter questions. Where did you get your team name from? Does it mean anything?
Dchow: 3 years ago, Sterl wanted to name the team, and wanted to make an acronym for B.A.D, but aaron (pocket soldier) just told him to use Team Bad. We were also very bad at the time too lol.
YMR: Honestly I have no idea at all. One day I came online and saw we had a new name. We used to be "Age is just a number". Pretty much as simple as that. For all I know I could come back on tomorrow and it could be changed again. Hope it is beyblade related next time.
Deathanchor: What future do you see for your respective teams? Are you planning on sticking together for the next season and move up to IM?
Jiao: Well, we've been in the same mumble server for over 3 years, so we'll still be hanging out, but most of us are gonna quit tf2 for a while. Dchow is sticking in and he's gonna be looking for a team in this next season as scout or soldier, but I think the rest of us are done.
YMR: Next season is sort of up in the air for me personally. I have some things that may not leave me with enough time to commit to a team. The rest of my team will also be disbanding unfortunately. Koolb and shade are leaving for personal reasons and tyranny and jnkx may attempt to make a new team.
Deathanchor: Finally, score prediction of the badlands match, go.
Jiao: 5-2 Us
Dchow: 5-3 Team Bad
Tyranny: 5-2 Team Bad
YMR: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm this is a toughie. I WANT to say is 5-4 us. What I actually think will happen is something closer to 5-2 them. My team is gonna kill me for saying that.
Deathanchor: I'll put the 5-4.
YMR: Nono, Put it alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.
Deathanchor: HAHAHA, fine. Dchow predicted a closer score than you by the way.
YMR: Rofl
And that concludes my interviews. Thanks to Jiao, Dchow, Tyranny, and YMR for giving me the time and allowing me to interview them. Be sure to either spectate the match or catch a live cast of it. Would be surprised if it wasn't cast. Best of luck to both teams. Finally, a thanks to all the readers on ESEANews. I hope you enjoyed my coverage of TF2 Open Season 9, and I am hoping for an even bigger turnout come S10.
Originally published on ESEA on 10/3/2011, 7:37 PM by Deathanchor.
Archived from ESEA TF2 Open Finals - Interviews as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of ESEA's TF2 coverage. All rights remain with the original author and ESEA; reposted for historical reference.