Power Gaming

How it all started...

11th of January 2010 - all of my teammates joined the obligatory military service. When it became evident that they had togo, it seemed like an era had come to an end. All of these guys have been playing CS for more or less the past decade and the past few years competitively on the most professional level. We were obviously joking around about how it´s now time to put the mouse into a shelf and give it the rest it truely would already deserve. Things aren´t so black and white though, so a couple of months of early wake-ups and several camps in the woods later - the idea of playing CS didn't seem like a bad idea to any of these guys anymore :)

I spent my past spring doing as much non-cs related things as possible. I kept in contact with the guys obviously, as we´ve all become friends through the years. Sometime during the spring, the idea of gathering some of the team as a mixteam for Assembly 2010 and the Finnish WCG qualifier came up. Initially, it was just me, plastE and tihOp who talked about the idea. But as time went by, things started to get more serious. I consider Ben Woodward of Power Gaming a good friend of mine by now - as we´ve known each other eversince '03 or '04. So we kept
in touch throughout this period and I then suddenly came up with the idea of a complete comeback. As you can probably tell by now - he was obviously interested by my idea :). Once I was able to get naSu and ruuit onboard - pieces seemed to settle into place rather quickly.

When we first announced the comeback in mid-June - I was shocked by the amount of attention it got. I had obviously read at several communitysites how some people were hoping for it to happen, without knowing it actually would. Seeing how much people love our style of play and impact into the top competition - it was a thrill to be a part of it all. Knowing that none else had ever done something like this before, we really didn´t know what to expect from ourselves. I was and Iam still confident, that with the natural talent that everyone in our team has,
it´s all going to work out just fine. When 9th of July finally arrived and the guys were done with their service,
it was only a week from the WCG qualification that we were set to attend, to secure ourselves a spot in the Nordic WCG finals. Quite obviously the guys had alot of things to sort in real life - as they had just spent
a half a year away from their normal lives. Computer issues, internet issues and real life obligations denied us to have more than a couple of days of playtime going into the qualifier. The level of competition wasn't exactly top notch, but considering our situation - we didn't know what to expect.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Going into the Finnish qualifier and the Nordic WCG finals, we knew we really didn't have much time to prepare ourselves strategywise, so we mostly relied on our old stuff and getting back that chemistry from before. For the Finnish qualification, it worked out just fine. Eventhough we ended up losing the 1st map against Munkka in the finals, we literally destroyed them on the latter two maps. Our play was based on freelancing, individual decisions,raw talent and aim. We were definitely happy that things worked out fine.

WCG Nordic was going to be a completily different story. Eventhough the only teams we considered as a threat were H2k and SK, we were still worried that our lack of "competition routine" could catch up with us - and it partially did just that. The first game against H2k was on Tuscan, a map we played once or twice going into the event. I think we played a pretty good game regardless of losing - considering that it was our very first  international appearance since December 2009. We lost both pistolrounds and a 2vs4 situation for instance,
mostly due to bad calls.

The tournament progressed pretty much according to my expectations. We beat both PlayZone and Oslo Lions relatively easy and got a  beating from SK Gaming. Although I think we completily threw that groupstage game away against SK, as we lost a round where they had all glocks and just one flash for instance :). Our goal was to get into the finals and we did just that. Although we didn´t expect to be playing Lions in the semi-finals. That game went quite well for us. Despite not having many strats for T-side on Inferno,
we played it very well this time. Our CT-side was as bad as it used to be before our break. Unfortunatily we ended up in a dispute situation which most of you have probably heard of by now. I won´t spend more time commenting on that so I´ll just settle with saying that we clinched the map on the last round. The 2nd map was Train, a map that Finns have been strong on traditionally. This time wasn't any different and we dominated CT side with a 11-4 if I remember correctly. We ended up losing the 2nd pistol but tied the half with a 2nd round buy. We were then able to lock it down rather quickly and the map ended with a 16-6 score and the series 2-0 for us.

We had a 6 hour wait till the finals, which we spent chilling  at the hotel. We were quite tired, as we only got to know around 3-4am who we were going to play and at what time. This was due to a three way tie and the organisation had to make multiple calculations to get the match-up´s right. The final was a complete let
down from us. Face and MODDII were pretty much humiliating us throughout both maps. Although it´s easy to accept a defeat when it´s evident that you´re just not up to the task quite yet - but at the same time it does sting just as much. We were really never in the game in neither map. They were much more organised in all aspects, so we really didn´t have much a chance. Congratulations goes to the SK guys for being so dominant at the event. I hope we´ll soon get our new chance with you guys :)

Evolution

Now let´s fastforward a couple of weeks to the present time. It´s the 20th of August, exactly two weeks before WCG Samsung Eurochampionships in Berlin, Germany. We´ve now got a lot closer to the individual level of play that we´re capable of. Our main task has been updating our tactics to the new decade. I can assure you, it takes hours of demowatching and inspiration and trying to squeeze all that into a format that works with your team and with the right tasks going to the right players. My goal is to make our team very flexible tactically. With that I mean that we have different setups and variations to counter as many styles of play that we´ll be playing against. We will however not forget our roots and what has made us succesful, so you can expect to see alot of the elements that you have seen before :). Quite obviously we won´t be a complete 100% going into Berlin,
but I´ll assure you that we´re going to be alot better than in Helsinki, once the games start.

To end this (far too long) rant, I´d just like to welcome everyone to our new Powergaming.com website and I hope you who have supported us in the past will keep doing that - and yeah, there´s been surprisingly many of you! Remember, this is just a beginning and it´s definitely going to be a fun ride. :)