Dignitas vs Impact - Report

Introduction

What turned out to be one of the best games this year ended in a staggering 5-3 victory for Impact Gaming. Impact was eager to gain retribution having lost twice whilst creating few chances against a dominating dignitas side at the Antwerp eSports Festival. The match was so tightly balanced, it took a total of four maps in order to seperate the two teams.

The match was a total delight for the spectators having reached a viewer peak of 632, the second highest viewer peak this year since the CIC7 Grand Final. Many were those viewers who expressed their opinions stating this game was the "best match they have ever seen" along with "sick & intense game!", GTV Admin skooli stated that "this is what oscars are made of". Not only was the match exciting because both teams were evenly balanced, in all four maps, they all had an adrenaline and heart thumping finish nobody could bet on.

Match Report

Supply: (Dignitas & Impact's chosen map)

The Dignitas side started by attacking on supply, a typical dignitas rush lead into a flag cap and after 30 seconds the Impact side had already started setting up a CP Defence. The defence was not bad, but definitely not good enough considering they need to get more time on their hands after a bad first stage defence. The last stage defence from Impact looked like it was allover the place, they weren't playing as a team and it showed, the dignitas side rushed through their defence and set a fast time of 8:12.



It was Impact's turn to show Dignitas what they are made of, after a minute the Impact side capped the flag and not so long later, they managed to get control of CP and the depot gate, with 4 minutes remaining, it seemed like dignitas were under control, but with a bit over 2 minutes remaining, the Impact side rallied through the axis defence and constructed the crane controls, the truck was escorted with around a minute to go.



2-0 Impact

Goldrush: (Cointoss procedure)

Impact started as allies on the map, the dignitas side did a very good job in preventing Impact from stealing the tank, holding them for 5 minutes at first stage. After losing the tank, the dignitas side didn't have time to set up a second stage defence and the Impact side escorted the tank without any hesitation, with 7 minutes remaining, the gold was stolen and taken to the truck on the first try, the truck was escorted and a time of 10:50 was set.



Dignitas's attack wasn't bad, the tank was stolen after around 5 tries, just like Impact, they had a strong second stage attack and with 7:30 left they had all the time in the world to steal the gold, but mAus & the Impact side were not ready to give up so easily, the Impact defence was as strong as ever and it only fell apart with 1:10 remaining, a XyLoS artillery stopped the truck for a few seconds, but it wasn't enough to stop the dignitas side from escorting it, as they had around 8 seconds remaining.



2-0 Dignitas

Delivery: (Cointoss procedure)

Dignitas started attacking on the map, a typical first rush attack meant in planting the walls and capturing the flag while Impact set up a defence, there was only one man to spec in this match, and it was mAus, he single-handedly kept the dignitas side away for a complete 12minutes, his position at main was so effective that he had over 6k damage and 40kills in 1 round, the Dignitas side managed to construct the controls and secure the first objective, but couldn't find a way to secure the second.



It was Impact's turn to attack and they were confident in winning this knowing that they had fullheld dignitas, but the overconfidence have went up to their heads and took it too easily, just like the dignitas side they managed to secure a gold crate but jackazc and his stick were too strong for the allies to press that button! A double fullhold on delivery, not quite often you see that! For the mAus fanboys, he got over 10k damage and 64kills and around 90 headshots.



1-1 Tie

Adlernest: (Cointoss procedure)

After 2+ hours of epic battling, radar was eliminated from the mappool and the choice was between bremen and adlernest. Having already played 3 maps, playing bremen could have led into another double fullhold and fatigue was getting into the players, and alas adlernest was chosen, the only non-double fullhold map in ET! Impact chose to defend first and therefore dignitas was on the attacking team. It took them around a minute until they managed to get the plant on the controls. Impact were caught on one leg during the last stage, mAus & hayaa were killed and the rest of the impact side were caught behind the windows, dignitas had total control over the objective, it was R0SS versus dignitas and needless to say there was nothing he could have done except to delay them a bit. Time set to 4:49



The good news was that there wasn't going to be another double fullhold and we were going to have a winner in the next 5 minutes! The Impact first stage attack was some seconds faster than the dignitas attack, with 2:30 on the clock, Impact constructed the Command Post and pushed from bridge to get the objective, only to find out that the dignitas side had purposely retreated back to the transmitter to set up an organised and definite last stage defence, but everything blew up for dignitas in the final 30 seconds, 2 of their players had to respawn but in order to team up with their teammates they had to face mAus, and mAus clearly told them they shall not pass, after killing both Squall and jacakzc this left dignitas with 3 players, and a strong push from Impact with 10 seconds to go, meant that finally someone had won the match, and this time it was Impact!



2-0 Impact

Final Score: 5-3 Impact Gaming
POTM: mAus

____________

Interview

But that's not all, we have also contacted both teams in order to answer some questions for the community about the match, eVo for Impact and JaKaZc for Dignitas.



JaKaZc from Team Dignitas


Going into the game, were you confident on winning the match?

We always want to win, but i guess we were not confident as much as we were before AEF or at AEF, i didnt even open ET after LAN , probably same goes for other chaps in team :) and to be honest we dont care that much about online cups its more like pracc for LANs.

You had a really strong attack on supply, and a pretty good defence, until the last stage, Impact constructed the crane controls easily, what went wrong?

Our attack went pretty ok, we did some mistakes in defence, some engi sneaked and constructed controls in the end i guess impact was better this time.

What went through your minds when you lost supply?

Not much, it was first map , kinda warmup for us :), we never go crazy if we lose, we just had to focus on next map.

You had a pretty good time to attack on goldrush and when you attacked, you eventually won by a few seconds(10), did it give any moral boost to the players?

Well , we did some major mistakes in attack , we could secure our victory 2-3min before already. We didnt have some major moral boost maybe a bit but thats normal when you win map.

Going into delivery, do you think the goldrush win effected the players in such a way that they were too confident, leading into a fullhold on delivery?

We didnt know what to expect i think we played this map once 5on5 , we really didnt want to play adler, so delivery was only pick there and no we were not confident at all:D

You did a good job in fullholding the Impact side on delivery eventhough mAus had over 10k damage and 60 kills, do you think their team is to blame, or do you think the map is just not suitable for 5on5?

For me this map is pixel for 5on5, if you dont play as team , you wont win it , its simple, we played retarded in attack and so they did :)

With a bit more than 2 minutes remaining on adlernest, you decided to give away the objective and instead fall back and set up a defence at transmitter, who's call was it, and what was the reason behind it?

We were testing this tax before AEF already, it worked in some cases :) defending docs is so random, i think its easier to defend transmitter. I would say we were missing karnaj on this map since me and karnaj had special tricks there :XD

What went wrong in dignitas's defence in the dying seconds of the game? Was it mis-communication or a strong Impact push?

It was strong push and i missed some rifle shot which should happen , but yeah, i dont play rifle there (fucking karnaj).

Looking back, do you think it was a bad decision to give away the objective?

Not at all. This is 2k10 tax for adler.

Do you think uNDEAd let the side down?

No. He played first time with us and he did it ok. I didn't know what to expect from him since i never saw him playing , but he was good replace for karnaj. He's good enough to be in our first lineup if there will be some drop outs.

Do you think you have lost your aura of invincibility?

Nop, we just lost motivation, as i said before we dont care that much about online cups. We play them if there is LAN comming up. We will be back in full shape at next ET LAN.

____________

eVo from Impact Gaming

Going into the game, from a manager's perspective, did you think you had the potential of winning the match? Did the players believe they could win the match?

We always go into any game believing we can win the game however in all honesty we didn’t have a massive understanding of how adding mAus to the team would change things, we had only played a few pracs with him and we weren’t changing any positions/tactics round to suit his more accepted roles on certain maps; therefore it was barring a few warmup pracs, new for us as well as him. That being said I am always sceptical going into any game against dignitas, they have been consistently the best team for a long period of time and they always seem to have a way of breaking down even our best defences. The players I am sure like me knew they could win but inevitably would have had an air of doubt also.

You lost flag on supply on the first rush, lost cp stage after a few minutes and apart from the bad defence, your attack was pretty strong, mainly in the last stage, can you briefly tell us what happened?

Story of our last few games, we just don’t seem to be able to set a 1st stage defence on supply, a month ago I would have said it was our best stage on any map, right now we can’t seem to make the right changes to get back on track and make a 4-5 minute hold. CP stage wasn’t that bad, a couple of minutes is realistically all you can hope to hold that stage for, our final stage however wasn’t great, we didn’t look comfortable, we weren’t gibbing, we were trying to win every fight 1o1 instead of working for each other, our comms were awful and consequently we weren’t reacting and moving our defence to counter their attacks, I think it’s the first time in a long time that I have had to shout at the players at the end of a round. This is also where players like XyLoS step up, someone with a lot of experience who often has some solid words to say to the team to try to motivate. Fortunately I think everyone knew we weren’t playing as a team and certainly not how we are capable, we changed that on attack, comms were better and the decision making was far better and we showed what we could do.

It took you 5 minutes to get the tank and despite that you set an average time of 10:50 on goldrush, on defence you set up a strong defence which held the dignitas side for 7 minutes, despite that, you lost the map by a few seconds, how did you and the players react to this?

Well I think after goldrush everyone kinda had that feeling of “ah shit not again to dignitas” however I think equally we knew we were the stronger team on the map, the players knew that even though it was going to a decider that we could beat this side and were playing better than them.

On delivery you fullheld dignitas and mAus had almost double the damage than any other player in both teams, despite this, you couldn't set a time either, was it the team to blame, were you overconfident, were dignitas just too strong (despite mAus doing most of the job), or is the map to blame, and if so why?

On delivery mAus had an amazing game for sure, he was put in a position covering spawn when he can just cause so much damage and is incredibly effective there. On attack I think you have to give credit to Dignitas, they made the right decisions at the right time, i.e. to cover button or cover low, Jaka had a good game with the rifle for them also and they stopped us ever getting control of the map, a double team kill by sqzz at a key moment didn’t help and we have given him a good ribbing after the game for that :) That being said we should have won, strangely if we had attacked first I am positive we would have set a time, when you have so much time to complete a map sometimes u lose a bit of urgency that you might otherwise have had.

On adlernest dignitas set a time of 4:49, a pretty strong time, what went wrong in the last stage, it seemed like you couldn't get control of the objective and your players were stuck defending behind the window, what happened?

I don’t think 4.49 is that strong on adler at all, in fact I think it’s very beatable. The thing with adler is if you attack second I think you always have an advantage, as long as on defence you have given yourself some time to work with then the pressure on defence on the 2nd round is always going to be high and cause mistakes. In answer to your question we never once got setup on the last stage, they got mAus and I think maybe hayaa full also so we were struggling all the time, what we should have done in retrospect is go defend the transmitter and setup there because you can add quite a few minutes to your defence if you get everyone setup properly there. But retrospect is a fine thing ;)

What was your reaction and the teams reaction when you found out dignitas let you take the objective?

I guess we were a bit surprised but at the time we just got on with it, in some ways I think maybe a few hearts sunk because attacking a team well setup at transmitter can be tricky.

Do you think dignitas made the correct decision by falling back and playing it safe by setting up a defence at the transmitter?

Well we had a discussion about this after the game, myself and Adacore actually think they did the right thing, I was watching XyLoS at that point and with players in front of him dignitas would have been forced to defence from behind the window or try attacking through the doors, it would have been messy and anything could happen, with XyLoS ready to rifle those behind the window I think we would have been in a stronger position so imo they made the right call although R0SS disagrees with me on this.

You won adlernest by a few second on the final push, was it your push that unlocked the dignitas defence, or was it an error from the dignitas side?

Actually we stayed remarkably calm for that final push and decided to make sure the rush was clean and not a headless push which would surely have lost us the stage, I’m not aware of any mistakes that they made, we knew on our previous push we had the rifle gibbed and mAus in place at main low to cut off the rifle from spawn and also Squalli who had been stupid and got himself caught in the main low area trying to kill mAus each spawn and failing and so we knew we had the numbers on our side, add that to the pressure situation and I think we were always in a better position.

As a manager, did you make any decisive calls, or change tactics during the game, did you play an important role in the win/loss of the maps, if so in which and how?


Not in this game no, I was sat on my laptop watching and given the mic is kinda shit I only said something on comms when it was absolutely needed, generally just talking on comms when it came to map decision making, to offer words of encouragement or in the case of round 1 supply a few stern words to tell them to get their heads in gear. At LAN I made some tactical changes to certain stages so as to bring the surprise element however there was no need to change our tactics in this game, we just had to play our game and if we all performed we could win and we did.

If Meez played instead of mAus, do you think you would have still won the match?

Its speculation that I’m not going to join in on sorry.

Your team seems stronger than ever with the acquisition of mAus, is this a permanent or temporary switch, if so, who is he replacing?

This is a permanent switch, Meez expressed his interest after LAN to try to reform his old SNB team and so we always knew we had to replace him, we had discussed mAus but whilst he was in overload we didn’t approach him, when they folded we moved quickly to secure him for the team.

Your next match is versus Fintastic 5 in the EC Grand Final, do you believe you can win the match with a full lineup, considering you have to win twice due to coming from the lower bracket?

If we had a full lineup then yes I am confident that we can win, the issue is its very unlikely we will have a full lineup. For the next 2 weeks sqzz and xylos are both going on holiday and so the game definitely won’t be played. On Monday hayaa is going into hospital for surgery to fix on injury he has in his shoulder and so is likely out for a month although we will monitor his recovery and make a decision on whether he plays closer to the game. Sorry to the spectators but the final won’t be played for a couple of weeks at least.

____________

So what are you waiting for? 400 people have already requested the match on demand, make sure you watch the replay if you haven't seen the match yet!

GamesTV Matchlink: http://www.gamestv.org/event/20505-team-dignitas-vs-impact-gaming/
Watch the Match on Demand: http://www.gamestv.org/match/replay/20505-team-dignitas-vs-impact-gaming/