BFB2 Match Reviews II

So far the second edition of Battle of Berlin hasn’t shocked players with any unexpected scores. Sure, there were games with lower seeded teams winning but disparity between teams’ seeds was not that prominent. Was it so predictable this time as well?


I’ll start off with Team.PDEG playing against Anexis eSports. Clearly the favourite here is the second team. Top seed, LAN winning lineup and silver trophy from previous edition of this tournament. With players such as Night (or Nait, as he spells it now) or mAus there is not much chance for failure. Team.PDEG, former teamoxid, who placed 5th at SAGE however already won a game against a higher seeded team in Battle for Berlin 2 and are definitely not afraid to face another one.




Bremen_b3 first round

Bremen_b3 is the first map and with Anexis attacking the game starts. Both sides push through ruins and FATiH, formerly known as Fireball, gets quick kills on Nait and squalli. stRay adds another two and allies’ attack stops. Nait takes a covert ops and gets clothes from FATiH. 13.41 on the clock and he pushes for axis door. He gets killed just as he opens it and is not able to let anyone through by the same person he robbed clothes from. Clock keeps on ticking and with 12.40 left R0SS and Xylos push for the plant. mAus covers them and dynamite is armed. Team.PDEG makes a horrible decision and with 5 people and no time to defuse they spawn at flag. Anexis pick them off pretty quickly and try to ‘snowball’ the whole map. Luckily for PDEG gr0ss spawns back and gets to command post as soon as possible. He kills R0SS and sqzz holding back allies long enough for his team to recover a bit. 12 minutes left. Nait grabs keycard but stRay shoots him down right after. FATiH recovers it. Command post being built for allies. Anexis does not want to let their enemies rest at all. squalli manages to get inside keycard room, grabs it and runs. Seems like no one is going to stop him but FATiH is where he’s needed the most. He hides behind a pillar and kills the Fin with luger just as he is jumping towards generator. Keycard retrieved once again. Nait exploits the fact that axis haven’t built wooden barrier and sneaks by Blade and stRay. He makes sure no one is watching him and repairs the truck with 10.30 left. Rest of his team takes care of keycard and with just under 10 minutes left they are driving the truck. Team.PDEG desperately try to take control of it but Anexis players just pick them off one after another. While mAus drives it past main gate his teammates make sure not to let the barrier be repaired. Little bit of spawn killing and the time is set: 6.48

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Bremen_b3 second round

stRay’s team has one hell of a challenge now. The time is definitely beatable but against such a strong opponent it will be very difficult. First attack gets stopped quickly. Time is running hand over fist for Team.PDEG. stRay manages to get past ruins but squalli and sqzz are waiting by the flag with lugers. They kill the German player and stop another push. With 5.22 on the clock FATiH manages to finally capture it and 50 seconds later main gate is open. Anexis is not making their enemy’s mistake and everyone keeps their position. A strong crossfire is not allowing allies to push anywhere near command post neither keycard room. With around 3 minutes left stRay blows up command post. Xylos and R0SS are just a little too late and even though they kill everyone allies repair it. There’s hope for PDEG. They try to get keycard but are not able to get through axis defence. Finally with 1.57 left An7ho grabs it and jumps out. Xylos lands a riflenade on him and recovers the objective for his team. He dies on full right after. Blade hides inside the room and waits for his chance to run. Axis team selfkills and he manages to bring card to generator. 1.14 left and it looks impossible to beat. With no time left PDEG losses bremen after a nice fight.

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Adlernest first round

Adlernest is the losing team’s choice. Many people say it’s a ‘lotto map’. That skill gap does not make a difference here. Well I was hoping for it to be true. Game starts with Team.PDEG on attack. squalli lands a double nade and Blade replies with 2 panzer frags. mAus gets another two with mp40 and Nait call for an artillery just outside the hall. sqzz decides to hide behind door controls and kills FATiH and stRay. Just over 9 minutes left and eujen tries to arm dynamite. Xylos sees that and tries to kill him but gets full by gr0ss. Dynamite planted. With only one engineer left Anexis is pushing allies away. An7ho lands a nice nade on R0SS and with no one to defuse it axis team falls back. PDEG try to surprise by ignoring command post and pushing through enemy’s spawn. Axis anticipate it and they manage to defend it pretty easily. 8 minutes left and allies go for command post this time. Xylos lands double riflenade but that’s not nearly enough to stop Team.PDEG from repairing it. 7.06 left and Nait decides to take covert ops. He sneaks through transmitter room and blows up command post with 6.47 on the clock. Blade in the meantime tries to sneak through axis spawn and lands 2 headshots on squalli. It’s not enough and the Fin wins this duel with almost no health left. Command post being built again. 6 minutes left and Team.PDEG is struggling to steal documents. They get Xylos on fullspawn but nothing comes out of it. Nait annoys his opponent more and blows up cp for the 2nd time with 5.10 left. FATiH in the meantime grabs documents as axis team is out of ammo and runs away. There’s less and less time to turn this game around for Team.PDEG. They try to push transmitter with all their players from hall. Xylos lands a double nade kill but allies are still pushing. Blade, who has the objective, decides to jump towards transmitter ignoring some axis players still alive. That’s a mistake since squalli and R0SS crossfire him with lugers and secure documents. eujen grabs objective once again with 3.37 left and runs towards his first spawn. He leaves them there and tries to get some picks on enemy team. With 2.44 on the clock An7ho repairs command post again. eujen hides around axis team door and gets 2 kills allowing his team to push further. Whole Anexis is dead and stRay delivers objective setting time to 8.17.

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Adlernest second round

Over 8 minutes on adlernest is definitely not what Team.PDEG was hoping for. Nevertheless, giving up is not an option here. Both teams start with panzers, both miss. Four axis players selfkill and Anexis is using this to their advantage. sqzz trickjumps across the hall and gets right to ladder. PDEG players get distracted and mAus is able to revive 3 of his teammates and successfully push enemies out of hall. 7.26 left and Nait arms two dynamites at door controls. Soon enough it blows up and allies go for command post. PDEG can’t really compete with them there so they fall back to defend documents. 6.33 on the clock when Xylos and Nait finishes repairing cp. Now they can focus on getting objective. Just under 6 minutes left and Anexis gets to document room. R0SS picks them up but gets killed by Blade’s grenade. The German player is able to retrieve it before dying on his teammates nade. Time is running out and PDEG is still holding their positions strong. 5 minutes left and due to lack of ammo 5 axis players selfkill. That allows Anexis to steal objective almost uncontested as Team.PDEG can’t get back to their positions. mAus gets Blade on fullspawn and squalli with 4.37 on the clock grabs documents and runs away. His team covers him well and he’s able to get to his spawn. Axis team goes to transmitter room and tries to hold it for as long as they possibly can. FATiH pushes up stairs and hides in the corner. Unlucky for him sqzz checks it and with squalli’s help Turkish player goes down. Rest of Anexis is successfully killing off axis team and after Xylos hits a double riflenade squalli delivers documents to transmitter winning the game 4:0. Time set by Anexis: 4.36.

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Anexis eSport taking the 4:0 win is not a surprise. At the end of the day they are just the better team. Team.PDEG put up a good fight but it’s still to early for them to win those kind of games. Bremen was really intense and without many mistakes made by PDEG I feel that it could have ended differently. Five people spawning on flag with no chance of defusing dynamite pretty much made it impossible for them to establish any kind of proper defence. They continued making mistakes and can blame no one but themselves for losing bremen. Let’s be honest, if you play against top teams they will exploit every single flaw possible. What’s done is done though so there’s no point theorising. On adlernest the major thing was selfkills. This is a standard mistake many teams keep on making. If your whole team disappears from their positions how can you actually defend anything. Letting the enemy team push you out of your spot increases the chance of them killing you off drastically. People tend to hate playing against teams with one or two players who are always staying alive. It doesn’t matter if you hate it (as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson would say), it just works. Anexis will face MPG in WB semi final while Team.PDEG drop to LB and will play against Belgian Fraternity on thursday.

Player to watch: if you go for pure aim I suggest FATiH. If you agree with Kobe Bryant though

Quote by Kobe

I'll do whatever it takes to win games, whether it's sitting on a bench waving a towel, handing a cup of water to a teammate, or hitting the game-winning shot

your eye should land on Nait. He might not have been a killing machine but in my opinion he had the biggest impact on the whole game.

Aftermatch statements:
Anexis eSports

Quote by Nait

It was a quite comfortable game for us, also a must win, we didn't underestimate our opponents and we were well prepared for the match. We've just recently started playing together again, had a long break after the first tournament. At the moment we are kind of underperforming though, things are not working out as we might have expected but we are working on it and playing more actively, hopefully we'll be on top of our game by the end of the tournament/LAN. A lot depends on our next game because it's the first real test we've faced since the first edition of BFB, a win in the next round would grow our confidence quite a bit and help us move on from there.

Quote by squalli

To be honest I think it went pretty well cos we have been having difficulties within the time past weeks, and our practices’ results haven't been what we have expected. But now we are slowly but surely getting top shape with our team. The game itself was easy, couple mistakes there and here but nothing too special of course I expected us to win and we did so but we surely have to shape up for the next game against mpg if we wanna beat them, they are playing really well what we have practiced against them.

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Team.PDEG

Quote by stRay

Well at bremen we did a good 1st stage defend but then we f*****g turned of our brains off, forgot to spawn back and lost command post. Then we forgot to build wooden barrier and lost truck. Nevertheless we still managed a good attack and got the truck... but the time was running to fast! At adlernest we also did good at the beginning. Got the objective quite fast but failed hard to secure it. Our defend wasn't as rubbish as expected but still couldn't hold it that long. All in all I think without these big mistakes we could have won a map but Anexis was of course the better team and deserve this win.

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Second game reviewed is miNd’s Pro Gamers against MouseControl. mPG has been created specifically for this tournament while mCon is around for quite some time already. To be honest I had no prediction on this match. It’s always hard to judge those new European mixes, especially as this is their second official game since miNd created the team. On the other hand we have MouseControl who are active for a longer period of time already. However, just before Battle for Berlin 2 started they lost xPERiA which must have hurt them quite a bit. Luckily koop was around and with this new talented rifle they look pretty good.




Bremen_b3 first round

mPG start on axis side on bremen_b3. MouseControl try to get inside ruins as fast as they can but mind gets two kills and stops them. SQuid manages to jump over towards short way and gets kills on perfo and drago. He captures the flag right before his teammates spawn and even though Clown reclaims it all mCon players are on it, most with spawn shields. saKen arms dynamite near main gate and proceeds to side entrance. With 13.22 main gate blows up but Dutch team is already pushing for command post. miNd’s team shows a great crossfire and soon the attack stops. koop however waits for the right moment and pushes for keycard room with a nade. He gets Nuggan and perfo on full and no medic is left near that objective. In the meantime MouseControl go for cp and manages to destroy it. mPG had to fall back and with only drago inside they couldn’t possibly defend it against four allied players. koop who already spawned runs straight there and repairs it securing another spawnpoint for his team. mCon decide on a fast push towards keyroom. Nuggan is waiting for them already and lands three kills. Three axis players selfkill though and that enables saKen to jump in and out with key. He delivers it and with 11.16 on the clock and can focus on repairing the truck now. Barrier gets planted but mPG is doing a great job keeping mCon away. Bodies lie all round the truck but allies can’t get any engineer anywhere near objective. With less then 10 minutes left MouseControl decides to push main way but miNd lands a double nade kill and it looks like the attack is over. Out of nowhere JALLAA and joshua literally let the bodies hit the floor getting 2 frags each. saKen uses the opportunity and repairs truck. Clown spawns with a panzer and fires it right away but gets the engineer a split second too late. Allies team escorts truck and prohibits axis from even thinking about putting up second barrier. L4mpje drives till the end and the time is set: 6.43.

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Bremen_b3 second round

With less than seven minutes to finish all objectives mPG do not have an easy task. Second round starts. Airstrike markers fly left and right but no fragmovie material is produced. Axis team gets pushed out of ruins and mPG spreads all around them. They manage to get 3 mCon players on full spawn. perfo gets inside axis spawn building and adds JALLAA and SQuid to his frag pool and captures flag. At this point mPG is faster than MouseControl by few seconds. They decide to push along balcony but get killed. Nuggan in the meantime jumps to keycard, deals with joshua and L4mpje and runs towards generator. koop falls back from command post and frags the Swedish player. Objective retrieved. mPG uses that fact to their advantage though. They get inside command post room and with less defenders there they blow it up. miNd’s team keeps on pressuring axis and with 3.56 left on the clock they repair cp securing their spawn point. Dynamite gets armed near barrier and soon after it goes off. Allies decide on a split push. perfo and miNd get two frags each and with truck being attacked from both sides mCon have to admit defeat there. Truck is repaired but allies team dies and it stops. koop and saKen jump for barrier crates and put it up again! 2.30 left and mPG is in trouble now. They arm the dynamite and with 1.46 left it blows up. Truck is being escorted in spite of MouseControl all around it. Allies team finally kills them off with a little help from Clown who lies on balcony with a mobile MG. He puts down two and moves towards second barrier which is not built yet. mCon can’t get anywhere near crates and with 42 seconds left and mPG drive the truck safely to the end winning bremen with time of 6.01.

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Supply first round

MouseControl chooses Supply as their map and mPG decides to attack first. Both teams start slow. Vanhaomena misses his panzer shot while koop keeps on scooping allies one after another. miNd’s team gets to main gate but steps on mines and grenades which gives saKen a triple kill. Next push is also not going so well for them. JALLAA gets Nuggan, perfo and Clown with mp40 while rest of his team finishes allies off. Both axis engineers keep on planting mines downstairs. Vanhaomena gets a nice triple kill and his team manages to get inside forward bunker. They can’t however control any of the staircases and one after another they become mCon’s prey. Just under 12 minutes and Clown finally lands a dynamite plant downstairs. They manage to kill off most of MouseControl and L4mpje who lasts longest decides to selfkill and surrender the flag. All axis players spawn back. Allies successfully attacks command post. 10.17 on the clock and satchel blows it up to be repaired few seconds later. Now with cp spawn allies team can focus on planting all depot entrances. miNd is already on it, he arms dynamite beside depot gate while his teammates take care of both east and west walls. With little over 8 minutes to go and everything possible destroyed Nuggan jumps inside depot from east and kills all three axis players there: saKen, joshua and koop. mPG’s rifle drives the truck and manages to get it to position just as he dies. 7.30 left and allies are already rushing up stairway to repair crane controls. saKen lands a splendid panzer inside crane controls killing drago and Clown who was repairing controls. Rest of mCon gets up to help and they reclaim it for now. Minute later perfo and Clown jump inside from east and push stairs killing remaining axis defenders. 6.30 on the clock and gold is being moved onto truck. mPG players drive it for a while but at 5.45 MouseControl team regains control over and it stops at east. With double kills from joshua, koop and JALLAA’s artillery it looks like they can stall it for some time. drago however lands a double airstrike kill and adds two more with mp40. Truck starts moving again and unobstructed gets to its spot and with an ‘ok’ time of 10.50 mPG players prepare for defence.

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Supply second round

Just under 11 minutes is a completely beatable time for MouseControl. They push upper way with five people leaving only koop on the middle. Waiting for axis team to selfkill definitely pays off as after 49 seconds saKen captures forward bunker’s flag, JALLAA and L4mpje getting two kills each undoubtedly help him with that. With 9.15 left both entrances are open and they proceed to attack command post and depot gate, but Clown, Nuggan and Vanhaomena are a really tough combination defending. Somehow mCon engineer manages to plant depot gate. Vanhaomena though doesn’t agree on it blowing up. He pushes towards allies and gets a triple kill. perfo uses the moment to try to defuse dynamite. koop anticipates it and gets him with a riflenade. miNd is the only axis engineer alive but even under heavy fire he defuses it with just few second away from explosion. MouseCon still have some time left and decide to take it slow this time. koop plants east wall while saKen gets a mainplant and selfkills for take panzer. 5.24 on the clock and he kills Clown who tries to sneak by to defuse main gate. miNd keeps on bleeding enemy team with nades and his rifle. Main gate explodes with just under 5 minutes till the end. Whole axis team selfkill which allows MouseControl to push for staircase and get the truck ready for gold. 3.30 and it seems like saKen will repair the crane controls. He actually succeeds but drops before pushing the button. Nuggan takes a covert ops and blows it up with a satchel at 2.47 before the end. All axis players are above spawn at this point. Vanhaomena and miNd are doing an excellent job holding allies at stairs. When more mCon players arrive they fall back. Vanhaomena dies but there is drago, Clown and miNd still inside the crane controls. They keep on throwing nades one after another to gain those precious seconds. MouseControl looks like they’ve given up and can’t kill them off. Time passes and with 1 minute left it’s clear that mPG are the winners. They hold their time and advance to WB semi final.

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Overall that was definitely the closest out of 4 games reviewed so far. The score surely doesn’t show everything. Bremen was anybody’s game and I feel like MouseControl brought the loss on themselves. With less than one and a half minute left they decided to push for truck rather than try repairing 2nd truck barrier while the truck itself was passing 1st one. The sad part is the other crates were actually uncontested at this point in time and they would be able to build it, try defending it and maybe win. They also didn’t take a covert ops to blow command post up. If they’d manage to do it their decision might have been justified and would most likely give them a map lead. Easier said than done. During the game it’s hard to come up with those solutions on the spot. MouseControl will learn from this game and mPG should feel a bit lucky. How to sum up supply? Oscar Wilde once wrote that ‘experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes’. I’ll just say both teams grew in experience in a rapid manner during this map. MouseControl did a pretty nice job holding mPG at flag and when gold was already on the truck. However, between those two phases they got crushed. After sides change it mCon showed how to attack on this map. Flag below a minute, command post repaired just over 3 minutes in. With almost five minutes left they had depot gate destroyed. And then something broke in their team, or maybe mPG started playing according to their seed. They put up a strong defence when it was needed and stopped mCon from getting anywhere. The difference between those teams is quite simple: one started strong and the other finished strong. Which of those you matters more is shown by score. miNd’s Pro Gamers will now face Anexis eSports and MouseControl drops to LB and plays aToOn.

Player to watch: it was a riflers’ game. From the two I would pick miNd. He was just more influential during this match.

Aftermatch statements:
miNd's Pro Gamers

Quote by miNd

Had lots of ingame problems with one player not showing up and one having allnighter behind but it turned out fine by us getting our backup vanhaomena to use. Game didn’t go too well but we won at the end and that matters most.

Quote by Clown

Our match vs mCon didn't go as smooth as we expected. Before match we had trouble fielding a team, so Vanhaomena stepped in to fill subbis spot. On bremen defense, everything went wrong, we got stupid fullspawns, we were not agressive enough, and died one by one with no revives... Luckily, we are pretty confident in our bremen attack, so we didn't really panic after the horrible defense, and it paid off, we won the map! Supply was pretty standard, we set some mediocre time, around 11mins, and we were forced to defend it with the up defense on the last stage for the last 3 mins, which we did quite well. Overall, I think we played ok, considering we never played vs mCon before, and the fact that we had a merc/backup.

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MouseControl

Quote by saKen

We messed up on the defense on both maps, the game was still kind of close but I feel we could have gotten more out of it. It's up to us to show improvement in the LB now.

Quote by koop

Well, It was one of those games which we should of won fairly easily, not taking anything away from mPG as they're a really good team. Whether it was us being good on attack or mPG's weak defense, we set a really fast time on Bremen, 6:43 to be precise. It seemed really unlikely for us to throw this away, but I guess our defence was even worse! Similar with supply, we defended first and managed to get a 10:50 time to attack. Yet again we dominated the attack, getting the flag in 1-2 rushes and we had already planted main depot gate with 5 minutes left. Approximately 4 minutes left, me and saKen made our way up to construct, I got killed, saKen managed to build the controls but just couldn't press the button in time. Since then we failed each rush, If we had pressed the button, it would have been 4 minutes to escort which I think we would of done with ease, unfortunately things didn't turn out like that!

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