Bravado CoD4 Champions Once Again

Bravado Call of Duty 4 (CoD4) showed their experience to outplay BFB Regiment in the final of the Do Gaming Championships (DGC) 2012.

The team looked somewhat different this year with the loss of Stephen “Troley” White to Korea and the Grobler brothers to the Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) Bravado team, while picking up the Noble brothers and Jayden “phatnoob” Schroeder.

Bravado came through a close first map with 32B in the semi finals and once again they started out just as cautiously as before.

The move proved to be a mistake. The two sides traded rounds to 5 – 5 when Regiment managed to break into the lead. The BFB team moved 6 –5 ahead and then a 1V1 clutch saw them stretch it to 7 – 5. A 2v1 saw them move to 8 – 5 and Bravado was just as quiet as they were in the first map against 32B.

But then something seemed to change in the team. Tucconi became more vocal but at 9 – 6 to Regiment, they were in danger of things running away from them.

The team responded to their captain’s encouragement and leadership and Tucconi took three kills to pull it back to 7 – 9. A 1v1 between Chris “Evax” Noble and Joshua “Fluff_e” Forbes saw the experienced Noble come out on top and pull his team together as one.

But Regiment responded, surging through a strong round without losing a player to go 10 – 8. They then took the next round and the writing seemed to be on the wall at 11 – 8 to Regiment. But Tucconi was having none of it; his clear commands echoed out to his team, calling the strats and guiding them in the game.

Perhaps his good friend and former captain, Stephen White, has worn off on Tucconi because he told his players exactly what he wanted from them and they delivered. The team clawed back to 10 – 11. But then Regiment managed another round and they were on the brink of victory at 12 – 10 with Bravado on the ropes and Schroeder facing a 1v4 to save the map.

Schroeder clutched for all he was worth and took his team to 11 – 12, whereupon Bravado cleaned up without losing a player to tie up at 12 – 12.

“We had to change strategy. They had been pushing up mid-street all game and we weren’t dealing with them well enough. We came out much more aggressive and applied the pressure in overtime and gave them no space to move.

“They battled to adapt under the pressure. We were able to hurt them with 'nades and spam. They were waiting for the 'nades and then rushing in and so we were delaying our 'nades and confusing them,” Tucconi says.

Bravado stormed to a 4 – 0 lead in overtime with Michael 'Bl4ck0ut' Ferguson playing particularly well. They then traded rounds and Regiment started to sneak a few pulling it back to 3 – 6. But it was too little too late with Gary “Craolia” Noble also putting in a strong performance to help his team close out to win the map.

The second map, Crossfire, was terrible according to Forbes. “We should have won that first map and they were ready for us in round two. They picked up on what we were doing and seemed to have a counter for everything we threw at them,” he says.

Before Regiment knew it they were 0 – 5 down on the back of a three kill stream from Tucconi, whereupon a time was called and Rynier “Cranky” Schoeman tried to impart some wisdom to his fellow BFB players.

It seemed to make a little bit of difference as Regiment clawed back to 3 – 7, but once again Bravado changed tactic.

“We were picking up good kills on B side. They started shutting us down there and so we switched to a push up the middle. We defended a little more and made sure of the wins,” Tucconi says.

Regiment had no answer and only managed another two rounds in a convincing win by Bravado who took the map 13 –5 and the Championship.

Forbes says his team was outplayed by a more experience team.

They knew where we were going to go. They were prepared for us and we just weren’t able to do anything that was different to take them by surprise. Almost all of their players have LAN finals experience in the DGL and it was key for them,” he says.

And so Tucconi, Ferguson, Schroeder and Chris Noble all took their second CoD4 wins in the DGC with Gary Noble finally winning at rAge too.

The team were deserving of the R18,000 prize money and the Alienware X51s,courtesy of Alienware.Prizes were awarded to eighth place and here's how the prizes were broken down:

1st – R18,000 (plus the five Alienware X51 desktops sponsored by Alienware)
2nd – R8800
3rd – R4000
4th – R2800
5th – R1600
6th – R1600
7th – R1600
8th – R1600