Area 52 Wins MPLD

The action

Getting down to the action, 11 teams entered the competition, making it the biggest MPLD CoD4 competition ever. Here were the teams:

• BFB xp
  
• Area52
  
• sN | Blackhole
  
• UbS.FK
  
• sN | Super*
  
• [iMg]JouSusSie
  
• [iMg]Surge
  
• Diversion
  
• Dark Validus (DV)
  
• Royal Gaming
  
• CR ( Cranky's Revenge – a mixed team)

Henry says XP came up against Area 52 early on in the double elimination competition.

“We’d come through comfortably against SN Blackhole and played Area 52 on Crash in what was a really tight game. We attacked first and after a tense start they got ahead to 4 – 1. However we pulled it back to 4 – 4 and the half ended at 6 – 6. We clamped down on our defence and managed to shut them out, taking the game 13 – 8,” he says.

XP then went on to play DV in the winners’ bracket final. Henry says the team was nonchalant about the game, believing it would be a walk over on Strike. This was not the case with DV proving to be very competitive.

“They locked down the middle street. They kept pushing us with good grenades. Without kills in the middle we’d lose the round and we had to scramble to take the game 13 – 11.

“DV then dropped down to the losers’ bracket final where it seems they did the same thing to Area 52 who also scraped a 13 – 11 win,” he says.

So the grand final once again saw XP playing Area 52, starting on Crossfire. Henry says the Area 52 of the morning was not the Area 52 they faced in the afternoon.

“They dominated us. On defence they killed us 10 – 2 and ran out winners 13 – 5. We ran into their grenades, had no co-ordination – it was just horrible,” he says.

Hoping that things would get better on the second map, XP returned to Crash which they had beaten Area 52 on earlier. However it was more of the same, thanks largely to the late entry Jaco 'SpEeDy' Zwarts for Area 52 and some brilliant work from Max “Faith” Mclaughlin.

“They had settled and everything worked for them. They pushed better, called better. We attacked first, but they shut us down taking a substantial lead at the half. They then won 13 – 6. Zwarts's AK was amazing and it was crap trying to play against him on the day,” Henry says.

Area 52 won R2500 cash while XP walked away with R1000. The Area 52 win bodes well for leg three of the CoD4 Telkom Do Gaming Online League 2010, where Area 52 hope to contend with Bravado Gaming and Pantheon Gaming for top honours.