ENSL S5: Road to the final

This short article was written in late October 2006. It sums up our trials and tribulations in the group stage of the fifth ENSL season. Much fun was had and many fond memories gained. The end of the story did not live up to the events detailed here unfortunately. We beat Levitacus 4-0 in a dull final and the promised cash prize went up in smoke as Google reclaimed their money. Oh well!

 

 

The group stages of ENSL Season 5 Premier league have now finished and it’s time for the grand finale. As Levitacus beat Reflect 4-0 and we (9L) beat Xensity 3-1, we’ll be facing each other in an all out battle for the championship title and cash prize. To get you all warmed up and ready for HLTV chat antics, I’ve put together a short review of the matches we played to reach the final this season.

 

 

Quick season recap

 

As the number of teams were uneven, we didn’t get scheduled to play in the first week. By the second week things had changed however, as KTDM folded and the schedules were changed. In the second week we went up against Levitacus, before facing Testicules in week 3, Reflect in week 4 and finally Xensity in week 5. We were also supposed to have played a catch up match against Flatline in week 6, but they unfortunately decided to leave the league before we got the chance.

 

 

Week 2 – Nine Legends vs. Levitacus

 

 

Result: 3 – 1

Demo: Link to direct download.

 

Levitacus put up a solid fight and could’ve turned things around on several occasions. Both our alien rounds were pretty intense, but Levitacus never managed to really pressure us with their early PG and slow upgrades tactic, as we kept building new RTs and taking down theirs efficiently. Our eclipse marine round was a study in domination — even b1 lagging out as comm and sherpa taking over after 2 minutes couldn’t stop us. Origin marine was less successful however, as we made several basic mistakes that put us at a disadvantage, while Levitacus kept their cool and won the round.

 

 

Week 3 – Nine Legends vs. Testicules

 

 

Result: Forfeit win

Demo: No demo, so here’s tutu’s Fade getting knifed instead!

 

Despite their efforts to field “team tutu”, testicules were unable to play the match.

 

 

Week 4 – Nine Legends vs. Reflect

 

 

Result: 4 – 0

Demo: Link to direct download.

 

We pretty much demolished Reflect, round by round. On our alien rounds they tried some early PGs and slow upgrades, but that just resulted in a lot of easy frags for us. Their ping disadvantage certainly wasn’t giving them any help either. We won the ns_veil marine round comfortably, while the ns_tanith marine round gave us a little more trouble. They went for an RT rush tactic and while we killed all their RTs and took down their second Hive before it finished, they still had enough res to build another Hive quickly and we pushed it too late. The Hive went up and two-hive aliens made short work of our attack squad. Fortunately we’d taken down all their RTs while keeping our own up, and we were thus able to siege down Fusion Hive before they got a chance to capitalize on their two-Hive advantage. We then proceeded to take down Waste Hive without much resistance and won the round.

 

End game drama as sherpa started lagging during the last round on ns_veil, which one of the Reflect players interpreted as him speed hacking, much to our amusement.

 

 

Week 5 – Nine Legends vs. Xensity

 

 

Result: 3 – 1

Demo: Link to direct download.

 

I was unable to play this map, which is probably one of the reasons why our alien team play was a bit weird. In addition, orbital is a map we’ve never had much interest in practicing much. Nevertheless it proved to be a fun — for those of us spectating at least! — match with lots of action. The first round saw Xensity get off to a fairly good start on their orbital marine round, but right when they were about to take down our RTs after killing our less-than-agile (read: fat) replacement Lerk, the server crashed. After much drama and a server switch, the game was on again.

 

This time we managed to win orbital alien quickly with a base rush, while we lost orbital marine to one of Xensity’s many base rushes. Sherpa felt the CC was getting a bit crammed and decided to go outside for a breath of fresh air only to face the raged jaws of Arc’s Lerk and two Skulks. We shaped up for the next map however, winning marine comfortably. Yet another base rush sealed our alien round win and the game was over.

 

 

Closing words

 

I’ve had heaps of fun playing the group stage matches this season, although we would’ve wished for a few more matches. Hoping to meet at least some of these teams again in Season 6, if there is one! Be sure to tune in for the ENSL Season 5 Premier league final later this week. More information will be released once we have a date and time set.