Second Half

In all of my match breakdowns I have talked about what each team had done right and wrong in each half. I honestly can not say anything bad about JmC in this part of the article. Watching both teams, I saw that they did nothing wrong, but Lunatic was able to pull off a 8-1 half. You are asking yourself, "How could JmC not do anything wrong if they only had one round this entire half?". I will get to that shortly. Also, I am always able to pick apart tactics that a team ran to give them an excellent half, and tell them what they could do to improve it. When I was watching Lunatic play, I was absolutely baffled by their tactics that they ran.

In this match alone, the entire world could learn from Lunatic's new play style. They have ran tactics that I have never seen even attempted in my life. My job here is to watch teams play and analyze them, I have pretty much seen everything a team can physically do in this game and like I said, I was amazed.

Lunatic’s fast new style of play, along with their flashes was unstoppable. I always tell teams that make excuses as to why they just could not create a mid-half counter tactic that they are absolutely wrong. You could toss any tactic at me and I could tell you exactly what you could have done to counter it. The reason why I mentioned that JmC did nothing wrong, is that while I was watching Lunatic play, I could not even think of a way to counter what they were running.

What Lunatic had done in this match was all about timing, teamwork, and quick/precise flashbangs. I will give an example. During this pistol round, the second best spawned lunatic player bought two flashes and the rest had armor. The entire team held the middle to get a feeling of what JmC's setup was like. After they saw that one player was playing at the bottom of the ramp, Lunatic made their move. The player in the front was mal and he was timed perfectly with the player behind him with the flashbangs. The second player did a close flash first towards the ramp, that would blind anyone to the right corner, and then he through a flash straight down the ramp. When mal entered the ramp room, he was able to check the right corner and right as his partner through the second flashbang, he was jumping over the ramp room red rail, and he glocked the ramp player in the face WHILE HE WAS TURNING FROM THE FLASH.

It was amazing.

They were able to do this in multiple areas of the map. Flashing out of the door or flashing out of the hut door up into the air to blind the rafters. There was always a player that knew exactly where to look to shoot a Jmc member in the back right when he was turning away from the flashbang.

After only losing one round in this half, and only needing one more to win the match, they closed it with another tactic I had not seen before. This wasn't a flash-passing tactic as I mentioned before, it was just very well played. What Lunatic-Hai had done was sent four outside and one inside, just in case the ramp room pushed up to kill the outside players. The four players outside had smoke grenades and took it slow to see how Jmc was playing, luckily they were playing back. Lunatic made sure that they were spotted outside to make it look as though they were rushing downstairs to the lower bombsite by smoking all over, but making sure they were seen.

There was actually only one player that went down the stairs to the lower hallway. The rest of the three were still outside, hiding in various parts of the garage or behind the entrance to the top site to make the illusion that they had all taken the lower bombsite. The one player that was down below hit the first sliding door to the fake bombsite, he then blew out both vents, and hit the other door as well. I didn't understand until I realized that your sound does not pick up which vents, and which doors were shot out or opened, it just picks up that this action happened. After Lunatic saw that JmC had all fallen back to retake the lower bombsite, they planted upper and were able to setup and hold this site and take the match.

The last time I saw Lunatic-Hai play was at ESWC 2005 while I was with Team 3D, and I wasn't impressed at all. They have done a complete 180 to make me think they could be the next "Vesslans" at tactic designing. All I've been telling everyone since I watched them play is, "If they can be that creative against SK and aim like that, they just might be able to take this tournament."