Congratulations to Epsilon eSports for winning the game of the year!

Martn — It’s Sunday morning, the Team Fortress 2 tournament at the Insomnia Gaming Festival for Summer 2011 is almost over, every match has been played, except the final. By now we know  Team Dignitas came up short with it’s mix of old and new age members, ending up at the fourth place and that TCM Gaming, just like last year, ended up third place.

We also know that there have been another 44 teams eliminated, but it not about that, it’s about the final, the grand final between  Epsilon eSports and  Infused.Tt. The one question on all of our minds is: Will Infused.Tt be able to do, what Epsilon eSports almost managed to do last year?

eu Epsilon eSports F2, , Gear,, Knoxx, , Extremer,, Quad, , Stefan

Epsilon eSports
21
Team Infused

Team Infused uk Boomeh,, Mike,, Flushy,, Numlocked,, Qun,, Greg

i-series Grand Final
(51 comments)
TIME
  • Sunday August 28th
  • 14:30 cest
  • 08:30 edt (na)
  • 22:30 est (aus)
CASTED BY
SOURCETV

Who will win this match?

  • Epsilon eSports (76%, 90 Votes)
  • Infused.Tt (30%, 35 Votes)
  • Tie (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 118

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MAPSSCORE
DEMO
VIDEO
cp_badlands6-1
cp_gullywash4-6Multiplay
cp_granary5-2SalTV

Note: The cast will be streamed at the official multiplay channel

Let’s have a look at what both teams have achieved on the road to the finals.

Epsilon eSports

Epsilon, despite having a bad start with a failing server, went right into business mode and ripped right through the group stages, every single game with a perfect maximum score and not a round got scored against them.

At the start of the elimination rounds it was yet again a slaughter fest as  Continuity and A Clockwork Purple were not even close to the skill level that Epsilon is on.  That was going to change though, as the next round was against Infused.Tt, we had, as it would turn out, a preview of the grand final on our hand. This preview looked very strong for Epsilon, as they managed to beat Infused on their favorite map, Gullywash, with 2-1 and then afterwards managed to score 4-2 on Granary.

By now the only thing between Epsilon and the grand final was TCM Gaming, as spectators we hoped for a close game, but it ended up in a really one sided game for Epsilon. Beating TCM with a solid 6-1 on Badlands and another solid 7-2 on Granary, giving Epsilon their well deserved spot in the grand final.

Infused.Tt

Infused, just like, Epsilon had it easy going in the group stage. They managed to make it somewhat less boring for themselves by using some uncommon tactics and class setup, but it still was a solid five game massacre.

Same goes for the first two rounds of the elimination rounds, where they yet again playfully managed to get through with solid results, but afterwards they got knocked out by Epsilon, casting them into the lower bracket, which turned out to produce some very exciting games.

In the lower final Infused had a very close best of three series against Team Dignitas, Infused took the first map, Badlands, with 3-2, but then Dignitas took Granary in a yet again close 4-3 and then on the deciding map Turbine, it was Infused coming up strong, as they clearly had some better tactics going, 2-0 to them.

Then came the closest and most exciting game so far in the tournament, it’s against TCM gaming, who just got knocked out of the higher bracket by Epsilon. It didn’t bode very well for Infused as TCM took the first map, Badlands, of the series with a close 4-3, but the second map was Infused’s favorite map Gullywash and they proved it with a solid score of 6-3, so it was time for a third map to decide who could take on Epsilon in the grand final.

That third map was Granary,  TCM started out well with a 2-0 lead, but Infused managed to come back to 2-1, then TCM took 3-1 and then Infused really came back to make it 3-3. TCM nor Infused managed to decide the match in regular time, so there was a golden cap needed to decide the game, it was TCM who looked like the would take a easy win in this, wiping Infused on mid, rolling towards the final point, but Infused managed to cause an upset, taking it all the way back to TCM’s final point and score, giving Infused the well deserved second spot in the grand final.

De-Ja Vu?

Wasn’t this about exact the same what happened last year? Yes it is! Except this time it is Epsilon who takes on the form of the top dog and Infused being the underdog. If we would look through the recent meet ups between these two, then Epsilon has the upper hand, although, in the recent Alienware cup, Infused managed to take Epsilon to a third map before getting beaten.

We also need to take into account what happened at i42, Team Thermaltake should have won that final, but surprisingly, Infused managed to upset and win it. So it looks like we got one exciting final on our hand, anything can happen.

The grand final stage, it's quite intimidating.

The Cast

Back by popular demand, casting from the main stage and (hopefully) entertaining a capacity crowd of ~ 400 sweaty geeks will be Byte and Admirable. The game  is scheduled to start at 12:30 BST (13:30 CEST), however previous i-series events show that delays are inevitable. The stream will be online from approximately 12:15 and we’ll continue to update the match ticker with STV and Mumble information as we get it.