CoD: 4th Place at AM2Pro3

This past weekend, exceL eSports attended AM2Pro’s third UK LAN Event of 2015, this time held at the Peterborough Garden Centre. It had originally been planned that we would have both our Call of Duty and Gears of War teams in attendance, however the lack of participating teams in the GoW tournament resulted in a late cancellation.

For our newly-formed Call of Duty team however, the weekend can be deemed as relatively successful. Our roster consisted of Shea ‘QwiKeR’ Sweeney, Zach ‘Zed’ Denyer, Brian ‘Braaain’ Fairlamb and Nick ‘Nolson’ Nolson. We detailed the circumstances surrounding this roster’s formation previously, however it has to be said that despite the short amount of practice time, the team had grinded very hard to ensure we were prepared as well as we could be going in to this event.

We met up on the Saturday morning and popped in to the nearby Garden Centre canteen for a team breakfast. We then made our way to the venue and quickly got on to a practice station to warm up. As is typical of most events, we had a bit of a wait on the Saturday until we got to play our first game (WBR2) against Rewind. We took the series 3-1, dropping the SnD, which proved to be our weakest game mode in the early stages of this Event and an area we will be able to improve upon ahead of the ESL Online Qualifiers.

Our next match-up (WBR3) was one of the most anticipated games of the tournament against Riot, who had two of our ex-players in Sean ‘Seany’ O’Connor and Jamie ‘Insight’ Craven. Riot took the series, ending our Saturday in disappointment and with a Loser Bracket run on the cards.

On the Sunday, our first match was up against U4X, featuring none other than our good friend Rory ‘Rez’ Hunter. After dropping the first Hardpoint, a gamemode in which U4X impressed all weekend, the team maintained complete professionalism and composure and won three maps in a row to take the series 3-1. Our next series was up against E4, who many may remember we played at EGL and completed a spectacular 0-2 comeback in a Game 5, Round 11. This time there was no repeat of that heart-wrenching game and we took the series 3-0.

This set-up another exhilarating tie as we once again took to the mainstage to play Team Vitality, the all-French pro team, for a place in the T4. We took a lead in the series but they tied it up with the Search & Destroy. However back-to-back wins on Uplink and Hardpoint saw us emerge victorious and advance to the next round. You can see Dexerto's reaction video to this game HERE.

This set up the inevitable rematch against Riot, this time off-stream, which produced yet another spectacular series with some incredibly close matches and a display of some high calibre Call of Duty. Riot took the series 3-1, with us losing our first Uplink match of the weekend. Credit to Riot, they were formidable opponents and deserved to win. Overall we placed 4^th in the tournament, equalling our previous result at EGL and keeping up our record of always at least matching our previous placement.

Thank you to the AM2Pro Staff, Admins, Casters and the team for Dexerto for making it a very enjoyable event despite the low attendance and technical difficulties. Thank you also to Charlotte and Tommy for supporting Kieran and I in organising everything for the weekend and for being there to support the team. We have at least two weeks now to prepare for the ESL Online Qualifiers and we are determined now more than ever to succeed. You can see all our photos from the event in our gallery!