Eximius came thisclose to upsetting the Chicago Chimera in group play on Train. They got off to a great start on T side, with Vu leading the way on a couple key rounds. Their timing looked excellent, and quite frankly, the CHImera weren’t playing well at all.

Then Chicago bought AWPs, and the momentum changed.

The first few rounds, Eximius broke down Chicago’s defense outside using smokes and flashes. Vu took out three Chicago players after coming down ladder or out mid (GotFrag TV didn’t show which one). He started by taking out one guy watching his entry point. While blind, he ran towards the gap between the bomb train and #5 train, took out a blinded Chicago player that he snuck behind, and fragged another one under the sniper tower.

But once Chicago adjusted and played back a little bit more, it seemed like they were running into the AWP angles more often than not. Grt started AWPing inside, and his rotations to the back of bomb train outside were key in either preventing Eximius from reaching the bombsite, or at least delaying them until his teammates could rotate and apply more pressure. The CHImera ended up winning the first half 8-4, but four rounds on the offensive side of Train is usually enough to win. Usually.

And even though Train is a CT sided map, the second half started with momentum for the Terrorists, again. The CHImera came out strong and took a couple rounds, but Vu brought Eximius back with stellar play inside. He was playing close on the lower ramp, and every time they went inside he was getting two entry kills. It’s tough enough to win on Train 5v5, it’s almost impossible to get a single round when you’re losing two people on every entry. It wasn’t a one man effort on either side – Eximius had clutch frags from everybody, but Vu stood out, in my mind.

Eximius mounted a comeback to tie it, but the key round was something that everybody blasts the CGS for not having: a save round. Chicago was forced to save, which is almost a certain round loss on Train. But instead of their usual slow strats, they decided to do a full rush on Ivy. messiaH got caught in a bad position and was swarmed by five glocks, and the rushers went behind to the back of the bomb train and caught an AWPer off guard. With two guns and an advantage in numbers, the CHImera took the round, momentum, and, eventually, the match.

(As a side note, the match finished around 5:45 PM, Pacific Time. That’s two groups down, and way too many left to go. LANDodger might be pulling an all-nighter.)