Chapter 113: Stickers are already out?? (Seeking Monthly Votes)

After overturning the Liquid players solo, Xu Beifang and his teammates returned to the training room.

The Coach and neo were reviewing the Mirage match that had just concluded from their respective perspectives.

"Actually, we could be a bit more conservative in our subsequent matches." neo tallied up the data from Mirage; in this match, out of 15 rounds on the defensive side, VP only spent 5 rounds defending solidly at the Bomb Site.

The remaining rounds were all played with aggressive pushes; the frequency of these pushes was too high.

byali was gnawing on an apple and asked with some confusion: "Weren't we supposed to be playing to support nice the whole time?"

Last night, perhaps due to the uncertainty of the changes, byali had been somewhat resistant to this style of play.

But after today's match, he discovered that this strategy of protecting nice was actually quite easy for winning games.

For a legendary player, other teams value his experience; as long as he can win matches and achieve decent results, he can easily find a job after the next Major, so he doesn't care much about the level of his stats.

neo added: "It's not that we aren't playing to support him, it's just that I think perhaps we should adjust the frequency and depth of our aggressive pushes."

"For example, on this map, at the start of the round, you coordinate with nice to take control of A1, and perhaps you could just leave him at A1, while the others rotate to cover B Site or Mid."

kuben nodded from the side and explained: "The risk of aggressive pushing is indeed too high. This playstyle of nice can bring good benefits to the team, but we are using it too frequently. Our upcoming opponents will likely be on guard, so we need to consider whether we should restrain ourselves a bit."

"We need to find a balance between aggressive pushing and playing conservatively, otherwise it will be too easy for our opponents to counter us."

The more complex your overall tactical defense is, the harder it is for the opponent to read you, and they will inevitably have to divert more mental energy to be on guard.

And the simpler and more rigid your tactical defense is, the easier it is for the opponent to handle you specifically based on your positioning and their choices in rounds with different economies.

Although they won this match against North, they still identified many problems.

However, they were only looking for solutions and brainstorming in their minds.

After all, there was no one to play practice matches with them at this stage, so VP could only run around the maps to experiment on their own.

It took nearly 2 hours to finally finish the review.

After this review, the focus was more on discussing tactical possibilities for future matches, with little focus on the game of individual positioning.

Xu Beifang sat in front of the computer and opened their match against NiP from the first day of the Major Qualifier.

This match weighed on his mind; in some respects, he had been shut down by rez in individual duels.

Even though his win rate in direct firefights with rez was higher, often after securing a kill, he would have no time or health left to do anything more.

After the match ended previously, he had reviewed it once from his own perspective.

But this time, Xu Beifang had a sudden inspiration and decided to adopt rez's perspective to think—if he were to encounter a guy who loved to push aggressively like crazy, how should he deal with him.

In what gun positions, and in certain rounds, what methods could be used to better handle an aggressive opponent, or even a double-push from the opponent.

This feeling was quite peculiar, playing a head-to-head game against himself.

However, he didn't know rez's specific positioning habits, the thoughts in his mind, or NiP's tactical ideas at the time.

He could only think about rez's thoughts at the time based on local judgments and deductions.

Even so, it made the review feel interesting to Xu Beifang.

He first chose a holding position from rez's perspective with X-ray turned off, or a way to counter an aggressive push.

Then he waited for himself in the perspective to push out, and then judged whether the aggressive self or the holding self would win based on his own pre-aim and the advantages or disadvantages of the gun position.

Over an hour of deduction made him more familiar with some special spots for CT aggressive pushes, and he also learned what methods the Terrorist could use to make his aggressive pushes very uncomfortable.

He found many ways to respond and break the deadlock during this review.

It greatly strengthened his aggressive pushing skills, giving him more preparation for the opponent's possible positions, and making his subsequent pre-aim and jiggle-peeking more targeted.

It also enhanced his anti-aggressive-push skills to a certain extent.

This was the difference between self-review and team review.

Self-review focuses more on individual skills and playstyles, while team review is based on the tactics of both sides in the match to correct the players' playstyles, which is too limited.

Xu Beifang's method of review was very time-consuming, but if one lacked talent yet wanted to become stronger, it was absolutely necessary.

After finishing this review, he washed up, went to bed, and entered the 【Instance - Unlimited Deathmatch Space】 to start practicing.

With the continuous improvement of his gunplay and the enhancement of his game understanding over these days, he found that his level was in a state of rapid progress.

Before the ZOTAC Cup, Xu Beifang could barely stand firm at Lv6 in this Deathmatch Space.

Now he could already reach the top 5 in a Lv7 Deathmatch.

Although the kill count in Deathmatch didn't explain everything, combined with his recent matches, he could roughly understand where his level was.

There was one BO3 match left, and they would be able to advance to the Major main event.

By then, I'll be able to have my own Sticker, right... Xu Beifang looked forward to sticking his four-piece set on the red line in his mind, and he also began his Deathmatch training.

On the 4th day of the Major Qualifier, the first batch of teams that had already advanced were fresh out of the oven.

As expected, NiP and Liquid both charged directly into the main event with a 3-0 record.

"No wonder Liquid had the mood to play ball with you yesterday." neo looked at yesterday's results and complained.

The guys from Liquid even said they performed very well this time, but they didn't expect that they were the real humble-braggers, having advanced to the Major main event without a sound; perhaps those guys from Liquid were already considering how to design their Stickers.

"Keep it up, keep it up. Today we PK against the Germans. If we win the BO3, we can also design Stickers!" pasha sat in the car heading to the venue and said to Xu Beifang, "So you have to work hard today. We all have Stickers, now it's just you missing out. You have to work hard for your own Sticker!"

michu raised his hand: "Is it possible that I also don't have a Sticker out yet."

kuben added: "It seems that this year, you can design Stickers after finishing the qualifier. That means regardless of whether we finally advance or are eliminated, we can have Stickers."

Only then did everyone realize that this was a new rule introduced by Valve this year. Teams advancing from the various regional Minors were automatically classified into the Challenger Stage, the 9th-16th place teams from the previous Major became the Legend Stage, and the 1st-8th place teams became the Champion Stage.

Before this tournament, you had to enter at least the top 16 and reach the Major main event to have Stickers.

Xu Beifang shook his head: "It's not like I earned it with my own ability. You guys at least earned the qualification for the Major Qualifier through hard work. I was purely lucky, so for me, there's nothing to be happy about."

pasha patted Xu Beifang on the shoulder: "Young people have ambition. Then let's crush BIG today, successfully break into the main event, and make this Sticker well-deserved!"

The members of VP were also very satisfied with this attitude of Xu Beifang; this was how a young person should be.

Arriving at the match time for today, the members of VP took their seats to start debugging equipment and warming up.

After the world rankings were updated yesterday, this strong German team's world ranking had already reached 11th, while VP's own world ranking was 18th.

Compared to North from yesterday, BIG's world ranking is indeed not much to look at.

Even North, ranked 4th in the world, was crushed by them, so facing a team ranked 11th seemingly shouldn't be much pressure.

But sometimes it doesn't work out that way; after all, their confrontation with North was a BO1, and in such a matchup, both sides have little room for error, so one player's explosive form can influence the entire match.

Today is a BO3 match, which is a huge test for the form of all players on both sides and the depth of the teams' map pools.

Therefore, playing against this 11th-ranked German team is no simpler than yesterday's match.

Both sides entered the BP phase, and because of the BO3 mechanism, BIG chose the map first.

"Let's ban their Mirage," GodB said with some worry, "VP's Mirage has been truly a bit eerie lately."

After yesterday's match ended, they also knew their next opponent was VP, so they analyzed VP's recent match recordings.

It was truly hard to tell what level VP was actually at.

Let's not even talk about the match where they were hammered by NiP, because NiP's level is too high and not a target for them to compare against.

As for the other two Mirage matches, when VP played well, they could beat a team of North's caliber, and when they played poorly, they could almost lose to OpTic.

This level is truly a bit metaphysical, and they didn't dare to gamble on how the opponent's form would be today, so they simply banned Mirage outright.

"Why are you afraid? I'll just crush them!!" smooya felt the team's mindset was too "cowardly"; so what if the opponent is strong? Can they be stronger than him?

However, he didn't say it out loud; after all, the big-headed leader is not someone a fry-cook like him can compare to.

Regarding this, he stated that he wasn't being cowardly, but rather preserving the most basic qualities of a CS: GO star player (confirmed).

"Mirage was banned? Then let's ban Overpass," kuben said. They had played miserably in their last two consecutive Overpass confrontations, and this map would basically be hard to appear in their map picks moving forward.

The first round of map bans for both sides ended, and BIG's speed was also very fast, directly taking Dust II.

"What do we say? Should we take Train?" neo asked.

The others considered it among themselves and nodded: "Let's go with Train; we've won this map the last few times, and our feel for it is still quite good."

After the first round of map picks ended, both sides quickly banned one more map each.

In the end, VP left Inferno as Map 3.

The VP members bumped fists to encourage each other and, under the referee's reminder, began entering the server.

Map: Dust II

T: tabsen, nex, tizian, godb, smooya

CT: pashabiceps, neo, michu, byali, nice

The match officially begins!

BIG's Dust II is one of their strongest maps; their historical win rate is 65.2%, which is a quite exaggerated statistic.

Xu Beifang had also always known the Germans' strength on this map.

s1mple once played a prison match where he had over a hundred kills in a BO3 and still lost the map; the opponent was BIG.

But they still didn't ban Dust II right off the bat.

There was no choice; compared to Dust II, their Overpass was even more lackluster.

Their recent performance on Dust II was still considered decent; at least there were some opportunities to fight it out with BIG.

While their performance on Overpass could only be described as a disaster movie.

byali seemed to notice the poor atmosphere within the team and took the initiative to shout: "Think about our performance in the ZOTAC Cup finals; didn't we play Dust II quite decently? So even if BIG's level is a bit higher, it shouldn't be much different from Team Kinguin..."

And then, byali paid the price for this confidence.

As soon as the Pistol Round started, BIG launched an attack on their beloved A Long. In this exchange at A Long, byali had just seen a person when he was killed in one shot, and Xu Beifang traded one, only to be taken down by the opponent's trade kill.

pasha, who was at the Bomb Site, was even taken down by two headshots from smooya, who had picked up a USP at A Long.

A wave of a flat push onto A Site made them feel the strength of the seniors.

The opponent's gunplay and trade kill efficiency at A Long made even byali feel immense pressure; BIG's strength is a bit exaggerated! Is this the pressure a team ranked 11th can give?

"It's fine, wait until we enter the Full Buy Round; once we have long guns for long-range exchanges, the opponent won't be able to be this rampant." byali didn't know what was wrong, but he was in a somewhat excited state; he believed that as long as they entered the Full Buy Round, relying on the coordination between him and nice, the two of them would definitely be able to go on a killing spree!

After entering the Full Buy Round, he and Xu Beifang came to compete for control of A Long at the start.

BIG's positioning was good, and they also didn't want to give up control of A Long.

VP and BIG held a press conference together at A Long; out of the five people hitting A, only one had their eyes open.

In the end, after a fierce exchange, they only managed to take down 2.9 people.

But for VP, there was no overall gain; after all, although the trade of lives was okay, they also knew the opponent still had one who had been tapped in the head.

However, in this exchange at A Long, they spent too many utility items, and the subsequent defensive pressure was too great.

Then BIG pulled a cheeky move, rotating directly from the T spawn to B Site to launch an attack.

michu traded two.

Then the opponent's smooya planted the bomb at B Site and easily won this 1v2 with a sniper rifle.

"Let's go, let's go! Once we get double snipers later, everything will..."

Seeing that byali still wanted to say something, michu hurriedly shouted:

"Brother! Brother! Stop talking, let's just play the game properly; let's try to get the first point first before we discuss the issue of things getting better."

After adjusting their economy, they finally relied on a double kill with a sniper rifle by pasha at A Platform, plus Xu Beifang's counter-flash, to successfully harvest their first point.

But the subsequent situation was not optimistic; BIG's rhythm on this map was too practiced, and their tactical techniques were all very refined.

Most of the time, even competing for A Long was a problem, and Xu Beifang couldn't even enter the stage of pushing forward.

And I have to say, the strength of the McDonald's God of War is still very strong; that sniper rifle often limited his performance.

The situation is not optimistic...

Slept for a while and feel my form is a bit better; I plan to get my form back today.

Finally, I'm about 250 away from 4000 monthly votes; asking for monthly votes. When the last chapter comes out today, I will tally up the owed updates.

(End of chapter)