CPL Cologne 2002


SK.lads by anouc

Well this was the first time a female team wanted to play in a profesional tournament like is the CPL. We had not many time to prepare a team, nor to train together the last months, but for the girls who were going to the event, it seemed exciting. We were not able to play there with a "prime team" (like we were used to have some time ago), but at the same time the experience has been really good and made us feel the gaming deeper than before. I'm sure that after this first "touch" the team will change in many aspects and will improve a better prepared teamplay for future meetings and tournaments offline. Be prepared next time people, that wont happen again :P Just special greets to the guys from mTw (our last game) with whom we had a lot of fun; at least we left the tourney area with a big smile in our faces. And of course we enjoyed a lot watching the great espectacle that some other clans offered us, like the winners: forZe. Was pretty nice to meet all the SK people once more even if it wasnt the best weekend for SK we had a lots of fun together. Wish to see you all soon and reach much better results! ;P

SK.sca by bds

Tuesday the 14th, I met NIRee and Xenon at the local station in Stockholm. We were heading for Essen in Germany for a few days of LAN practise before the actual CPL event. Later we hooked up with Attermann and VicoN who came by plane from Denmark and Copenhagen.

In Essen Sebastian had fixed a really nice place where we could play versus two local German clans, Quadaver and Natural Rockaz. Loads of thanks to you guys for practising against us. It really helped alot.

Since Blue had to take care of school until Friday I played as a standin for the team (I hope I didnt do too bad).

It was now Friday and we took the train to Cologne and the CPL event. We checked in at the fancy Maritim Hotel and went to registrate. Matches was delayed the first day so we took an early nap.

Saturday morning. Found out that we had Regeneration in our group, the clan who had played really strong in this years Clanbase Eurocup. The two first matches were vs to quite unknown, but nevertheless really good German clans. We won them on de_cbble and de_nuke.

Now it was time for Regeneration on de_aztec. A map which we missed to practise before CPL Dallas and made us loose our winner bracket match. It started good as T, ending up with a 2vs1 situation in our favour. But with some really nice USP shots, Kainie managed to win the round. It was now a tough situation. Xenon played really aggresive at the wooden door and managed to take out their guy almost every round. The 6th round was crucial. We had to save and rushed bridge. Blue takes out on guy with deagle. Picks up an AWP. Takes out another guy with AWP. He is now left alone vs two rG guys. With awesome Quake3 1on1 skills he managed to feel them booth, running out from bridge house. With one AWP shoot he kills one with a headshot and legshots the other one. Its now 1vs1, and he finishes the last guy off with another headshot from AWP. Round of the tournament!

After that we just continued. Xenon ended T side with 18 frags. As CT we won the pistol round and managed to get 6 straight rounds. Final score 13-6.

After that we had to face DkH, last years winners of Clanbase Eurocup. We heard that de_train was one of their best maps. It was going to be tough. Once again Blue showed some incredible 1vs1 skill, winning most vital rounds. After winning CT side 10-2, we just had to win the pisto. Which we did, and the got 3 straight rounds. Final score 13-2.

Now it was time for aAa, the clan who had really suprised in this tournament. Beating GG who crushed mTw on de_aztec. Map was de_dust2. We started off great as T. VicoN won an extremely nice round 1vs4 from within bomb site B. As CT we hold them back and could win quite convincingly. Final score 13-6.

The time was now over 11pm. We had been up playing for over 14 hours. We were all extremely tired and went to sleep.

Sunday, we were up against ND on de_inferno. I felt a bad mood in the air. Many of the players were way too tired both physically and mentally from the day before. But we did our best. After a bad start as CT, we started to get the act together, but it was too late. We lost 6-13.

Now it was time to play aAa again. Which we played the other day and had a quite comfortable win. We started as T on de_cbble and won the pistol round. It felt great. But after that we only managed to win 2 more rounds. Ending the T side 3-9.

Now we had to win the pistol round, which we didnt. aAa was up 3-0 and just had to win one more round to be in the final. But no one gave up. All of sudden we hear Attermann saying "Buy everything you can, last round, by deagle etc". Xenon who already thought we had lost, bought an AUG for the first time ever (he never uses the AUG). Goes into B2. aAa are rushing. With extreme skill he kills 4 of them with the AUG and finishes off the last one with his USP. Final score 9-3. Total score 12-12.

It was now time for overtime. I dont remember much from it, since I was way too nervous by watching. I wanted to be in there playing, but since I was the coach, this was what I had to do. After five (5!) overtimes aAa managed to win by one round. Of course it feels a little disappointing, but Sunday just wasnt our day. The play from Saturday was gone, and we just werent there.

But ending 3rd in this really tough tournament was great. We all were happy with the result. And really happy with the really awesome tournament the CPL staff put up with.

Later that night we went out with some ND guys, some CPL staff and smerz from Quadaver. We had a really fun time. Me and Xenon went to bed at 6am and took the train to the airport 7am.

At around 6pm we all were home, back to our normal lifes, with great memories from the past week!



Q3 by paracyde

This weekend was the most disapointing weekend in the whole q3 history of sk i guess.

On friday we drove to Cologne with with great resolution. On saturday we had our first matches against ukn-tot, advanced and shuuk which we were all able to win. But after the group stage we had to play the russian clan forze and then it started.. :)

We never expected an opponent like this, if you know SK you know that we always try to play very calm and defensive. But we were not prepared against such a ffa / running around owning everything style. The Russians where fighting unbelivable well and we had no clue what to do against them. Even on dm14 they often had the whole map. We were destroyed in 2maps, ospdm5 and dm14 which gave our philosophy of teamplay a hard hit.

In the lower bracket we met shuuk again and for some reason we thought that we had to throw our whole teamplay over board and play the same FFA style like the Russians. Of course this didn't work for us. :)

Being not used to it we rushed like madmen all the time into shuuk and despite this lost dm14 only narrowly. In cpm4 nothing worked anymore for us and we exited the tournament.

GG forze GG shuuk

Overall i want to emphasize that under no circumstances we would have had any chances on this weekend to finish better than top3 if everything had went according to plan. Looking at our performance and the performence of shuuk and forze we deserved to place that badly.

side note: beside the cpl tourney we played the pgcl half final vs mtw which we lost of course in 2 maps :)

I hope we'll be back at Lan Arena 7
cu soon.



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