The Bi-weekly Gamer: Smiting the opposition

Columns January 20, 2016

Although not League of Legends, the mythical-god-centered MOBA Smite stands out with its own unique style of gameplay, which has led to it being quite a popular game. Recently, Smite wrapped up its own world championship tournament.

Starting with best-of-one matches, lesser teams were quickly eliminated by the superior teams, all fighting for a shot at the $500,000 grand prize.

Coming out of the group stages, European team Epsilon eSports and Enemy looked to be the strongest. Neither teams dropped a single game in the knockout and quarter-final matches, and their skill would later result in them going head-to-head in the finals in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Bi-weekly Gamer is a column about competitive gaming that appears in every issue of Nexus.
The Bi-weekly Gamer is a column about competitive gaming that appears in every issue of Nexus.

Even though these two teams would meet in the finals, both had rough patches in the semi-finals. Epsilon faced off against North American team Cloud 9 G2A in a match that pushed to the final fifth game. Enemy was pitted against the European reigning champions Paradigm Gaming, which ended in a 3-1 win for Enemy.

Going into the finals, both teams fought valiantly for a chance at the prize money, but Epsilon ultimately came out on top with a 3-0 sweep. Game one was one-sided with team Epsilon’s player Yammyn showing some great numbers, going 9/0/10 on the marksman god Neith.

Game two was even until an over-extension in a tower siege resulted in a 4-1 fight in favour of Epsilon.

After this, Epsilon surged ahead and won constant fights to eventually take down Enemy’s base. Going off of this win, tensions were high, as this game was match point for the European runner-ups.

Enemy knew they needed a win to stay alive, and that’s exactly what their plays showed. Gaining an early lead, Enemy seemed to become overconfident as they fought several losing fights. After losing a fight 4-0, Epsilon was able to pick up the fire giant buff. Following another 5-0 slaughter, Epsilon skipped Enemy’s phoenixes and rolled right through their base, claiming their title as world champions and banking a huge $500,000 for the team’s efforts.