It’s been an exciting weekend over at the EICC, with two groups of 4 teams keeping players busy during the Saturday. Meanwhile, on Sunday we saw an exciting set of playoffs, including the grand finals, take place. Let’s take a look at what unfolded…
BYOC Attendees @ iScotland. Credit to Multiplay for the photo.
Group A was certainly an exciting with some tense Best of 1 matchups. The results were as follows;
| Rank | Teams | W | T | L | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ThatWasExcepted | 3 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| 2 | Keyboard’s on Fire | 2 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 3 | BozHz | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | Playtime Gaming | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
Meanwhile over in Group B, another set of four interesting teams who also fought quite closely…
| Rank | Teams | W | T | L | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | #TeamHive | 3 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| 2 | Team-Evil.mix | 2 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 3 | What are those | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | Some Age Happy | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
You’ve seen the groups, now let’s take a deeper dive into the main portion of the event – playoffs! The results were as followed, with some teams making strong runs including Team-Evil.mix who bounced back after losing out in the semi’s, making a successful win in the lower bracket leading them into the Grand Finals. It’s certainly worth taking into account the large prize pool available for an event of this fashion, with the winning team set to walk around with £900, 2nd place taking £400 and lastly, 3rd place, taking £200, adding up to a total prize pot of £1,5k!
| Rank | Team |
|---|---|
| 1 | #TeamHive |
| 2 | Team-Evil.mix |
| 3 | ThatWasExcepted |
| 4 | What are those |
| 5 | BozHz |
| 6 | Keyboard’s on Fire |
| 7 | Some Age Happy |
I caught up with Jack Harrison, one of the members of #TeamHive, after their recent LAN-win.
Hi Jack, so first up can you tell me, as well as our readers, a little bit about yourself and your overall weekend at iScotland?
It was fantastic, as my first LAN event, I have to say I’m very impressed. As soon as we arrived we could see that even the security detail they had assigned had an interest in the event itself. Everyone knew what they were doing and were extremely helpful. I’ve said this to everyone but we really did feel like VIP’s! We were surprised by how chilled out the atmosphere was and how nice all the other teams were, everyone could have a laugh and chat about the games afterwards. We even had a small crowd of people standing behind us during the finals, amazing really.
Glad to hear you and your team had a wonderful weekend, can you tell us a little bit about your Counter-Strike experience, what was it like for your first LAN reaching the finals of iScotland?
Well, I’m relatively new to counter-strike, and PC gaming as a matter of fact. I started playing around October 2014 I think. I know it was whenever operation breakout had just finished. I played in this year’s spring online NUEL tournament for team Napier, but that didn’t really pan out too well. This LAN I expected to get carried pretty hard but I am really happy that I managed to perform in line with my teammates especially given their experience. Reaching the finals was really amazing for me, this hopefully will be a springboard for me to try and break into the UK scene and either join a team or create one of my own.
That’s good to hear, you mentioned you had a few experienced teammates, anything you wish to highlight on them, even room for potential shout-outs?
Well, me and Tattie have known each other since we joined the Napier University team, we complement each other quite well and both wanted to go to LAN so I looked for a team to mix with and found the other guys. (Archer, Scruffsti, and Eddie) No one was really sure what to expect, and we literally played for the first time as 5 in our first game of the tournament, we hadn’t even pugged. After playing though we just came together so well, it felt really good being able to synergise immediately. Scruff is an insane player, his reactions are just fantastic, really an individual to look out for. Archer has some potential as a brilliant IGL too, He left the style quite open for us, but really dished out the hurt when we lost something stupidly. Eddie was fantastic to play with, always giving his opinions on strategies and just being consistent in winning the necessary fights and making those aggressive plays that win the rounds. Myself and Tattie spoke after and we were really happy about the guys, who hopefully we will see at another LAN soon!
Lastly, out of curiosity, what will you be spending your LAN winnings on?
Well, to be honest with you, living haha. I’ll spend some of it on a few drinks tonight but aye, mostly just paying the bills!
CS Group Photo. Credit: Jack Harrison
That concedes the chat I had with Jack, massive thanks to him for his time. This also concedes the first Multiplay side-event, run in Scotland. Up next we have Insomnia Ireland, which if anything to go by, will be just as big of a success as Scotland!
