[ENG] Rooster Recap — Summer Showdown
Paris Eternal are your Summer Showdown NA Champions !
We’ve been 100% behind our favorite roosters since the start of the season, but even with the highest confidence in the team, we never quite thought we’d be typing those words out. And yet! The Paris Eternal came through an amazing 2 matches marathon this Sunday, going all the way to map 5 and map 7 every time, for our greatest stress and pleasure.
What a show !
We’ve been debating how to write this article for a while now, unsure of where to start or how to get across how much of a nailbiter this tournament was. One term everyone can agree on is “unexpected”. All the predictions and brackets were good to throw away from the quarterfinals onwards, and every team made sure to bring their A game to the table, to give themselves the best shot at taking down their opponents.
For Paris Eternal, that meant bringing out SP9RK1E on Genji. Before the tournament started, the team had tried to play off-meta picks, but that hadn’t been particularly successful. BenBest explained on stream that they’d pivoted to the Genji method some teams were already practicing in scrims, like Toronto. SP9RK1E felt particularly comfortable on the pick so they decided to continue down that road, so well that they were already taking down San Francisco Shock in scrims. Considering the end results, we can only applaud their decision.
Before reaching the semi-finals and breathtaking games, Paris had two teams to get through.
The first up was the Dallas Fuel. In the past few weeks, the team has been nothing but question marks from an outside perspective. Would Decay play (would his presence be enough) ? Which team would show up, Doctor Dallas or Mister Fuel… ? Crimzo had dropped some spicy trash talk on the selection interview but would they be able to back it up ?
As for the Rooster Club, we have to admit we were pretty confident. Let’s be real, we told each-other, it’s not gonna be Fuel that’ll stop us on our path to the Showdown. Against well-prepared roosters, Dallas still came out strong and gave us some great plays, with a DPS duo that tried as hard as they could to carry. The real difference was the off-tanks, where HanBin dominated Note the whole time on Sigma. The full-hold defense on Gibraltar pulled off by our roosters was just the nail in the Dallas coffin, and confirmed Paris in the quarter-final slot. We can even say that Fielder sealed the deal with his 200 ping and a perfect sleep dart on a ulting Genji.
The next step was the Vancouver Titans. Far from the aura of the previous ex-RunAway roster, the Canadian team had run into some issues since the roster change, losing speed as the season progressed. They had a better showing in the past month however against lower ranked teams, which gave them the better seeding (4th place) and qualified them directly for the quarter-finals. They weren’t quite lucky enough to pick their opponents and logically found themselves facing the Paris team no one would voluntarily pick.
A picture-perfect game for our favorite roosters, who had the opportunity to show off how best to play their style. The Vancouver players made a few attempts to counter them but it was futile against Paris’s well-oiled mechanics.
It’s when we sneaked a glance at the tournament seeding that we really started to worry. Winning against the Titans was great, but it also meant we’d run into San Francisco in the semi-finals. And that’s where the real challenge started: facing a team that had won their last 14 matches, and was currently in a 14 map win-streak.
We’d be lying if we said that the Paris supporters were calm and collected before the start of the face-off against the holders of the title. Paris had faced off against them just two weeks before in a one-sided massacre in favor of the Golden Bay team, so the encouraging cheers couldn’t quite disguise the doubt of those that had gathered to watch the game. The match had been pushed back a few hours because of an unknown problem on San Francisco’s side, tensions couldn’t get higher. “They can do it,” “Winning a few maps would already be a huge accomplishment”, “Make us proud,” were some of the cries ringing out.
We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but we still weren’t prepared for how tough of a battle it would be. Shock didn’t give up an inch without a fight and brought Paris to the brink everytime, going for the full 5 maps. For each map taken by the Eternal, they came back even more motivated — it was a fight to the finish. But Paris had come just as determined and ready with their own personal weapon : SP9RK1E on Genji. Shock didn’t have a resident Genji expert since Architect’s departure to Spark and it showed the one time they attempted to counter him with Rascal on the same pick. Rascal is no second-tier DPS but SP9RK1E still managed to show him up with amazing stats on King’s Row, charging Dragon Blades in the blink of an eye and unleashing them on the unprepared backlanes of the opponent. Rialto was perhaps the most impressive show of resilience from both teams, with Shock pushing almost all the way to the end of the map — twice — and Paris giving back just as good as they got. The final decider was Oasis, which brought back mixed memories for Paris fans (the infamous Oasis map 5 against Philly has had both good and bad conclusions in the past). This time again, the map went all three rounds, with push and pull on both sides. Paris finally got the better of the Shock in the gardens, SP9RK1E getting one final highlight reel to his name to conclude the battle. Until now, Shock had always been in the competition finals since stage 1 of season 2. Paris had taken down the “titans”.
That nail-biter was worthy of a finals, but it wasn’t over yet. Philadelphia had taken down Toronto in a fast one-sided match and had been sitting pretty for the past few hours, waiting to see who would come out the victor to face them. Paris had barely finished a marathon, but not even 20 minutes later, they were gearing up for a second one. Alone in Korea, Fielder was starting to see the sun rise. Afterwards, BenBest would say that they felt even more emotions against Shock than against Philly, because of the sheer exhaustion of playing two full matches in a row. He felt that it led them to make mistakes due to miscommunications and mistimed charges or aggression (as seen in one case where half the team was already dead when BenBest and SP9RK1E ulted with Blade and Bongo respectively). But nevertheless, the team had never been so motivated and pushed through to bring their opponents a worthy fight.
Now that we’ve seen the glory and beauty that a 7 map duel can bring, 5 maps will never quite feel enough when watching Paris Eternal face off against the Philadelphia Fusion. After seeing Paris take the lead 1–0, some might’ve had false hopes and gotten ready to go to bed, thinking the match was already over. That was a critical mistake, not accounting for Philadelphia Fusion and their passion for drawing out suspense, as inherited from Fusion “we get paid by map” University. Unlike the Shock, Philly had no problem adopting the Genji meta, and their expert was ready to face off against SP9RK1E. Eqo might’ve had an entirely different playstyle, but he was just as effective as our Element Mystic prodigy, as proven by his clutch play on Rialto first point where he single-handedly capped, momentarily saving the map.
Paris was feeling the exhaustion but they carried on, getting a much needed boost of energy on Gibraltar when the coaches swapped NoSmite back in. The dive-y map was the perfect spot to unleash Winston, and he brought a much-needed burst of fresh air and energy to the team. BenBest even credits him with saving the team mental, saying they might’ve failed to keep going as strong if they hadn’t had that swap. And that was also part of what made the victory against Philadelphia so beautiful: the entire team played at least one map, bringing their personal expertise to the table. It was a true team victory, with no one left on the sidelines to watch. It was a beautiful team victory to watch at the end as well, when “Paris Eternal wins!” popped up on all our screens and we could finally start breathing again — just in time to shout our joy at this amazing performance.
To quote Zaroide from a recent show: “if the value of a title is measured by the adversaries faced, then we can say that the NA Summer Showdown Championship is worth millions!” These breath-taking matches brought us many emotions and proved to the world that our roosters are capable of great things — and are definitely worthy of the higher League ranks.
All that’s left to do is to continue on this path and keep putting stars in our eyes with every match. Let’s rally the hen house and get ready to support Paris Eternal once more !
