Defense of the Ancients 2

In the Dota 2 side of things, things are looking rather swell as the boys have managed to secure a spot at the VS Gaming Masters Main Event which will be taking place towards the end of July on LAN. This will boast a massive R550,000 prize-pool and will see South Africa’s best battle it out for their share. This came about after Bravado Gaming took down Aperture Gaming in the Winner Bracket Finals of the VS Gaming Community Shield 2. You can check the brackets and all the details of this cup by heading over here.

Although the Community Shield 2 is incomplete, we’re still waiting for our contender in the Grand Finals – the team who makes the Grand Final from the Loser Bracket will be the second and final team to qualify for the Masters Main Event. This means, that Aperture Gaming and Sinister 5 will be battling it out for that second spot and boy, is it going to be an action packed game.

We felt very confident going into the Dota 2 community shield qualifier. Last night (Sunday 06 July) we played the winner bracket finals securing our place in the masters finals at the end of July. Everyone is feeling good and looking forward to the LAN. – Jeff ‘Impackt’ Waller

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

Call of Duty, despite an amazing start, was a bit of a different story. Hameed “Viper” Moosa gives us some insight into their experience this weekend:

Going into the tournament we felt pretty comfortable, as was shown on day 1 of the tournament. We went 9-0 in map count, making it all the way to the WB bracket finals without dropping a single map. We felt really good after day 1. Sunday came with our confidence was still running so we took the first map of the WB finals, went 3-0 up in the 2nd map but ended up losing and everything pretty much went downhill from there.

The team felt pretty bleak after losing the WB finals but still knew we had another chance, which we didn’t really take advantage of. We were beaten 3-0 by Krypto, who we beat 3-0 on day 1.

The main factor on day 2 was the host for all of us, playing on a Cape Town host with only one of us being from Cape Town, was pretty difficult according to the team. The connection just wasn’t as good as it should’ve been for us, due to us being so used to Johannesburg hosts.

Overall it was a disappointing end to a good start of a weekend. But we know it’s an online tournament and that’s made it easier for us to accept the loss. LAN will be a different story. – Hameed ‘Viper’ Moosa

Regardless of the above results, you can view the entire event details and brackets by heading over to the official hosts of the tournament, ACGL, here. Again, thank you to the excellent staff at ACGL for running a very smooth event and congratulations to the top 3, especially Ventus Gaming for taking the win!

The final results for the ACGL #MGMS2017 are as follows
1. Ventus Gaming (R6 000 + 4000XP)
2. Krypto Gaming (R4 000 + 3200XP)
3. Bravado Gaming (R2000 + R1000 Raru Vouchers + 2560XP)

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

The Counter Strike “kids”, as Trevor “Kani” Morley affectionately put it, had a phenomenal weekend after they went undefeated to win the VS Gaming Masters Cup which took place in Midrand, Johannesburg from the 30th of June – 02 July. This saw South Africa’s top best it out for a R110,000 prize-pool. More information, details and brackets of the event can be found here.

The final scores (start to end) were as follows (maps)
– Bravado Gaming 1 – 0 Aperture Gaming (Winner Bracket Quarter Final)
– Bravado Gaming 1 – 0 XTC (Winner Bracket Semi-Final)
– Bravado Gaming 1 – 0 Energy E-Sports (Winner Bracket Final)
– Bravado Gaming 3 – 0 Energy E-Sports (Grand Finals)

The top 3 finishers were as follows
1. Bravado Gaming (R44 000)
2. Energy E-Sports (22 000)
3. Damage Control (R14 000)

I decided to get the input of the two more recent additions to give us a rundown of the event

It feels good to have won the VS Gaming Masters Cup but we were a bit disappointed that it wasn’t a more convincing win because we struggled to close it out. We’re taking a break for one day and then we back to our normal schedule. We will be looking over the demos to find our mistakes and improve for the upcoming tournaments. – Johnny ‘JT’ Theodosiou

After a convincing win at the VS Gaming event, it gives us a lot of confidence to continue the year with. Having our first LAN event final against the newest Energy team was always going to be an interesting match and we were well prepared coming into the event with high expectations for ourselves.

Even after a win you can always see there is room for improvement, so we are taking Monday night off and practicing the rest of the week, fixing errors we need to fix and those sorts of things.

Our goals moving forward are to be as well prepared for any team we can possibly be. Our biggest goal though is probably to fix all of our mistakes, big or small. – Rhys ‘Fadey’ Armstrong

To the folks at VS Gaming, that was easily one of the most enjoyable South Africa Counter Strike experiences I have ever had the pleasure of watching online, I’m sure the atmosphere at the event was even more electric. I’m usually extremely critical about online streams, especially for Counter Strike. Seriously, hats off to you guys as well as Mettlestate, Orena and ESL.

My thanks to all of the players who sacrificed their time to give the community their side of the story. As always, the Bravado name stands proud with every team doing well. Most noticeable for me was the Counter Strike teams performance. I have stopped playing for a while now and watching them play this weekend was somewhat of a master-class demonstration of superb Counter Strike.

It’s encouraging to see how far we’ve gone as a community in the past few months, with talent and team skills rising along with production quality and prize money. There’s definitely a bright future ahead for competitive gamers in South Africa…

We would like to once again thank each and every person for your continued support. Make sure you follow Bravado Gaming on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Bravado Gaming is proudly sponsored by Alienware and Intel and is the proud brand ambassador for Alienware in South Africa. Also, check the local Alienware Facebook page by heading over here.