Quake.cz Quake Live TDM Nations Cup 2009: Group 2 Overview (ESP, PORT, FRA & LIT)

This is a review of the second group in the 2009 Quake Live TDM Nation Cup.

Today’s teams up for review are Spain, Portugal, France and Lithuania. It’ll be a bit shorter than the previous overview, but It’ll have to do. 🙂

Earlier I already did a review of group 1 with the Netherlands, Italy, Poland B and the Czech Republic.

Group 2 Teams:

1. [portugal] Portugal: eden, holy, x1nador, exter, stratos, syz, sLiCeRpt, plim
2. [spain] Spain: SuPRiMo, Dabra, Centinela, DosCAras, Sl1p, pizo, Allter
3. [lithuania] Lithuania: Guard, DM, Fndz, Str4fe, H1T, fire_bot
4. [france] France: eki22, l1nkje, Kirua, unity, strenx, slx, AppleSeed, mitch

Team Portugal

Portugal is the team that will most likely take the second place in this group. Even though Portugal hasn’t participated in any Nations cup for a long time, captain [portugal] Eden managed to gather a set of skilled players who are motivated to give the old dinosaurs such as France a good fight worth their money.

[portugal] Eden: I can say we were always motivated but the expectations about our team weren´t really high. We are far from being good compared to most of the teams of the event, but we will train hard to give them all a good fight and our main objective for now is to get into the playoffs.

Portugal has already beaten Spain in an exciting confrontation that lasted 3 maps. Portugal considered their match against Spain the most important of all if they wanted to make it to the playoffs:

[portugal] Eden: Spain was our biggest threat, but it’s over passed since the first week matches. At this moment our only threat is Lithuania. We need to win them so we can enter in the playoffs.  The sooner the better as France is going for the first place of our group.

[spain] Spain vs [portugal] Portugal (W):

• Map 1 (dm6): 124:133 (Portugal wins)
• Map 2 (dm6): 147:135 (Spain wins)
• Map 3 (dm7): 90:146 (Protugal wins)

However, since the time Eden sent me this interview, Portugal has already won 2 out of the 3 matches in their group fase against both Spain and Lithuania.

Considering France is the huge favorite to win Group 1, Portugal was really just duking it out between Lithuania and Spain. Unless France suddenly drops the ball hard in one of their next few games, Portugal can pretty safely say they’ve made it to the playoffs.

[portugal] Portugal (W) vs [lithuania] Lithuania:

• Map 1 (dm6): 158:111 (Portugal wins)
• Map 2 (dm7): 125:86 (Portugal wins)

On a side note, it’s always good to hear that Quake Live is reviving Quake communities everywhere:

[portugal] Eden: As I said, due to being so small the Portugese community isn’t organized or anything. We just know all each other very well and I think most of the Portugese quake community is playing Quake Live already.

Team Spain

Spain’s line up for the Quake Live Nations Cup is nearly the exact same team playing the Quake 3 TDM Nations cup. From the matches Spain has played so far in the Quake 3 Nations cup, they lost all maps.

Here are the match results from the games Spain played in the Quake 3 TDM Nations cup in which they lost all maps (against [netherlands] Netherlands, [poland] Poland and [hungary] Hungary), with nearly the exact same lineup as in the Quake Live TDM Nationscup:

[nggallery id=7]

Unfortunately captain [spain] SuPRiMo wasn’t available for any more questions. But I’m sure he’d tell me the Spanish Quake community is still very active in both Quake 3 and Quake Live.

Team Lithuania

Little was I able to find about team Lithuania. I probably wasn’t looking hard enough, but who gives! Bare with me as I quickly spew the little I know about the Lithuanian’s participation in the Quake Live Nationscup.

Lithuania has some very strong duellers such as Guard and Fire_bot, both playing this Nations cup. I’m sure they are able to hold their own in TDM as well.

Nonetheless, Lithuania has lost 2 out of 3 confrontations already in the group fase, against both [france] France and [portugal] Portugal, and it’s looking like they’ll be making an early exit from the Event together with [spain] Spain.

Something more about the Lithuanian Quake Community:

[lithuania] Str4fe: There’s not that many good Quakers left in Lithuania. Maybe 10 normal skill players and 50 CA lovers. It’s mostly the “lithuania nations cup team” that’s playing Quake Live though, the rest are still playing Quake 3.

Team France

The French team has with no doubt the strongest line up of all teams in group 2.

Strenx probably has the most solid aim in Europe and recently came second in the 2008 Dreamhack 1v1 Quake 3 competition. Unity, L1nkin and Slx are part of Miel Gaming which is currently most likely the strongest Quake Live team in Europe. Needless to say, the other players such as Kirua and Mitch are a force on their own as well.

Team France has a very strong and experienced line up and is playing for nothing less but the win. They’ll meet some tough competition and they might not get there in the end… but whoever comes in their way will sure as hell have known it.

Only one match played by France in the Quake Live Nations cup so far:

[france] France (W) vs [lithuania] Lithuania:

• Map 1 (dm6): ???:??? (France wins)
• Map 2 (dm7): ???:??? (France wins)

Nonetheless, France will most likely win all the group fase matches with their current line up. The only real flaw in the French Team is the lack of motivation or time to organize practice games. They might make it far in the Event and give plenty of teams a hard time,… but in the end a more prepared team like UK or Sweden will probably take the victory in the end.

Again, thanks to the captain(s) who send me their interview answers! For an overview of the other 2 remaining groups, check back here at holysh1t.net in the next few days. I know that matches are already being played, but better late than never! 🙂 You can subscribe by mail or RSS to receive the news delivered by Google in your mailbox as soon as there’s an update. All the info and links about the event can be found on our Quake Live Nations Cup page.

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