fnatic are once again the final of a big tournament in 2009 and this time the opponent standing in their path to another title is Finland's Power Gaming . Interestingly the tables are reversed this time as Power have looked the strongest team thusfar in the tournament, yet fnatic still bring their experience of winning so many titles. Can the Finns overcome that disparity in winning know-how deep in tournaments or will fnatic reign supreme again in 2009?

fnatic vs. Power Gaming

According to reports the map order will be: inferno, dust2 and then nuke if a decider is required. The way the maps are chosen is that a coin is flipped and the winners remove a map, the other team picks a map, the first team picks a map and then the final map left is the decider. Based on that the order would suggest fnatic won the toss and removed train, Power picked inferno, fnatic picked dust2 and then nuke was left over.

It's rare a team reaches the final of a big event without having a good chance to win it, even the mighty MYM.pl found itself only three rounds from losing the 2008 ESWC finals, so I will keep the prediction element of this post shorter and towards the end. Instead it seems more appropriate to examine and provide some analysis for the two teams and their map matchups.

fnatic's stand-in had people asking questions about their level before the event had even begun. Then they let wNv.cn take a few too many rounds against wNv.cn and were stuffed on train by Power, who completely locked up the second half. That left it all down to the last game where fnatic came out and shined on dust2 to put WeMade Fox away and move into the semi-finals. That convincing crushing of the Koreans really helped rebuild fnatic's credibility as WeMade had played PowerGaming closely thanks to a big comeback on their T side.

In the semis fnatic raised their level once again as they moved past AGAiN in a match which was tougher than the scoreline will suggest. Consider, gentle reader, that fnatic won all of the pistol rounds and yet won the two maps by five and six rounds respectively. Give even half of those pistol rounds to AGAiN, and the accompanying ecos, and suddenly a three map series or even last round victories become a very real possibility. So fnatic moved past AGAiN in a solid two map win which saw them beating a team which could have been playing below their level but still were putting up serious resistance.

PowerGaming were the toast of the tournament as they beat every team in their group, including their win over fnatic, and headed to the semis filled with confidence. In the semi-final they met Chinese natives TyLoo in a game which proved far from close. The first map saw them smash the Chinese team on inferno with a big CT half and then finish it quickly on the T half. The second, nuke, had the Finns again go up big on the CT half and due to their huge cushion decide to play without their best tactics, in the hopes of hiding them from fnatic, as revealed by ruuit in this interview. The Chinese team took advantage of that to take a lot of rounds but it was not enough to approach challenging Power for the map win and the series.

Now in the finals the first thing we immediately notice is that with no train Power won't have that psychological advantage or map advantage over fnatic. That said both teams look very even over the other maps.


inferno

Losing to AGAiN on this map in the decider at the WCG might make you think PowerGaming dislike the map but in fact it should likely be considered one of their stronger maps. Their ability to gain a lot of rounds on the T side should be obvious and the structure of the map plays into their strengths as they can both use short bursts of individual skill to gain ground or key positions on the enemy but also execute hard pushes together and overwhelm their opponent. On the CT side Power had some of the same jitters against WeMade they had against AGAiN but their TyLoo game, when TyLoo had chosen inferno, showed they only face those problems against the very elite teams at worst.

fnatic had their own bumps along the road on inferno when they played wNv.cn and of course lost the map in a heart-breaking 30 round game against mTw.dk at DreamHack Winter. I think the key to this map will be how aggressive the Finns play their CT side and how fast fnatic decide to attack it. If Power decide to get in fnatic's faces they could have ruuit trying to lock down the banana with an AWP each round to deter the Swedes from entering and contE taking turns at pushing the apartments while naSu covers him from the window room. That kind of play is certainly risky against fnatic but it's also the kind of play which if it has success is going to really chop the map up and reduce fnatic's options and element of surprise at all times.

For fnatic will we see slower rounds and then quick pushes into sites as we did in the dust2 game against AGAiN? That game they seemed to get into the timing of their opponents and synch their attacks to throw them off. In this game fnatic needs either big time entry killing, as threat provided in the first map of the semis, or to fake out Power and force over-rotation with two man flash and peek fakes.


dust2

Any questions about threat's ability to play within this fnatic seemed to disappear for a while as he proved his worth in the dust2 portion of their semi-final, seeming to be there to get two decisive kills whenever the game was in the balance on a key round. Meanwhile PowerGaming completely destroyed wNv.cn on this map, to the extent the Chinese team looked unable to even figure out how to string some rounds together.

This is a map which once you reach the elite level is almost impossible to predict because there are so many different types of dust2 game and individual skills can really skew the result in a way they don't to the same extent on other maps. Attacking entry players become vital for rushes and on slower rounds it is a case of who has that guy who is going to kill the 3rd or 4th enemy to allow you to play with a numbers advantage?

This map looks very even any way you cut it and I get the feeling one of the keys for Power is tihOp's AWP. Against AGAiN at WCG his AWP was rolling yet the kills he was getting weren't able to turn many rounds and he ended up saving a lot. If he plays with the confidence he did against fnatic on train then I think kills for him at middle will really disrupt the fnatic attacks. At that point it is down to how much the Power players at long are willing to flank and how aggressive the Power players at B will play. On this map aggressive flanks work well once the opponents' push has begun, so they cannot be entirely aware of your counter-push behind them. Communication between tihOp's AWP scope and the Power players watching catwalk will be key.

For fnatic it's a case of finding three terrorist strats which are effective against Power's timing. The confidence Power have played with so far suggests they are going to at least equal fnatic's skill level, unless f0rest and GeT_RiGhT get really crazy, so fnatic need to keep their heads and execute their strats without letting them game get too free-for-all. fnatic have more experience in finals and more understanding of what it takes to close out tight games.

On the Finnish side of things they have a lot of confidence and they also have more experience playing with their stand-in, experience going back years, that fnatic couldn't have hoped to make up in a week. In a dust2 game when rounds get close on the CT side that experience can be translated into instinctual teamplay opportunities.


nuke

This map has also been a good matchup for this lineup of players against the fnatic core so perhaps one should not be too hasty to throw it fnatic's way, despite that team's ability to put up good terrorist scores against everyone they face. The keys for this map may well come down to speed of Power's attacks, if they go too slowly outside then they are going to face problems getting into sites I can forsee. On the other hand if fnatic are not able to push their skill level during penetration into sites then it's going to be difficult for them to get their terrorist rounds. Power have a the luxury of high skill players at every choke position on the map.

Have Power studied the couple of mistakes AGAiN made in some of their T attacks which otherwise could have worked? Have fnatic got a good handle on where they should rotate their players to handle the Finnish attacks? dust2 is probably the most random of the maps in this series because so many factors come into play on even a very individual round to round basis but nuke might be the most difficult to figure out as both teams are very apt at this stage of the tournament to tweak things a little here and there which could either win or lose them the map.

What should be sure is that if the game comes down to three maps then fnatic will need all their experience and calm to take it home while Power will need to overcome the mental pressure they put on themselves sometimes against the elite teams, and as ruuit said: not start whining.


I still think the other fnatic lineup is the best in the world and if you put them in a 100 map series against anyone they'd come out on top. There are so many extra factors in this tournament though that I'm going to side with Power in a close game. threat, Power's comfort level with contE, the Finns' confidence, fnatic's loss to them in the group stage. fnatic do come through when games get tough but that's also a pattern which emerged with the previous lineup, their old lineups were also known for getting deep and them getting beaten by teams who stepped up a level in a series.

Prediction: PowerGaming wins