Quickly, QUE OTA started by making gestures and shouting at the other booth while choosing their robots. They decided to run a six-Haechi lineup that had Orkans and Tarans on them.

Meanwhile, Medevdev followed their original plan of using four Ancilots. Two of them were loaded with Orkans, while the other two had Tarans on them. They were to be supported by two Zeus Carnages, a tactic that has already proven on Moon against the Koreans in the quarter-finals of the tournament.

QUE OTA quickly started by dashing in a 4-2 formation, with two capturing their home beacons and four going up the platform to challenge the C beacon as well as the enemy’s home beacon. After all, they figured out that if they were to beat the Russians on a map like this, they needed to set the momentum first.

Even though they’ve already faced the Dash robots a ton of times, Medevdev knew that it was hard for them to find counterplays. He even remembered a couple of lines from an article that he has read in the War Robots Wiki Forum many years ago:

Finally, create threats through the strength of your robots so that your opponents will be forced to spend time (and hopefully, robots) in order to hunt you down, thus creating space for the rest of your teammates to control a larger part of the map.

 

 

This is one of the biggest reasons why the Lancelot, the Dash robots (and the Rhino/Carnage to a certain extent) are unbelievably OP: It’s not just about their stats, it’s also about their capability to deny your movements on the map…as long as they’re alive.

After all, War Robots, for all its momentum-based play and crazy patches, is still a mech game that relies on people controlling points in order to get the win.

While the Haechis were quite squishy in comparison to the Lancelots, the Korean-themed units had the advantage of nearly unlimited mobility, thus allowing them to set the pace of the engagements. Even though the Haechi would lose to a straight-up fight against a Lancelot, the fact is that it was a team-based game made the advantage irrelevant.

It was Moon, so Medevdev expected that the Dash bots would prove to be superior in this map.

However, he didn’t expect the events that followed.

First, the Haechis quickly captured their home beacons. The Russian Lancelots tried to challenge them.

“Artour, Igor, challenge C!”

“Yes, Captain!” was the two Russians’ reply.

Unknown to them, the Brazilians already set up a Dash ambush. In a matter of seconds, Igor and

“NICE!”

“CYKA BLYAT!”

“IDI NA HUI!”

The Brazilians started to light up their game as they proceeded to push into the Russian half of the map from all sides, giving them no respite as the Dashes went around

“Musa!”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Go with two bots and try to take their far side beacon! The rest of us will try to hold the Dash attacks!”

The Dashes were dancing from left to right, killing the Lancelots rather quickly as they timed the cooldown of their Dashes for unloading their payloads onto their enemies.

“Que ota? Want some more? Want one more?”

The Brazilian captain laughed at the remark of his teammate. After all, they never expected the match to be extremely easy for them.

Meanwhile, the Russians have just realized that the Brazilian strategies were not strictly one-time affairs, as evidenced by the fluidity of their movements and tactics across the map.

Whenever Polar Pro tried to approach a beacon, De Costa and his teammates immediately repelled them. When the Russians decided to take the fight to them, the Brazilians simply went to the other side and keep the beacon advantage.

At this point, it was clear that the play that Medevdev planned wasn’t working at all. He wanted to tap out, but he knew that he must stay on until the bitter end for the sake of honor and entertainment.

His teammates have also realized this as they just went full-on against the Dash bots, chasing for damage rather than trying to go for beacons or map control. The Dashes had the latter two securely under their control – and De Costa had no plans of changing the status quo.

Finally, after seen minutes of play, the screen came up.

“WIN! YOU HAVE WON VIA BEACON CONTROL.”

The audience was shocked as they thought that the Brazilians would be beaten quickly by the Russians, considering that they had a breakout performance on the same map against the Koreans.

They were wrong.

Indeed, Medevdev was wrong.

Steeling forward, he calmly asked his teammates to prepare for the second map.

You can read the next chapter here! As for the previous one, you can always go back!