Now that another day has begun, the long-awaited match between the tournament hosts and the world’s top War Robots team was about to begin.

Ancheta’s Silent Miracle is to face Medevdev’s Polar Pro. Both sides considered this to be a hard and grueling series, with a lot of things at stake.

For Ancheta and his team, a win here might be their chance to win War Robots’ premier tournament on home soil, making history in the process. However, they were already happy that they were able to reach the semifinals, even with the shakiness of the plays they made.

As for Medevdev and his squad, they want to make it once again to the top and become the first-ever back-to-back War Robots World Champions. Besides, he has a personal agenda: He wants to win another World Championship before he retires next year in order to rest his health. After all, being a professional gamer is never easy, despite the glamor and perks shown both in public and in private.

Once again, the match started with two casters discussing the live map picks.

“So, what do you think the Russians are going to do?”

“Surprisingly, the Filipinos play an extremely conservative playstyle compared to their peers. They play a cerebral game and their finest moment was the time when they destroyed the United States in their final group stage match, knocking them out of the tournament.”

“Well, the US needs to step up if they want to keep their spot at the World Championships next year. After all, there is a damn lot of new blood incoming!”

“Indeed.”

The United States is generally good at playing video games, and this trend also continued with War Robots, going as far as taking fourth place in the first edition of the WR World Championships. However, as the commentator pointed out, the country’s WR community needed to improve their team as soon as they can.

“Probably we’ll have a mix of maps.”

“Which map was the most banned in the tournament?”

“Everyone and their dog hated Yama, so most teams banned that first.”

Then, in order to remind the viewers about the map picking and banning system in the playoffs, a chart showing the said process was lit up on-screen.

The map veto phase basically stipulated that while the higher seed had many actions, the lower seed can do their actions is one single wave, which can definitely steer the map veto phase into the latter team’s favor.

Meanwhile, both teams quickly chose their maps inside their respective booths, with the choices showing up in real time.

Inside the Philippine booth, Ancheta just had a few words for his teammates:

“It will be really good if we can win this year. However, if we don’t, then that will be alright – let’s be proud that we’ve done our best in our first outing for our nation!”

“FIGHTING!”

Then, Ace, one of the players in Seven Miracles, placed out a placard that said:

LABAN PILIPINAS! BUS YAN! PARA SA BAYAN!

The slogan meant, “Philippines fighting…WE WILL CRUSH THEM…for our MOTHERLAND!”

Upon seeing the poster, the audience reacted with a unified shout that shook the SM Aura Theatre Hall. After all, these guys are among their hometown heroes now…

The Russian booth had different thoughts.

“Captain, can we do this?”

“Yes, we can. We will show them that we are the best team in the world…and that we don’t bow down to pressure!”

“HOORAH!”

The match began with a panoramic view of the various robots that composed each team’s hangar, with the Russian side leaning more towards the Ancilots, while the Filipinos preferring the Dash bots for most of their drops on the map. Of course, there were a couple of variety bots on the sidelines for both sides.

Afterwards, the match quickly began with a vengeance as Ancheta and Carillo rushed out as a pair together towards the middle of Shenzhen, planning to try to get the game into their favor immediately.

“Musa!”

“Captain!”

“Join me and go middle! Igor, play defensively to the left, the rest of you, push deep on the right side!”

It quickly became a brawl as both sides came with range of each other’s Orkans and Tarans. The battle became so heated that the camera angles were changed rather constantly in order for the production team to be able to keep up with the pace of the battle.

“Kingslayer!”

“Yes, boss!”

“With our second drop, mirror what they are doing and do it on the opposite sides!”

The Russians, realizing that the Filipinos were going for a counter-push, asked Artour to eject out of his and use his Zeus Fury in order to provide fire support for Igor, who was in danger of being overwhelmed by the three talented Filipino youngsters.

Then, Seven Miracles made their next move.

“Matthew!”

“Yes, commander?”

“Make a diversion by going towards middle so that the Zeus Fury will be forced to fire upon you!”

While the action was still hot, the Russian captain asked his team to ignore middle. After all, Medevdev knew that they could still win even with a 2-3 beacon disadvantage.

Outside, the match screen showed an aerial overview of the map which zoomed in and out at different times, mostly focusing on the heat of the action as well as the key points in a map.

The crowd loved this new innovation; after all, they were not expecting any technical advancements beyond the multifeed, which was promised already last year at the first edition of the War Robots World Championships.

Without both of the teams knowing it, the spectators realized that it was a close match that will go down to the wire.

All of the things were happening in the space of a couple of minutes; it could even be said that there is no room for mistakes in this fast-paced game of digital chess.

The Kingslayer remarked, “Bloody hell, we should have used more Ancilots in our drops. At this rate, we would lose in terms of hitpoints.”

“I’m afraid that’s the case. Let’s just fight and go for the second map!”

The captain knew that in a game where their talents, strategies and mastery of mechanics were virtually equal, the type of robots that they were using would eventually lead to a disadvantage for them.

Even though the Dash robots were mobile and durable, the Ancilots remained as the go-to for those who were looking for brawls.

“Igor!”

“Yes, comrade?”

“Show the world your true power! Come on!”

As if gathering strength out of nowhere, Igor led his last drop, a classic Thunder Carnage, towards the Filipino spawn and blew them out of the battlefield with his unbelievable use of the robot.

Even though the Filipino crowd wanted to support their team, they could not help but be amazed at the instant transformation of the guy with the slowest actions per minute in the all-star Russian squad into a battle “god.”

The match results came up, with a win for the Russians and a message saying that “You held more beacons than the enemy team.”

On the other side of things, the Filipino screen showed as follows, “Your time has run out. The enemy had the strategic advantage.”

Indeed, the conquest bar difference between the two teams was just 6 points, a testament to the strength of the squads.

With all its blitz and color, the match could have just been the grand finals of the game’s largest tournament.

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