In a match that can be only described as the battle of the giants, the Get Nailed Overwatch league concluded on the 16th with PnX Syndicate coming out as the victors, dethroning arch-rivals nA Blackwatch to claim their spot at the top.
The rivalry definitely lived up to be what we all expected, both teams preparing for and analyzing the opponents to figure out their core strategies and their inherent weaknesses. We had a special opportunity to catch up with Venuja ‘Cybertek’ Silva who shared his insights on all four maps to help showcase just how close all the games were.
“ In terms of hero picks, Blackwatch likes to run 2-2-2 a typical comp of 2 DPS heroes, 2 Supports and 2 tanks. In Blackwatch’s case, generally, they ran one projectile DPS,(known as Phara, played by Falca) and one hitscan DPS (Soldier 76 and Mcree) played by Bouncy Knight as for tanks they ran what is called a “Dive Composition” of tanks, Winston (Madhu22) and DVA (Preebashan),these tanks are favoured because of their mobility and their ability to harass backline supports on the opposing team and focus down key DPS threats and create space for Falca and Bouncyknight by drawing fire. Syndicate ran a similar comp, Falsegod on the Phara and Yato on the Mcree, the only difference being that the tanks on Syndicate featured a Reinhardt and DVA, so a semi Dive comp, mostly using the Reinhardt to protect backlines and establish point control. Both team share a common interest; a combo called the phamercy combo, where the Phara gets a pocketed heal from a support called Mercy.
On the first map, Lijang Tower, Blackwatch was able to reign supreme because their win condition was to shut down Yato’s Mcree through the coordination of Madhu and Preebashan on the Winston and DVA, if that was done, Falca’s Phara would be uncontested,allowing him to just drop damage because one projectile from Phara does 120 damage and when damage boosted does a massive 150. However, with the new roster changes to Blackwatch,especially the tank line up, it made their win condition harder to achieve because there was a lack of coordination between the Winston and DVA and they were unable to shutdown Yato’s Mcree completely, which was a problem for Falca’s Phara. However, Syndicate forgot about the other DPS threat which was Bouncy Knight and became so focused on shutting down Falca that they left Bouncy Knight uncontested,allowing him to more than make up for the slack left by his other DPS core being shut down. The map went in favour of Blackwatch because of clutch plays from Bouncy, allowed by Falca drawing so much fire, Syndicate still put up a strong fight because of individual plays made by Acelord, Nishastic and Yato in the first map.
On to the second map. Junker town was all about which team had the better sniper, but Syndicate ran the unconventional double sniper pick of Hanzo and Widowmaker . BouncyKnight was able to come ahead with the widow 1v1 duel but False God’s Hanzo was left uncontested allowing a clutch victory of the first checkpoint. On the second checkpoint, Falca’s Genji and Bouncy’s Widow as well as the tanks of Blackwatch were able to hold Syndicate off for most of the pushes but Acelord’s DVA bomb at the last second lost them the second checkpoint but Blackwatch was still able to hold off Syndicate at the third checkpoint. Blackwatch decided to attack with a classic dive comp with a Widowmaker and with the momentum of the first picks that Bouncy took in the team fights, Blackwatch was able to push the first 2 checkpoints with relative ease with good plays by the healers of Blackwatch keeping the team alive in key teamfights to keep the steamroll going. However at the last checkpoint, Blackwatch got sloppy and ignored a Winston with primal rage,being played by Nishastic, who was able to use his ultimate along with his health pool of 1000HP, keeping the payload contested long enough to let Acelord come in with a DVA bomb which wiped most of Blackwatch, allowing Syndicate to clean up and clinch the map victory. A special mention must go out to a sleep dart from Dogam’s Ana that shut down Falca’s Pharah,not allowing him to contribute to the final team fight.
The third map was Horizon Lunar Colony, Blackwatch was able to absolutely dominate this map solely because of crucial first picks made by BouncyKnight on his signature Widowmaker, Blackwatch ran a Widow and Phara and their normal dive comp with Winston and DVA and by taking the crucial first picks the rest of Blackwatch was able to play cleanup crew on Syndicate because the combined pick offs by Falca and Bouncy meant Syndicate had no backline supports. Building on their past momentum, they were able to snowball the second point capture as well because Blackwatch did more work and damage in the first point than Syndicate leading to Blackwatch having an upper hand in terms of the ultimate economy and with the help of a rocket barrage from Falca, Blackwatch was able to seal the deal for their attack, having a whopping 5 minutes remaining in their time bank if they had to do a retake in round 3, if it even got to that point. With that card in their arsenal Blackwatch went forth about their defence; the first point was lost relatively quickly due to a crucial pick off by Yato onto Falca’s Genji,crucial because Blackwatch opted out of playing a Mercy for the first point, thus denying the resurrect ability, giving Syndicate the first point.
The second point was a different story however; the tide was changed simply because of BouncyKnight being uncontested on his Widow, where he shutdown teamfight after team fight with his picks and even made Yato swap from a Widow to a Genji,sending a message, because when an enemy Widow loses the duel and swaps to Genji to hard counter you.. that just becomes personal man. Mad props to the healers of Blackwatch for keeping their tanks and DPS up to allow them to stay alive through the 1v1s, however, on the back of another clutch DVA ult by Acelord, Syndicate was able to capture both points, but in overtime, this gave them the disadvantage as per assault map rules; if a team defends until overtime, in the third round the defending team (if they have a higher time bank) gets to attack and they just need 25% of capture progress on Point A to win the map. Blackwatch was able to get the job done with a good dive by the tanks of Blackwatch separating the backline from the front, from there it was just a game of divide and conquer.
Moving onto the final map, it started out as Blackwatch on Defence and Syndicate on attack on the map Kings Row, which is a hybrid map that it involves capturing a point from the defenders and pushing it all the way through 3 checkpoints
Blackwatch went for the “Meta Pick” for that map as Madhu22 played Zarya and Prebashan Played Reinhardt, these tanks are signature for this map because the attackers come through a small choke point and Reinhardt can deny entrance through the choke using his shield and Zarya can use her energy bubbles to get charged from the damage the opposing team puts on the Reinhardt which is a very strong syngergybut this comp requires great coordination while taking the brawl to Syndicate and that is where Blackwatch failed. At the first point they let Syndicate through the choke and backing off hoping to take the fight to them on the point however the Zarya lacked the charge early game and great plays from Nishastic, who was able to just massacre with his aggression, lead to the first point capture. The second point was lost by Blackwatch due to their lackluster ultimate management, the Zarya graviton was wasted without any follow up, allowing Syndicate to win the second checkpoint with superior ultimate management and crucial picks.
The third point was easily captured by Syndicate as well because Blackwatch did not have any way of stabilizing the fight with Nishastic being so aggressive on the attack, denying any counter efforts by Blackwatch, Syndicate was able to push with 4 minutes remaining in the time bank.
For Attack, Blackwatch decided enough was enough, they ran their strongest picks as they did in map 1 with BouncyKnight on the Widow but Syndicate had played 4 maps with them and knew this was coming, so to answer this they played a Junkrat and Soldier for area denial, the Junkrat denies space for the dive tanks by simply blowing them up with his grenades if they come close to him while Yato made sure to keep Falca’s Phara in check with his Soldier.Syndicate also opted to play out of the sight lines of BouncyKnight making it difficult for him to get picks to get an advanatge in teamfights, however Blackwatch was able to crack this defense by identifying the backline of Syndicate and cracking down on it and allowing Falca to clean up with some good anti heal nades coming from Fifty. Great work was done by Sleepy in keeping his team alive through the Junkrat’s damage
Syndicate took so much time from Blackwatch who were already behind on time, the second point was further stalled by keep riptires from FalseGod which completely shut down 2 individual ULT invested pushes from Blackwatch,however with the help of Falca’s clutch rocket barrages they were able to push the second and third point
Onto the final moments.
Round 3
Blackwatch was on attack again.They had 1 minute to do the impossible;capture the point and get the payload far enough that they could defend it from Syndicate in the 4th round. This was a game of first picks with Madhu22 and Preebashan stepped up to the plate by securing kill after kill on the backline of Syndicate and eventually obtaining the point.
During the push phase ,Blackwatch was on overtime, meaning if they leave the payload, overtime runs out and their attack was over. Syndicate knew this would happen and they had Falsegod on the Junkrat at the start to make sure if the opportunity presented itselfthey would use Falsegod’s riptire to completely blow up Blackwatch again, denying their push this is exactly what happened. The riptire came in and killed most of Blackwatch, leaving the rest of Syndicate to clean up.
The final part was Syndicates’ attack, it must be pointed out that Syndicate could take their attacks slowly because they had 4 minutes in the bank, which is what they did. They took some damage, built ultimates and let Nishastic run wild with his Reinhardt and Syndicate captured the point with 2 minutes remaining to push less than 200 meters .This do or die for Blackwatch.
Blackwatch had to use 4 Ultimates, to shut down one push from Syndicate with 2 minutes in the time bank left.
With no defensive support ultimate,Blackwatch knew they would be vulnerable, however Falca shutdown another Syndicate push alone with his rocket barrage, but Blackwatch had lost all their cards and Syndicate still had most of theirs.
A quick combination of a riptire and DVA bomb left Blackwatch shattered and lost them the match .“
We congratulate PnX Syndicate on achieving this feat which is in every word the equivalent to scaling the highest mountain and reaching the top besting the reigning champions. We wish both team the best of luck moving forward and hope to some more exciting Overwatch action
