UNi beat another Finnish team, Cruciamentum in both final games. The first half of the finals ended up with a 2-0 victory for Clan United as they won cp_pro_granary 4-3 and cp_badlands 6-2. This game was easier for United since Cruciamentum missed a couple of important players from their lineup, namely Haza, kent and snap. As United came from the lower bracket, a second final was required and that was played on Monday.

The game started with pro_granary again and like in the first final, this map proved to be very tight. After 30 minutes the game was tied 3-3 and the teams moved to a golden cap extra round. UNi took this one decisively after killing the medic and most of Cruciamentums's team in the center battle. After this United had quite an easy task of securing the next two CPs as well before Cruciamentum had time to recover and ending the map in 4-3 victory for UNi.

The next map to be played was badlands and here Cruciamentum clearly had the upper hand. United managed to cap the center and C's second CP a couple of times, but they never managed to quite finish their attacks and Cruciamentums's last CP remained untouched. Cruciamentum had things well under control in this map and the end score of 4-0 left no second guessing.

Since both teams had won one map, cp_gravelpit was required as a decider round. In the final map, Clan United won both rounds with a very close margin thus took the title with final score 2-1.

Statement from humis{UNi}:

As some of you may know this was the last match for Clan United's TF2 section. Clan United started TF2 soon after the beta release. October 10th to be exact. Most of our players have played fortress games together for over 3 years. So this was, I think, the best possible way to end our journey. Playing in the finals of the ClanBase OpenCup Spring 2008.

With everyone knowing that it was our last game under UNi there was no problems finding the drive needed to win. Our first final match gave us enough confidence to believe we could pull off a victory in this too. I was very happy that we managed to get our "the one" lineup that had lasted from the beginning of our TF2 section.

Although a few in our lineup had been pretty inactive for the past months. In the first map cp_pro_granary we managed to pull a tight victory over Cruciamentum. We had a good drive through the whole map although there were a few "F*KK#"¤"#" moments due to lousy communication. The usual stuff. Eventually we managed to win the map after a golden cap round which was a completele over-run.

The second map was badlands which had for some strange reason been a very difficult map for us. IIRC we have never won Cruciamentum on it and this time it was no different. We controlled the center capture point for many times but we just didn't manage to take the last one to score. TBH they were just better than us.

So it was time for the tiebreaker on gravelpit. We were very confident due to our experience playing tiebreakers and managing to actually win them. Gravelpit started nicely and we pulled out a good time on the offencs. Our defense worked well and we managed to stop them at the last point C. Second round was pretty much the same. We scored in a decent time. It was our last defense round and Cruciamentum had all the pressure. Again we managed to defend the last point C although Cruciamentums snap was very close capping after killing three of our players in the tower. Luckily our scout Jambo saved the day by defending the point by taking out snap and securing our victory.

Like the Premier League final, the Second League final match was fought between two Finnish clans, H2 Team and Second to Last. S2L had won the first head to head game of these teams in the playoffs but H2 won the first final. S2L was missing some key players from this match, so it most likely affected them heavily. The second final was again S2L's show and this time H2 seemed to be asleep during the game. Bleah has written a detailed match report for the game on ClanBase:

The first level, cp_well went relatively smooth for S2L as they were able to grab the first point and build up from there each time, over powering H2 with speed, although they were able to hold S2L a lot of times by battling over the last point. Whereas S2L scouts would try to provoke the über from LosMs, the rest of the team was standing by to rush in with a Gainiz ready to release his über.

Badlands started out in the same way, albeit faster. H2 didn't give up and fought back resulting in 2 rounds, which unfortunately wasn't enough as S2L clearly were the better team.

I enjoyed watching all 3 matches and yes, skill can vary from day to day, depending on how much alcohol you've consumed, right Cut? Agreed.

Statement from [S2L]Nemppu:

IIn the end I feel every thing's fair and well. I was really bitter about the earlier final match, H2 ego-ing like they're better even though there was no real competition in that match to begin with. So in this match S2L had the setup we played with for the whole cup with and I think it showed :--)

I want to thank everyone who played in this cup, thanks for the games, I want to thank all the admins for making the cup happen, not forgetting shoutouts to ThePledge for great match coverages and giving me much love in his reports<3 ;D, but most of all I want to thank all the fellas in S2L for the spring, I had great times with you guys, made good friends and had a lot of fun learning to play this game together with you guys, thanks!

Statement from H2|CutMasta

Sad to end a good cup to a bad performance like this. Not trying to take anything away from S2L, but after the last final game that we won 10-1 (rounds), it seems everybody just thought we only need to show up to take this cup.. except for Tonza who didn't even show up

Having 4 players with a hangover (including myself, was partying both nights this weekend) we didn't seem to work as focused as a team and our squad was kinda soft in 1on1 situations as well. Having to replace Tonza with Pipelayah who hasn't played in many months, to a class that he hasn't played, didn't help at all.

Simply put, our game was a mess. S2L was clearly better team tonight, and they deserve the win. Congratulations.

I'm pretty certain we are going to stop or at least put H2 TF2 squad for a break also. H2 will be back in the next game (FEAR Project Origin). Thanks for the cup.

Congratulations to all the ranked teams! It's a shame to see three of these awesome clans quit TF2 but it seems that most of the players have already found new homes in other teams. Coming up next from Clanbase is the TF2 Multimode Summercup. Stay tuned for the hottest cup news in July!

Related:
CB TF2 Opencup
CB TF2 Summercup