The Tournament of the Underdog (Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1)

After witnessing Mihai defeat TheViper it felt like anything was possible. Yet just underneath the feeling of hopeful expectation was the rational response: what had just occurred was not replicable. As the saying goes, lightning never strikes the same place twice. If the ShenAiXie tournament had just witnessed one unbelievable upset, then surely another was even more unlikely.

The first set of the day featured Tatoh, a long-time top contender, and FreakinAndy, a player who had been making a name for himself with some respectable finishes in recent tournaments. Tatoh was a solid favorite, albeit not to the same level as TheViper had been the previous day, but still considered to be a tier above his competition. If TheViper and Mihai's matchup could be analogized as Superbowl XLII with TheViper playing the role of the 19-0 Patriots and Mihai the scrappy New York Giants then Tatoh and Andy's set could be compared to Superbowl LIII with Tatoh representing the old guard Patriots and Andy the young and talented L.A. Rams.

The draft went slightly in Andy's favor. Tatoh's first three picks, Saracens, Lithuanians, Mayans were absurdly strong, but Andy's last five picks were arguably better than Tatoh's. In other words, Andy's draft was more consistently good, whereas Tatoh had a lot of power packed into his top picks.

The first matchup of the set was Tatoh's Gurjaras vs Andy's Hindustanis. Andy had selected the Hindustanis in the first round of the draft, while Tatoh had selected the Gurjaras as his fourth pick. It was important that Andy win this first game, otherwise he would have used one of his top civs and not gotten the win, the AoE II version of not cashing in a check. This would leave Tatoh holding a distinct advantage in the set.

Going into the game it was clear based on the civ matchup that it would feature some odd unit compositions. Neither the Hindustanis nor the Gurjaras possess the powerful knight unit which has dominated the AoE II meta for years, but both civs are renowned for their powerful camels which ordinarily would be used to counter knights.