Gambit was out for blood during VCT EMEA playoffs. They came back from being sent to the lower bracket by Acend to win the entire thing! One of the key factors of their victory was their impressive CT sides, specifically on Ascent. During the event, they averaged a 78% win rate on their Ascent defense. (in contrast, they averaged an abysmal 32% win rate on their attack.) How did this Russian god squad dominate here? To try and find an answer to this I compiled a few tidbits and tendencies I saw from them during their three most recent wins on the map in their EMEA playoffs campaign.
Pistol Rounds
Gambit won 5/5 defense pistol rounds on ascent during the event. In three of their ascent games they played for retake on A, leaving Cypher and Jett holding in garden. They left omen and sage bottom mid and market with a Cypher cam, and had Sova anchor B. Sova recons B main early in all of these matches. If Sage wants to rotate towards A, she always reclears mid and walls it off. During their game vs G2 and their first game vs Acend they played the pistol round completely differently than the other three by getting aggressive. In the G2 match they left cypher to anchor B and crunched mid, and they had one player push down B main and A main consecutively in the Acend game. When they had to retake they overran the site, won their duels, and just overall traded well.
(the pistol setup they used in 3/5 of their ascent games)
Early Round Protocol and Mid Rounds
Gambit is always doing something proactive at the start of a round, and sometimes two things at the same time. They will swing out with a one-way smoke A main, have their Jett player D3FFO peek tiles from arch or peek top mid from cat, or recon and drone B main. Occasionally they will drone Sheydos into B main for him to wall it. after playing for early info they won’t get aggressive for it mid-round. Instead, they will whittle down the clock and wait for the attackers to do something first. With this approach they rarely let a man advantage be thrown and I rarely saw any overextension. I also noticed that they never gave up garden control even when tree and catwalk was contested because of how integral it is to the structure of their A retakes.
Retakes
Like I mentioned above, Gambit is a team that doesn’t hunt for much engagement mid-round and often will play for retakes off of their anchors dying. I feel like this works so well because they have high confidence that nAts or chronicle will lock down their sites and put them in a 4v3. Even if they’re left to an 4v4 retake or one with a numbers deficit they can seemingly win them all. Gambit plays them very methodically and will burst onto a site with solid trading and just good aim/isolation of duels. A lot of times you will see lower-tier teams play these slower retakes with no thought to it and end up being on a clip reel but not Gambit. They have set protocol and order such as chronicle always setting up his recon/drone from heaven.
D3FFO’s OP peeks
To be honest, D3FFO wasn’t much of a stand-out player during their VCT run but the way his team played around his OP in some rounds to create pressure helped a lot. He was mostly around mid and his most common peeks were:
Tiles peek from Catwalk
(He also pushed up to peek top mid in a few rounds, but this was rare.)
Top Mid/Tiles Peek from Arch
Like most good OPs he had variance in his play and liked to float around to both sites. He also threw in the occasional aggressive peek but he mostly was focused on mid control.
Cypher Cam tendencies
Now, this isn’t an exact thing but I want to point out how they play off Cypher cams. They like to peek off them getting a tag or just general info and it leads to quite a few kills such as this round. I recall seeing similar setups during their split match vs Liquid.
Other Notes
- Regdar’s positioning: His rounds are fairly consistent but sometimes he just randomly switches it up and does something unpredictable, like picking up arch and taking fights, playing cat with a judge, or playing odd angles.
-Odin spam: Chronicle is also a more static player when he’s doing his B setup but he occasionally will substitute his early B main recon with this and even has had a player push up off of it like they would with his drone. I’m not fully sure if this is actually part of their game plan or if he just does it when he feels like it though.
-Setup variance: They usually are playing the same positions and default round but they sometimes switch it up completely, usually based on what they want to do with an OP. They always seem to go into these rounds with an idea in mind as well.