Mandatory maintains its place in the 2023 Ascension Play-Ins

The last chance tournament kicked off this Thursday for Mandatory. By finishing 2nd in the VCL Franceour team is obliged to play in Ascension Play-In 2023 if they are to qualify for the European league. After two extremely complicated BO1s, Mandatory narrowly finishes second in its group and stays in the tournament.

Mandatory vs Team Queso: a worrying setback

The evening started over an hour late, due to problems encountered during the group's first match. The pressure was on and the patience of the players was tested. Perhaps that's what played into our game against Team Queso on Haven.

Mandatory began in defence, but with the exception of a few flashes of brilliance from TheBigFiz, the team seemed much slower and more passive than usual. Team Queso were not the liveliest team we encountered, however, as they played a slow, methodical game, regularly putting the Spike down in the final moments. The Spaniards won the first side by a wide margin, with 9 rounds to 3. When Mandatory seemed to regain momentum, particularly with Goaster and kAdavra dominating the duels, it was too late and Queso only needed a short round to regain control of the game and win.

With a score of 6-13Mandatory found itself in a very unfortunate position. The only way to stay in the tournament was to beat Entreprise Esports. without letting them score more than 8 rounds. An extremely difficult task, especially as our players do not seem to be at their best.

Mandatory vs Entreprise Esports: no more room for error

The second match was also played on Havenbut this time with Mandatory on Attack to start. Although we needed to get as far ahead as possible in this phase, Entreprise Esports never let themselves get behind in the score. The side ended on a score of 6-6 and the Czech players needed just 3 rounds to win, while Mandatory needed 7 more.

The tension was palpable on the ZeratoR stream and in the Twitch chat, but our players were completely unaware that they could still qualify. That's because.., HyP explained after the match that he thought Entreprise only needed to score 6 rounds to eliminate Mandatory. After this 6th point, the Mandatory players started to give up and play without pressure until our coach CREA^ came to warn them. But this release of pressure, and the prospect of perhaps qualifying in the end, seems to have transcended the team.

While Haven clearly favours Attack, Mandatory manages to make the difference in Defence. Often just by the skin of their teeth, thanks in particular to some dazzling moves by TheBigFiz who saves the team on several occasions, backed up by HyPsometimes by AKUMAAAA and kAdavra. The score now stands at 12-8 for Mandatory, who have no choice but to win this round.

But this final round began so badly. Entreprise took over point C and found itself outnumbered with 4 players against TheBigFiz and Goaster. Fiz manages to take 3 to his grave to leave Goaster in a final duel against Cantzer. Although the GOAsTer was clearly at a disadvantage in terms of HP, weaponry and position, it still managed to make the kill and defuse the Spike. Mandatory then won the match and managed the feat of staying in the competition with 1 round to go.

The Play-In suite

By finishing second in its group, Mandatory finds itself in a new group comprising all the runners-up from this first phase. We'll have to play two more matches tomorrow to reach the final Play-In tree.

We will therefore face the Team Ra'ad (MENA) and S2G Esports (TR) in two new BO1s.

See you on Friday 23 June at 7.30pm on ZeratoR's Twitch channel to follow the match.