At the end of the BOTC league last year, the final three teams were Entropy Gaming, Brazen and UbS.Saints, in that order. Going into this year’s final we saw Pantheon (formerly known as Entropy Gaming) having to beat Brazen twice in order to retain their BOTC crown.

This challenged turned out to be two victories too many. Brazen has only lost one game throughout the league, and emerged victorious over their opponents Pantheon with the final score-line reading 13 -9, after a tense final on the map Crash.

Going into the final, it was vital for both of the teams to win the knife round as that would essentially allow them to pick the map which the final was played on. Despite a close knife round, Brazen emerged with two players still unscathed and elected to choose the last map, as opposed to picking sides on the chosen map. Pantheon then proceeded to eliminate both Strike and District, while Brazen elected to eliminate Crossfire and Backlot. This was a fairly fortuitous turn of events for Brazen, as leading up to the final they had spent a substantial amount of time practicing on Crash.

Although they had the map of their choice, Brazen were forced to start on Attack, as Pantheon picked defense – the more favored of the two sides on Crash. Unlike many previous games, Brazen started the game with a very slow (by their standards) attack strategy. This appeared to backfire as Pantheon took both the first and second rounds fairly easily. Brazen’s strategy began to pay off in the third round as they were able to pick off a number of the Pantheon players and thus take the round. The team repeated this and took the fourth round, essentially setting the scene for the remainder of the half. The back and forth tussle resulted in a half time score of 6-6, with Brazen already being clear favorites to come out the winner.

This was put in doubt by Pantheon’s successful attack in the first round. However, the doubt didn’t last long as Brazen put their stamp of the authority on the game, with Blackout really finding his feet in the second half and proceeding to decimate many of Pantheon’s pushes towards A bombsite. Although Pantheon worked hard, they were only rewarded with only two of the following nine rounds. A last desperate B rush by Pantheon with the score on 12-9 in Brazen’s favour sealed their fate, with Brazen quickly adjusting to their strategy and decimating the team in and around the narrow B corridor.

With this victory by Brazen, they now control the champion positions on all three major online leagues in South Africa – the iGame Intel League, The Do-Gaming AGASA league and the Incredible Connection BOTC league. Consequently, they firmly cement their place as the number one Call of Duty 4 side in the country going into the rAge LAN.

The team line-ups for the final were as follows:

Brazen

•    Sean “r0adrunner” Grobler (SMG)
•    Michael “Bl4ck0ut” Ferguson (SMG)
•    Stephen “Vitrolic” White (Assault)
•    Steyn “Vindicator” Grobler (Assault)
•    Max “fAiTH” Mclaughlin (Sniper)

Pantheon

•    David “Number” Guimaraes (SMG/Assault)
•    Hayden “Pooks” Huntington (SMG)
•    Kevin “Privacy” Woodland (Assault)
•    Gary “Craolia” Noble (SMG/Assault)
•    Chris “Evax” Noble (Sniper)