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Titan fall in $1.3m Smite World Championship Final
Cognitive Prime take their place atop Mount Olympus as underdog story falls at final hurdle.
Cognitive Prime take first place
© Hi-Rez Studios
Smite's first World Championship ended with a legendary bang yesterday, but it wasn't quite the perfect fairytale ending some were hoping for.
The showdown between EU champions Titan – formerly known as amateur challengers Aquila – and Cognitive Prime resulted in victory for the Americans over their former European protégés as they claimed the $1.3 million grand prize. There was no love lost between these teams, though, as Titan's Hunter Nate "Ataraxia" Marks said after their loss, “it couldn’t have gone to a better team.”
Both teams’ route to the final could barely have been much different. Prime’s complete dominance began in the Kick-Off LAN almost a year ago, and has continued almost unabated since. Beating 404 Team Not Found in the first round, they then faced Titan in the third round where they bossed the Europeans into submission, sending them to the losers' bracket to fight for a place in the semi-finals. Prime then went on to put their stablemates, Cognitive Red, out to pasture with a 2-1 win in the semis to secure their grand final seats.
Titan’s start to the competition was decidedly more rocky. The big name sponsor and number one seed out of Europe masks their true roots. Having missed out on a spot in the Pro League (by a single place) Cognitive Aquila proved the standout upset of the season, making their way through the amateur “Challenger Cup” and the European Wildcard tournament to the EU Regionals.
The Regionals put their name on the board for some ostentatiously close comebacks, of which their win against Cloud9 – despite having one percent health remaining on their titan – has become something of a legend. And it was this legendary comeback potential that kept Titan in the tournament through some shaky times.
On their first match against Chinese team Oh My God, they looked set to be going home early before coming online in the late game with a farmed Kali, outlasting the Chinese early draft. Despite their loss, OMG are definitely a team to watch coming into next season given their performance against Titan and relative lack of experience in the game.
After taking the drop to the loser’s bracket from Prime, Titan went on to face the prospect of coming up against their European brothers, SK Gaming, in the Semis. SK had to make do with second place in the Regionals after a 2-0 sweep by Titan, so a score was waiting to be settled. Certainly the score seemed almost written already for SK, as in practice scrims last week they had lost only two out of 18 scrims against the boys in blue.
But as it came to pass, Titan proved they were capable of learning and adapting to use their opponent’s strategies against them. SK fell and Titan took their place in the finals. The rematch was on, the dream was real, but Prime had done some research of their own.
In true Titan fashion, they lost the first two matches of the best-of-five final after Prime banned out supports as opposed to carries. They had seen that Andreas “KanyeLife” Christmansson was a danger as the frost giant Ymir, or God of War Ares, and sought to take him out of the fight. The bans, completely unconventional for a North American team to consider, were successful. Without their initiation and crowd control ability, Titan could do nothing against the might of Cognitive Prime and, in particular, Andrew "Andinster" Woodward’s Thor.
But the third match, with their backs against the wall, saw a resurgence in form for Titan as they managed to sneak Ares through the draft. Capitalising on their newfound momentum, they took the next two matches to tie up the final. But catching onto their strategy, Prime removed Ares from the field in the last game, and Titan let Ao Kuang through and Sylvanus – previously respect banned in every match – fell into the hands of tree-riding expert Rosario “JeffHindla” Vilardi.
Over-compensating for JeffHindla on his favourite God, Titan forced too many engagements in order to shut him down, feeding the rest of Prime too many kills. The Cinderella story died at the claws and jaws of the Chinese dragon, Ao Kuang, and Prime reached out to grab the hammer of the Gods trophy – and that equally heavy cheque for $1.3 million. Still, the performance of many teams over the weekend makes the prospect of Season 2 very exciting, along with a brand new Conquest map on the way, with its changes and NPCs. No doubt about it, we’ll be visiting Mount Olympus again very soon.
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