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Everything that happened at Red Bull Flick Helsinki Invitational 2021
From upsets to quickscopes to jump pads: here's everything that transpired at the high-octane Red Bull Flick Helsinki Invitational.
It's fantastic to have the fans back once again as the Red Bull Flick Invitational 2021 kicked off in Helsinki, Finland, over the weekend. Over the course of two days, we saw teams of pros go head-to-head with not just each other, but sets of highly skilled amateur players, as they battled it out to see who could be crowned the champion and get their hands on the grand prize of €20,000.
Pairs of players went head-to-head in the unique and exciting Red Bull Flick game mode, where teams of two fight on futuristic, alternate-universe battlegrounds, attempting to deplete the enemy's tickets before their own. Any time not spent on one of the map's three capture points slowly depleted tickets and any death – whether by the enemy or your own hand – leads to the loss of a ticket.
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Day One
The first day started with an upset, as hometown heroes PardiPojad trumped OG (which included fellow Finnish player Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen), featuring the tournament's first knife kill, as Puteli descended from the heavens to finish off Aleksib to the delight of the crowd. It was clear from this moment on that it wasn't going to be as easy as expected for the professional players.
Out of the six professional duos, only Team Spirit's Viktor 'somedieyoung' Orudzhev and Boris 'magixx' Vorobyev advanced to the playoffs with a 3-1 record. What was most apparent about the split between the pros and amateurs was the level of comfort and skill the amateurs had with the movement mechanics and opportunities available on the maps. Where the pros shift-walked to mask their position, the amateurs surfed and launched themselves across the map before their opponents had a chance to react.
The highlight performance of day one has to go to Tarlea 'lauNX-' Laurentiu from Team doggonogog against FURIA, who was not only flying and fragging with ease, but also managed to spawn-kill the Brazilians multiple times. But one of the loudest crowd moments of the day was when 8Juho8 gave Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovač a taste of his own medicine with a tasty one-tap. The G2 star clearly took that to heart, as he followed up with a literal 360 degree quickscope moments later in the match.
NiKo's theatrics were one-upped later in the day, though, by his fellow pro Kaike 'KSCERATO' Cerato, who pulled out a monstrous quickscope flick, followed by a no-scope that would make the highlight reels of any player's tournament.
The Red Bull Flick Helsinki 2021 Invitational stage in all its glory
© Victor Engström / Red Bull Content Pool
Day Two
The second day began once again with an upset of sorts, with Team DepressionDuo claiming a 3-1 victory over day one standouts Serban 'CHANKY-' Bogdan and lauNX. The third and final round was probably the tightest of any round in the entire tournament, with only a single point separating the two teams as they both raced to the recently changed capture point – tragedy truly struck in that moment for doggonogog.
LauNX's movement crown was usurped by Mateusz 'mmati-' Knapik of Team swiiiry, who provided the two best clips of the playoff stage. Against PardiPojad on Wing:5 Flux, he launched himself to the top of the central structure, allowing him to efficiently pick off the two enemies below, with neither having a chance of hitting him. Then, against Team Spirit in the lower bracket final, mmati- gave somedieyoung in-game whiplash by what can only be described as pinballing across the map to get an easy FAMAS frag.
Unfortunately there was no glamorous lower bracket run, as Team Spirit met PardiPojad once again in the grand final, but thankfully it was an excellent match-up that went the whole distance. The Finnish amateurs were unable to mirror their heroics in the tournament's opening match once again by defeating a pro duo, with Spirit emerging triumphant in the final round of the final map against the hometown heroes. But both Alec 'Puteli' Kolvanen and Julius 'blaze-_-_-' Leppaniemi should be more than proud of their performances over the past two days, coming just one round away from being crowned the Red Bull Flick Invitational 2021 winners.
Team Spirit take the trophies after a thrilling run through the playoffs
© Victor Engström / Red Bull Content Pool
Not only do Team Spirit get to call themselves champions and revel in their performance relative to the other pro teams, but they get to claim victory in a time of uncertainty. This was the last time we'll see somedieyoung sport the colours of Team Spirit for the foreseeable future – a team which he has been a part of for nearly four years now – so it was great to see him rise to the top in his last stand.
