Three days passed quickly, and the eleventh season's team competition finally officially kicked off.
At 6:30 pm on April 4, the members of the Nirvana team arrived at the official venue in advance after dinner. Today is the first day of the team competition, and two matches are scheduled. The first match is between Fenghua and Sanctuary in Group A, and the second match is between Judgment and Nirvana in Group B.
The first match was a sure win. The Sanctuary had been complacent for years and had long since fallen from grace. Today, the Sanctuary was not even a second-rate team, and certainly could not compare to the powerful Fenghua.
On the surface, Tang Muzhou never said a bad word about the Holy Land - he only took action.
Every time Feng Hua meets Sheng Yu, he is never polite and always uses the simplest, cleanest and most efficient tactics to resolve the battle in 10 minutes and completely crush the opponent. In the eyes of fans, Tang Shen's way of using actual actions to vent his master's anger is simply too cool!
The game started at 7 o'clock and ended at 2:0 at 7:30.
This caught Hsieh Ming-che off guard. The first match ended too quickly, and there was still half an hour left. He couldn't let the commentator chat for half an hour, or the audience would be upset.
So the race director came to inform: the second race will start early.
When two games are scheduled on the same day, the start time of the second game will be adjusted according to the end time of the first game. This situation is also very common. Xie Mingzhe and his teammates had to quickly prepare for the game.
After the match, Tang Muzhou returned to the backstage, walked to the Nirvana preparation area, and whispered to Xie Mingzhe, "Are you confident in the referee's decision?"
Xie Mingzhe smiled calmly: "Having confidence or not is different from whether you can win or not. I will try my best."
Tang Muzhou liked the way he was always full of energy. Looking at the brilliant smile on his junior brother's face, Tang Muzhou looked gentle, took out a mint candy with exquisite packaging from his pocket and handed it to him, saying, "Take one, it will refresh you."
Xie Mingzhe took the mint candy and put it in his mouth. The cool mint flavor immediately made him energetic. He gave Tang Muzhou a thumbs up and praised: "Master was also watching the game today. You played so well in the match against the Holy Land just now. Master must be very pleased!"
"He doesn't mind whether the Holy Land wins or loses. He came here mainly to see you. Perform well later." Tang Muzhou gently put his arm around his junior brother's shoulders and gave him some encouragement. "Today's game, all other clubs came to watch. The official also arranged the best commentary. It really gave Nirvana enough face."
Just at this moment, the big screen was turned to the audience seats, and Xie Mingzhe indeed found many familiar faces - Lao Zheng, Ling Shen, Ye Zhu, Pei Jingshan, etc. They did not have any competitions arranged today, so they came to the scene as spectators. It seems that everyone is looking forward to Nirvana's first team battle show.
Xie Mingzhe took a deep breath and thought to himself that he must not mess up Nirvana's debut. Regardless of winning or losing, at least the game must be played well. He couldn't be like the Holy Land just now, where he was completely defeated by Fenghua without any chance to fight back. That would be too embarrassing.
***
At the game, two familiar faces appeared in the commentary booth.
The beautiful female commentator wearing a professional suit skirt and long straight hair smiled sweetly at the camera and said, "Good evening, everyone. I am Wu Yue, the commentator for this game!"
The male commentator next to him was also dressed in a suit and had a handsome face: "I am the official commentator Liu Chen."
Wu Yue said: "We will explain the next match between Judgment and Nirvana together. I believe the audience is looking forward to this match because it is the first teamfight show of Nirvana team!"
Liu Chen said: "From the results of the pre-match predictions, 70% of the netizens predicted that Nirvana would win 2:0, 25% predicted that the two sides would tie 1:1, and the remaining 5% predicted that Nirvana would win 2:0. What do you think, Yue Jie?"
Wu Yue smiled sweetly: "As a commentator, I don't want to offend anyone. I will vote for both sides. Team competitions are a test of team cooperation. I am also looking forward to Nirvana's performance tonight! The time is almost up, let's invite the players from both sides to play!"
The inspiring official theme song resounded throughout the venue. Amid the audience's enthusiastic applause, the four judges and the four Nirvanas walked onto the big stage from different aisles and stood side by side.
This is the first time that everyone sees all the members of Nirvana appear in their team uniforms.
With a white background, red patterns and Nirvana emblem, this uniform looks simple and elegant - mainly because the four members of Nirvana are all good-looking. When Xie Mingzhe puts on the uniform, he looks like a sunny and handsome school idol. Chen Xiao, Yu Ke and Qin Xuan have different styles, but they all look good!
Even Yu Ke's baby face is particularly cute in the eyes of fans.
Fans who came to the scene to cheer held up the posters and screamed excitedly. There were also many people licking the screen in the live broadcast room, and many fans were spamming the screen: "Nirvana's team uniforms are so beautiful, can they be sold online so that fans can buy them and wear them!" "Can Nirvana set up a peripheral mall? I want to buy Azhe's cards!" "I want to buy Brother Chen's dark plant entity card, so that I can summon Black Rose at home and look super cool!"
When Chi Yingying saw these comments, she took the things about the surrounding mall to heart and planned to discuss it with everyone later.
In the arena, amid warm applause, the two players simply shook hands and walked back to their respective swivel chairs.
After the referee confirmed the gaming equipment of all the players, he pulled the eight players directly into the official competition channel, and the game footage also appeared on the big screen.
The live broadcast mode of the new season has changed a lot. In addition to the main screen with a bird's-eye view of the overall situation, there are eight split screens around it, representing the first-person perspectives of eight players. The audience on site and fans in the online live broadcast room can see many perspectives at the same time, and understand the details of the game more intuitively and comprehensively.
At this time, the main screen shows the two sides drawing lots. The referee draws the blue side and has priority in choosing the map.
Nie Yuandao chose the latest map submitted by the refereeing club this season, called "Endless Sand".
As the map was submitted, a system prompt immediately appeared in front of everyone in Nirvana: "Because the opponent has selected a new scene map, the next five minutes of map real-life playback time will begin. Please observe carefully."
In order to ensure the fairness of the competition, when some new maps appear for the first time, the opponents will have up to 5 minutes to adapt to the map, and can move around in the map to familiarize themselves with the terrain and various negative states. In addition, new maps are not allowed to appear in the playoffs. All new maps submitted by clubs this season must be used in the regular season stage so that other clubs can get familiar with them as soon as possible.
The difficulty of judging this map lies in the perspective.
Xie Mingzhe soon discovered this, because as soon as he entered the map, he was blown into the face by a dust storm.
Endless Sand is a desert scene with extremely strong winds and sand. The endless desert looks particularly vast at first, but every time the wind blows, a sandstorm will sweep in, drastically reducing the players' visible range. The sandstorm will also bring with it the negative status of "silence on the entire map", making all cards unable to use skills.
Yu Ke's face was covered with sand, and he couldn't help but complain: "Just keep silent, why do you want to blow the sand?"
Chen Xiao smiled and said, "It's harder to fight than a simple silence map. The sandstorm has a huge impact on our vision. We can only see within a 10-meter range when it blows. The judge can completely block the time when the wind blows, allowing the beasts to launch a surprise attack."
There are more melee cards in the Judgement deck, and all attacks are close-range, so 10 meters of visibility is enough for them. But Nirvana's deck has many long-range targeted skills, and they can't hit at all if the vision is blocked by the sand.
Xie Mingzhe used the short 5 minutes to quickly familiarize himself with the map and think about strategy - although the referee's home court was difficult to play, they couldn't just surrender! They still had to deal with it seriously.
After the scene is played, both parties reveal their decks.
The Judge's deck was composed entirely of animals, including the beast cards that Nie Yuandao was good at, the bird cards that Shan Lan was good at, Shao Dongyang's big beast and small beast summoning cards, and some healing and status auxiliary cards brought by the newcomer Li Jiu.
This newcomer made it to the quarterfinals in the Masters Tournament. As an assistant trained by Nie Shen, he is indeed quite capable to make it to the quarterfinals in a one-on-one match. Xie Mingzhe will not underestimate him just because he is a newcomer.
Comparatively speaking, Nirvana's deck is more messy.
Since the deck of Zhu Bajie and Tang Monk was only used at Huoyan Mountain's home court, there was no need to reveal the tactics in advance when playing away. Therefore, in the first game, Xie Mingzhe followed his master's arrangement and sent out a large number of Chen Xiao's dark plant cards, forming a wood-based team battle deck consisting of 10 plants. He and Xiao Ke took the gold-based critical hit cards and the earth-based ghost cards respectively.
Seeing Nirvana's deck, commentator Wu Yue analyzed seriously: "From the deck, Judgment is still a frontal attack style, and Nirvana... Chen Xiao's plant cards, Xie Mingzhe's gold critical cards, Xiao Ke's joker cards are also loss cards. Among the cards released, the proportion of loss cards is more than 70%. It seems that this is a head-on confrontation?"
"In a head-on confrontation, it's hard to beat Judgement on a map like this with silence effects." Male commentator Liu Chen said seriously, "Nirvana must have a few healing cards hidden in their backhand, otherwise, they'll probably be wiped out in one go."
The commentator's analysis is exactly what the audience is worried about.
Although there are many new fans of Nirvana who like the looks, most of the fans who like Fat Uncle and Chen Xiao initially liked them because of their cards and competitive skills. Therefore, 70% of the fans can understand the team competition. Nirvana's deck is indeed worrying!
But judging from the live broadcast screen, Xie Mingzhe looked calm and composed, not nervous at all, with a smile on his face.
I hope he won’t be tortured too badly by Nie Shen… fans are praying in their hearts.
The game begins.
Nie Shen was indeed quick and efficient. He summoned a large number of beasts at the beginning. Lions, wolves, tigers, leopards, and bears all pounced on Chen Xiao's plant cards. Shan Lan's bird cards responded in the air, and the Ice Phoenix's group freezing directly froze a large area!
The coordination between this pair of masters in air attack and land combat is simply amazing!
Shao Dongyang, the third player of Nirvana, is also very powerful. His method of summoning small beasts with big beasts allows him to take advantage of every opportunity to assist Nie Yuandao in attacking the opponent's core cards. His small beasts are scattered everywhere, which is really a headache.
For a moment, Nirvana was completely suppressed. Nie Yuandao, Shan Lan and Shao Dongyang cooperated with each other and killed Chen Xiao's two group attack cards, Black Mage and Black Rose, at an extremely fast speed. Qin Xuan couldn't even use his healing skills, which shows how fast the Judgement's concentrated fire speed is!
For the first time, Xie Mingzhe personally experienced the terrifying power of Nie Shen's command. The speed of reaction was simply a race against time!
The situation in a large-scale group battle is chaotic, but the commander's mind must not be confused.
Xie Mingzhe took a deep breath and quickly calmed down, letting Qin Xuan use his control skills - Fuxi's fishing net fell from the sky, followed by a large-scale chaotic Bagua formation!
Two skills landed accurately in succession, causing 10 melee cards to be confused, and the beasts began to bite each other!
Xie Mingzhe said: "Hit him!"
Taking advantage of the brief few seconds of group control time, Chen Xiao, Yu Ke and Xie Mingzhe went out at the same time.
All output skills were used at once, hoping to quickly kill the opponent's fragile output card. However, Nie Yuandao was very smart, as if he had expected this trick. The moment the melee output card was controlled, he immediately summoned the unicorn black rhino and cooperated with the brown bear controlled by his teammates. The two super thick-skinned cards rushed to the front and forced taunting, absorbing all damage within the range.
This wave of Nirvana's attack only killed two of the Judgement's taunt cards, greatly reducing the effect.
Immediately afterwards, a sandstorm struck, silencing the entire map. Nirvana's cards could not be used and he had to retreat quickly.
This match was extremely difficult. Although Xie Mingzhe found several opportunities to counterattack, they were all quickly resolved by Nie Yuandao. In the final analysis, it was still a gap in command awareness, and Xie Mingzhe lost convincingly.
The first game ended at 8 minutes. Nirvana was unable to resist the violent attack of the Judge. Xie Mingzhe looked at the "failure" pop-up on the screen and felt helpless. He still had to study carefully how to play the Judge's home court. Next time he encountered a silent map, maybe he should try to let Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying play.
At the scene, Nirvana’s fans all looked a little depressed. It was a very uncomfortable feeling to be defeated head-on!
But why is Xie Mingzhe still smiling?
He clearly lost the first game, but why is this guy still smiling so happily?
In fact, Xie Mingzhe was not happy. No one likes to lose.
But he was the commander today. If he looked depressed, his teammates would feel even more pressured. So he could only pretend to smile and encourage his teammates: "Don't lose heart. There's still the next game. Give them a surprise!"