CMU’s Competitive E-Sports team, nicknamed “The Stegos and Toads,” traveled to Denver on Nov. 15 and 16 for the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Series LAN tournament. On the final day of the event, after a seven-game closing match, The Stegos and Toads took home the win in Overwatch 2 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Throughout the two days of competition, The Stegos and Toads matched up against players from Colorado University (CU) Boulder–which offers its students scholarship funding for E-Sports–the University of Wyoming, Fort Lewis College, Colorado State University (CSU) Pueblo and the Air Force Falcons.
According to players from The Stegos and Toads, Overwatch 2’s meta-play styles constitute three different sub-categories: dive, brawl and poke. The brawl style is when a team groups tightly together to sustain damage, mitigate incoming damage through healing and overwhelm enemy players.
The counter to that playstyle is dive, wherein the opposing team coordinates mobile and powerful characters to disrupt the brawl strategy.
“We just felt like we were surrounded. When you’re playing against a really good dive team, it feels like there’s nothing you can do,” fifth year public accounting major Everett Rogers said.
Rogers holds 3,000 hours of playtime in Overwatch 2 and noted that CU Boulder’s team-composition was excellent at dive.
“Boulder had a really strong dive, and they knew how to play it well,” Rogers said.
The final style of poke is a long-range variant of the dive playstyle. When a dive strategy would encourage a close, fast counter-attack, poke would include a slower, long-ranged counter that attempts to shut down the opposing side’s advance. The Stegos and Toads has specialized not in focusing on any one of these strategies, but adapting to all three.
Lindsey Chaskelis, a biology graduate and current coach of The Stegos and Toads, has 1,500 hours of playtime in Overwatch 2. Chaskelis further explained the game mechanics of Overwatch 2’s winning objectives.
“Ilios is a point-control map. It’s like King of the Hill. Your team tries to hold onto a specific part of the map for as long as possible, while the other team attempts to take it from you,” Chaskelis said.
During the tournament, the Overwatch 2 team that lost the preceding round could pick the next map, and ban one hero character from the opposing side. Chaskelis further elaborated on The Stegos and Toads’ efforts to beat CU Boulder’s dive strategy with these conditions in mind.
“We knew that if we banned their Lúcio, we could weaken their Genji,” Chaskelis said.
Lúcio is a support hero in Overwatch 2 and can heal team members after they have taken damage, while Genji is a damage hero who is primarily responsible for defeating enemies and engaging with the point on any given map.
The Stegos and Toads’ technique focused not on mastery of all the unique map compositions, but instead to force the opposing side into strategies they were unfamiliar with. This approach eventually caused problems for the team.
“Overtime was where everything fell apart,” Rogers said. “With all respect to my teammates, I made a bad play. Some other players made bad plays, too.”
Following this error, CU Boulder was able to regain the lead, capturing two points during overtime. The round-based scores favored CU Boulder during half-time at two to three points.
“After losing King’s Row, we needed a mental rebound,” Rogers said. “We had to reset the momentum.”
This loss on a familiar map set high stakes for the players of The Stegos and Toads team going into a tie-breaker round. CU Boulder’s morale was noticeably high following their round win, and the CMU players remember hearing cheers from the opposing side of the arena.
Going into the tournament defining match, Chaskelis gathered the team to hear a game plan.
“They took us to Hollywood, a map we had little-to-no practice on. I told everyone, ‘You guys either give everything here, or we go home sad.’ This was it, and we knew it,” Chaskelis said. “We defended first and managed to full hold them, not even letting them get any percentage on the point. By the time our defense was done, we knew we had won. It only took one fight for us to win, and we knew we had done it. I remember the shock of winning, after such a hard fight to get to map seven. We had won [and] it almost felt like we had never been down three maps.”
Landon Giacoletto, a junior business management major, also made The Stegos and Toads proud with his performance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Giacoletto’s gameplay as the Nintendo character Donkey Kong proved to be quite effective against other players, as he beat one opponent after another during the tournament. His performance ultimately secured another victory for The Stegos and Toads.
“I had fun at this event–just getting to hang out with the guys and play video games on stage for a weekend […] I am excited to see the event expand, and continue where we will aim to uphold our victory,” Giacoletto said.
The Stegos and Toads currently have a fundraiser live on the First String website to support future competitions and traveling costs.
