On August 28th, a story about a new Overwatch team sponsored by TaKe TV sat on the front page. Just a day later, the headlines were much more somber. Vivi's Adventure had come to an end.
A part of that TaKe TV roster, called the Angry Titans, was support / AFoxx. Nearly two months prior, AFoxx left the lineup of Vivi's Adventure.
Vivi's had long been knocking on the door of the upper echelons of European Overwatch in 2017, competing in a number of online tournaments. Being a new team seeking organizations that year was troublesome however, with much of the summer defined by organizations leaving Overwatch rather than entering. Despite their best attempts, the rest of the roster would soon follow AFoxx as they folded and looked for better opportunities elsewhere.
"As soon as AFoxx quit the team to join Angry Titans, we knew we had to step up our game as well," flex tank ELLIVOTE said. "And then maybe one day we could join him. That was actually our conversation as a team."
ELLIVOTE and LullSiSH have since joined AFoxx like they planned, reuniting half of Vivi's Adventure. However, much of the roster has played with each other for mixed periods of time, even outside of the Vivi's core, such as Luddee and erki, who were teammates on Red Reserve.
The roster is bonded by more than just their previous experiences together; most of the roster toiled through 2017 with little to no time spent on salaried teams. After a year of grinding, TaKe TV finally rewarded the players with a chance to make a name for themselves on Angry Titans.
"For sure [it's redeeming to play on a sponsored team], I don't know exactly how many games we played, and how many quarterfinals and small tournaments we played, but I know we played a lot in Vivi's Adventure," ELLIVOTE said. "And now with Angry Titans, we finally managed to get up to the big leagues and play with the good teams."
The grind didn't stop when he and his teammates joined Angry Titans, however. They, along with fellow finalist CIS Hope, had to play their way through Open Division, Contenders Trials and the group stage of Overwatch Contenders to get to the Contenders Finals in Poland.
"When we played Open we had games every week and scrims the other days, so we barely had any breaks," ELLIVOTE said. "Then we went into Trials and still had games every week, and Contenders after that there were games every week. It's nice to now have two weeks between games."
The players weren't just given contracts for their grind, but were also given chocolate.
ELLIVOTE and his squad enter Poland hoping the break gives the team the energy it needs to take home a title from Poland, riding a four game winning streak in which they've only lost a single map. Their first match is against Team Gigantti, a team they beat 4-0 in the regular season. The matchup the Titans really want, however, won't be a possibility until the grand final.
"We want to get our revenge against Hurricane," said ELLIVOTE. However that doesn't mean he is overlooking the rest of the competition.
"I think all four teams right now are almost equally skilled," he added. "Any team can take it."
The matchup between Angry Titans and Team Gigantti should be an exciting one for fans of the deathball. Both teams are known for running tank-centric lineups that are designed to trample over enemy teams. Despite that, ELLIVOTE thinks his team is more flexible than they appear to the casual onlooker.
"I think our team is kinda underrated because we run a lot of quad tank, but we are actually extremely flexible," he said. "We have like two or three different comps on every map, but we haven't shown it that often. We play quad tank on almost every map, and it has been working. We usually just play quad tank the first map, and then if they can't handle it we just keep rolling with quad tank."
The ultimate goal of the players on Angry Titans is the same as almost every player in Contenders: make it into the Overwatch League. ELLIVOTE is confident he and his team can make it into the league.
"I think everyone on my team can actually [make it into the Overwatch League], if given the right circumstances," he said. "The flexibility on our team is actually insane. We don't show it that much, but whenever we try different comps in scrims it usually works."
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