Over the course of a year spent in homes and online, the popularity of competitive video games and esports have skyrocketed. Saturday, June 12 featured the grand finals of the June Joust tournament in one of the major esports, Overwatch. The final was played between two teams who have spent the season so far forging a potentially historic rivalry: the Dallas Fuel and the Shanghai Dragons. Entering the finals, Dallas was a top ranked team and the winner of the previous tournament, the May Melee, where they secured a 4-2 victory against the very Dragons that they faced once again in the June finals. Shanghai followed a rather treacherous path to the finals and were the clear underdogs coming into Saturday’s match, but through an intense display of heart and a key strategic change, Shanghai emerged the victors in an incredible comeback.
Contributing to the Shanghai Cinderella story, the Dragons lost their last match to Dallas 3-0 earlier in this tournament, showing little to no signs of life. This defeat saw them relegated to the loser’s bracket early on, meaning every game from then on was do or die. After that match, one of the Shanghai star players, known as Koo “Fate” Pan-seung, switched characters — a major change, similar to an entire change in position in more conventional physical sports. Initially his decision to change faced backlash from fans and analysts alike; Fate’s choice to play a character known as “Wrecking Ball” was thought to be a statement that he had given up on defending his team, but his aggressive style on this new character allowed for a change in the overall attitude of the Shanghai team, as well as the pace of their play. Fate detailed the switch during a postgame interview:
“It was three days prior to the play-offs that I actually picked up Wrecking Ball; we had to run with that because we knew that going up against Dallas Fuel, if it was a mirror match-up, we knew we definitely couldn’t beat Dallas [with a strategy they knew] … for the finals today what we do was we changed up our playstyle, and we were being way more offensive. I think that was the key to our victory today.”
To adjust your team’s strategy around a whole new character mid-tournament is a massive change in itself; to do so just three days before the grand finals would be considered ridiculous if not for the result — an epic comeback from Shanghai.
The finals was a series of consecutive games, each on a different map, and the first team with four wins took the championship. After two games, Dallas had a 2-0 lead, and it looked as though they were primed to take yet another trophy. However, on the third map, Fate’s Wrecking Ball began to take its toll on the Dallas Fuel’s team composition, and the Shanghai Dragons’ chemistry began to set in. After this, the momentum shifted massively and the game never looked the same. The Dragons came alive in the second half of the match, and went on to win 4-3.
Their star, Fate, said, “It really feels good to beat the team that dominated us in previous matches. I think this is a work of art that all of us on the Shanghai team — the teammates, the coaches, and the staff — it was everyone working together that helped us to get the win.”
Fate makes a crucial point, considering their clear loss to the Dallas Fuel earlier in this tournament, and it was especially striking for the Shanghai Dragons to play this final with such swagger and conviction. Through trials and changes, Shanghai kept their focus on the trophy (and subsequent $100,000 prize), rallied around the heroic play of Fate, and won the June Joust finals, in what Soe Gschwind, Overwatch League host and commentator, rightly called the “biggest or the most hard-fought comeback in Overwatch League history.”
This epic comeback and historic victory for the Shanghai Dragons is thrilling not only for the team’s fans and players, but also for fans of Overwatch and of esports at large, as great matches like this one attract attention and excitement surrounding the Overwatch League.
