Free Fire City Open: Lucknow Finals Recap

Lucknow is one of the most impressive cities in the Free Fire City Open tournament so far. The day was full of some crazy action and comebacks. Some of the best teams of India were participating from this city, and all the teams that have qualified for the National Finals and the City Play-Ins were big names. 

Ankush Free Fire have been crowned as the Lucknow Warriors and will be moving ahead into the National Finals. Zila Ghaziabad, Team Elite and Survivors 4AM will be joining the City Play-Ins. 

Let’s see how this wild ride unfolded. 

Ankush Free Fire assert dominance right at the start 

Ankush Free Fire followed a simple formula to get the first two dubs. In match 1, on Bermuda, the circle closed around Peak. More specifically, near the mansion. Now there were already opponents present in that house, so attacking it would be difficult. When one team did attack it, AFF moved in to third party on that fight, wiped the squads there and took control of that house. When their zone prediction turned out to be correct and the house was indeed inside the final circle, their moves paid off dividends. 

They repeated a similar formula in the next game on Purgatory. Except this time, they did not even need to kill anyone to get it. The fourth circle took us to fields, and the fifth one moved towards one small house in the middle of wide open grasslands. Everyone knew that it would be important to control that compound, but nobody could move early towards it because they’d risk getting shot while crossing to it. AFF took that risk and it paid off, as now they were the only team with hard cover left in the zone. They made these two wins look easy, and took a pretty good lead. 

Zila Ghaziabad on the chase

While Ankush Free Fire took the wins in the first two games, Zila Ghaziabad, consisting of players from 4Unknown were also performing consistently, as they kept on getting top 3 finishes in the first half of the day. During the first four games of the day, their consistent kills and placement points kept them close to Ankush Free Fire who had been sitting at the top for the longest time. Then in match 5, they finally hit their marks and got a booyah for themselves. That was enough to propel them over AFF and steal the lead away from them. In the last game of the day, Zila Ghaziabad tried their hardest to stay on the top, but unfortunately, AFF got their third win of the day. With three out of the six booyahs in their bag, AFF was bound to win the day and get that National Finals spot. 

Team Elite and Survivors 4AM struggle to make their way into the Play-Ins

Team Elite and Survivors 4AM are two of the strongest teams in India, having proven their mettle in high profile tournaments several times. However, they both were struggling to make their presence felt today, and barely managed to qualify by the skin of their teeth in the last few games. 

Team Elite had a disastrous start as they were eliminated outside of the top 10 in the first game by GVSC Squad. In the second game, they got caught in a terrible crossfire and had to settle for a position outside the top 5. They were able to salvage a second place finish in the next game, but that did very little to improve their standings. By the end of the fourth game, they were not even in the top half of the overall standings. Then they started to kick things into high gear. From Game 5 onwards, they started to hunt down enemies. They actively seeked out fights, went out of their way to wipe out squads that they had information on. This kill hungry approach also kept them well fed on resources as they were able to replenish their gloo walls and med kits off of their enemies corpses. They secured a respectable position in game 5 along with a plethora of kills to catapult into the top 3. This was further strengthened in the last game of the day when they managed to eliminate Zila Ghaziabad, one of the most dangerous squad. In this outstanding leap, Team Elite went from being in the bottom half of the scoreboard, straight into the top 3. What a clutch performance by Pahadi and co. as they fragged out of their minds. This is a message to everyone, as it proves what they can accomplish when they get kill-hungry and desperate for frags. 

Survivors 4AM had an even tighter story. They were stuck in the 10th position by the time the first two games were done. They recovered just two spots in two games. To go from 8th position to the top 4 is an incredible feat that only a team of their calibre could have pulled off. They relied heavily on positioning. Much like Team Elite, their shortcut to success also started in the fifth game. They started to rotate very early into the circles and got into positions from where they could gatekeep other teams. Once in the right spot, they tried to steal as many kills as possible. If they got in trouble, they tried to keep their players alive and somehow get them as deep into the game as possible. The last game had them clenching their fists, and holding onto their lives by a thread. Their attempts at rotating early did get them into a decent enough position, but unfortunately, they were not successful at gatekeeping, and as a result they were surrounded on all sides. They somehow kept the heart of one of their players beating long enough to secure a third place finish in the last game, thus scraping together enough points to qualify. The other teams competing for that spot just happened to get eliminated before them, and that helped their cause massively. 

What’s next for these teams?

Overall, this was one of the most entertaining days of FFCO. Ankush Free Fire pulled off a triple booyah, Deadsoul proved that he doesn’t need the full lineup of 4Unknown to win a tournament, and Team Elite and Survivors 4AM made some clutch performances towards the end. 

Our next stop in this journey will be Mumbai. Tune in to watch the FFCO Mumbai City Finals on 6th July 2021 at 6 PM IST on Free Fire Esports India Youtube channel.

For more information regarding Free Fire City Open, please visit https://ffco.garena.com/