How Total Gaming won the first edition of Pro League?

Total Gaming just became the first team to win two Indian Free Fire Majors. Their rise to glory started all the way back in 2020 during the Asia All-Stars, where they(The Mafia) finished third while competing against the best teams of Asia. They continued to dominate the rest of 2020, and also won the Free Fire India Championship 2020 Fall. At the start of 2021, they had a little roster shuffle where Vasiyo and Golden left the team to join Galaxy Racers, whereas Prince and Javaboy joined the team alongside FozyAjay and Mafiabala. Together, they had a small honeymoon phase where they saved their face in the Free Fire Titan Invitational, but this phase did not last long. They finished dead last in the FFIC 2021 Spring. That was rock bottom for the team. The team once again underwent a roster shuffle to bring in two new players - Mafia and Delete. 

Coming into Free Fire Pro League, this team looked like they were barely surviving by the skin of their teeth. They were reeling back in the 14th position up until the last day of the Group Stage. They made some hail mary plays on the last day and somehow managed to propel themselves into the final by a narrow margin. So how then, was a team that was barely clinging onto their Tier 1 status, win the Pro League? How did they go from zero to hero in just a day? 

Let’s find out. 

How did Total Gaming win Free Fire Pro League 2021 Summer?

They were not the hot favourites going into the tournament. Most of the casters predicted that Team Elite would win. And why wouldn’t they? After all, Team Elite blazed past the opposition with a hundred-point lead during the Group Stage. 4Unknown and TSM-FTX were also teams that were expected to deliver. This was the first mistake that the opposition made - not considering Total Gaming as a tangible threat. 

While Team Elite and TSM FTX had more consistent performances, Total Gaming had bigger bursts of points flowing towards them. Total Gaming’s first big burst game came in Match 4 on Bermuda. The circle took us to Riverside. There was not a lot of permanent cover. Total Gaming had a small shack to their name, which they used to keep themselves alive while most of the teams were biting the dust. The number of teams alive was reduced from 10 to 4. Total Gaming survived up until that point, but after that, they had no such advantage. The circle forced them out into the open, where strong teams like 4Unknown, TSM-FTX and Team Elite lied in wait. No team had a positional advantage as such. That meant that the winner would have to duke it out with the other teams. Nades and gloo walls would be of crucial importance here. 

Total Gaming focused more on keeping their players alive instead of dishing out damage or moving into the zone. They would judiciously use their gloo walls to block out any incoming nades, and would then play around the deployed gloo wall instead of putting down one more, even if it meant that they had to tank a little bit of zone damage. Keeping all four players alive up until the last moment paid off dividends, because in the end, it all boiled down to trade-fragging and having more blood to spare than your opponents. Total Gaming won the booyah in that game, and it catapulted them to the top. 

Identifying win conditions

Team Elite at this point had become really frustrated. They were getting several second-place finishes, but not a single booyah. In Game 5, Total Gaming suffered what Team Elite had been going through. They were on the verge of getting yet another booyah, but they choked hard. They lost a 2 vs 4 fight against Last Breath. This was a pretty winnable situation for Total Gaming, but losing a fight which they had an advantage in shook their foundation and their confidence. Sure, Total Gaming finished second and were still in the lead, but that double-booyah would have secured the championship for them. 

Going into the last game of the day, Total Gaming was at 70 points, Team Elite wasn’t far behind at 62 points, and TSM-FTX was at 56. 

Total Gaming realized that Team Elite will probably get desperate, and change their strategy this time around, and try to deliberately target some of the front runners on the scoreboard such as them or TSM-FTX. For TSM-FTX, the story was different. Their defense was rock solid, which meant if they got into a compound that was in the zone, there would be a really good chance that they would win the game. Total Gaming identified the playstyles of their opponents and worked out a strategy to out-score them.

Maximizing points - Split approach

Kalahari, the dunes were tricky to navigate. Team Elite got caught out in a very precarious position and got eliminated early. They were trying to fight Team D and Last Breath at the same time, but when the zone came in and they retreated, they ran straight into the crosshairs of more teams like Life Hackers and Total Gaming. Team Elite got eliminated early on, which meant that Total Gaming was happy. They were happier about the fact that Elite started this massive cluster of a team, that they could take potshots and steal frags from. They feasted to their heart’s content. They were getting kills onto the players of not just Team Elite, but also Life Hackers, Last breath, Team D, and Captains. This gave them enough points to make life easy. 

The circle took us to the edge of Command Post. While 4Unknown and TSM-FTX were busy fighting each other, every other team tried to move in. Unfortunately, Total Gaming too had a little difficulty in doing so, but captain FozyAjay took it easy. He tried to heal off as much as he could outside the zone and got his team to fifth place in that game. 

TSM-FTX finished second in that game, and the points from it were enough to propel them above Team Elite in the overall standings, but they were just too far away from Total Gaming. 

Team Elite started a domino effect as they triggered a massive team fight, and unfortunately for them, out of all the teams that could have capitalized upon that mess, it was Total Gaming that ran away with all the frags. 

That’s how Total Gaming won the Free Fire Pro League. This wasn’t a very clean or dominant victory by any stretch of the imagination. However, it does show how situational awareness on Total Gaming is immaculate, and they know how to take advantage of an opportunity.