Perfect Storm came off a very successful Saturday to face last seasons defending Champion Carbon of Major League Gaming, parent company of GotFrag.com. It was clear that neither team was a clear-cut favorite in this Upper Bracket Semi-Final after Carbon’s team captain Triple-X admitted that he wasn’t sure his team was playing that well. He went so far to predict a 3-1 loss.

Triple-X looked prophetic in the opening round as Ramby of Perfect Storm grabbed two opening flag captures in the first three minutes. It wasn’t until Karma ran right down the middle of the defense with a very quick capture that Carbon got on the board. That opened the flood gates as Shockwav3 followed with three more captures of his own while Karma also picked up a second. Combined, that gave Carbon the 5-2 win.

Slayer had been one of the strong points for Perfect Storm so far and that continued as they pushed the middle and held strong against Carbon’s attacks. Perfect Storm’s flexibility in sniping really helped them. Any of their four players can snipe while Carbon seems only comfortable having Ghandi snipe.

Still, Ghandi managed to give Carbon some momentum to close near the end of the game but it was too little too late as Perfect Storm picked up a 50-48 win. This left a tie heading into the two back to back Midship matches. The first Midship match was on Ball format while the second was on CTF.

The first Ball format was over before it started as Carbon really dominated behind Ghostayame’s complete control over the Ball. The second Midship was back and forth as the lead changed hands five times. Ramby again started strong picking up two flag captures while Shockwav3 grabbed another giving him his fourth of the match.

He wouldn’t stop there though as he earned three more throughout the course of the map. Four captures by Shockwav3 still wasn’t enough as Xtremist picked up the slack for Ramby and the rest of Perfect Storm, snatching three captures to finish off Carbon in a highly contested match. This forced a fifth map on Lockout in a Slayer format for a chance to move onto the final and face Final Boss.

Carbon started strong grabbing the sniper rifle twice in back to back spawns while keeping a solid lockdown on the BR tower. Still, they didn’t really pull away; only holding a three frag lead after about 10 minutes. It wasn’t until they started controlling the Sword in BR 2 that they were able to build much of a lead, pushing the score to 40-20.

A long sniper respawn then played into the hands of Perfect Storm as they mounted a comeback. On the back of some strong play by Naded, they whittled the score back to 48-40, in favor of Carbon, even retaking BR tower in the process. But Carbon then responded by turtling up and really backing off from Perfect Storm’s aggressive attacks. This earned them the final two frags needed for a win on the map, and the overall victory versus Perfect Storm.

Carbon now faces a rematch of MLG Charlotte, against Final Boss who lost its first map of the tournament to 5K in their own Upper Bracket Semi-Final. Both teams looked primed for an epic conclusion.