And why should they have been the favorites? Up until last weekend, Pandemic were perennial second place finishers (see: CEVO-P, TGL-P, NERV 2). The thinking was that if Pandemic couldn’t even win one time out of three against EG in the States, how could they possibly defeat not only EG but a host of other talented European teams? Team Pandemic’s latest addition, David “sk1nz” Patnode, responds to this mentality: “For some reason, I think a lot of the European teams underestimated us since for the past few months EG have been at the top of the NA scene, so they figured EG were just a better version of Pandemic. The truth is we play very different from EG and I think it showed in our matches. Our only goal now is to keep playing at this level as we feel we could potentially bring home another international championship for North America.” Hindsight being what it is, one might think Patnode is being a touch self-congratulatory, but when you take a look at the numbers you see a Pandemic side that beat its non-KomaCrew opponents by a combined score of 39-16.

As cliché as it sounds, there is no denying that Pandemic surprised everybody but themselves at AEF. The team that “was playing second fiddle to EG” is now the team to beat heading into The eXperience LAN next weekend. Team leader Joe “Nabore” Amorosa comments: “Winning AEF means so much to us. For the past 3 championships we have been battling EG for the title and coming short by inches. Despite the predictions of us not finishing within the top 5, we kept our heads down and played our game, taking each match one at a time. While we are extremely happy about our victory at AEF as it is our first international championship, the team is now focused solely on TEX as we will go into the event with a clear mind.  We know teams will be gunning for us now but that doesn't change anything in terms of approach and our desire to bring home a second title.”

The €10,000 + €4,000 hardware prize is the largest prize payout ever to a North American CoD team from a single event and TEX, with its unique win-based bonus structure, has the potential to pay out even larger. Will Team Pandemic continue their winning ways and bring home a second trophy? Will KomaCrew play with the same strength and vigor and make another run at the title? Or will EG, Dignitas, or any other top competitive European side play brilliantly and be crowned champions? This much is certain, anticipation is through the roof for TEX in Denmark. Good luck, have fun.