SD Mecca: Pinoy Power!
The recently concluded Games Expo (TGX) Malaysia was a great event, but the fun does not stop there as we managed to speak to the captain of SD Mecca the CounterStrike:GO champions.
Captain of SD Mecca, “Johnny Peralta”
SD Mecca is spearheaded by its captain/attacker Johnny Peralta (JOHnn3y), with him in the team are Rodney Co (rdn3y) who plays back-up and sniper, Vicent Mayorga (Vins^nity), Daryl Teves (kangji), and Michael Poblete (Wuzz) all playing back-up. The team was formed in the summer of 2012 and is based in Bacolod City, Philippines.
Johnny personally felt that playing the classic CounterStrike 1.6 is still preferred, though with the recent updates for CS:GO, the team is starting to adapt to the differences. Prior to tournament, SD Mecca trained with lots of practice games to prepare for the tournament. In addition, they also analysed international tournament demos in order to devise better team strategies.
Although TGX was the team’s first international LAN tournament, the team did not feel nervous at all, as most of the competing teams were either friends or former training mates. Despite being familiar with their environment, the team suffered a big defeat, in the Winners Bracket Finals, against Team Orange. The difficulty of facing Team Orange again in the Grand Finals again however did not faze them. As a matter of fact, Johnny stated that during the break before the finals, they managed to gather themselves and came up with a better strategy which turned out to be the key to victory.
After receiving their first gold medal for being the champions of Asian Cyber Games, Johnny was very proud of the team and mentioned that he was very fortunate to be a Filipino Gamer. In his opinion, TGX, which was organized by Rapture Gaming Network, was “Perfect”. The team also encouraged other Filipino FPS teams to practice hard and use their success as motivation to strive for better results in future.
Lastly, Johnny would like to thank their SD Mecca family, their fans, the Cebuano gamers and their big bosses namely, Ramon Llacer, and Bob Thomas.
Congratulations once again to SD Mecca for winning the ACG CS:GO division