Oath Gaming win Charity Showdown: Interview with Wolfgang ‘Wo1f’ Von Braun

Last weekend, Oath Gaming took home the lion share of a $100,000 USD prize pool at the PCS: Charity Showdown with a dominant final day performance.

North American PUBG Esports made its official return over the weekend with the PCS: Charity Showdown. The event awarded $200,000 USD in prize money, with half donated to a charity of the winning team’s choice. Over the four-day event, a few teams began to separate themselves from the others, setting the stage for an exciting conclusion to the tournament.

Three teams were well within reach of the top position as the final day began, but it was Oath Gaming that rose to the occasion and made a statement in the final five matches. Quickly stealing the optimism of teams racing for first place as they won four of the five matches on Sunday. Round after round, the team secured another match and placed themselves atop the leaderboard as PCS: Charity Showdown Champions.

Prior to the Charity Showdown, Oath Gaming made an adjustment to their roster when they signed Brendan ‘Balefrost’ Connors. Despite this change to their lineup, Oath managed to command an extremely talented lobby and pull off one of the most dominant performances in recent memory.

To hear more about what the team was feeling like heading into the tournament, and what the addition of ‘Balefrost’ has done for the team, we asked their player Wolfgang “Wo1f” Von Braun a couple of questions.

App Trigger: Entering the Charity Showdown, where was the team’s confidence level on winning this particular event?

Wolfgang “wo1f” Von Braun: Entering the Charity Showdown the team’s confidence was definitely at an all-time high since picking up Balefrost. Coming into this after a win in the 303 Royale 2 against some of the best teams in the world gave us confidence that we were capable of winning this event if we prepared hard enough and executed our plans.

AT: Which aspects of your game, as a team, or personally, were you focused on improving prior to the event? Did that preparation pay off in-game?

‘Wo1f’: Prior to this event we just had to make sure that everyone was on the same page, including our new player Balefrost. We’ve made some playstyle changes since our failure performance in Stockholm at GLL, and in scrims, since then we have been practicing and getting everyone in the proper mindset of the new playstyle. Each player has their role in the team, and each player needs to execute them properly. Our preparation definitely showed over the course of the games, winning four in a row doesn’t happen just because you’re lucky.

AT: What would you say was the biggest challenge faced by the team over the course of the tournament?

‘Wo1f’: Our biggest challenge is ourselves. In all honesty, we should have won this event by over 100 points. Nine of the 20 games were winnable games without even playing perfectly. However, through a few unfavorable circles, and misplays by us (specifically on day three) we fell into a bit of a mental rut mid-tournament. We headed into match 14 with a 34 point lead, and by the end of match 15, we were in second by six points. We had a long talk the night prior to the final day. The last day we came back and won four games in a row, securing first in the tournament by a 45 point margin.

AT: Moving ahead, is there anything that the team can take away from this victory and carry into the PCS1 Group Stage?

‘Wo1f’: After this victory, the team is feeling more confident than ever and can’t wait to compete in the upcoming events. Every player on this team wants to be the best, and we all put in the effort to do so. This tournament reassured us that as long as we execute our plans and have good mental, we can win anything.

AT: What can fans expect from this team in future 2020 PUBG Esports events?

‘Wo1f’: Fans can expect to see us at every PUBG Esports event that we are able to play this year. We will keep preparing and playing our best each tourney and hope to bring our fans more wins throughout 2020.