Nifty Ultra Anarchy still has tricks up its sleeves come the second half of the group stage in the 2021 Call of Duty Mobile Garena Invitational (CGI) in Taiwan.
NU Anarchy landed at the sixth spot of the eight-team tournament with four points on a 1-2 series win-loss record after the first set of group stage matches held on March 19-21.
Only the top six teams will advance to the double elimination playoffs of the $40,000 (nearly P2 million) tournament organized by the one of the leading global online games developers and publishers Garena.
Team manager Arkisha Aragon said NU Anarchy has hidden strategies for the second part of the group stage on March 26-28 which will help them stay in contention for a playoff spot.
"Plan for now is to execute more strategies that everyone hasn't seen yet. They learned about their mistakes. Everyday they are practicing," Aragon told Manila Bulletin on Tuesday, March 23.
"Even smoke (Josh Videna) who is the oldest in the team and has work always makes time to study and execute plans so they will stay alive until the playoffs," she added.
Aragon's squad will face fellow PH bet and World Championship Garena qualifiers champ NRX Jeremiah 29:11, Thailand's Astro.1s1k and SharpeR Esports, and Taiwan's Raptors.DNS in the group stage's second half.
NU.AA, which also has Averson "skerd" Salaya, Jerzen "aeschy" Espiritu, Vince "demorz" Salaya and Saymun "baymun" Mateo, fell to a slow start as it lost to Singapore's ALMIGHTY (formerly Divinity.Uprising), 2-1, in the first match last Friday.
The Joseph Alejo-owned Philippines Championship winner bounced back with a 2-1 series victory over Malaysia's Resurgence highlighted by a 159-80 romp in the Hardpoint map the next day.
NU.AA put up a valiant fight against Indonesia's Dunia Games (DG) Esports with a 6-4 win in the Search and Destroy at the Raid to tie the series at 1-1 but fell short in the Domination at the Firing Range, 150-119, last Sunday.
"They're literally playing crazy good every game. The only error people and even me saw is when they did five AR (assault rifle) tactic in Firing Range against DG," said Aragon.
"'Cause DG was losing until Clove (Andhika Syukur Sukmana Putra) went SG (shotgun). And if it's AR versus SG in close range, Clove is gonna kill everyone."