There’s no such thing as rookie jitters for Alston “Sanji” Pabico as he led ECHO to a masterful performance over RRQ Hoshi that opened its campaign in the M4 World Championship on a high note at the Bali United Studio in Indonesia on Monday, Jan. 2.
The rookie midlaner immediately embraced the spotlight in the brightest of stages, spearheading the excellent team-fight control for the Philippine representatives using his Yve pick.
With the effective zoning and damage of the Yve’s Real World Manipulation ultimate, combined with the crowd control of the Yu Zhong pick of Sanford “Sanford” Vinuya and Khufra of Jaypee “Jaypee” Cruz, RRQ never really got into good position during the team fights for the major objectives.
He finished with an 8-1-8 KDA on the Yve while Benedict “BennyQT” Gonzales was untouchable on his Karrie from the backlines to finish with a perfect 7-0-5 line.
ECHO set the tone for the 18-7 rout with two quick early kills and seized control of the contest from there despite some resistance from the hometown bets. In the first Lord fight, ECHO scored a two-man pickoff on RRQ that allowed them to secure the objective and take down the outer turrets of the Indonesian representatives.
Rivaldi “R7” Fatah anchored a clutch defensive stand for RRQ as they took down three heroes from ECHO to stop the siege.
That, however, couldn’t stop ECHO from cruising to the victory as it completed the three-man wipe in the next Lord fight to put the nail on the coffin on RRQ and silence the raucous home crowd.
ECHO wraps up its group stage campaign against Occup Throne and RSG Singapore on Wednesday, Jan. 4.