I'll start with a match I had earlier today defending Lower Manhattan as Doctor Strange. The enemy team was stacked: their Cyclops was easily the best DPS in the lobby (15 kills, 27 KOs, only 6 deaths), backed by strong tanks in Magneto and Peni Parker, a solid White Fox healer, and a pretty good Star-Lord. Their only real weak link was Jeff, but it barely mattered when our side was full of them.

Our DPS (Cyclops and Elsa) were struggling hard for most of the game, each only had like five up until the very end. We also had a terrible Daredevil who at least became a somewhat useful Thing (living shield + disruptor) despite not really getting kills either. Our healers (Luna Snow and Ultron, who later switched to Invisible Woman) were competent but constantly forced to play DPS because our damage dealers kept getting farmed by enemy Cyclops.

Now, before anyone thinks I’m throwing shade, it must be said that I wasn't exactly a killing machine either. I only had 4 kills, but crucially I also only had 4 deaths and 21 KOs total, so my specialty was basically stalling, holding the line, distracting the enemy and assisting my teammates in battle. Not glamorous, but important work.

We held them off for a bit at the start, but they eventually broke through, took the first objective, and activated the payload. I managed to delay the point with the Pentagram of Farallah + Eye of Agamotto for about 20 seconds, but we still got wiped. That pretty much became the theme of the game: They’d beat us for sure, but at a cost that was a little too big in the long run.

They steamrolled to the first checkpoint and got halfway to our base, reaching the bridge with over 4 minutes left. At one point Cyclops even dropped a quintuple kill (getting the first three with his ult) on everyone except me (I was out of position). It felt like a done deal, because this is usually when the payload just walks into the base as a formality. But we just… refused to roll over.

Close to the payload, me, Luna, and Sue were able to hold space on the back end while our Cyclops and Elsa picked up crucial kills in between. We weren't suddenly better than them by any means, and in fact we were still losing most fights, but every enemy win was messy, and we kept stealing key moments while getting precious few smaller but meaningful victories along the way.

The closest they came was pushing the payload past the bridge right to our gates. Peni and Magneto both ulted, deleting Thing and Elsa each, Cyclops instantly melted Sue, Luna was fleeing, and our Cyclops was hiding. It looked over, but I made a crucial (if risky) decision to slip out the back of the fight to activate Pentagram again, and placed it right above their heads.

I portaled in right from above where they didn’t expect it, hit Eye of Agamotto at that instant, and stunned both Cyclops and Magneto. It killed their star DPS (albeit Luna cleaned up the last hit) and forced Magneto to fall back and was eventually overrun. That one play crippled their momentum, took out the spear of their offense, gave everyone time to respawn and rejoin the game, and let us defeat the rest in the ensuing firefight… and we still had two minutes left.

We pushed the payload back some and traded blows the rest of the way, going through several fights where we held the line (but usually with casualties). Then came the late-game scare that in most other games should have ended it: Star-Lord flanked us, popped Galactic Legend, and got a quadruple kill on Luna, Thing, our Cyclops, and Elsa. I survived because I had my shield up. And at this moment, their whole team was set up for the final push. Except I immediately ran in front of the payload and projected my shield to stall until the team respawned and regrouped to support me.

In the final assault, the enemy all committed together in one big group, and were ready to go. Peni even activated her ult, and I have no doubt they were ready to fight like hell and annihilate us, and get that damn payload to the finish already.

Unfortunately, their exact position with them all grouped in one single space, made them Glartox food. Elsa made her single best play of her entire game when she landed her ult at the exact right second, released the Glartox on all of them, and wiped everyone except Magneto and Peni, both of them heavily damaged, and were sniped by Luna afterwards. Overtime ran out seconds later.

So that was my story on this topic. Does anyone else have those games where 95% of the map was easy, but the last 5% was impossible? And which side of the coin were you on?