The Defenders
Going into AGN Foundation League Season 2 everybody knew of the Arial Arise brand, they were the defending champions trying to repeat while defending their title. What many may not have known was there had been a roster change. JuJu, and JansportJake were taking the place of kLoH, and Boardy. Arial’s new roster would experience some bumps this season. Going from barely dropping any maps last season to losing their first two games 3-1 to Total Advantage.Black, consisting of Beehzy, NickHate, and JDestiny; then dropping 3-0 to Carnage Gaming's roster of Nightmare, Gunsii, and co.. They would also suffer a forfeit loss later in the season in one of the mid season tournament grand finals due to an unforeseen circumstance.
However when playoffs rolled around Arial proved why they were the ones defending the title. Due to the mid season tournaments even while suffering 3 regular season losses Arial was able to slide into the third overall seed and they did not look back from there. Right before the playoffs began Arial would make another key roster swap, subbing out Stolly for NickHate. Their round 1 playoff match pitted #3 Arial versus #6 Charlotte Phoenix, where a big series from JuJu propelled them to a dominating 3-1 victory. Winners round 2 saw probably one of the best series of the season. Arial vs #7 Unjustified. The series went the distance with Crysis single handedly being able to extend the series to a map 4 with an unholy 37 kill domination map. JuJu’s veteran leadership was shown in the game 5 where he was able to drop 11 kills and lead Arial Arise to the Winners Finals vs Carnage Gaming. Winners Finals was rough for Arial as they tried their best but was no match for #1 Carnage Gaming, dropping the series 0-3. Losers Finals was a rematch from earlier in the playoffs pitting Arial up against Unjustified one more time. Once again the series went the distance where Arial was able to close it out in game 5 with a dominating 6-0 victory off the back of Crysis; going 11-3.
The stage was now set. Arial had a chance to defend their title versus the team that sent them to losers in Carnage Gaming. The only difference was they’d have to force a bracket reset to do so and that they did, quite convincingly with a hot 3-0 first series. Winning Rammaza Hardpoint 250-156, Arklov Peak Search and Destroy 6-1, and Hackney Yard Domination 209-109. The bracket was now reset and they were 3 map wins away from defending their championship. The next 3 maps could have gone either way until the last 5 seconds, but in the end Arial had run out of gas and eventually conceded 0-3 to Carnage. This landed them a 2nd place finish in the 2nd season of AGN Foundation league and another placing for Arial Arise as an organization.