Gray was feeling a little more hopeful for the tournament after the military decided to allow a slight rule change. Regardless, the first 16 versus 16 match was about to begin after two very boring matches. While trying to lead a team of 16, Gray long ago realized that trying to micromanage everyone was a mistake.
Gray and Kelly broke the team of 16 apart in to four teams of four. They took votes about who wanted to be teamed up with who and assigned four squad leaders. Gray, Geoff, Kelly, and Caitlyn would lead a squad each. As for the members, a vote was taken about whom they wanted to team up with. Everyone wanted to be teamed up with Yurika while nobody voted to team up with Jono except for Gray.
The results weren't shown, but everyone was going to talk about who they picked anyways. Gray was teamed up with Alice, Xyra, and Rita. Geoff was assigned Paul, Christine, and Heather. Kelly took Yurika, Jono, and Tia under her leadership. Lastly, Caitlyn took Felisa, Stacia, and Caleb.
While not everyone was happy with the arrangements, Gray and Kelly agreed that it played to each of their strengths the best. Jono would be the exception as he only listened to Kelly or Caitlyn. Caitlyn tended to be hot-headed, so she matched well with Caleb who always kept his cool.
Kelly's team should actually be the strongest one. Kelly and Tia were fairly well-rounded and excellent shots, Jono was an unknown, and Yurika would probably win a solo tournament even if she went in without a mech.
With everyone using the same mech and weapon for these first matches, the excitement and curiosity of what you would be facing off against was gone. Still, the 16 vs 16 had the fewest amount of people drop out due to the military pilots participating in it.
Gray thought it would be a good time to give a speech of sorts to everyone right before the first round of 16 versus 16. "Alright, I'm not one for big speeches, nor does this really need one right now, but no matter what happens I want to say I've enjoyed the time we've worked together so let's at least make it to the last round to keep it going longer!"
"At LEAST the finals?" Kelly said with a wry smile on her face.
"Yeah, should be easy, right?" Gray said returning her smile.
"…no problem…" Xyra whispered.
After several hoots, whistles, and a few shouts of "Purge the unclean!" everyone seemed fired up and ready to go.
Gray wanted to ask which of them shouted "Purge the unclean!" but was pretty sure nobody would own up to it, although he was certain one of them was Yurika.
Once the countdown finished, everyone spawned inside their 16 versus 16 match. Gray was surprised to see that the previous geometric shapes were now at least made to look like an industrial complex instead of the uninspired blocks as before.
"They must place a lot of importance on the tournament's popularity if they changed the maps within minutes." Gray thought to himself. Gray didn't like the look of the solid geometric shapes from before, but he had to admit it made it a lot easier to spot the enemy and the terrain could be analyzed quickly.
"Ok, just like we practiced, let's get a feel for what the enemy wants to do. Cait take point, Geoff take my flank, Kelly take rear!" Gray ordered.
Everyone split-up and reformed according to their assigned teams, the 4 teams creating a diamond formation. Kelly's team would be put in the back so they could be saved for last while Caitlyn's team would take point as they were made up of the most defensively-minded among them.
They only had a dozen or so matchmade games with all 16 of them, but this formation had proven the most effective especially since other teams were just working with each other for the first time. Gray was hoping they would get an easy match in the first round to build their confidence.
"Enemy spotted!" Stacia suddenly shouted, she still favored scouting over everything else so it wasn't a surprise to anyone she would spot the enemy first. "8 on direct approach from North."
Gray looked at his tactical display to see 8 red dots appear at the top edge of the map. He figured the other 8 were going to try and flank them since it was probably 2 teams of 8 working independently like they did in many of the matches in matchmaking earlier.
"Second group of 8 approaching from the East!" Christine shouted. Geoff's squad was the furthest east so naturally someone on his squad would spot a group coming from the east first.
"Head towards the northern group, we need to pin them between their own group in the east and us." Gray ordered.
Without radar, map locations would only be updated when someone had line of sight on the enemy. Gray wasn't sure why they decided to run the tournament without radar coverage, but it did allow for tactics to be used instead of everyone lining up in a single row and marching towards each other to just slug it out.
The only downside is that it meant that if you could see them, they could see you. It's hard to hide a mech that stands around 15 meters tall without any special equipment.
Geoff's team opened fire with their DMRs at maximum range on the team approaching from the east. Their objective was not to hurt or destroy them, just slow them down.
The DMR may be a boring weapon, but it was still highly effective at all ranges between point-blank and extreme. Geoff's team were firing at extreme range so while they could still be accurate, the rounds had lost enough power to not be enough to punch through armor. Still, the occasional lucky shot was enough to get the team of 8 to slow down and seek cover before lining up their own shots. Geoff's team ignored the enemy fire and kept running since it was the extreme range that was keeping them safer than anything else.
The terrain itself was not hard to cross, the amount of debris was minimal meaning that mechs could run at full speed without tripping easily. The industrial park had a lot of natural barriers so with Geoff's squad slowing down the enemy approaching from the east, the rest of their team was able to approach the team from the north and start to force them to a crawl with their superior numbers.
Once Gray's, Kelly's, and Caitlyn's squads had concentrated their fire on the 8 coming from the north, the 8 enemies were also forced to take cover, but Geoff's squad was now in trouble as it was able to be shot at from all 16 enemies.
"Geoff, that's enough, swing around and draw them towards us!" Gray ordered.
"Roger Wilco!" Geoff said loudly. "Squad pull back, return to formation!"
"Understood!" Christine and Heather replied simultaneously.
"Unable! Coolant leak, hunkering down until I'm shutdown!" Paul replied.
Paul was the closest one to the enemy so his mech was the most beat up of all of them. Another shot from a DMR must've hit something important because smoke and steam suddenly came pouring out of Paul's mech.
"Good luck Paul!" Geoff said as Christine, Heather, and Geoff limped and ran as fast as they could. The screen created by Paul's soon-to-be-disabled mech was good cover allowing the others to return to the rest of their team.
Paul may have been the first to get destroyed putting them at a slight numerical disadvantage, but due to the enemy teams not coordinating well, only 8 enemies could fire on the 15 remaining mechs of Gray's and Kelly's combined team.
The 8 enemy mechs pinched between Gray's team and their own team caused them to quickly get torn apart. The 8 enemies that had destroyed Paul were not worrying about their own teammates so they were firing through them, but the chaos and occasional unlucky shot caused the enemy team to start bickering among themselves. Even though they hadn't lost anyone yet, the enemy was getting frustrated with itself.
"Kelly, show them how fast you 4 can destroy a mech." Gray commanded.
"Affirmative!"
Kelly, Jono, Yurika, and Tia formed a line and started approaching the closest enemy out in the open.
Seeing the 4 of them parading outside of cover, the enemy got brave and some of them started to come out of cover to take better shots at them. This was their mistake…
"2 at 2! Follow my shots!" Kelly shouted.
Kelly, Yurika, Jono, and Tia all aimed in the same direction. Kelly shot first and was extremely accurate, she hit one of the enemies in the shoulder where the armor was thinner to allow for joint mobility. Kelly, Tia, and Yurika were unsurprisingly able to hit the same spot within inches of each other every single shot, but what surprised Gray was that Jono was actually matching them shot for shot.
"Huh, was he really as good as he said he was? How come I only am just noticing this now?" Gray thought to himself.
Even Kelly seemed surprised and said, "Jono, why didn't you shoot like this before?!"
"I always could, but my accuracy with automatic weapons sucks so this DMR works great!"
Gray remembered that Jono did like to consider himself a professional gamer so the DMR was beneficial for his type even though the average gamer would find it boring as hell.
Every 3 shots from each of Kelly's squad, the enemy mechs would lose an arm. After only 20 seconds, both enemy mechs that had came out were standing like idiots with their arms limp or missing. More enemies became brave and tried to challenge Kelly's squad, but Gray's and Caitlyn's squads were there to limit the number of enemies that would be able to come out safely and challenge Kelly's squad.
Overall, this was the basic strategy that Gray and Kelly came up with for teams that were uncoordinated. Split them up, then use Kelly's squad to eliminate enemies one or two at a time while Gray's and Caitlyin's squads kept them from overwhelming Kelly's squad. Geoff's squad would get the pleasure of finishing off any disabled mechs since they would probably be the most damaged after drawing enemy fire initially.
Gray's team won their first 16 versus 16 while only losing Paul, Rita, and Stacia.
"Excellent job everyone, especially Jono, honestly didn't expect that from you buddy!" Gray said, praising Jono.
"Told you I'd win you this tournament!" Jono said proudly.
Gray rolled his eyes. "Team effort, it's hard enough to praise you, don't make it harder!"
Everyone was still on their high after winning the first round, but Gray reminded them that the next round was going to start soon.
"See you in the next 16 versus 16." Gray said to Kelly, a new 10 minute timer indicated that the next round would start in 10 minutes leaving Gray, Geoff, Yurika, and Caleb alone in the pregame lobby for the next 4 versus 4 match.