Kanae’s Overwatch Team Spends Seven Hours on Maps and Lineups at First Meet-Up

NIJISANJI — Kanae, joined by Shiina Yuika, Reina, Inami Rai and Tsukahara Daichi, held the team’s first practice session for the #にじEX_OW Overwatch tournament on Tuesday night. The stream ran about seven hours and moved from introductions to map walkthroughs and custom-game scrimmages.

The session opened with congratulations for a participant’s six-month anniversary and a round of veterans’ recollections about their early streaming years. One participant also walked the group through an OBS setup that pulls ad banners and recordings from a shared Dropbox folder, so images update on their own and finished recordings reach an editor as soon as a stream ends; viewers called it a streamer life hack worth paying for. When the group compared competitive histories, one participant said their peak was Grandmaster, while others reported Diamond, Platinum or Gold. Chat greeted the top rank with “Grandmaster-sama.”

“We don’t need anything but a win.” — The team’s coach, as the full group assembled

Once the lobby was set, the team’s coach said nothing short of a championship would do and joked that failing would mean never appearing again. The coach explained that the tournament uses a pool of five maps, that a dice roll sets the first map and that the team that lost the previous map picks the next. With the event close, the coach asked whether to study many maps shallowly or a few in depth, and proposed starting by walking each map’s routes and high ground. Chat answered with “A hot-blooded coach, let’s go.”

From about the 1:30 mark the group moved into custom games, with the coach inviting viewers at Gold and Platinum rank to fill the opposing side. The plan rested on two approaches, a dive lineup built around Winston and Vendetta and a long-range poke lineup. The matches were used to drill taking high ground first, trading space instead of chasing kills, and calling out ultimates and moments when healing could not reach the front line. Early games saw the dive lineup stalled by counter-picks, which prompted practice in swapping heroes mid-match. A participant’s screen went dark at one point, and server lag later forced the lobby to be rebuilt.

In the later hours the team tried a Zarya-and-Vendetta pairing on King’s Row attack, with Vendetta told to roam freely and Zarya’s barriers going on teammates, and tightened its calls about who stands on the objective. Against a strong opposing group it got through the first stage, and the final practice game ended in a draw. One participant judged that the lineup had come together noticeably. The group also reviewed the scrim schedule for the 23rd and 24th and discussed asking the organizers to reorder a slot because two members have another match that day. Kanae closed by thanking viewers and saying they would keep practicing for both events.