They were the odds-on favorites coming in, but after hitting a speed bump in the form of Envyus on Day 2, Fariko Impact’s hopes of a trifecta of 2013 Call of Duty championships were in jeopardy. But they would not be denied.

After being relegated to the Lower Bracket Championship against OpTic Gaming, Fariko knew that the road would be tougher, but not insurmountable. And so after getting a good night’s rest and making sure to come together as a team, they began working their way to $400,000, a big trophy, some sweet gold rings, and ultimately the 2013 Call of Duty World Championship.

Led by team captain, Parasite, Impact started off neck and neck with OpTic in Hardpoint. There were seven lead changes in their opening match before Impact locked down the final Hardpoint and won 250-190. And things would be just as hard in Search and Destroy. Going to the 11th round after Impact let OpTic back into the match, a trend we saw across the whole tournament, one man was left on each team. Parasite would again get the clutch kill that would seal the game for his team.

After letting CTF get away from them some, Impact kept their cool, knowing it’s not their best game mode, only winning 20% of their CTF matches in the tournament to that point. But Hardpoint is. And they showed why on their favorite map in “Hijack”. Dominating from the get go, Impact cruised 250-137, never letting the map get away from them, and crossing the finish line 3-1 in the Lower Bracket Championship, leaving OpTic with the $120,000 3rd place prize.

After a ridiculous two and a half hour “break” between matches, it was finally time for the World Championship where Envyus would look to repeat their performance from the previous evening. By the way, easily the worst thing about this weekend was the huge delay between the Lower Bracket Championship and World Championship. The CodCasters were wondering why the energy in the building had died down so much. It’s simple. The live crowd took a nap because there was no reason to take so long there. Not to mention all the cut-ins between the games of the actual World Championship match and I’d be surprised if most of the audience watching at home online didn’t turn it off and go watch Wrestlemania. It was as if we had a power outage every five minutes in the Super Bowl.

But I digress. Since Envyus and Impact met already in the tournament, instead of playing another best of five match, they played as if their series was now a best of 11, picking up where the match from yesterday left off. So right off the bat, Impact knew they had to win four and not three games since Envyus had a natural 3-2 advantage going into the championship. And the first game would be CTF, Envyus’s strongest game type and Impact’s weakest.

But against all odds, Impact forced Stopwatch, CTF’s version of overtime, and pulled off one of the most improbable victories of the entire tournament to tie the series at three. This then brought us into Hardpoint, where Impact again dominated 244-138.

The two teams then traded victories to bring the count up to 5-4, and Impact was going to be playing Hardpoint again. But much like they had shocked Envyus with a win in CTF, Envyus pulled the wool over Impact’s eyes much like they had in their Upper Bracket Championship match and stole a close 220-200 victory.

This set up another all-deciding Search and Destroy match. Envyus again started strong here, winning 3 of the first 5 to take an early advantage. But their nerves seemed to get the best of them because this is when Impact hunkered down and rolled over Envyus in 4 of the next 5 rounds to win Search and Destroy 6-4, and to win the Call of Duty 2013 World Championship six games to five.  The comeback was complete and Impact had finished their personal Call of Duty Triple Crown.