Last week of qualifier matches before the Countdown Cup tournament starts next week. Let’s get into it.
News and Blues
- Atlanta Reign sign Saucy – Saucy is a DPS player formerly on Atlanta’s academy team
- Atlanta Reign sign Lr1s – Lr1s is a support player formerly on the NA Contenders team Third Impact
- Rawkus retires – Rawkus was a flex support player for the Houston Outlaws who has been in the Overwatch scene since 2016. Best of luck to his future endeavours.
The Meta
No hero pools in effect this week so we saw a little more variety of compositions. We saw Orisa/Sigma double shield, we saw dive, we saw Mei and not an insignificant amount of Symmetra and Junkrat on some maps.
I am looking forward to what kind of compositions teams will bring into the tournament next week.
The Games
A couple interesting games this weeks, both from the NA region, the APAC region was pretty quiet this week.
Los Angeles Valiant vs Houston Outlaws
This series was damn close and I don’t think the Valiant are happy with how close they played this series. At this point I’m inclined to say that at this point the LA Valiant are solidly a middle of the pack team. They can’t seem to beat teams in the top tier (like Philadelphia Fusion) and have trouble beating teams like Houston Outlaws.
Toronto Defiant vs Vancouver Titans
Another edition of the Battle for Canada and it was a good one. This series had the longest Volskaya I think I’ve seen since the 2CP map changes. That map went 6-5 and even the players were exasperated.
I am just glad that Toronto were able to close out this series with a victory, if they had lost this in map 5 I would have been disappointed. Thank you mr Logix.
Predictions for next week
So next week’s Countdown Cup starts with knockout matches in NA and APAC.
NA:
- Atlanta Reign vs Vancouver Titans
- Los Angeles Valiant vs Houston Outlaws
- Dallas Fuel vs Washington Justice
- Toronto Defiant vs Los Angeles Gladiators
APAC:
- Guangzhou Charge vs New York Excelsior
- Hangzhou Spark vs Seoul Dynasty
- Chengdu Hunters vs London Spitfire
Let’s make some predictions for winners and see how wrong they are next week.
NA:
- Atlanta Reign win against Vancouver Titans
- Los Angeles Valiant win against Houston Outlaws
- Dallas Fuel win against Washington Justice
- Los Angeles Gladiators win against Toronto Defiant
APAC:
- Guangzhou Charge win against New York Excelsior
- Seoul Dynasty win against Hangzhou Spark
- Chengdu Hunters win against London Spitfire
Looking forward to the upsets that completely fuck up my bracket.
Wrapping this up
This week and the last couple have been the calm before the tournament storm. I am ready for the excitement and ridiculous upsets.
I leave you with a Twitter thread from Liz:
See y’all next week after the tournament!