What a tournament it was … again! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start from the beginning this time.
If you didn’t see the games last Sunday, I strongly recommend you watch notas’ twitch VOD before you read this summary. Spoilers ahead!
The Seedings
With w00p and sp4nk, the two finalists of the previous SauerLeague tournament, being pre-seeded, the 8 remaining teams battled for seeds in 5 minutes of efficteam xenon (who would have thought this map would turn out to be of use after all?).
In the seeding match, the impressive Squad (108) came first thanks to homogeneously high scores of all three players, leaving behind the likes of sQ (106) and DK (96).
As for individual performances, Redon (again) managed to outshine the rest and scored 48 frags by himself, nine more than the runner-ups hamon and Gangler (39).
The Elimination Stage
Unfortunately for us sensation seeking vultures, the number of upsets was comparatively low this time. Yes, the DarkKeepers‘ B-team sent the Dangerous Monkeys into the losers bracket (forge – abbey – haste), and normally this would be an upset of cosmic scale, but the DM line-up suffered heavily from the absence of their powerhouses Frosty, Lokio and benzomatic.
Team RED made their first SauerLeague appearance and right away they kicked out DK’s A and B-team, only to be stopped quite brutally by impressive Squad (forge). Here’s hoping we see more of them in the future!
Certainly the must-watch event of the day was the first quarterfinal match between sp4nk and impressive Squad. I really don’t want to take anything away from this game, just watch it! I could promise you 10 minutes of sheer reissen awesomeness and adrenaline, but the game’s a little longer than that.
Under the lead of ffa superstar Redon, sQ plowed through DK, DM and !s. The only teams that stood between them and their first title were sp4nk and w00p.
The Final Clash(es)
It wasn’t exactly a surprise that these two old-school clans would fight it out again in the end. Whenever the sp4nk team of starch, hades, and notas got a foothold in the game, they were cool-headed and experienced enough to emerge victorious (forge#1 – reissen#2). When that didn’t succeed, basically any attempt at gaining traction was mercilessly shut down by the w00p triumvirate consisting of raffael, Honzik1, and Acuerta. Such was the case on reissen#1, forge#2, and haste. At the end of the day, the w00pies seemed to always be a step ahead and took home their second eCTF title in a row. (Vod links: 1st encounter in semis – 2nd encounter in grandfinal)
The Raffle
raffael sponsored three (!) 20€ steam gifts for this tournament, one of which to be raffled among the winning team. As chance would have it, he would actually have won one himself, but the kind gentleman he is, he didn’t accept it. Instead, it went to Gangler. The two other 20€ gifts were picked up by notas and hades. Since many were voicing doubts as to the legitimacy of the raffle-master and his clanmate winning prizes, we consulted a Ukrainian raffle expert and official OECD observer, but no irregularities were brought to daylight.
Links
SauerLeague – SauerLeague Discord – Tournament Bracket – twitch VOD by notas
Big thanks to everyone who was involved! Stay tuned for future events! By the way, what were your personal highlights of the tournament? Let us know with a comment!
I wonder who is the Ukrainian observer.
Couldn’t have written it better myself!
My only regret is that I can’t be everywhere at once – hopefully one of these days sp4nk can field our starch rexus hadis lineup and I can devote my attention to streaming all kinds of games and POVs!
Thanks Raffael for the prizes.
You are are doing a lot for sauer.