SD #22 Effic 1v1 – The Aftermath

Forgive us for the delay, but it took a while to come down from the 29-players-duel-tournament-induced high.
Yes, that’s right, 29 participants! What. A. Massive. Turnout!

The Games
To make it quick: raffael won the tournament, thus securing his third effic 1v1 title in a row.
hades surprised everyone (but Rexus) with his freakishly good out-of-training shape and came second.

Let’s dive right into the final!
The first map was picked by raffael and academy was set to be played. For a while, it looked like hades was capable of anything, clinging to a tied game ever so tightly, but ultimately raffael’s big dick energy shield could not be penetrated, so to speak.
The final result was 52:50 in favor of the w00p player (screen | demo).

As unsurprising as raffael’s map choice was, the same cannot be said of hades’ pick. The decision to play memento, a map known to be extremely popular among w00p duelists, caught everyone off-guard. Nevertheless, the sp4nk powerhouse went on to show us that he wasn’t to be taken lightly. His performance on memento might very well have sufficed to destroy any other high-profile player, but unfortunately not raffael, who got on an almost unparalleled roll and hit shots that you would otherwise only expect to see in a fragmovie. This eliminated not only the spectators’ but also hades’ hopes of seeing a tiebreaker map fairly quickly. Still, it deserves special credit that he put up a dogged fight until the very end and didn’t let himself be shaken off farther than 5 frags.
Thus, the final result on memento was 58:53 (screen | demo). Seriously guys, watch the demo if you want to see magic. And textbook positional play, of course.

Obviously it goes without saying, but the tournament didn’t just thrive on these two players and their grandfinal.

Rexus, who many of us (self-proclaimed) experts had seen as one of the favorites after his nail-biter final versus raffael last time, showed some very convincing performances, but was sent to the losers bracket by his clanmate hades in an incredibly close legazzo match (73-72 | screen | demo) and was later sent home for good in an equally intense academy duel (49-48| screen | demo) by his ex-clanmate (with allegedly hurtful attitude) Frosty.

But our favorite Canadian (sorry Skillz) giant killer didn’t stop there. He also extinguished the flame of fan-favorite Lokio in a super-close (do we even have to say it anymore?) academy (47-45 | screen | demo), and was only stopped by lagout (53-46 | screen | demo).

For someone so out-of-training and hesitant to even participate – insiders tell me he was forced to play by some mean clanmates – like lagout, the Frenchman delivered quite the show, knocking into the dust the likes of Doko (that guy has talent!), Partizan (76-64 | screen | demo), and Frosty (as you already know, but some things I don’t get tired of repeating). Only hades got in his way (twice), which averted a w00p final, but still landed lagout a more than respectable third place.

It was at this point that I realized I could ramble on and on about the tournament and move from player to player, but my non-linear storytelling has become confusing enough already, so I’ll stop here, adding only one more food-for-thought item before I do so:
This was by no means the end of the road, or the superlative of tournaments, that will never be achieved again, There are lots and lots of legendary players that couldn’t attend the event (starch, Honzik1, notas, just to name three), and even more have been motivated to get into title-worthy shape again. The competition is anything but stalling. We’re looking forward to that.

The 20€ Steam Raffle
When the games were over, we excitedly put all names into our tombola. In a contest of true skill, Frosty emerged as the winner of our 20€ steam gift.
This may not seem like much, but converted into their monopoly currency, that’s 29,78 CAD or approximately 36 Tim Hortons donuts. Congrats!

Resources
SauerDuels website
Results page with all screens and demos
Challonge bracket
Twitch VOD by notas (with lousy co-casting by Acuerta and a mid-tournament Lokio interview)