NGA Club were the favourites going into this game and delivered, making All Strike Gaming look amateurish in a 3-0 defeat. NGA had their own issues but ASG were not strong enough to exploit them; NGA defended better on Hollywood and Numbani to crush their opponent's morale, finishing them off on Nepal.

This Quarter Final was the battle of the Chinese. Powerhouse side NGA Club had underwhelmed in the qualifiers but come out strong when the pressure was applied. They now had to quell the uprising from the promising players on All Strike Gaming in order to progress through the tournament. In the groups they had already beaten ASG twice 2-0, so history was clearly on their side.

Hollywood

Both teams started with a Zen Lucio composition, with ASG defending with a Mei and Reaper. NGA waited for their Graviton Surge to be available and then burst in, diving with their Winston and piling in damage with the Zenyatta and McCree. NGA tried to carry their momentum through the streets but Samsara was ready on Reaper, dropping from a house to clear the wave. It didn’t take long for NGA to regroup and roll through their defense however, using mAps’ McCree and RLE’s Genji to pressure from the roofs.

NGA were unable to keep momentum flowing without ultimates, but their execution when they were live outclassed ASG’s. They wiped ASG just before checkpoint two but couldn’t push the cart quick enough to block the spawners and again struggled to push without their ults. By the time they captured there was two minutes left in their timebank, giving ASG real potential to defend. Rain and Samsara on Zarya and Reaper continued to do a lot of work for their team in the dry fights, but almost none of the ASG ultimates were effective. With 30 seconds left NGA popped off another range of impactful ults, but again couldn’t push the cart fast enough to get enough reward for it. ASG streamed out with their spawners and staggered out a slow fight to stop NGA Club at 67.69m.

NGA had looked lost without their ultimates and had ignored the cart repeatedly, and this playstyle almost bit them immediately as ASG looked to swarm in fast. They dived in with a D.Va and Winston though and got torn apart by RLE’s Junkrat. As NGA started to get ultimates up they began to steamroll as well, using them effectively on defense. NGA’s Ana/Zenyatta defense gave them a lot of damage and good ultimate potential for teamfights, but eventually they got caught in a Graviton and had to give up the first point.

NGA swapped out to McCree and Tracer but couldn’t stabilise until the end of the streets. RLE’s Tracer had huge survivability against ASG’s composition but had little impact himself; his safe play was enough to delay ASG for a long time and buy time for spawners however and the rest of his team slowly bled them out for a full defense at the end of the streets. NGA went up 1-0.

Numbani

ASG started on attack with a Genji/D.Va/McCree lineup. Shadowcat on Winston instantly shut down the Genji however and both Rain and Samsara looked uncomfortable on their picks. ASG took control of the top right and baited out a Graviton Surge which connected onto three but was instantly neutralised by 11520’s Transcendence. As the black hole subsided NGA had given up position to try and do damage and got killed, allowing ASG to take the point.

NGA held immediately around the corner with their Roadhog and looked for picks, but their total lack of frontline left everybody open. The Winston and Hog got eaten alive and the cart was pushed slightly further, before a Dragon Strike from RLE reset them again. Once they had ASG on the back foot though, they continued to pressure and stopped any full teamfights by picking off a couple of targets at a time. ASG showed a real weakness of vision by never attempting to reset their spawns and NGA were permitted to almost spawncamp as ASG just fed into them one at a time until the end of the map.

NGA started with a Tracer and McCree, picking off the defensive Winston and Genji straight away to open up the point. mAps on McCree let his team clean up a variety of further kills by poking midrange damage into everyone and RLE again did work on Tracer. ASG appeared to be mentally rattled and again just fed in, rolling over completely for the map loss.

Nepal

NGA started rolling immediately with RLE on Genji and mAps on Tracer. LittleCat on Zenyatta was even getting ballsy, running in and getting kills for his team. ASG did recap the point after a Graviton Surge was followed up by Rain on Tracer, but it didn’t take long for them to overextend and give NGA back the point. Shadowcat had his Graviton up and popped it into the team at an early choke, blocking everyone and getting better position despite a counter Transcendence. They took the first round on Sanctum.

Samsara again tried with Genji but looked far out of his depth, running around spamming shurikens and doing almost nothing. NGA took the first capture and wiped ASG. To add insult to injury, Rain accidentally spilt coffee on his keyboard and had to disconnect, hopping in and out of the server trying to see if he could fix it on the fly. There had been no attempt to pause despite it being implemented into the game a couple of days before, but the game did take a break after the second round went to NGA.

All Strike Gaming gave up. With a broken keyboard that they had to fix and facing a long pause and then a huge uphill battle against a 2-0 in the series and a 2-0 in the map, ASG decided it wasn’t worth the wait and forfeited the series.

NGA took the game and earned the right to face Rogue in the Semi-Finals.