As the playoffs of Japan's Overwatch OMEN CUP by HP draw closer, so too does the desire to learn more about the top talent of the Japanese scene. The ‎¥360,000 (~$3250 USD) tournament is recommencing this weekend 8th-9th April, starting with the quarterfinals on Saturday and concluding with the semifinals onward on Sunday in a straight eight-team single elimination format.

We've already got the teams and fixtures on our OMEN CUP event page, but to learn more about the tournament I took some time to talk to one of the DPS players of HEAT, ta1yo, for a little insight on what to expect.

Having recently moved from the South-East Asian scene, playing with Unestablished.Juniors, what is your 'newbie' perspective on the Japanese scene?

ta1yo: I feel as if that when I played SEA, there were a couple teams that were extremely dominant over everyone else, whereas here in JP I feel like everyone is on a similar playing field. There is a fighting chance for every team, which is why I feel like this tournament is going to be super exciting.

Going into this tournament, who do you think are the teams to look out for?

t: USG Supreme and 琉球王国 (Ryukyu Kingdom), for sure. 琉球王国 (Ryukyu Kingdom) are an old team originally called Rampage Kingdom, but they reformed under their new name for this tournament after 2 of their DPS players couldn't attend, and proceeded to pick up their now standout players, XQ and ALPHARD_UNmO.

USG Supreme, however, as a whole team are just extremely talented, they are rat-a-tat insane. nanase's Zarya is something to fear, he seems to always have 100 energy with tracking that would make hackers jealous. nanase and pepper are for sure the most standout players there, but the whole team is sick.

And the other teams, what should we look out for when watching them?

t: USG Iridata has a great player named Aktm, they seem to base all their plays around him, so if he's not performing neither are they. When he goes off, however, they all go off.

卍最強即席チーム卍 are a new team, made pretty much for this tournament. Their name actually translates to something near to “The Greatest Scrim Team”.

I don't know much about CrestGaming.Blitz or ONE LIGHT but I know Naturals北海道 have some very respectable players, RuiNation's off-tank and nico's Genji are quite good.

What about your team, HEAT?

t: Right, I forgot. We're a pretty new team and we really like to run dive comps. Only other thing that's notable is MaTtyo's claim to fame.

Prize Distribution

Total Prize Pool - ‎¥ 360,000 JPY (~$3250 USD)

• 1st Place - ‎¥240,000 JPY (~$2165 USD)

• 2nd Place - ‎¥120,000 JPY (~$1085 USD)

Schedule

Quarterfinals

• Saturday, 8th April – 04:30 EDT / 10:30 CEST / 17:30 JST

Semifinals

• Sunday, 9th April – 03:30 EDT / 09:30 CEST / 16:30 JST

Final

• Sunday, 9th April – 07:30 EDT / 13:30 CEST / 20:30 JST

The event will be streamed live on twitch.tv/JapanESports with VODs becoming available on their YouTube later.