It does look good for a scene when you have limited invites and too many good teams. They'd pretty much would have had to double the spots to fit more of the top teams.

I'd put my money on Immortals and C9 for this but considering Contenders I'd be wary to count anyone out prematurely.

When Cyberathletes almost beat Ninja Rappers...

Didn't see this one coming. I guess Cyclowns needs more time after losing a big part of what made them so good. Hope they get a chance to bounce back from this.

Bazooka Puppies disappointed me a bit since I thought they may have been able to best Team Expert but the latter came out to play.

The real shock to me had to be 123 and Cyclowns swapping spots. Didn't see that one coming!

The rest of the seeds could somewhat be expected, specially with Group C being as up for grabs as it was.

Nevermind 2nd place, they went and got the first seed in their group. Work got done.

Yeah, I don't see LGD being challenged much, specially since FTD is out now.

somehow FTD managed to massively under perform compared to their group stage results. Too bad, I wanted to see if they could challenge the top dog of this tournament.

From what I could see Mafu looks like he fits better in this meta than Himzy does. Not sure what their future holds but at least they looked like they were somewhat starting to adapt. Albeit against lower tiered teams, even if they're resurgent ones.

Strong performance from the Laser wielding Kittens. I honestly thought this was going to be another 2-2 situation but they just dominated on a couple of those maps.

I have to give the edge to CLG just because I don't know how much Selfless has had time to gel here but I'm hoping that it's a close match nonetheless.

I think nV should win this match, hopefully they don't need to pull a reverse sweep this time around but if they dive Meta aggressively they should find success.

Even if Gido has to be in I'll give this one to LH:

LH 3-1 Conbox

Conbox can pull out surprises but LH "should" be able to out skill them if they don't throw games.

sister team I believe.

Looks like Misfits and Laser Kittens were just too much to handle.

I don't understand, there's a draw column for maps, put it in there? Also why the heck don't they have a draw column for matches lol? Some teams just end up with what looks like 1 or 2 fewer matches played, I dun get it.

Map score: W-L-D
Match score: W-L-D

Should be easy enough lol.

Surprise!

Apparently he's going to have surgery to help with this. I think we might be getting a LH vs LWB match with no
Janus and possible no WhoRU depending on how he's doing.

Slight advantage to LH in that case since they can still work more of their comps than LWB since no role swap are needed, but if WhoRU is back then LWB will have their work cut out for them.

Indeed, I'm surprised it wasn't a 3-0, but with Janus in the lineup the match would have no doubt been very different. Next round is looking like a KDP vs nV match up if nV can get their shit together.

As for LW Blue or LH I guess it depends on who gets their key member back and in what condition they'll be.

Maybe, but the contenders game dates don't seem to clash with these ones though.

So much trolling, guess I can go back to other things.

Agreed, Mangachu isn't a good offtank and his hero pool is better played by the other two dps. Quite the disapointing waste of time.

Wow that was such a waste of time.

From looking at the group stage this will more than likely be between Black Ananas and 1246. Unfortunately I don't see either of these teams winning their first playoff games.

FTD should take this with relative ease, I already see them in the finals with a chance to possibly avenge their loss to LGD.

I think Bazooka Puppies has the highest chance to make it out of their group here but I;m not counting anyone out. The field is pretty damn wild with all these new teams that no one has a solid grasp on yet.

That's very possible, though I don't know what kind a scrim schedule one would need to have to not be able to play 10 comp matches all season.

Heck you (talking about the theoretical player) could even do them as a 6 stack if you have that much time invested in scrims.

I'm sad they had to knock out IceBlock, I think both teams could have made it in if not for unlucky seeding, but these guys are looking better than ever before.

I'm not 100% sold on them getting out of their group but it certainly can't be ruled out by any means.

NA
Group A: Faze + CLG
Group B: LGE +Toronto
Group C: IMT + FNRGFE
Group D: C9 + Kungarna

Edit: My top 6 here would be:
C9, Faze, IMT, Kungarna, LGE, CLG

• I'm not quite sold on FNRGFE just yet, but the way this tournament is stacked I can't be sure of anything.

EU
Group A: eUnited + Bazooka
Group B: Misfits + Laser
Group C: NiP + TSN
Group D: Moviestar + Cyclowns

I haven't mentioned the upset possibilities because I wanted to stick to who I thought was going to make it through but most of these groups have a clear leader and pretty much a free for all race to 2nd. It will be very interesting to see who over/under performs here.

I'm not sure I see LGD being challenged at any point during this tournament. They look poised to take it unless someone steps up to pay the bills.

They looked good considering their qualifying conditions but this group is stacked. I don't see them coming out of it alive.

If we have Train I'm not sure Mangachu fits in here. S4's Parah is monster and he's a straight up better Soldier. With Train more than likely on Flex duty I think Agilities might be a better option than Mangachu for this squad.

The only other swap I'd arguably make, though not with 100% certainty, is swapping Verbo for Joemeister.:

xQc - Train - Agilities - Surefour - Roolf - Joemeister

• Less than 5 hours away, HYPERBOLIC HYPE!.

With such a large bracket of teams these looks like they're gonna be the most competitive tournaments in quite a while for both EU and NA.

Really curious to see if these guys can nab the 2nd spot in their group.

6 hours left? HYPE!!!

I think the only problem with that is you want your Winston/Rein to be played by the same person, in cases where you need to swap mid-map. Like Winson/D.Va to Rein/Zarya if it was ever needed.

As Sideshow mentioned if Carpe will be on Genji duty it free up Sinatraa go Tracer around and then that just leaves the tank role(s) to figure out.

Sunday can't come soon enough..

That sounds interesting, and yeah, I'm curious at what they'll be doing for the tank situation or the Emongg/Midnight thing. Like what would their triple DPS comp look like and who would be likely to be subbed out if comp changes are needed.

If Faze continue to be this strong they'll probably take first in the group but the 2nd seed could be a very volatile situation if the Selfless situation doesn't work out as well as it needs to.

Looks like Sinatra is going to be spending more time on Genji. I'm pretty interested in seeing how Emongg is going to cope with the Hog nerfs and how the team as a whole will deal with these big changes.

All hope may not yet be lost, but it certainly won't be an easy journey.

I haven't seen _ID and AZK flex to that off tank role as much, and I don't know what their OT pool looks like if needed, so I don't think they'd be viable choice, imo.

LWB hans't been tested yet this season so I'd have to give the advantage to KDP.

KDP 3-2 LWB or KDP 3-1 LWB

Should be another good one, hopefully no one chokes this time around.

Unfortunate but it's the natural cycle. Hopefully they find their success elsewhere.

It's spreading. No one is safe...

It looks like the top teams in NA, that are currently playing in this tournament, are going to have a tougher time making it out of groups than the top EU teams, in my opinion at least.

NA group D is just disgusting while group D could arguably called the weakest (though Group A doesn't seem as strong with the loss of Dafran but that remains to be seen).

As for EU I'm not sure what I'd call the strongest group but to me it would either be A or B while group C looks to be the weakest.

Looking forward to see who makes it through and if any surprises pop up!

For NA, all groups except for B look at least somewhat stacked to me. As for EU I have a hard time telling, maybe A and B? I feel like the top EU teams, that are currently in this tournament, should have an easier time dominating their groups than the top NA teams. What opinions do peeps have on this?

I'd have to agree, France has Rogue and Denmark has team Singularity Ninjas if they also chose to go the way of full OW team. I think Thailand has a chance but it probably won't be easy.

Meta continues to be weak against even semi-dive teams, but AF Blue just looks so strong right now. It also looks like they'll have an easy path to the semis now. Looking forward to see how they do against the other top dogs which they have yet to face.

He said he wouldn't be in the World Cup team if they were going to be 100% serious about it because he wouldn't be able to stream the scrims. I have no clue what the final result of this is though.

I'd take S4 and Agilities over them without hesitation.

I can't speak for the US team but Canada I agree that S4, xQc, Agilities, Rool and Verbo are pretty much in. The last person needs to be able to flex dps/tank unless they want to run triple dps all the time but Train (LG Evil) might be a good flex pick.

That is extremely unfortunate because they really needed him today. He may or may not have been able to make a difference but I can only assume the result would have been better than this.

Possibly, but unless they have something Metter Athener doesn't this looks like another 3-0 or possibly 3-1 considering how dominated they were in the previous match.

AF blue looks really good right now and i'm not sure X6 are going to be the ones to slow them down.

Tobi must also be feeling even worst now.