The stage is set
The American qualifiers for the World Electronic Sports Games concluded at the weekend, where seven teams battled to get a prized spot at the massive 32 team tournament to be held in March. Four teams came away with qualifying spots, along with their share of a $42,500 prize pool.
Although initially, seven teams had qualified for these online finals, Blue Pikachu decided to withdraw early, leaving Team USA, Team Leviathan, Play 4 Fun, Team Canada, Volta7, and Learn2Gank to face off against one another. The format consisted of a best-of-one round robin group stage, with the top four earning themselves both a ticket to the playoff stage, along with the WESG 2017 LAN finals. The playoffs were then held as a best-of-three double-elimination bracket, with the placings determining prize money only, and not any seeding.
Group stage
With every team gaining a free win after Blue Pikachu’s withdrawal after their first two series (which they also lost), it soon became apparent that Team USA were the ones to beat. Despite being a team of mostly middle-tier players, with the exception of EG coach Bulba, they managed a flawless run, facing little resistance apart from their match against Play 4 Fun. Coming in second were Team Canada, who, at first glance, unusually have two players not thought of to be Canadian in Fly and Febby. However, their secondary Canadian citizenship allowed them to join this superteam, consisting of other well-accomplished players in Arteezy, Moonmeander, and International winner Aui_2000.
Coming in third were Play 4 Fun, another representative of Canada and headed by Jeyo, a previous compLexity Gaming and Evil Geniuses player. Their last match of the group stage was against fellow qualifying team Team Leviathan, and their win there meant that they would end up facing against second-place Team Canada, while Leviathan were placed against Team USA, the apparently stronger team. This left Volta7 and Learn2Gank, the Ecuadorian and Mexican teams, respectively, out of contention and ending under the US and Canadian teams.
Playoffs
Both playoff games were simultaneous, so none of the teams knew who their next opponent would end up being. In the all-US match of Team USA versus Team Leviathan, they started off with a 52-minute, back and forth game. While USA got off to a slight lead early on, Leviathan managed to turn it around at the ten-minute mark, starting to win early skirmishes, and getting away with favourable trades, including a Melee Barracks take at 23 minutes. However, USA began to turn it back on their opponents, taking fight after fight, narrowing the gold lead to zero, and then even gaining an impressive 15k lead for themselves. But then, they too were turned around on, losing four players without a return kill, and then Leviathan managed to snowball it into a win, finishing the game with a five for three trade in their favour, winning at 52 minutes.
The second game was much more one-sided, though, with Leviathan capitalising on the momentum gained from their previous win to punish a greedy, late-game focused line-up, and although there was an unfavourable fight at 11 minutes in, resulting in them losing four members, they kept up the aggression, getting kill after kill. They then pushed into USA’s base at 21 minutes, putting on the pressure and leaving them no room to manoeuvre, before Team USA called the GG at 25 minutes in, sending Leviathan to the finals in an upset victory.
Meanwhile, in the Canadian match-up, Team Canada seemed to have a much easier time in their games against Play 4 Fun, when, even though they gave away four kills early (including one before the game had even started properly), they kept playing to their strengths in grouping and taking objectives. Although their opponents were able to find a lot of pick-offs, with Jeyo on Play 4 Fun racking up a massive ten kills by the 16-minute mark, they couldn’t take many objectives; Canada’s composition was much more suited towards pushing and getting away safely. After a nearly nine-minute period where no-one in the game died, Team Canada pushed in and gained tower after tower, before managing to pick off a support and offlaner, and push into the enemy’s base to force out the GG call, giving them their first win.
The second game ended up being a lot more aggressive, with Team Canada putting a lot of focus into picking off the enemy’s roaming support. Although they were pushed in a lot in the bottom lane, they made sure to keep forcing fights and engagements, taking constant good trades and increasing their gold lead. Pushing into Play 4 Fun’s base at 28 minutes, Canada played the game carefully, taking Roshan and buying their items, before pushing once again at 31 minutes, making their opponents concede the second match, and sending them to the finals.
Finals
Although there was meant to be a third-place match between Team USA and Play 4 Fun, Team USA forfeited the match which, while not having any effect on who qualified, meant that they took only $2,500, while their opponents took double that amount.
Team Leviathan versus Team Canada in a US vs CA final was much less one-sided than the previous ones. The first game started off with a very early skirmish before the one-minute mark, resulting in a trade of one for one between the two, but leaving Leviathan with a slight advantage. They continued to keep this for the majority of the first ten minutes, thanks to some pick-offs of the opposing team’s Drow Ranger; but, as in Team Canada’s previous series, their opponent seemed unable to take many objectives from them. With a superior team-fighting composition, each fight was a loss for the American side, and they lost tower after tower, until Team Canada finally pushed to the Ancient at 28 minutes, and put their first win on the scoreboard.
The second game also started with an advantage towards Team Leviathan’s side, but unlike the previous game, this time they seemed content to keep it going their way. Now that their team had the team-fighting advantage, it was on them to keep up the aggression and force Team Canada into unfavourable bouts, which they were able to then use to create pressure and push more towers. They kept this gold advantage for most of the game, and though they did at one point lose it, thanks to Canada taking Leviathan’s bottom lane base tower, along with one of their barracks, they were able to take four of their heroes in return. Continuing their own push, Leviathan took the Dire base and forced out a GG, tying the series up at 1-1.
The final match of the series was very reminiscent of the first one, with Team Canada able to take numerous pick-offs, and translating them into tower kills, while their opponents found themselves unable to trade back. Even with some missteps, including fights at 21 minutes and 22 minutes in resulting in a total of seven deaths for Canada, their continued pushing was impossible for their opponents to deal with. Fight after fight was won, and Canada pushed into the base, taking every single lane of Barracks, along with one of their opponent’s Tier 4 towers, before the Americans finally conceded, giving Team Canada both the series win, along with the $20,000 grand prize.
