A plethora of picks from the OC Esports scene this week
Aussies abroad were the highlight of our week as some awesome teams took their talents overseas to do us proud. The Dire Wolves faced stiff competition in the Worlds 2017 Play-Ins and the Chiefs slogged it out in the IEM Oakland Sea Qualifiers. Back home the WPGI Women’s Esports League kicked off with some awesome battles, and the Throwdown RLCS Season 4 League continued.
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LoL – Worlds 2017 Play-Ins
OPL Champions the Dire Wolves showed up to the Worlds 2017 Play-Ins ready to play. Facing off against oNe Esports and Dire Wolves, they had a tough road ahead, but their first day looked alright — they dropped to Cloud9, but beat the CBLOL champions handily. The second day saw them taking on C9 again, and things looked very promising as they got out to an early lead. Unfortunately too many of their kills went to Destiny’s Alistar, giving the DW an incredibly fed support but not as big of an advantage as they otherwise might have liked. Watch their fantastic early game run below.
They were later knocked out by oNe Esports in a nailbiting tiebreaker as they fell to an early deficit against the South American squad before managing to stage a monumental turn-around thanks to deft play from Shernfire. A huge swing in momentum came off the back of the clip below — unfortunately the OPL champs got a little too greedy and went all-in on a Baron play that saw them unable to defend their base.
The takeaway from this is really how much the OPL has grown in the last few seasons, and a lot of that has to do with the amount of overseas play Riot is putting together for them. Getting international experience has lifted teams like the Dire Wolves to a point where they’re able to shutdown zero-respect play from Cloud9, or swing things around against the best of CBLOL. Even if they didn’t make the knock-out stage, they’re still champions and they did our region proud. The growth you can see in DW from their performance at MSI compared to Worlds is huge in and of itself — there’s no doubt they’ll learn from this experience and come back stronger next time again.
CSGO – IEM Oakland SEA Qualifiers
The Chiefs took advantage of a changed ruleset to put in a great effort for the Iem Oakland Sea Qualifiers, but they fell to TheMongolz — who would go on to win the event — in the Semi-Finals. They stomped their way through the rest of the qualifiers, but came up against an in-form TheMongolz, who beat them first on Train and then again on Inferno (despite a very good T side start from The Chiefs).
CSGO – WPGI Women’s Esports League Season 3
The WPGI is back on, seeing Women’s squads from around the region fighting it out to determine who is the best — although it was hard to find a result out of the Best of 2s format, as all but one team went 1-1. Only the Kings Gaming Club managed to 2-0 their opponents, Team Noxide, off the back of some brilliant play. It’s awesome the WPGI has started up again, and hopefully this season goes off without a hitch. Watch Sammiie do her best to keep Team Noxide in the running on Overpass.
Rocket League – RLCS Oceania League
With the RLCS Oceanic League back on we’re seeing more of the best Rocket League our region has to offer on again. Playing for a spot at the RLCS means teams are putting it all out there — the big winners this week were Pale Horse, who managed to win both their games, although it was close when they faced off with JAM Gaming. JAM beat Noizee Isn’t Toxic to salvage their week, and Legacy smashed the Chiefs to close things out. Watch JAM do their best to spoil Pale Horse’s hopes and dreams with a late comeback in game 5 below.
Ping us in the comments or on twitter if you think I missed any of the best highlights, and join us next week as we bring you more of the best from around the OC (don’t call it that).
Joab Gilroy is an Australian-based freelancer that specialises in competitive online games and esports. You can tweet at him here.
