We saw almost 120 games during the last month where 48 Teams played in groups of 6 in order to prove themselves as one of the 16 best 5v5 LT teams of America and Europe in the biggest tourney of Tribes:Ascend so far. Sadly, we had two complete dropouts in the US divisions for which we couldn't find a replacement in time. Also some midway dropout and sparse activity in the US groups made us delay the Elimination Phase by a bit. But we do not want to talk about the bad things here, but rather analyze what happened in each group. We will now go through the groups, each one had one seeded team (given in parenthesis) and was else drawn randomly.
Division 1 (.uE):Unhandled Exception has proven again and again that they are among Europe's top 10 and that since the beta days. All other teams that are much younger and less experienced, also one newblood team "Tour of Teamrespawn" found its way into Division 1.
What sounds like a clear thing turned out to be one of the closest groups in the tourney. The upcoming team Flamboyant (which also claimed a place among Europe's 7v7 top 5 in the meantime) proved to be on par with uE. Their game ended in a 4-6, 6-4
perfect draw and the only thing that decided the group victory was that uE managed to get less counter grabs than their less-experienced rivals. Also the third place was decided by caps only. Here, Team MILF Launcher came out ahead against Capture The Lag - Again, the match between the respective teams was a draw!
Division 2 (kok):The primarily Finish veteran team of Cult of Kyprä was placed in a mixed group of familiar faces - the French team orKs and the also Finish team No Fear are about for a bit - and some new teams. Worth mentioning: team Discbait is a sub-team of ClutchEU who also recently established a place in the top ten of Europe.
In this division we had 5 (!!) draw games which tells a lot about how evenly matched this group was. The Terminat'orKs were able to secure the second place by winning against the third and fourth placed dcb and FF, but only managed to get a draw against the 5th and 6th-placed Jazz and NF, crazy world.
Divison 3 (idk?):The division of death. Headed by Europe's number one team I Don't Know this group featured 4 European top ten teams and the Spanish team Shellfish. Team Masterrace, starring players from GoV and ex-/v/Tribes, dropped early after their first losses. The remaining teams fought hard and the result was surprisingly clear: The Italians know how to handle flat round things - Team Blue Pizza special (Noobfellas + Kat99) where able to beat all opponents (except idk) and secured the second place.
Divison 4 (ePi):The first of three (randomly sorted) US-only divisions. This group featured two newblood teams, one dropout and a
late-joining second squad of the otherwise seeded team Egocentric.
Sadly, one newblood team dropped out early, leaving only four teams for the battle of supremacy which was won by Egocentric's second squad - the only team able to snatch the first place from a seeded team - congratulations!
Division 5 (ego^):The only group not finished by today features one of the most delicate decisions in the tournament. Egocentric faces Kings in the last round of their group phase and the winner of this match will advance first and face Epidemic in the Ro16, the looser of this matchwill face Egocentric's second squad. This means, if Kings manage to win this, both Egocentric squads will have to duel each other in the first round of elimination
.
Else, there was one complete dropout and team Vexillifer dropped half-way through the tourney, again a group of 4 US teams
.
Divison 6 (eX.):The last US division had a clear victor (Exica) and a clear second place by "The DrunkenLegends".
Of the two newblood teams, one dropped early without notice. Also two inactivity-induced default draws had to be awarded, a shame.
Divison 7 (nM.):This group featured two beta-veteran teams (MD and nM), two teams strong upcoming teams (TF and PLD) and two newblood teams (VGS and GAF).
Worth mentioning is that ILD (incredible Life Decisions, a squad from Poor Life Decisions) was able to beat the Mighty Discs and thus managed to claim second place. Also good to see: The newbloods of VGS were able to win two matches, congratulations!
Division 8 (-3-):The home of one of the tourney's favorites, heartbreakerz, featured a dropout by BB (a sub-team of ClutchEU).
In what was said to have been a close game (featuring a fatal flag bug), YaM! beats team way2go on the first playday and this match turns out to be the decider for the second place in the group - tough luck. Also worth mentioning: Heartbreakerz managed to get out of the group phase with only 2 caps against and finishing all maps by capouts, that's tourney record!
We want to thank all participating teams and all the casters who did a wonderful job covering as many of the matches as they could. We hope to see some of the new teams pick up Tribes in the Ladder (first teams did already join, VGW) and participate in the upcoming events by Gameshrine.org and nimbleMinds.eu. Stay tuned for more information on those!
Cheers!
