So for anyone that hasn't been following the recent matches in TIW, I'm going to give an update of what has transpired over the last couple weeks.

Silver & Bronze League Results

First and foremost, let's congratulate Epic on a great Bronze League win over DMz. They now get an automatic entrance into next year's TIW. Both teams have now advanced to the silver league, which is still ongoing. Unfortunately, Epic was unable to translate their bronze league victory into success within the silver league and have already been knocked out.

The Silver league so far has unfolded more or less how many thought it would, with Dv8 already advancing to the finals with a victory over DMz.

DSyR has also advanced to the silver league final, which means we will see a rematch of the 3rd and 4th place teams from the Group stages match ups. Dv8 won the first clash between these two teams but it looks like DSyR is fully active again and ready to go this time around. Certainly Dv8 are the favorites here but it is possible we could see an upset.


Gold League Finals

The semi final matches for the gold league have come and gone and we have our two finalists. I have provided the bracket results below to illustrate how it takes Frankie >1 day to update the brackets.



As you can see, 7th and EoT_ will rematch for the top spot in TIW this year. The last match-up saw 7th come away with a narrow 4-3 victory but it's really anybody's game at this point. ViCiouS and Xcel will battle each other for 3rd place. Hopefully the third place match can actually happen this year, as ViCiouS was too lazy to schedule with EoT_ in last years tournament.

How it Happened

Both semi finals actually unfolded in a pretty similar way to each other, with both match-ups ending in a 5-2 score. However, each had at least one map where the results could be disputed (I will explain later).

Keep in mind that I am very bias towards ViCiouS so take everything I have to say with a grain of salt.

ViCiouS vs 7th

This semi final was actually very very close, if you look deeper than the final score. The 1v1 portion had a huge upset, with Efkan (Padishah) beating Hoodlum in khans. Well done from Efkan, I don't think anyone expected a result like that. 7th also won the 1v1 cba hero match.

The 2v2 portion saw ViCiouS take a very close lustful game followed by an easy win from 7th in RCB. The 2v2 random decider was probably one of the best comebacks of this tournament, with me (Marauder), and Hoodlum managing to win the game despite being >100 kills behind 7th when they first got cataphract in Veteran blood. Here is the bias I was speaking about before.....and here is the match link to that game: http://www.voobly.com/match/view/13837682

The series was all tied up going into the TG portion of the game, with ViCiouS vetoing AB, CBA, and CBX from 7th and 7th vetoing Graves, Europe, and WoA.

The first match was a very good Art of War victory for 7th which lasted 45+ game minutes and saw ViCiouS put up more of a fight than even we thought was possible vs a very good AoW team from 7th. You can see that match here: http://www.voobly.com/match/view/13837877

The next games were smosh (vicious win) and gwarz (7th win). Both of these games were pretty convincing wins from each team.

The next match was herofest, which originally was going to be a ViCiouS homemap pick until Angel couldn't show up that day. 7th decided to use it as their homemap and it went very long indeed, eventually ending when both teams deciding to call it a tie at sabs & khans (scar vs crescent 1v1 at the end). ViCiouS would eventually forfeit this game instead of replaying since the point would be worthless.

The random decider was played after the herofest tie since no one on vicious was interested in another long game if they didn't have to play. The decider ended up being Deathrow, which went down to a final stand from Like_Gg against three vicious opponents. Like_Gg managed to get Ghengis khan almost immediately after his last ally died and killed the remaining three vicious players.
You can that match here: http://www.voobly.com/match/view/13838707

Like I said before, this semi was incredibly close and couldve gone in a different direction if Like_Gg had died in drow and the herofest was replaced. Very well played by both clans in my opinion and good luck to 7th in the finals.

EoT_ vs Xcel

This semi final was also quite close. The 1v1 portion of the match started off with a viking RCB match which was taken by EoT. The next 1v1 was an archers blood between Eddy and Su, in which Su showed himself to be very competent in, taking the victory from a good player in eddy.

The random decider for 1v1 ended up being CaMp2gg_ vs ForgiveMe_ and was somewhat comical in that the first map to appear was Dome Blood, which had been vetoed earlier by EoT. Suddenly, EoT wanted to play dome with a more favorable player match-up this time around. But unfortunately for them the veto was still in place and the random 1v1 had to be rehosted. The second map turned out to be lustful and camp pulled through with an upset against one of the best lustful players around.

The 2v2 round started off with a very convincing Dome Blood win from Xcel and a close khans win from EoT_. The random decider for this round was a gwarz game in which EoT_ pulled ahead easily with a very early harald from ForgiveMe_.

Both EoT_ and Xcel agreed to play Europe as the first match and it was progressing quite nicely until one of the Xcel players started having connection issues. Both clans agree to replay the match if necessary once all the other matches were out of the way. I believe they have already scheduled a time to play a number of euro matches vs each other in the next week or so.

Following the Euro, smosh was played and won quite easily by EoT. A quick KM match followed which was taken by Xcel.

With the score at 2-2, gwarz was picked by eot and won after a pretty standard game. The final decider ended up being CBA hero. I can't really speak to what EoT did correctly in the CBA hero game as I don't have much experience with same civs, but from my perspective it looked as if Stryker played very strong with byz to carry his team to victory.

Final Thoughts

I want to thank army for organizing this tournament and I want to thank all the players for not ragequitting along the way despite all the drama. I found this tournament to be very fun and it gave me a great opportunity to play competitive games with ViCiouS members, which comes along once in a blue moon.

As for the state of competitive CS.....if you ignore all the drama and childishness that is displayed by many members of our community, I think the gameplay itself has been superb. We are seeing more and more players who can be competitive in variety of maps and we can see the drive from certain players to seek out more competitive match-ups.

There are also more clans that can compete right now than this time last year. It's easy to see only negativity when you look at the day-to-day actions of CS players, but when you take a step back I see the skill level rising constantly.

Maybe we can see more tournaments like this one in the future, only time will tell I think. Once again, congratulations to EoT_ and 7th for making it to the finals and good luck!

Great post! I think you should co -cast in the finals if anyone is going to stream.

I actually enjoyed for the first time in my life a post in the Cs section

Keep the good work coming;good

tl;dr dave had to brag again how he can update brackets faster then frankie

I've already talked to Frankie about this idea..

Next weekend is Eot XceL europe games, I think would be nice to have them casted.

2 weeks from now I think if its possible and goes with peoples times that XceL & ViCiouS should fight for 3rd place and we get streamers/casters for that and have the event advertised to get as many to watch as possible.

and 3 weeks from now we have the Eot/7th finals match, advertised streamed & casted for maximum viewers again.

As long as teams dont have to play without important players because of these times it's most ideal... having both gold league matches the same day & time would just be a mistake imo.