WSVG World Championship 2015- Unofficial Write UP |
Hello AoC Community :D
I decided I wanted to do a somewhat detailed writeup of the WSVG tournament before the final in the Maldives, as I have found it to be one of the greatest 1v1 AoC tournaments ever, and I like doing write-ups, and want to cover it thoroughly. I plan to have a writeup of around this length about Asia and America, and later the play-off stage and showdown stage. The further I progress in the tournament, the mroe detailed the match descriptions will become. It might be pretty long, feedback is always welcome. Here is the write-up I made for Europe, as well as a short introduction to the tournament :D
THe announcement of the WSVG tournament represented a major AoC event, as it was the first time in eons that a live Championship would be played. A 1v1 tournament, where the 8 best AoC players would get a free journey to th Maldives, and a stay in a five star hotel while playing the final live, it had a prize pool of 10.000 dollars in addition to the accomodation and flight to the Maldives. A qualification stage in the three AoC continents would be played, giving four players form each in the showdown stage, and four mor e in the play-offs. Four of the 12 play-off players would then proceed to the showdown stage, where foru groups with four players each would compete for two spots in the Maldives in each group.
Europe and Africa did, as somewhat expected, end up as the continent with most sign-ups for the WSVG World Championship, and the only continent with a number of sing-ups exceeding 64, meaning a pre-qualification round had to be played between the lowest rated players. Once the pre-qualification round had finished without any dramatic surprises, the qualification stage in Europe could truly begin. As pertaining to the format, Europa was split into four brackets of 16 players, each leading to a regional final that would secure direct qualification for the showdown stage, and a play-off spot for the loser. In the first bracket, Norwegian TyRanT player TheViper was widely regarded as a leading contender for qualification, being regarded as one of the top player in AoC history. As expected, TheVipers route to the Maldives started without a hitch, beating British Rgeadn and Slovakian Majkl without sustaining any loses. However, as expected, opposition would only get tougher. In the regional semifinal, TheVipers opponent Arma had impressed by beating first Ronopovi and subsequently Poison of Zone player tobi, sustaining one loss against the Portuguese.
Against TheViper however, Arma unexpectedly impressed. Picking RF as a home map, he successfully pulled off a king snipe using petards and plumed archers as Mayans, despite TheViper having picked Goths to counter his Mayans. Despite this impressive feat however, Arma ended up losing 3-1, but definitely retaining his honor. With this minor chink in his armor, TheViper was ready for the regional final. Here the opposition was expected to be stronger, as expected from meeting one of the top 8 of Europe. Two Finnish players from NaBs dominated this bracket, with Zuppi as the favorite, effortlessly defeating Squeak, “The Kanye West of AoC”, and later Mits_OS, while his country- and clanmate, NorthenPike also made it to the regional semifinal. In this clash of NaBs – a recurring motif in the tournament, Zuppi proved superior winning 3-0. Here, TheVipers dominance proved less pronounced than expected. Zuppi unexpectedly winning first an Arabia Hun war, and later – with TheViper confidently playing with bugged stone – winning Regicide Fortress Maya war. At this point a surprise seemed to be brewing, but TheViper proved why he was considered the best, and won the next 4 games, reaching the showdown stage with a 4-2 win, while Zuppi, though having impressed, had to go the off-route through play-offs.
In many ways, the second European bracket was the most interested, due to containing no TyRanT players. Instead, this was dominated by NaBs, with Lojza, Spaden and 8th Wonder being the regional favorites along with the best Danish player, Kongensgade_42 also being involved. Lojza, the Czech talent, soon proved his potential by beating VIK_Warrior and BuzZ_Bleys without little problems. In the regional semifinal, Lojza became participant in the second clash of NaBs in the tournament, facing Swedish Spaden. Spaden had already impressed by beating the Serbian legend DauT in Balance of Power, and defeating his opponents kuNfTy and RoR_Optilaser. The clash of NaBs however, proved onesided, and Lojza was ready for the regional final with a 3-0 victory.
His expected opponent, Latvian clanmate 8th Wonder, was doing short work of opponents in the other side of the bracket. Swedish BuLLeT and Danish Kongensgade was swept away with little effort, after which Tsu_NilPferD was the opponent. NilPferD, having defeated Norway A player Lecture and countryman Skittle seemed slated to be a stronger opposition, but Wonder was too strong, and won 3-0. With the regional final being played right after the official NaBs meet-up in Riga, Wonder and Lojza spiced up the battle for NaBs with a bet: Wonder had to change his nick to omnomnom for a month in case of loss, Lojza to monkey. This proved the best bet for Lojza. After winning Arabia as well as Wonders home map, Lojza picked the same home map to prove superiority, which ended with a loss. However, 4-1 was more than enough to progress to the showdown stage, while Wonder alias omnomnom had to take the detour through the play-off.
The third bracket also provided a clear favorite in the person of German TyRanT JorDan_23. With JorDan announcing a semi-retirement after winning War is Coming as part of TyRanT Legends, the community was ripe with speculation that he would not be signing up for the World Championship. However, the chance of a journey to the Maldives proved too good to pass up, and indeed, JorDan was to be found as the top seed of the third bracket. Other strong players were present in the bracket too though, and JorDans journey to the Showdown stage was far form easy. After beating CZ_Mango and Vodka, JorDan faced Czech Janik in the semifinal. French Arena expert Edie had been a favorite to this position, but scheduling conflicts with his exams led Edie to give Admin Win to Dane SaladEsc in the first round, enabling Janik to defeat SaladEsc with little difficulty in the next stage, and progress to meet JorDan. Though JorDan won the Arabia game as expected, Janik pulled a fast one by picking Migration as his home map, and actually outplaying JorDan to secure a victory. JorDan held his head together for next two games and progressed with a 3-1 victory, but like his friend and clan-mate TheViper, he had encountered difficulty unexpectedly early.
More difficulty was to be found in the regional final however, in a bracket filled with a nasty collection of top level players, such as Pedro, Emin, MbL, Error and never ever. Never ever, a Norway A player, was defeated by Error, who soon proved his skills when facing 2k Turkish player Emin. A thrilling match went into a fifth deciding game before Error surprisingly took home a 3-2 victory, allowing him to progress to face Norwegian MbL, who had comparatively little trouble defeating ExIT and RA_Berk, taking no defeats against him. This proved the end of the path for Error, as MbL, despite losing one game, won 3-1. That send MbL to face JorDan in the regional final, where more trouble was waiting for the German. MbL, being one of the very few global Black Forest experts, used this map to his advantage, and secured a victory for MbL. Unfortunately for the Norwegian though, there were other maps than Black Forest as well, and JorDan proved to have little trouble winning these, and taking the series with a 4-1 victory. While MbL was heading for the play-offs, JorDan had lived up to expectations, and reached the showdown stage.
The last European bracket featured a favorite form TyRanT Legends, just like the first and third. Here, it was age old Serbian AoC legend DauT, who despite recent inactivity, was ready to make a bid for the Maldives. DauT started his ambition by beating Russian opponent SticykFingaz 2-0, but DauT ended up facing trouble even earlier than his clan-mates TheViper and JorDan, losing the first game against Czech Where Iam in the quarterfinal. DauT managed to shake this early scare off him however, and took the game 3-1, but a result like that spelled potential early trouble for the legend, that could turn into costlier results later. His regional semifinal was postponed for a while, since the scheduling between Polish Barles and Spanish tomate in the first round had been drawn out, ending in an Admin Win for Barles. Subsequently, Barles, perhaps surprisingly won an interesting match with 3-2 against Turkish top player Jugband, before facing DauT. That is where the fun ended for Barles though, as DauT in a very short timespan won 3-0, and was ready for the final.
Here, he could expect to meet opposition from the new top clan Wolfpack, created to challenge the TyRanT hegemony in the AoC clan world. Three European players from that clan, Emin, as well as Russian AoC prodigy Vinchester and Spanish TaToH, had signed up for the tournament, and two of them, Vinch and TaToH, was competing in the other side of the fourth bracket. TaToH started his tournament by defeating NaBs player Luffis, while he missed his chance to play second NaBs player Rubenstock, who lost 2-1 to Irish player Melkor in the first round. Melkor was swiftly dealt with by TaToH, which prepared him for the meeting with clanmate Vinchester. Vinchester had progressed with similar ease, beating Mitos 2-0 and later Quark 3-0, and with none of the two players having any losses against them, they faced each other. TaToH proved strongest, and progressed with a 3-0 victory. TaToH seemed to have a real chance against DauT in the final, but threw away the first two games with early mistakes. Despite making a comeback with two wins through grushing in the next two games, DauT proved too strong, and with a 4-2 victory, joined his clanmates in the showdown stage, while the last remaining European Wolfpack was forced to count on his luck in the play-off stage.