Overwatch Open is now the biggest tournament for the class-based FPS that was just announced out of nowhere. With only a few days from announcement to the first qualifying round, the biggest teams in the Overwatch e-sports scene immediately flocked to it in order to secure qualification to the regional finals. This have left the Gosugamers Weeklies open for less established teams to make a mark while the big boys rush to the tournament that has $300,000 worth of prize money up for grabs, with the winner taking a $100,000 chunk of it home.
That said, several teams have made some upsets by denying some teams favoured to secure the first qualifying slots. There were two separate brackets being run, for the NA and EU regions, in a single elimination format. The winner of the final match of the bracket gets to secure a slot in the regional finals. There will be three more qualifier events, and it is better to secure a slot early rather than later.
The two primary upsets were Anox, a consistent mid-tier team from Russia defeating old-favourite Reunited in the EU quarter finals, and Team Solo Mid, formerly Code 7 and Gale Force e-Sports, beating Cloud 9 in the NA Semi-Finals. Both Anox and Team Solo Mid advanced to the finals, but beaten by Misfits and current #1 team in the world EnVyUs, respectively.
The team that was Graviton Surge has now been better performing after being picked up by Misfits. They had some good runs with having support player Nevix using mostly the new sniper support Ana, although he had to switch to the reliable Lucio from time to time. It would seem Anox was going to take down Misfits at the finals with a convincing first round of the Finals in King’s Row, and a good showing at Lijiang Tower though Misfits gathered together and made a comeback, snatching the round, as well as three other games to emerge as the first EU team to qualify for the Regional Finals.
On the NA side, EnVyUs continues to reign domination, beating cowd favourite Luminosity Gaming in a two straight games in a best of three, and beating TSM in the finals with three straight games in the best of five finals. To add more salt, EnVyUs messed around with TSM with an unconventional pick: DPS player Talespin went to play Mei, a rarity in competitive Overwatch (video below). Though the performance on King’s Row where the Mei pick happened were not ideal, but is enough to throw off TSM in a lot of ways, denying them a win. TSM put a valiant effort in the next matches, but not enough to even get a win from EnVyUs.
The rest of the pack still has another three shots to secure qualification to the Regional Finals. The four winners will be joined by the top 12 performing teams- based on placements in the qualifiers- in the Regional Finals, with the winner representing the region, NA or EU, to the Grand Finals this September.
You can check out the VODs of the previous matches on co-organiser FaceIt’s YouTube channel. Reruns of the stream, as well as streams of upcoming Qualifier matches can also be watched on Astro’s eGG, channel 808. If you prefer to watch it live, check out the Twitch channel for when the next stream starts.