Coverage: WC3L Season 5 Playoffs

This weekend was the playoffs from the ESL WC3L Season 5 in Cologne. The playoffs mark the end of the season and decide who is crowned season champion and like many other previous seasons there were several teams that could emerge victorious. After completion of the regular season this is how the championship table looked and the top 6 teams qualified for the LAN finals.

The interesting part of the playoff tree at the LAN finals is that the top two ranked teams directly enter at the Semi-Final stage. It is also important to note that the playoffs are double elimination so a team has to lose twice to be eliminated.

This is how the first playoff games shaped up:

After a reasonably successful season mYm seemed to have had some major problems against aT and only won a total of 2 maps in the whole matchup. If aT continued this type of play throughout the finals they would certainly have a good chance in taking home the crown. In the other match mTw made tough work of 3wD who have had some team and sponsor problems this season which has lead to a slight drop in form. Based on the above this lead to the following Round 2 games:

As you can see from the above results, after crushing mYm it was the turn of aT to be taught a lesson and it was our very own team that showed them how to play this game properly. The other matchup saw some domination from both teams with SK.Int winning all the 1v1 games whilst mTw took the 2v2 games without losing a map. This then setup this next set of games:

 4Kings saw them take their spot in the Grand Final after closing out SK.Int in the Upper Bracket Final with Zeus the only player to lose his matchup and the only 2 maps lost in the whole game, both the other 1v1s and 2v2s ended up clean 2-0 victories for 4Kings. Whilst in the Lower Bracket Round 1 again mYm failed to perform even with strong players such as coReY and Bjarke and mTw closed the doors infront of mYm who have know finished 6th due to two 5 - 0 defeats in a row. In the other Lower Bracket game 3wD also tried their hardest to overcome the first stage and beat aT to progress into the Lower Bracket Round 2 but unfortunately it was not their day and they ended up going home early like mYm.

As you can see mTw seem to be getting stronger and stronger as the playoffs progress and not only did they send aT packing but also brushed past SK.Int to setup a Grand Final matchup against. This meant that two of the teams tipped to take home the title had also been knocked out whilst falling short of making it to the Grand Final. This left only two teams to battle it out to determine who would be going home victorious and who would go home with nothing. Being Double Elimination it meant mTw would have to win 2 seperate matchups to claim the title whilst being in the Upper Bracket 4Kings only needed to win a single matchup. Neither of the two teams left had met each other in the playoff tree yet so it would be interesting who would come out on top, mTw has been getting better with each game whilst 4Kings has defeated aT and SK.Int with ease. This is how the final played out:

The results above meant that mTw will take the title as Season 5 Champions but the important thing to note is that both Grand Final matchups were played on exactly the same maps and this seems to have worked in mTw's favour after winning the first matchup. Congratulations to them as they are crowned champions for a second time and this leaves the final standings as follows:

Well done to all teams and players that took part. It will be interesting to see what happens in Season 6 with a few new teams making an appearance