Regional 2 of EUs Winter Split is over and we just had the best Regional up to today. As always, I will give my 3 winner teams from this regional, then my 3 loser teams, then my Grand Finals thoughts and finally my overall thoughts.

 

Top 3 Winners

Top Blokes

They defeat BDS, the team they could never beat, and then go all the way to win everything. I don´t have to expand on why this team is my winner of the day.

Team Queso

This is the team that no one saw coming. They had an amazing run in which they defeated arguably 3 of the top 4 teams in Europe and came close to defeating all 4. They swept Renault Vitality and dropped them to lowers. Then they lose in 6 against Top Blokes and this is where they start their lower bracket run. They beat Redemption in 6 games, then they sweep Vodafone Giants and then they eliminate BDS in 6 games to advance to the grand finals. During last split, this team best result was a top 4 in the first regional. Now, adding VKSailen and being in an organization, they reach the finals in a very impressive run. This is why I consider them a winner team during this regional.

Redemption

I wasn’t really sure which team to fit in here but if a team deserves it is this one. They force Galaxy Racer to reverse sweep them and then they had an impressive lower bracket run. They took down Solary in 5 games, Guild in 4 games and Dignitas in also 5 games. Guild and Dignitas are both top 10 teams in EU so for Redemption to beat both of them is something to be proud of. Unfortunately for them, their run came to an end when they faced Team Queso and lost 4-2 games.

 

Honorable Mentions

Some teams that really performed great were Team Liquid and Galaxy Racer.

 

Top 3 Losers

Renault Vitality

For me, this is the team that lost more during this split. During the Fall Split and last regional, the only thing stepping between Vitality and winning was BDS, but this regional, it wasn’t like that. This team during the 3 days they played were always in defense and depended on the other teams mistakes or an insane play by Alpha. And this time, it wasn’t BDS who ended their run. They dropped to lowers in a 3-0 series against Team Queso, then swept Team Liquid in a series were they again depended on Liquids mistakes and Alpha solo plays and finally, they got swept by Galaxy Racer. So unless this team can start performing on offense better, they will get taken down by some of these newer teams that have a very solid offense and defense.

BDS

Even though most won’t consider a top 3 finish as a losing team, BDS has made it normal for them to win everything they play. And entering this regional they had only dropped 2 series in all of RLCS X. So for them to drop 2 series in the same regional is something almost no one saw coming.

Fadeaway

Fadeaway's split continues to be dissapointing. They got out on just their third series which meant they were last in the ranking, but this team could have easily gone further. Their series against BDS was a really intense one and they could have win it. In fact, the only reason that game 5 went to OT is because Fadeaway scored an own goal towards the end of the game. Then against Team Liquid they also went to game 5 and lost by 1 goal. So in the end, this team just got unlucky with facing really hard teams very early in the tournament.

 

Grand Finals

We saw the best Grand Finals we have seen in Europe during this RLCS X. Almost all games were 1 or 2 goal games, multiple overtimes and overall just some great gameplay. I think that the reason why Team Queso ended up losing was because they went all in on offense so it was either they scored or they got scored on. And Top Blokes defense was very strong, so sometimes TQ will end up giving away some goals. But TB was a very solid team through all 7 games and they deserved this win, so congrats to them.

 

Overall thoughts

For me, this was the best Regional we’ve had this far in Europe because it was unpredictable. Last regionals it was always 4 days of playing just to see who will BDS beat in the finals, so seeing some new teams reach that Grand Finals was great for the spectator that just watches it for fun and doesn’t root for any team. So I really hope to see more regionals like this one, that are very hard to predict.