Kalthose(freelancing E-sports writer)

I'm an amateur writer trying to make it working for esports.

[kalthose]

BotA:Weekend one wrap up/run down (spoiler)

The first weekend of LCS event “Battle of the Atlantic” has concluded in Cologne, Germany.  At botA we saw 2 complete stomp pro matches and 3 EU LCS promotion matches.  Fortunately for us, we got to see some enjoyable games and get a first look at some new teams.  This was a pretty long post and due to spoilers the rest of the story is below the break. So if you don’t want to know who won the games then don’t click.

 Picks are listed in order of lane/player (ie: top, jung, mid, adc, supp) unless otherwise noted. The order in which they were picked is in the number next to the name.   Some of the games are written in different ways/I took different style of notes.  I’m working out how I want to do these from now on so I tried a few different ways this time.

Day 1

  CW Vs MyM

Game 1

Bans, MYM: Kassadin, Renekton, Lee Sin.  CW: Olaf, Shyvana, Katarina

Picks, MYM: Mundo(4), Evelynn(8), Ziggs(5), Lucian(1), Thresh(9).  CW: Nasus(10), Elise(3), Kha’Zix(6), Caitlyn(7), Annie(2)

 MYM push well and take objectives off kills, both top laners take TP but can’t do much with it.  CW has a pretty decent team fight at this point with Cait and Kha, but usually loses if they can’t split MYM.  Caitlyn is working her tower push pressure when she can.  In what looks to be a quick turn around CW makes a comeback but loses a final fight and subsequently, the game.

Game 2

Bans, CW:Olaf, Katarina, Mundo  MYM: Renekton, Lucian, Kassadin

Picks, CW:Shyvana(1), Lee Sin(8), Kha’Zix(9), Caitlyn(4), Zyra(5)  MYM: Tryndamere, Evelynn(6), Ziggs(3), Twitch(7), Annie(2)

Caitlyn becomes a pushing machine and team fights in the favor of CW make taking objectives easy.  MYM was never able to make the roam with Evelynn + Twitch happen or get Tryndamere split pushing.  Kha’Zix becomes a beast again, and this basically seals the match for CW.

Game 3

Bans, CW:Katarina, Mundo, Olaf.  MYM: Kassadin, Annie, Caitlyn.

Picks, CW: Renekton(8), Vi(9), Ziggs(5), Lucian(1), Zyra(4) MYM: Shyvana(2), Lee Sin(3), Orianna(10), Sivir (7), Thresh(6)

This one CW get’s miles ahead of MYM early when MYM can’t get jungle pressure going.  Caitlyn pushes towers like a beast and superior vision promise CW dragons and enemy buffs. MYM was able to keep the game somewhat even for awhile, but eventually their team fight couldn’t compare to CW’s so they lost.

Game 4

Bans, CW: Mundo, Olaf, Katarina  MYM: Kassadin, Lee Sin, Renekton

Picks, CW: Shyvana (1), Vi(4), Ziggs(5), Caitlyn(8), Zyra(9) MYM: Singed (10), Evelynn (7), Ahri(6), Lucian(2), Annie(3)

This game was a pretty much like game one but CW had figured out this strat so well and MYM was on such a tilt that it ended pretty quickly.  No jungle pressure plus good rotations by CW got them 3 early turrets and got them up in kills.  Because MYM couldn’t get a singed split push going they really had no chance.  After pushing mid, CW kill enough to take a top inhib and mid inhib, but singed split push gives them the opportunity to finish and they do. ~28 minutes.

Day 2

  Dignitas Vs Alliance

Dignitas Vs alliance was the first of the pro matches slated for this event.  While the initial match was scheduled for Evil Geniuses, the recent roster change and re-branding caused the match to be played between the newly formed Alliance and Dignitas.  Alliance is a newly formed team made up of former EG (Frogen and Wicked) as well as some new faces.  Dignitas on the other hand kept the majority of their roster from the last LCS split.  Dignitas ran KiwiKid bot lane with Imaqtpie while they still look to acquire a full time support. The only new addition was new top laner CruzerTheBruzer. 

Game 1

Bans, Alliance: Mundo, Annie, Kha’Zix  Dig: Kassadin, Lee Sin, Evelynn

Picks, Alliance: Renekton(4), Elise(1), Nidalee(8), Lucian(5), Zilean(9)  Dig:Shyvana(2), Olaf(3), Gragas(6), Sivir(7),Karma(10)

The most notable thing from picks and bans was the pick by Alliance of Zilean.  However, Alliance made it work, securing a solid bot lane lead and winning the lane overall.  In fact, Alliance won pretty much all their lanes except maybe top which was a farm lane.  Without Crumbs being able to put effective pressure on lanes things continued to snowball worse.  Unfortunately for Dignitas, the snowballed mid and bot lanes created so much map pressure that Dignitas was on their back foot most of the game.  Eventually losing the game without getting a single turret and only 2 kill compared to the 11 of Alliance.

Game 2

Bans, Dig: Zilean, Nidalee, Lee Sin  Alliance: Mundo, Annie, Kassadin

Picks Dig: Shyvana (1), Evelynn(8), Ziggs(5), Lucian (4), Karma(9)  Alliance: Malphite(10), Elise(3), Gragas(2), Jinx(7), Taric(6)

Game 2 Dignitas banned Zilean and was able to secure Evelyn.  Alliance opted for a team fight heavy comp.  Even with Dignitas able to secure jungle Evelyn Alliance was able to counter.  Between deep wards allowing vision of the farming Evelyn and the heavy investment in pink wards by all lanes, the Evelyn pressure was yet again almost nonexistent.  This allowed again for both bot and mid to snowball putting Dignitas on their back foot trying to get anything going, but Alliance team fight was just too strong.  Dignitas did arguably better their second game getting 10 kills to the 25 of Alliance.  However, it would be accurate to say Dignitas still got wrecked by Alliance, even more impressed by the fact Alliance held Dignitas in their fountain while minions finished off the nexus turrets and nexus.  Some saw this move as BM.  Later Frogen and Wicked put out statements on Facebook saying they didn’t mean to be BM but rather wanted to see if they could kill all of Dignitas with all their ults so they waited to finish.

The Alliance stomp left EU up over NA 1-0 in the BotA.

  SK Vs SHC (Super Hot Crew)

Some, like me, went into this match assuming that SK was just going to 3-0 SHC.  But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Game 1 - 2

Game one started off pretty standard, but SHC was able to get super hot in the laneing and mid phase with the help of successful ganks and small team fights.  After some succeful sieges and objective fights, SHC was able to close out the game firing themselves up leading into game two.  Game 2 was similar to game one but more of a stomp, all lanes were won by SHC and the jungle pressure was immense.  At this point many were worried about the possibility of a 3-0’d SK Gaming.

Game 3 - 5

SK was able to channel their inner passion and bring themselves back into the games, taking the third game convincingly.  With a game under their belt, and the knowledge of how to beat SHC, SK went on to win game 4 tying the series at 2-2.  With SK looking like the LCS quality team they are the final game was started.   SK on a roll took over in game 5, pushing and team fighting like the team we knew they were, the nerves were no longer getting to them.  SK was able to convincingly take the final game and secure their spot in the LCS.

Day 3

  TSM Vs Lemon Dogs

The game a lot of NA watchers were waiting for, granted this isn’t the old Lemon dogs but everyone was still interested in seeing how TSM would work together. 

Game 1

Bans, LD: Shyvana, Olaf, Mundo  TSM: Evelynn, Kassadin, Kha’Zix

Picks, LD: Malphite (5), Amumu(8), Ziggs(9), Lucian(1),Annie(4)  TSM: Renekton(2), Elise(3), Leblanc(10), Sivir(7), Taric(6)

Game one opened with and interesting tactic of 3 man pushing top.  TSM put their duo top Vs Malphite and Odd One(Elise) came top fairly early to take 2 towers before 6 minutes.  TSM then swapped back to normal lane setup in order to secure a dragon taking a commanding lead over the Lemon Dogs.  Without Lemon Dogs’ Amumu able to create gank pressure on any lane, TSM was able to take a 4 tower lead and 2 dragon lead before 15 minutes.  Following more pushing and a Renek 1v4 TSM was able to take the game by ~25:59.

Game 2

Bans, TSM: Evelynn, Kassadin, Kha’Zix  LD: Olaf, Sivir, Mundo

Picks, TSM: Shyvana(1), Elise(4), Zed(8), Lucian(5), Annie(9)  LD: Renekton(2), Vi(6), Sion(10), Ezreal(7), Thresh(3)

Game 2 was definantly anything but normal, the first indication of this was the last pick of Sion by Lemon Dogs in order to counter Bjergsen’s Zed.  However, Lemon Dogs top laner (MYW) went mid lane to play Sion while Lemon Dogs mid laner (Shlaya) takes Renekton top lane.  Both LD and TSM run their duo lanes top, unfortunanlty for TSM their duo gets off to a bad start with a 2-1 gank top, TSM responds by taking a dragon.  Shortly after this Imsophresh’s Vi is 7/1/2 and three members of LD have mobi boots.  This comes back to bite them as they cannot control objectives when roaming.  Even though they would secure kills they could never turn those kills into towers or dragons leaving them behind.  After so long the only scary preson on LD was vi and anytime she was not around TSM would push an objective knowing they could secure it. ~25 mins in TSM take an uncontested baron thanks to a distracting Dyrus.  TSM then pushes down mid T3 and Inhib off of a couple picks.  TSM stays a bit too long however, and lose all but one.  TSM then siege bot tower but dive and kill 4 members of LD, leaving them to take the last nexus tower and the subsequent game by ~30:00. 

This match was worth 2 points in BotA, this match made the score 2-1 NA up.

  KMT Vs NiP

Nip came into this set of games thinking they would just stomp, they thought that it was a simple 3-0 and make it back into the LCS.  How wrong they would prove to be.  NiP is made of up of a lot of former Lemon Dogs players and other LCS level players.  KMT on the other hand has been around in the challenger scene for awhile and were just expected to fizzle once they made it this far.

Game 1

Bans, NiP: Caitlyn, Olaf, Kassadin  KMT: Gragas, Mundo, Lucian

Picks, NiP:Shyvana(1), Amumu(8), Orianna(9), Ezreal(4), Karma(5)  KMT: Renekton(2), Elise(3), Kayle(10), Vayne(7), Thresh(6)

These were some of the most boring games I have ever watched.  I don’t mean to be melodramatic; I just want you to understand that these were extremely slow games.  Interestingly enough NiP opted for a team fighting AOE comp game one Vs the split push/pick comp of KMT.  NiP played similar to how they played back in LD, playing the farm game and trying to get solid team fights.  However, this would be difficult, most of the time KMT would be split pushing or starting small skirmishes, basically reducing the wombo combo effectiveness of LD’s AOE team fight.  But what really put the nail in the coffin for NiP’s first game was the late game farmed Vayne + Death Fire Grasp Kayle split push.  Unable to ever secure a solid team fight, NiP dropped game 1. 

Game 2

Bans, KMT: Gragas, Shyvana, Karma  NiP: Olaf, Kassadin, Mundo

Picks, KMT: Jax(8), Elise(1), Kayle(9), Caitlyn(4), Thresh(5)   NiP: Renekton(2), Amumu (7), Riven(10), Lucian(3), Annie(6).

Game 2 didn’t see a Kayle ban or Vayne ban.  However, the Vayne ban would be unnecessary.  It appeared that NiP had not learned from game one and built their team fight comp again with little difference.  Like game 1 the early and mid game was pretty much all farming.  The junglers were not able to create a lot of pressure and mostly resigned themselves to farming as well.  Unlike game 1 KMT had some issues getting their split push going in game 2.  After small skirmishes resulting in 1-2’s and 2-2’s the teams began to baron dance.  After about 10 minutes of team faking baron and returning to farm it seemed like nothing was going to happen.  Eventually NiP went back to baron and started to fake again, but a thresh hook caught onto Amumu and the Kayle burst brought him down.  With the NiP crew split and no Smite KMT were able to take baron and begin their split push.  Kayle went bot while the rest of KMT went top.  Kayle would push down both T2 and T3 towers before being 2 manned by Riven and Renekton, to which Kayle double killed them.  This basically ended the game as the rest of KMT killed Amumu and Annie allowing them to take down the nexus.

Game 3

Bans, NiP: Kayle, Elise, Kassadin  KMT: Gragas, Mundo, Shyvana

Picks, NiP: Renekton(1), Lee Sin(4), Orianna(9), Caitlyn(8), Thresh(5)  KMT: Olaf(2), Vi(6), Nidalee(10), Lucian (3), Fiddlesticks(7)

Game 3 saw the Kayle ban, finally. This didn’t stop KML from being pretty beast though.  Like the last 2 games, this game was pretty much a farm fest for the whole early and mid game.  However, following some bad roams and good ganks, KMT was able to come out with a pretty decent lead.  Unlike in game 2, KMT was able to get their tower push going pretty quick by being up 4 towers to 2 by 27:00.  Following some farming KMT is able to pick off 2 members of NiP and rush baron as well as 2 more towers.  KMT then is able to get a solid engage, killing 3 and take the game at 40:00.

With the KMT win that’s it for EU LCS promotions, the list of EU LCS contenders now stacks as follows:

Alliance

SK Gaming

KMT

Fnatic

Copenhagen Wolves

Team Alternate

Gambit Gaming

Lemon Dogs

  What to Watch

If you for some odd reason didn’t tune in at all this past weekend well I got a list for you to watch, mostly the games that aren’t snore fests.

First is the TSM Vs LD game 2.  If you have never watched a heavy roam Sion with mobi boots, now is your chance.

Second is MYM Vs CW game 1. While it’s a bit slow, it’s still an exciting game once it gets past farm phase.

Lastly, if you feel so inclined, is the whole SK Vs SHC series, it was definitely a great and exciting run by both teams.

  Next weekend the BotA moves to LA were the NA promotion challengers will battle it out as well as six more pro teams.  BotA kicks off Monday with CLG Vs Alternate and Evil Genius Vs Determined Gaming.  As always, please follow on twitter/tumblr, it really helps me out and the buttons are at the top.  For the upcoming NA games I will be posting the run downs at the end of the day. If you have any criticism of the way I wrote up these recaps feel free message/tweet me, I’m looking for criticism to improve.

All team logos belong to their respective teams and LCS is owned by Riot Games. Huehue dont sue.

[kalthose]

NA LCS promotion final matchups announced.

Today Battle of the Atlantic officially kicked off in Cologne Germany with the EU LCS promotion match of MeetYourMakers Vs CopenhagenWolves.  While the EU promotion matches have been confirmed for a while, the NA promotion match ups have just recently been revealed.   Both Curse and Coast confirmed on Twitter who they would be playing, leaving the recently re-branded EG (former velocity spot) with the final unselected challenger team.

Curse announced on Wednesday that they would be playing the last place CoGnitive Gaming (3-2).  Curse will play CoGnitive Gaming on the 22nd (~5PM EST), after Cloud 9 Vs Fnatic.

Our selection for Promotion Matches in December is @COGnitiveLoL #LCS #Leagueoflegends

— Steve Arhancet (@LiQuiD112)

December 11, 2013

Following the announcement by Curse; on Thursday Coast announced they had selected the tied for first The Walking Zed (4-1).  The Walking Zed only dropped one game during the group stage to CoGnitive Gaming. However, Coast has looked strong in NACL and other challenger leagues/tournaments they have participated in during the off season.  Coast will play The Walking Zed on the 21st (~5PM EST), after XDG Gaming Vs Gambit Gaming.

Coast has chosen The Walking Zed (TWZ) to play during the Promotion Tournament on Saturday, Dec. 21. We are working hard and will be ready.

— Team Coast (@TeamCoastGaming)

December 12, 2013

The news that Velocity would re-brand as EG not only came with a new roster but also the anticipation of what team they would be stuck with during the promotion series.  With the selections by Curse and Coast the only team left to be placed was To Be Determined (4-1) (now Determined Gaming).  Similar to TWZ, Determined only dropped one game during groups, but they dropped it to TWZ.  EG will play Determined Gaming on the 20th (~5PM EST), after CLG Vs Team Alternate.

Matches stack up in chronological order like so;

20th EG Vs Determined

21st Coast Vs The Walking Zed

22nd Curse Vs Cognitive Gaming

Times are tentative due to the professional best of 3’s being played before the Promotions, but the games should start around 5 EST.

Late post, been busy, please follow on tublr/twitter, buttons at the top.

[kalthose]

Another break day, in order to satisfy writing every day in December I wrote some Fan Fiction.   Depression is getting me man, gotta take a lil time, going to read and watch anime I guess.  Gonna write a recap of the games for tomorrows Promotions.  Inb4 journal posts start happening.

[kalthose]

Roster changes, spot buyout and LCS changes: a crazy 2 days.

They did it again, freaking teams and Riot broke all their news at once.  Yet again making things over complicated and causing way too much input for the casual League viewer.  So here I’ll sum up the last two or three days of league news that for some odd reason all came out at once.

Let’s get started with the big one pretty much everyone picked up on:  The announcement of Alliance League of Legends team and the official confirmation of EG moving to NA.  Alliance announced their full roster on Tuesday, confirming the roster of: Froggen, Tabbz (former lemon dog), Wickd, shoock (former Copenhagen Wolves) and Kazmitch.  Technically Alliance is EG in EU but they re-branded so that the new EG roster can move to NA and play in NA LCS.  This leaves Alliance to take over the EG spot in EU LCS.  Alliance will also play Dignitas in the Battle of the Atlantic tournament.

That brings us to the new EG roster who will be taking over the Velocity spot in the promotion tournament.  The Official explanation of how EG is able to take over velocity’s spot is that this new roster is acquired by Velocity and Velocity is re-branded as EG.  EG dropped their site the same time as the Alliance site dropped and tried to keep 2 members of the new EG a secret.  However, Slasher went and did it again, basically ruining EG’s little secret and announcing on Ongamers that the official roster would be: Snoopeh, Krepo, Yellowpete (all former EG),Innox (former Napkins in Disguise) and Pobelter (former Curse).  Even though Slasher was the first to “officially announce from sources” who the other members were, some people had already discovered this group from them playing together in scrims. 

 This whole fiasco was a result of Riots “policy” that no owner can profit from two different LCS regions or teams (see Ongamers article earlier cited for sources/longer explanation).  Unfortunately, because Alex Garfield was a founding member of Alliance, he was immediately accused of breaking the LCS rules.  This is a grey area I suppose.  If you are unaware Alex Garfield is the owner/founder of EG and provided start up money/resources along with Razer for Alliance.  Alliance was originally just a Dota 2 team but later picked up Naniwa making them more of an E-sports team and less of just a Dota 2 team. 

EG and Alliance were not the only teams to have a roster change, the former EU LCS champions LemonDogs also cleaned house coming up with a clean roster of: MYW, ImSoFresh, Shlaya, CrazyCaps and Zeriouz.   This is the team that TSM will face off against in Battle of the Atlantic.

BotA Promotion finals

Battle of the Atlantic is right around the corner and with that are also the promotion matches.  The matchups were announced via various twitter accounts/Riot over the last 2 days and stack up as follows for EU:

NIP Vs KMT

SK Vs SCH XD

MYM Vs CW (watch this one; it’s going to be good.)

The NA scene has a slight change in plans however thanks to EG taking over Velocity’s spot.  There is still yet to be 2 decided matches but these should be announced by this weekend.  However, the matches stacks up like so:

CRS Vs CoG

EG Vs ??

Coast Vs ??

LCS changes

Wouldn’t it be nice if Riot announced some big news about LCS?  I think so too, and they kind of did.  I was hoping for news of Coke league but this is neat too.  LCS will change times and days for both EU and NA in the hopes that more EU watchers can keep up with the NA scene.  Because screw NA fans right?  I kid, it’s not that bad, just have to catch EU replays I guess.  The following changes will take place during the 2014 LCS spring split.

Eu will not be played:

* Thursday 1:00 PM EST

*Friday 1:00 PM EST

NA will be played:

*Saturday 3:00 PM EST

*Sunday 3:00 PM EST

There will be 2 super weeks, one at the beginning and one at the end of the 11 week season.

The EU days will be played:

*Tuesday

*Wednesday

*Thursday

And the NA days will be played:

*Friday

*Saturday

*Sunday

The full press release is here http://na.lolesports.com/articles/major-changes-coming-lcs-2014-season

So there it is, all the news the last 2 days surrounding League, now that I look at it, maybe it was just a lot because of the time period it all came out.  Oh well, hopefully someone can get something out of this.  As always please follow on Twitter/Tubmlr, the buttons can be found above.  All rights to Image holders Etc etc don’t sue fair use.

[kalthose]

NACL:Week 8 not the Coast League

Tonight marks the beginning of the last week of NACL before playoffs begin, and I couldn’t be more excited.   No really, I couldn’t because I’m pretty tired and I have finals this week.  NACL took a short break after patch 3.14 dropped and returned with their All Star games last week.  But unlike last week this week is the conclusion to the groups.  While The Ancient Golem group is already solidified there is still a place to be sought after in the Elder Lizard conference.  The Elder Lizard conference kind of ended up coming out as a stomp seeing how it featured all the relegated LCS teams and 2 challenger teams.  But still Velocity, VVV Gaming and COGnitive gaming have a shot at making it into the playoffs. 

The Ancient Golem conference featured all challenger teams and has an already decided group.  The teams to move on, in order of seed, are:

Complexity Gaming

To Be Determined (they have to win 1 game to take 2nd)

Curse Academy

Unfortunately, or fortunately, The Elder Lizard conference was mostly a bashing of skulls between Coast and Curse Gaming.  Coast had a perfect record until meeting up with Curse gaming on November 5th, Curse was the first team to overcome the coasting Prius that is Coast gaming.  After Coast had suffered their second defeat of the season at the hands of Curse’ sister team, Curse Academy.  With that success both Coast and Curse have clinched a playoff spot and now only fight for position.  The teams still able to move on are:

*VvV Gaming

*Cognitive Gaming

*Velocity Esports

So let’s get down to brass tax, what are the must watch games?  I would say the first game, Velocity Vs Coast, is a must watch, I think for an obvious reason.  The following game is very important, because how CoGnitive perform is what I believe will decide the groups.  CoGnitive is still hyped off their victory in the LCS promotions and I can’t imagine they would go on tilt since then.  Personally, despite them having the worst record, I pick Cognitive to get out of the group.  This may be optimistic, but something I think many people overlook in E-sports is the affect of being on a kill streak.  It’s hard to lose that hype and coordination when you have been so successful in recent history.  If CoG loses and Velocity is a roster of EU players I would say watch for Velocity to get out.  I have little faith in VvV after losing in the group stage of LCS promotion.  They would be too on tilt to play to their fullest.

So what are you waiting for?! Get over to NACL’s channel and join the fun.  Prius is an amazing DJ and the casters are definitely passionate about what they do.  So get your booty over their because the stream start at 4 EST/1 PST Monday and Tuesday.  As always if you like what you see be sure to follow on twitter/tumblr it helps a lot. But it's not like I'm your mom so I cant tell you what to do.

I know this one was kind of casual/sloppy, but I have to study so I threw something for today together hot quick!

[kalthose]

NA post groups round up: Quantics broken hearts and crushed dreams

This weekend Well Played and ESL hosted the group stages for the challenger promotion series.  And with that came some great games and some bitter defeats.  Many of us experienced the emotional highs and lows watching teams we cheered on winning and losing.  With a tournament so important it was one that had the eye of the community on it.  With the stream keeping a steady 30K viewers most nights the promotion groups were a hot topic.

Most discussed and debated is the fall of Korean team Quantic.  Quantic is comprised of Korean players who made their way to the US back in September in order to try and qualify for the LCS.  Plagued by internet issues since day one Quantic had a difficult time competing in the US.  And this tournament is no exception.  Quantic played the first day at their gaming house with a small amount of lag and ended the day going 2-0.  After the first day many had just written them off as automatic entry into the Promo bracket stage, but this was unfortunately far from true.  On Quantics second day of games they had to go to a “net café” in order to play their games.  This was problematic to say the least; Quantic proceeded to drop 3 games in a row and ended their run at 2-3.   But hope was not lost for some, there was still a chance Quantic could qualify if the stars aligned and there was a 2-3 tie in the groups.  Unfortunately for Quantic on the third day their chances at a tie breaker were dashed when The Walking Zed defeated Complexity and clinched a chance at the next stage of Promos.

Lag didn’t just plague Quantic though.  On the first day of groups Riot’s tournament server had spectator lag causing the spectators to see the champions skating around, although this is very minor, Riot probably should have seen this as an issue and maybe tackled it earlier.  The spectator lag was not even the problem, on the second day the lag got so bad it lead to an awkward game between VVV and Cognitive.  COGnitive was able to acquire a 10K+ gold lead but started throwing mid game due to lag.  This led to a Riot admin having to pause the game and ask the teams to remake despite the match reaching end game.  Despite VVV coming back from a 10K gold deficit COGnitive was able to take the game and with that Riot made the call to play the rest of the day’s games on the live realm.

With Quantic out of the way the following teams were able to qualify for the next stage of the Promotional tournament:

The Walking Zed (former GG:LA)

To Be Determined

COGnitive Gaming

Now that the group stage is over there is only 2 more week before the final teams for the next LCS split are decided.  The next stages matchups have yet to be decided, but the LCS relegated teams will get to decide who they want to play from the group stage.  The order of choice will go via a coin flip/RNG and probably be announced soon.  The teams who were relegated are as follows:

Velocity (Old EG players and Pobelter + 1 this is all but officially confirmed. This is irritating)

Curse Gaming

Coast

Many expect Curse and Coast to retake their spot in LCS but Velocity is a toss-up.

With the demise of many teams who were fan favorites we have narrowed the competition and the games are getting better.  Hopefully next weekend’s Battle of the Atlantic in Cologne will be an indication of what we will see in NA.  Preview for the games will be out next week sometime.

[edit] If you enjoyed this content be sure to follow on twitter/tumblr  kalthose [/edit]

[kalthose]

Battle of the Atlantic: relegation tournament and the clash of titans

[edit] Apparently during the bracket stage the teams are seeded based on a coin flip instead of summer LCS standing.  Disregard anything insisting that 1st seed picks their opponent first.[/edit]

The wait is finally over, NA and EU competitive League of Legends is back and in an exciting fashion.  Riot announced their “Battle of the Atlantic” tournament back in October, with this came the announcement we would get to enjoy multiple rematches from Worlds like Cloud 9 Vs Fnatic, and many new match ups some could debate we wouldn’t see otherwise like CLG Vs Alternate.  Later it was revealed that Riot would use the Battle of the Atlantic tournament to complete the bracket portion of their NA and EU relegation tournament.  Before that happens though a group stage has to be played with the teams who battled their way through the challenger ladder and qualifier tournaments.

This year’s LCS relegation tournament is formatted slightly different than before.  Previously Riot had a bracket system seeding the former LCS teams one set in from the challenger teams, this year Riot will be culling the herd of challenger teams in a best of one round robin played online.  After the round robin has been played 3 teams will emerge, at this point the 3 teams who were relegated in the previous season will be able to chose who they want to play in a best of 5.  The winners of the best of 5’s will have a spot in 2014 spring split of LCS.

NA

The North American round robin will be played December 6-8 on Well Played TV starting at 8 pm est/5 pm pst.  The round robin will include the following teams:

To Be Determined

To Be Determined qualified first for this relegation tournament by winning the challenger tournament held at MLG Anaheim back in June.

Complexity gaming

Probably the most established team, Complexity is a good chunk of former Brunch Club members.  Unfortunately for Complexity they have been hard pressed lately with recent roster issues, most recently the departure of mid laner Prolly.

COGnitive Gaming

Cognitive gaming is one of the original two teams who qualified in the first NA qualifier, along with the now defunct Napkins in Disguise.

The Walking Zed

The Walking Zed is comprised of the former Gold Gaming: Las Angeles.  The Walking Zed restructured into said team after being replaced by Gold Gaming: LA for a poor performance in challenger leagues and failing to qualify for the first online qualifier.

Quantic Gaming

Probably the overall favorite, Quantic is comprised of Korean players led by former CLG player Locodoco.  Locodoco has played for multiple high level Korean and NA teams in the past and is a veteran in the scene despite never having played in LCS.  The group of Koreans moved to the US earlier in 2013 to compete for a spot in NA LCS and so far have shown great promise in challenger leagues.  Problematic for Quantic has been their internet situation; they often disconnect and face lag issues.  As long as they can compete without said issues no one doubts their making it past group stages.

vVv Gaming

The final team to qualify, vVv gaming, qualified in a third place match during the second qualification tournament.  It was later announced that they would officially be taking over the Napkins in Disguise spot due to NiD not being able to provide 3/5 of the original qualifying players.

  Brackets

After the online challenger group stage has concluded 3 teams will make it out of groups.  At this point the previously relegated LCS teams will pick who they want as their opponent and play a best of 5 against said team.  North America will play their best of 5 matches following the Battle of the Atlantic Broadcast between December 20th and 22nd.  The following teams who were relegated from last LCS season are:

Curse Gaming

Curse gaming is a well known and established team who went a respectable 13 and 15 in Summer LCS split, but came up short in the playoffs to CLG. They are the first seeded team in the best of 5.  Curse, like many teams, has been experimenting with their roster.  With the absence of former team leader and jungler Saintvicous curse struggled to bring together a roster they could compete with.  As it stands now, Zekent has taken over the support slot from European god Edward.  Voyboy switches to mid lane, replacing Nyjacky, and is replaced by former GoldGaming:LA player Quas.  Cop had a short leave, but eventually came back when Curse couldn’t get a performing AD carry while playing in challenger tournaments.  Finally, the return of IWillDominate, IWillDominate was banned at the beginning of season 3 due to being “toxic,” thus he was unable to compete in LCS.  This will be IWillDominates first time playing in LCS.  Curse is expected to be a solid contender for returning to LCS.

Coast Gaming

The boys are back, and if I had to put money on anyone making it, it would be these guys.  Coast gaming never slowed down after getting relegated from LCS, most notably killing it in NACL with a 21 and 1 record only losing a game to Curse Gaming.  Coast is the favorite going into the NACL finals.  Coast had only accomplished a 9 and 19 record in the Summer split but seemed to hit their stride later in the split.

Velocity E-sports.

Velocity never took off in the summer split of LCS posting an embarrassing record of 5 and 23.  Velocity, after failing in many challenger leagues, dropped their entire roster and has yet to reform or publish a new roster.  This leads to many issues, first being that no one knows what Velocity will do in 2 weeks when they have to play their relegation match.  There has been much speculation (and questionable “proof”) that a European team will buyout velocity’s spot and attempt to get into the NA LCS.  The rumors surround mostly EG players Snoopeh and Krepo who have been playing on NA solo queue and ranked 5’s lately.  The speculation is that EG will buy out the spot, rebrand velocity to Alliance and play a team in NA as well as EU.  Due to Riot rules organizations cannot have 2 teams competing in 2 different regions, thus the need to rebrand to Alliance.

  EU

For the sake of transparency and the fact I don’t watch a lot of EU League of Legends I cannot accurately provide much detail into the challenger teams who will be playing in the round robin stage of the EU tournament.  As such I will only be listing the teams who qualified and where they qualified from.

The EU round robin stage, as of writing, has already started.  It will be held from December 5-6 starting at 12 pm est/ 9 am pst.  This tournament is hosted and put on by ESL TV.

TCM-Gaming

The first team to qualify was TCM-gaming.  TCM-gaming secured their spot at LCS Tenerife, which was a road show put on by LCS EU in which they traveled to a festival in Tenerife and played an amateur (challenger) tournament and the LCS games.

Copenhagen Wolves

Copenhagen Wolves qualified at a Games Com challenger qualifier tournament back in august.

Kiedyś Miałem Team

Kiedyś Miałem is a polish team who qualified during the first online qualifier.

Salade Tomate Oignon

Salade Tomate Oignon is a French team. They were the second team to qualify during the first online qualifier.

Karont E-sports club

Karont E-sports club is a Spanish team who came up short in the second qualifiers’ best of 3 against now defunct The Fox Sound.  Since The Fox Sound could not play in the final relegation tournament Karont E-sports club received their spot.

Super Hot Crew

Lastly is Super Hot Crew, who qualified in the second online qualifier.

  Brackets

The EU group stage of the relegation tournament will be played after the pro games during the battle of the Atlantic December 13th,14th and 15th.  The LCS relegated teams are:

Meet Your Makers

An established team in EU, MYM had a rough time in the summer split posting an unimpressive 8 and 20 coming in dead last of the group stages.

SK Gaming

SK Gaming came in second to last of group stage in a tiebreaker with Team Alternate.

NiP

Ninjas in Pajamas, while making out of group stages in 5th place could not capitalize on their success and lost in playoffs and subsequently got relegated.

  Battle of the Atlantic pro matches

Battle of the Atlantic, while a great time to get the relegation tournament out of the way, is mostly hyped up for the pro games that will get played.  Battle of the Atlantic is kind of like the Ryder Cup of league of Legends.  It features 5 NA teams and 5 EU teams battling it out in Cologne and Los Angeles in best of 3 competitions.  The matches will be played on pre season patch 3.14. Both regions are competing against each other, and as such earn a point for their region for winning a set.  The winning region will take home bragging rights and 5 grand for each team.  The first two matches will be played in Cologne Germany and will be hosted by ESL TV on 14th and 15th.  The final three games will be played in Las Angeles in the Riot Games studio.  The Los Angeles games will be played on the 20th, 21st and 22nd.  The field is stacked and as such we can only hope and expect some great League play, this will be the first time we see some NA and EU LCS teams playing on 3.14. 

EU matches

Dignitas Vs Evil Geniuses 14th 12 est

Dignitas was one of the NA teams with the least amount of roster changes.  Keeping a good chunk of their roster they only changed a few things.  First being the adoption of Cruzerthebruzer, Cruzer will be taking over top lane from Kiwikid.  Former support Patoy stepped down from full time member to sub and as such left Dignitas without a full time support.  There has been some talk of Kiwikid playing Support with ImaQTpie but it may just be a temporary situation while they search for a full time dedicated support.

Evil Genius is currently shrouded in mystery as the rumors of Krepo and Snoopeh playing in NA LCS under the Velocity spot is speculated and talked about more and more.  The only real way to see how the roster turns out is to wait to see how the whole Velocity situation works out.  At this point I’m waiting for the tournament to actually start so I can see the EG roster as they intend to play it.  With that said, it is entirely possible they play with the roster we have all known and loved since CLG:EU.

Team Solo Mid Vs Lemon Dogs 15th 12 est

The final game of the Cologne hosted games, TSM Vs Lemon Dogs is probably the most hyped out of all the games that will be played. TSM and lemon Dogs both played in the same group at Worlds and as such have a decent rivalry going with TSM losing both games.  But since then Lemon Dogs has lost a large chunk of their original roster and as such are questionable going into this match.

TSM is hyped up though with the recent acquisition of Danish mid laner Bjergsen.  Bjergsen replaced Reginald who is taking on the job of TSM analyst full time.  So far all interviews and public interactions between Bjergsen and the rest of TSM have posted positive results leaving little room for speculation of not fitting in.   I would say this match is a must watch whether or not you are a TSM fan…. Or you have finals week.

NA matches

CLG Vs Team Alternate 20th 2 est

CLG saw some big roster changes.  Bigfatjiji (LP) stepped down to a substitute position and the veteran Chauster retired.  As such CLG picked back up former support player Aphromoo, and have yet to acquire a full time Jungler.  Tricks, a challenger player (not trick2g), played with CLG in IEM Cologne but shortly after it was announced that CLG would part ways with Trick. CLG’s current competitive health is relatively unknown since the only competition anyone has seen them play in since the roster change was played with a sub that was later removed.

Team Alternate on the other hand has kept their roster pretty much in the same condition as last split.

XDG Gaming (former Vulcan Gaming) Vs Gambit Gaming 21st 2 est

XDG Gaming is the former Vulcan Gaming roster reformed under a new banner.  This match up may favor Gambit, who went substantially deeper then Vulcan at Worlds.  Both teams had little to no roster change in the off season, with the only roster change being the return of Edward to Gambit Gaming.  With Edward being back where he belongs, that left former support player Voidle team less.

Gambit Gaming had an impressive run at worlds, taking out Ozone in a tie breaker to make it to the bracket stage and eventually falling to Najin Black shield in a close 2-1.

Cloud 9 Vs Fnatic 22nd 2 est

Cloud 9 fell to Fnatic in the first round of brackets at Worlds.  Fnatic had an amazing run I think most were not expecting at Worlds.  They went 7 and 1 in group stage only losing their first game to Vulcan, which hyped them up and set them off to destroy the rest of groups.  Fnatic only made one roster change during the off season, and that is the removal of Puszu and the acquisition of Rekkles.  Cloud 9 on the other hand made no roster changes and set out to improve on their current roster.  This game is THE game to watch if you watch nothing else.  This one will cause a lot of salt.

  Wow, what a stacked 3 weeks, and during my college finals too.  It’s like Riot hates me.  Or maybe they love us all and that’s why we are going to get some GREAT games. I wrote this in 2 days, and I’m kind of disappointed with it, it could have been so much more if I had 2 more days.  Welp, that’s all I got, its 5PM and NA relegations starts in 3 hours so I end it here so I can post this.   Be sure to follow me on twitter @Kalthose and on tumblr if you enjoyed the content.

[kalthose]

LCS players contracts, Meh.

[edit] Article was written before the contract was changed due to community out cry.  for more info on the new contract here is the ongamers article pointing out the change by Riot. [/edit]

So here I am watching  TSM Bjergsen’s stream and he isn’t playing might and magic or some random platformer  while waiting in queue.  I can confirm that this in fact is hella boring.  He’s not doing it because of the whole LCS contract thing; he just isn’t playing anything at the moment.  Is this a future I want to live in? Is this a topic I wanted to comment on at all?  Both those questions get a big fat succulent “NO.”   So then why am I even writing right now? Well Mr.Lewis wrote a very long and interesting look at the 2014 contract leaked by Ongamers,  his article got me thinking and I think about things better if I write about them so you’re(all 2 readers) getting a half assed article/editorial.

Let’s start with this fucking list Riot came up with:  all Blizzard franchises, War gaming games and Dota 2.  These make sense, these games are direct competitors to League of Legends and the LCS brand, that is, these developers run leagues similar and as such can be seen as a threat.  Then we look at the more silly items on the list: Fat Princess, Poker sites (free poker is here too), tobacco and firearms/ammunition.  Let’s start with Fat Princess.  It’s a platformer collectathon, but apparently the list of games doesn’t care about the type of game because Diablo/Wow/Hearthstone/SC2 are all non MOBA games.  Granted some MOBA arcade games exists for SC2 but let’s be real, the only good arcade game in SC2 is Star Strikers.  Poker has been a game played by SC professionals for a long time; many even competed at the World Series of Poker and have a strong fan base from the Poker community.  Poker in itself get’s a bad rep; it became a game shrouded in immorality because it’s “gambling.”  But what most people don’t know, and probably won’t know now that the US has shut down most online poker sites, is that the game requires a certain set of skill and has a high skill cap.

Then we get to Tobacco and Firearms.  This one puzzled me, just because I don’t think I have ever seen an LCS player shop for a shotgun or smoke a cigarette.  But I had to ask myself if it seemed moral that Riot could ban a player from doing something on webcam like smoking or taking a prescription medication (we all know that’s what that over the counter thing means right?).  So what are these really about?  They are about contracting morality.  The question is, whose morality are we subscribing too?  Will next year include a clause where players cannot swear? Talk about religion?  Talk about political affiliation?  Regardless of where you stand most people agree that having the freedoms to speak our minds is what makes us human.  I understand we have yet to feel this, I’m just playing sky is falling.

Let me be clear, forced endorsement isn’t new. Teams have forced players to use Razer/SteeleSeries products for a long time. Between a certain computer, monitor, mouse and keyboard the players are pimping their endorsed products all the time, and they get paid handsomely to do so.  Even league forced endorsement isn’t new; the NFL has forced teams to adopt the pink colored gear during breast cancer awareness month.  This got a lot of publicity when the NFL fined Brandon Marshell, who wore green shoes during a game that he was supposed to wear pink shoes for.  All I’m pointing out is that if riot thinks of themselves as the NFL of E-sports they are following the league forced endorsement model perfectly.

So should we, the viewing public, be concerned with this contract?  Probably not, but at the same time some people are going to play white knight and insist the players should fight it and the community should help.  Honestly if the players are fine with the contract that’s just the free market doing its thing.  So morally I have no issues with the contract as long it doesn’t affect the players off stream.  Something we should all remember is during the LCS season a lot of these streamers stop streaming so they can practice and focus on competing.  So the vast majority of streamers during the LCS season will end up being non contracted “entertainers.”  Oh, and good news, Bjergsen is playing Dark Souls now so his stream is way less boring.

LCS image property of Riot Games

[kalthose]

The Dong is back… with EG.

Today Team Evil Genius announced the re-signing of Korean power house, Lee Jaedong.  The move to re-sign Jaedong for 2014 is not a surprising one.  Jaedong ended up coming up just short of a first place finish at the WCS finals to SoS.  With Jaedong’s second place finish at WCS he took the title of most winnings by any E-sports athlete, taking the place from Arena FPS player Fatal1ty.  The official blog post from EG can be found here.

[kalthose]

NiD is out and VVV is in!

Today came the news most of us expected. Napkins in Disguise has officially had their challenger promo spot given to VVV Gaming. NiD disbanded shortly after winning the first Well Played NA qualifier. VVV Gaming had actually come in third place in the second Well Played NA qualifier and as such will take over the spot over from NiD. This years relegation tournament is structured differently from previous, the most notable change being that challenger teams will play in a best of one round robin with top 3 advancing to group stage. Once the top 3 challenger teams have been decided the 3 relegated NA teams will then be allowed to choose their opponent starting with higher seeded Curse. With this change the current group stage includes the teams:

The Walking Zed

To Be Determined

Complexity Gaming

Quantic Gaming

COGnitive Gaming

VVV Gaming

And then the Bracket best of 5 includes the relegated teams:

Curse

Coast

And the shrouded in mystery Velocity E Sports (Dat EG money?!).

The round robins for NA start December 6th with times yet to be announced. Stream here

Photo belongs to Riot Games

[kalthose]

Pi is Coming: Brace Yourselves.

Oh lord have mercy! Champions Winter finally has PI, Patch 3.14 that is.  In case you have been living in a cave and don't know, Champions Winter is the premier Korean LoL league. Featuring such amazing teams as KT Rolster, SK Telecom and CJ Entus.  If you have never watched before I highly recommend you set your alarm or get a monster cause this Wednesday is going to be crazy.

Early Monday morning Monte Christo (one of the casters for OGN English broadcast) confirmed on twitter that starting wednesday December 4th OGN will be playing on the pre-season 4 patch (3.14). Later, J. Vandenbree, one of the E-sports direcotr for Riot confirmed that all champions will also be available for wednesday's games.

As a side note Korea's live servers have had patch 3.14 since November 27th, conversely the NA servers have been on 3.14 since November 21st. So while the Koreans have not had the patch as long as NA and EU they also did not have to endure the Targons mess.

If I or anyone has peaked your interest at all, Champions will be live at 4:30est (1:30pst) starting with SK Telecom T1 S vs Team NB. In case you are unaware of the format of Champions, currently they are in round robins, and each team gets a chance to play both sides of the map against there opponent. So the games are effectively a best of 2. If you want more info on how Champions runs be sure to check out the Leagupedia page.

[kalthose]

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つGive !Drops༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Counter Strike:Global Offensive made waves at Dreamhack Winter breaking viewing records some thought were not possible for a game so shrouded in controversy. But this tournament brought something we have never seen before – in-game drops from watching a streaming site. This created some great incentive to watch, but also created some real issues that must be addressed before we can look forward to using this system again.

First and for most is the obvious issue of botting to get these special drops. With CS:GO getting a 75% price drop during the tournament it brought in a lot of new players who might not otherwise be aware that Counter Strike is alive and well in the E-sports scene. But it also allows for those with the incentive to buy CS:GO on multiple accounts, link those accounts to twitch accounts and AFK the streams to increase their drop chances. Effectively reducing the overall distribution of these items. Another kind of dubious point about all of this is the Items and crates can be bought and sold (this is nothing new in the CS:go/Dota 2 market, you can sell or trade almost any item but special items). Which makes the prospect of botting seem even more dubious. At the time of writing the crates are going for ~8$ and the souvenir items with stickers range from 10-250$ on market (just because something is listed at 250$ does not mean it is worth 250$ it just means the individual thinks it is worth 250$).

Lets be real guys, chat is always shit, but this REALLY made chat shit. This kind of falls on the shoulders of Dreamhack rather then Valve, when they easily could have enabled Facebook connect (like hitler) or slowmode. Often times it took way too long to kill the !drop spam.  Either way, still better then ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つGIVE DARUDE༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Inflated stream numbers, really this goes with the first point. I found myself setting the second Dreamhack stream to low quality, muting it and watching the first stream on high. The only real evidence I have of this on a larger scale is the fact that both streams ended up sitting close to 20K at the same time most of the time.

Now, let's talk about the future. Some foresee CS:GO running a model similar to TF2, where it starts out maybe costing 15$ but gains so much popularity it eventually goes f2p, making profits off of in game purchases instead of initial sales. While this in itself is not bad (should build the community up), it presents a problem for this drop system. In Dota 2 there is a barrier of entry to have a shot at these drops, you HAVE to buy (and watch in game) a pennant for a team and the team your reping has to do something notable (multi kill, first blood, win the game) in order for you to have a shot at the drops. This on top of tickets in order to watch in-game creates enough of a barrier of entry that botting is close to nill. But with CS:GO all you have to do is pay 12 dollars to get CS on 5 accounts and make 5 twitch accounts, sit back and watch the drops roll in.

I don't want to take away from CS:GO's big week, it was great! look at these numbers! But objectively we have to look at what created these huge numbers. So do we stop it? do we stop incentivising the growth of the community with these boxes? In my opinion, no. We leave that s**t alone, having a maybe 100 guys botting 10 accounts and taking drops from people is such a small price to pay for what growth the scene has seen.  Does it seem kinda "woah buy some views from some nasty nerds"? yeah, but honestly the whole thing will probably end up evening itself out and maybe the next big tournament we can see some more solid/consistent numbers of people interested in CS:GO as a spectator E-sport. !drop Kappa

[ggcmontecristo]

Hey everyone,

This is the first episode of “Rift Review” a collaboration between myself and Machinima VS to give you a new kind of League of Legends show. While the first show focuses exclusively on previewing the 16 teams heading into Champions Winter, future shows will be more diverse in content.

What is my vision for Rift Review?

I want to follow strategies from regions around the world and give insight into why and how professional teams change over time. In order to accomplish this, the show will vary from week to week. Sometimes it might look at a single strategy or team comp played in multiple regions, it could go in-depth on a particular team, or it may feature special guests to discuss a topic in their expertise.

Fan concerns

After this first episode, there is some criticism from fans that I would like to address. Please remember that I take your feedback seriously and I will continue striving to improve the experience and meet viewer expectations.

1. Audio/video quality

I really wanted to release this Champions Winter preview prior to the tournament kick-off on 11/15. Since I recorded the video in New York by necessity to meet the deadline, I did not have my good recording equipment with me. Please know that the audio and video quality will be the same as in the intro/outro, which should eliminate many concerns.

2. Presentation

I plan to rearrange the furniture in my apartment in Seoul in order to give the show a more professional presentation. It’s very important that this show looks as good as possible, and I value polish. It may take a couple episodes, but I intend to get a black background in place to limit distractions.

Since people also seem to want more professional clothes, I’ll done the tie and suspenders for future episodes.

3. Guests

I want the show to have more variety than just me, so I will go out of my way to get guests and conduct interviews. Some shows may be just me, but I’d like to inject more personalities whenever I can.

4. Fan interaction

The show is necessarily pre-produced since we want to add nice graphics, video footage, and visual effects, but that does make it more difficult to interact with fans. While chat interaction is off the table, I want to open up new avenues for people to get their questions/comments on the show. Please see below for methods to contact me with questions.

Ways to submit questions/comments for Rift Review:

You can Tweet at me at: http://twitter.com/ggcmontecristo

You can call and leave a voicemail to be played on the show at the following phone number: [phone]

You can ask questions on my tumblr’s Q&A page: http://ggcmontecristo.tumblr.com/

Thanks for watching!

I appreciate the feedback and constructive criticism, and I will continue to change the show as necessary to fit fan desires. This is only the beginning of a long series, so bear with me while we work out the kinks.

[kalthose]

Yo like real, this guy is a real writer/creator.  Anyway watch this shit, he's god.

[kalthose]

Wat 2 c this weekend

Welp, this weekend we start a new OGN and a new LCS qualifier, so you can probably guess what I'm going to say to watch. 

OGN

OGN kicks off it's last "Champions" of the year on Friday. Unlike normal scheduling, play starts early Friday morning (Friday evening in Korea) at 4 a.m est/1 a.m pst and starts Saturday at the same time. Currently groups will be played Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Previously OGN only had Champions on Wednesday and Friday.

EU and NA LCS qualifier 2

NA and EU will have their second LCS relegation tournament qualifer in the respective regions. These run for 2 week starting on the 16th with "play in's". The teams to watch for in NA are Quantic, who are a full Korean roster that missed there chance last qualifer with a loss in the last round to Cognative Gaming, and Gold Gaming LA who have yet to qualify but already have a gaming house put together in anticipation for their success as an organization. I'm not too qualified to say anything about the EU challenger scene (but lol, wat am i qualified to speak about anyway?) but I'm sure it will produce a great bunch of games.

This qualifier runs a little differently then you would expect other qualifiers to run. In other tournaments you would usually get the teams started in a pool, here you have to play a best of 1 against another challenger level ranked 5's team and then you get placed into pools. After seeds are decided through pool play teams get placed into a "qualifying round" which is really just a best of three between the first and second team in opposite brackets.

NA starts on the 16th at 7est / 3pst. Eu starts the 16th also,starting at 9 a.m est / 6 a.m pst.

NA will be played on WellPlayed's stream with the almighty and always great caster, Wombat.

EU will be played on Riot Games stream and be casted by Studio and Panky.

NEPS (National ESL Pro Series NA)

Whether you like the production/casters or not, this tournament has brought some great games to us.  This weekend they play Sunday night starting at 8:30 EST with 2 heavy hitters in the challenger scene, TBD and NID.  Quantic will play 2 series in this tournament this weekend with the first being the 1-2 Curse Academy and the second against the recently "disbanded" Velocity(this game could be canceled since Velocity has yet to announce a new roster after kicking all their previous starters.).  Saturday kicks off at 8:30 EST as well.  All this being said, I wouldn't cancel any plans to watch this tournament, it has been getting DDosed recently.  Whether it's because the dick dislikes the teams or the tournament is unknown.  But yeah, fuck that guy.

Gaerna is also playing Friday, but I don't follow Garena so I cant say anything to the effect of whether or not the games are good.

Between the 2 NA tournaments and getting my lazy butt out of bed in the morning I have more then enough to watch this weekend and I hope you do too.

All brands and images belong to there respective owner, I'm just using them in fair use setting. Plz dont sue...

[kalthose]

E-sports week 11/3-11/10

This weeks big event was the much anticipated Blizzcon 2013, featuring the inaugural live hearthstone tournament, the World Of Warcraft arena finals and the crazy hyped WCS finals. Meanwhile League of Legends anticipates the big patch bringing in the changes of season 4 and saw some big roster moves. Not to forget the Console community who received the next installation in the COD series with mixed reaction. Finally Dota 2 community just shit the bed. To kick it off we'll take a look at what happened in the League Of Legends.

League Of Legends

OGN

OGN begins it's winter season on November 15th, a Friday, and runs through January 25th. Like previous seasons this season is incredibly stacked with few unknowns. It is sure to please. It is unclear if the tournament will be played with pre-season 4 changes, or if it will play the whole season on the 3.13 patch. I e-mailed and tweeted at OGN and because i'm no one they didn't respond.  SO!  I'll throw this out there.  I think they will play the whole thing on 3.13.

NACL

NACL is on it's 5th week and the round robin is proving to be pretty split. Team Coast – who has been undefeated through four weeks – finally takes there first loss to curse. If you didn’t catch this game the VOD will not disappoint, it is a good preview of the coming season 4 NA LCS qualification tournament. Curse and Curse Academy still hold a solid second place in there respective divisions and it doesn’t look like either will give up there spot any time soon. NACL week 6 broadcasts begin again November 11th at 8PM EST with VES v Cog.

Games to watch on week 6: The 1st place Complexity takes on the 2nd place Curse Academy November 11th at 11 EST. Likewise in the Elder Lizard Conference the 1st place coast takes on the second place Curse November 13th at 9 EST.

Player Moves.

NA

Reginald will be leaving TSM as a player and become a coach. His replacment is Bjergson who played for NIP and other EU teams since he broke onto the competietive scene. Bjergson is a top tier mid player who has many accomplishments in the EU scene. Be sure to check out his leaguepedia page if you don’t know much about him.

BobbyHankHill makes the move to GoldGaming:LA as there new ADC replacing Otter. BobbyHankHill has been playing in the amateur scene for awhile and with the anticipated success of GG:La he may finally have his chance to break onto the pro scene.

EU

Voidle leaves Gambit Gaming after only 1 brief season with the team. Thank Zeus, god almighty the king is back! Edward -- after his short time with curse -- has returned to the team that he once carried, team Edward... er I mean Gambit Gaming.

Community

Riot released a patch Tuesday fixing a few issues including the random 100 gold price increase to Kindlgem. Season 3 ranked solo and teams will be over on Monday November 11th at 11:59 PST. The assumption at this point is that the next day – tuesday – the pre season 4 changes will go into affect on the live servers, so get to that next solo queue teir before then to ensure you get your rewards. Over the course of the last 2 weeks Riot has made Reddit and Forum posts about the incoming changes of season 4. Theses posts cover vision changes, support changes, jungle changes, summoner spell and Mastery changes,”game flow changes” and a rework of the health bars. You can read all the posts on their forums here.  If you're interested in messing with the new masteries, a mastery generator has been created by Reddit user Zipnut, here. A Reddit post made this week had data mined information indicating that 1v1 ranked and 2v2 unranked may be coming to the game. 2 days later a reddit post -- made by Rioter Pwyff -- explained that these will not be coming, and the information that had been data mined had actually been in the PBE for awhile for the purpose of testing. Take that how you will, personally I think ranked wont happen but expect to see magma chamber soon.

COD

Call Of Duty: Ghosts released last Tuesday. The first big event for COD:ghosts is MLG championships in Columbus November 22nd-24th. It will be played on Xbox 360 with an open bracket capable of holding 96 teams (sold out as of now.) and a 12 team championship bracket featuring invited pro teams.

Starcraft II

The WCS Finals where held this weekend at Blizzcon in Anaheim CA. The first match (which took place before the tournament) was a tie breaker played between the king of the north, Naniwa and Korean great, Revival. Naniwa was able to take a commanding 3-0 victory in less then an hour giving him the 16th spot in the Championship bracket and setting him up to face Soulkey in the first round. Naniwa fell to soul key 3-1. The biggest upset to come out of the brackets was the defeat of Innovation by Korean DuckDuck. After a long 2 days of games we were left with The Dong himself Jaedong, and Korean Protoss sOs. After a tough first game sOs was able to take a lead and used the momentum to carry himself to a 4-1 defeat over the crowd favorite Jaedong. One thing that really was great out of this event was the fact that the trophy ceremony went off without spaghetti falling out of everyone’s pockets. But unfortunately the post tournament show was cut short by DirecTV causing a rather upsetting reaction from the community. Later on Lo3 DJ wheat confirmed that the show was cut short because of DirecTV.

World Of Warcraft

World Of Warcraft had it's Arena finals at blizzcon aswell. Coming out of groups was the well know Skill cap(NA and one AUS), LG-IM(KR), PVP live(NA) and MiR(EU). In the finals we saw Skill Capped take on MiR and crush them with a tough 4-0. Skill Capped took home 105,000 USD.

HearthStone

Artosis won. It's the only thing he will ever win.

Welp. thats it. it is 2 days late. A busy week, but a good one.  Next week/this week is homestory cup, and OGN's kick off.  I'll be sure to throw a write up of what to watch this weekend.

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