After what seems like an eternity of waiting, the RLCS Spring Major finally kicked off yesterday (June 29th) and boy were there some surprising results. Day 1 saw LOTS of games broadcast across the A & B streams. 12 games to be precise, those games were the 8 Upper Bracket Round 1 games and the Upper Bracket Quarter Finals.
When I say there were some surprising results, I mean there were some REALLY surprising results, I mean we got a fair few of our predictions wrong from our Spring Major preview. Let’s take a look at the full breakdown of results and then we’ll look into some of the games individually!
Spring Major Upper Bracket – Round 1
- G2 3 – 0 Gaimin Gladiators
- FURIA 0 – 3 Karmine Corp
- V1 3 – 0 Endpoint
- Moist Esports 3 – 0 OpTic (Envy)
- BDS 0 – 3 Team Secret (?!?!?)
- Spacestation Gaming 3 – 2 Pioneers
- FaZe 3 – 0 PWR
- Team Liquid 1 – 3 Team Falcons
Alright, before we get into the Spring Major Quarter Final results, I feel like there are a few things we need to talk about here. The first one is the proverbial elephant in the room. Arguably the favourite team going into this tournament, Team BDS NOW HAVE TO WIN THROUGH A LOWER BRACKET RUN?!
Yes, you read that correctly. I didn’t just get the result the wrong way round. BDS were exceptionally poor yesterday and Team Secret definitely smelled blood and pounced. Team Secret was the 14th seed in this tournament and they took out Team BDS. Incredible.
I have no doubt Team BDS will get their stuff together and make a push from the Spring Major lower bracket but they’ve left themselves a lot of work to do, especially after getting swept 3-0.
The next big thing I’d like to talk about is Liquid Vs Falcons. Now this game could’ve gone either way, I personally thought Liquid would get a result as you COULD say they were one of the favourites coming into the Spring Major tournament. However, it’s worth remembering they’re an exceptionally young roster with very little top-level competitive play. Oski & Atow both only turned 15 in FEBRUARY and they were making their LAN debut!
It was a big day for Falcons too however, while it’s true they were at the Fall Major in Stockholm, they attended that Major with Senzo in place of oKhaliD due to school reasons I believe. So yesterday was oKhaliD’s International LAN debut. It took him all of 2 minutes to settle in.
Liquid stormed out to a 4-1 lead in game one leaving fans and analysts alike to think it was all over already. Maybe the young mechanical masterminds of Liquid would prove too much for Falcons? Yeah, that wasn’t the case. Something changed in game 2 and that was all she wrote. A master class as per from Ahmad, oKhaliD looking like a LAN veteran and TRK511 picking up the pieces behind them and they won 3 back-to-back to move onto the next round with a 3-1 win over Liquid!
Other than SSG struggling to get their win over a young Pioneers team from the OCE region and the two games we mentioned, everything else went pretty much as planned, so it’s time to move onto the Spring Major Upper Bracket Quarters.
Spring Major Upper Bracket Quarter-Finals
- G2 2 – 3 Karmine Corp
- V1 3 – 1 Moist Esports
- Team Secret 1 – 3 Spacestation Gaming
- FaZe 1 – 3 Team Falcons
How do these Elephants keep getting into this room? This time, the elephant could be EITHER Karmine Corp OR Team Falcons. But we’ll start with KC. Let’s face it, we all thought there would be a European team progressing to the Spring Major Upper Bracket Semi-Finals on Saturday, but did anybody think it would be Karmine Corp? Absolutely not. I had Moist or Team BDS making it there 100%, but here we are. Not only did Karmine Corp make it to the Semi-Finals on Saturday where they’re guaranteed to play in front of the fans. They did it in style.
To put it bluntly, they looked poor in games 1 & 2. Losing 3-1 and 3-2 in OT respectively. But honestly, they COULD have won game 2, they had a 2-1 lead and Aztral, the mad lad he is, somehow missed an open net, you just can’t be missing those at the top level. They were immediately punished as G2 made it 2-2 30 seconds later and eventually went on to win in OT. But something clicked and it just started working for them. They managed to bring it back to 2-2 in the series, meaning it was all to play for on Champions Field in game 5.
A second game going to overtime after the teams finish the 5 minutes tied at 3-3 and a tense 2 minutes would ensue, neither team seemingly wanting to commit that third man forward to put the final nail in the coffin. But KC got their redemption by completing the reverse sweep to take a 3-2 win and progress into the Semi-Finals! KC are a fantastic team and the addition of Noly is proving to be a stroke of genius, but I have made an observation about G2. It seems to be like they have breakdowns in communication, quite a lot.
It happened in the Winter Major and caused them to go a second-best of 7 against Moist (Then Queso) in the Grand Finals. It has caused plenty of hiccups in the regionals and yesterday it happened a few times where players would just stumble over each other. I’m not sure exactly what the issue is because after acquiring Atomic for Dreaz they have looked incredible. But they really need to work on these niggling communication issues they appear to be having if they want success in the Spring Major.
Now we have Team Falcons, the phenoms from Saudi Arabia. Look, everybody knows the story of these guys by now, if you choose to sleep on them still then that’s on you. We all know they’re a great team. They got top 8 in the Fall Major with a SUB. Granted that sub Senzo used to be one of their original members but that isn’t the point.
If you cast your mind back to that major, you’ll remember that Falcons (formerly SRG) played 2 NA teams. They played G2 on the opening day of the Swiss and swept them 3-0 before meeting NRG in the first knockout round where they found themselves 3-0 down before putting up a pretty valiant fight back only to lose 4-2.
So their next attempt at a team from NA would be FaZe. This FaZe team with Sypical has looked incredible, but AYYJAYY hasn’t quite got things going this LAN and the team has had to rely on Firstkiller to get things going both offensive and defensively. So how did things go in their match against the Falcons?
In a nervy game one saw FaZe take a 2-1 win after going to overtime, but from that point on they didn’t really have a chance. Shot after shot peppering the FaZe backboard, trk511 scored for fun off the sidewalls. A 1v1 lesson from oKhaliD as he won the majority of his ground 50/50s and played a great possession game and then Ahmad. Wow, what can we say about Ahmad? This man is a walking highlight reel. Falcons are just built differently. 2-1, 3-2 and a checks notes 6-0 win back to back to back saw them take a 3-1 lead over the #2 seed from North America.
Based on how Spacestation have struggled to get through their games against Pioneers and Team Secret, I can only assume they’re going to have a really tough time against Falcons on Saturday. But who knows?
There will be more Rocket League for us to check out today, but today we only have 4 games, then 4 more tomorrow. Those matches are as follows!
Spring Major Lower Bracket Round 1 (Thursday)
- Gaimin Gladiators Vs FURIA
- Endpoint Vs OpTic
- Team BDS Vs Pioneers
- PWR Vs Team Liquid
Spring Major Lower Bracket Round 2 (Friday)
- FaZe Vs Gaimin Gladiators/FURIA
- Team Secret Vs Endpoint/OpTic
- Moist Esports Vs Team BDS/Pioneers
- G2 Vs PWR/Team Liquid
That’s going to do it for today’s coverage of the Spring Major! There probably won’t be a write-up of the action from today, given there are only 4 games to look at, so come back Friday for coverage of days 2 & 3 to see who progresses to Saturday where they get to play in front of a packed out Copperbox Arena in London, I’m going to be there, are you?
For even more RLCS: Spring Major coverage, check out our esports news section.
