NORTH AMERICA
Top Tier, a team that was stuck in sixth place before this week, stunned the WGLNA World of Tanks Gold League with two huge wins this week. With those wins, they are now tied for third in the whole league and everyone should be taking them very seriously looking forward. Upsets abounded all around in this week of the WGLNA so make sure you read about the matches below so you don’t miss any of the new information for your fantasy teams!
Apex Vs. Eclipse
Both former WGLNA champions met on the battlefield for the second time this season. Apex have been red hot all season, only losing a total of three games to teams that aren't eClipse. eClipse have had a few more ups and downs with their season but they seemed to have rebounded lately with solid wins against o7, Rival, and Valence.
This match started with Apex and Eclipse splitting sides of Ghost Town after some clever moves including an Apex fast cap and amd eClipse rolling out three E-100s to secure the tied score. The real story starts on Cliff, where both teams met in some incredible brawls but eClipse wiped the floor with Apex. The second match lasted maybe a minute thirty before eClipse had secured the win to make the score 4-2. At this point most people thought that eClipse would take home the win and three points, but Apex had something to say about that.
The next map was Murovanka, which is well known for its incredibly defensive sided win rate of almost 70%. When you bring in two very skilled teams you usually assume that they will both win their defense side and split the map, which would have led to an eClipse victory. Apex had other plans however. They won their defensive side as expected and then pulled off a crazy win on offense after finding eClipse’s passive scout. At this point the momentum was with Apex and they used it to cruise through the overtime match on Cliff and win in overtime 5-4.
#Apex wins an unlikely Murovanka attack to force overtime with @eClipse_WGLNA! #WGLNA @WorldofTanks pic.twitter.com/Gww3UhIIPM
— WGLNA (@WGLNA) February 8, 2017
Top Tier Vs. Dare
This was a very surprising match between the up-and-coming Dare Rising and the newbies to the league Top Tier. Both teams have had their share of ups and downs throughout the season, but Dare Rising was the consensus pick for who would be the better team in this match. The match didn’t quite go down that way though.
Both teams won the ruinberg attack, which is the first time that has happened all season. Then the teams went into a bad map for both of them when before you know it, Top Tier had won both sides of Himmelsdorf, giving them a 3-1 lead! Both teams seemed to be bad at Himmels as Top Tier currently has a 37.%% win rate compared to Dare Rising’s measly 18% win rate on the map.
Next on Prok, both teams ended up managing a successful defense on one of the most balanced maps in the league, but this gave Top Tier a 4-2 advantage going into Mines. It was now or never for Dare Rising to strike back. Top Tier decided to come out guns blazing with a rush down the eight line of mines as they tried to surprise the tanks of Dare Rising. They ended up getting the upper hand in the battle and finished the match then and there 5-2. This was a very unexpected upset for Top Tier and one teams should try and remember going into future matches.
.@TopTierWOT gets their fifth win on Mines to win the series over @DareRising. @WGLNA @WorldofTanks pic.twitter.com/4KDVShlGSY
— WGLNA (@WGLNA) February 8, 2017
Top Tier Vs. o7 Gaming
Top Tier came into this match red hot after a big win against Dare, and o7 had been struggling as of late with three losses in a row to Valence, Dare, and eClipse. However, it was regarded that if o7 was not on tilt, they would have the advantage in this match due to their wins early in the season.
Starting out the map rotation was Murovanka, everyone’s favorite 70% win rate for defense map and unsurprisingly both teams were able to even the score 1-1 after the first map. After Murovanka, o7 appeared to fall apart and couldn’t quite get their strats together. o7 Gaming tried to make something happen with E50s on cliff, but the E50s mostly just threw away their HP and they were down tanks for not as much of a gain as they had hoped.
It was a downward spiral from there as o7 continued to lose until they were on the defensive side of steppes down 4-1. They had the advantage as they were up on HP and Top Tier were trapped down in the low ground on nine line of steppes but somehow Top Tier clawed themselves back into the game and clutched the win which led them to a 5-1 victory over o7 Gaming.
.@TopTierWOT wins a close brawl with @o7gaming to win the match! #WGLNA @WorldofTanks pic.twitter.com/qbCax9Z46Q
— WGLNA (@WGLNA) February 10, 2017
Apex Vs. Aquatic M60s
Aquatic M60s were on a big winning streak as they won the last four of their matches but they were about to be tested by the still undefeated Apex. Last time these two teams met, Apex walked all over Aquatic with a 5-0 victory.
Prok, Ghost Town, and Himmels were all maps that Apex excel on and they started to gain momentum after winning both sides of Prok with ease. On Ghost Town, Aquatic was finally able to make a stand as they were able to get the first Ghost Town match down to a 1v1 but weren't able to finish off Apex to get the win. The close loss on Ghost Town seemed to take the steam out of Aquatic’s sails and Apex cruised to the last wins without ever losing more than one tank. Apex made this 5-0 look easy as they rolled right over Aquatic most of the matches.
#Apex pull out the win in a close game that ends in a 1v1! #WGLNA @WorldofTanks pic.twitter.com/rNUkSYkl5X
— WGLNA (@WGLNA) February 10, 2017
Fantasy
Tuesday had some big fantasy point scorers as Ledif once again headlined the fantasy point leaders. He scored an astounding 474 points even with his team losing 3-5 to Valence. Geeforcer and Nitts finished second and third even though they were less than 1% picked. Maybe they will be worth a look in the future. Brett, Makos, ZoneDelta, and Dealth_ rounded out the best fantasy roster for Tuesday, keep an eye on some of these guys going forward and see if they continue to perform.
Thursday was the first match where only two teams played so no one was sure how many people to pick from either match. Remember you can pick up to four players per team when there is only two teams playing. Wallhacks was the big winner this match with 340 points due to a ton of reset points but otherwise the points were quite low due to 5-1 and 5-0 blowouts this week.
Oxmathus, a popular pick with a 70% pick rate, came in second with 306 points scored. Otherwise no one broke 300 points with Pompous, xsoldier, Xits and Brett all scoring in the 280’s. Otherwise you go all the way down to ogHaKo at 247 and it keeps getting lower from there. Luckily the low top end points scored should prevent anyone from falling too far in this matchup.
Offline Matches
There were only two offline matches this week due to the new format where we only play two matches per night and make the season longer so there is more WGLNA for everyone! Starting off we have o7 vs Valence on Tuesday. o7 was favored in this match because they have been beating what people would consider better teams than Valence before this but o7 was coming off big losses to Dare and eClipse. As expected, o7 went up 3-1 over Valence but then the wheels fell off. Valence rallied to win the next four games in a row leaving a stunned o7 behind in a 5-3 loss.
The other offline match this week was Aquatic M60s vs Rival and it was not nearly as exciting. Aquatic M60s rolled all over Rival as Rival were unable to win a single game in this series. All six of Aquatic M60s tier 10 players scored more points than anyone on Rival in this blowout. Although Aquatic M60s liked the 5-0 so much they let Apex 5-0 them on Thursday night.
Tune In
Watch your favorite teams and players compete live at wgl.gg/watch Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 5:30PM Pacific. There will be a special match this saturday, February 11th, also starting at 5:30pm PT.
Be sure and make your fantasy teams at fantasytanks.com to win cool prizes and compete with your friends and WG and ESL staff!
Follow WGLNA on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date on all the latest #WGLNA news about the league, fantasy, and more!
APAC
After a crazy week of #WGLAPAC, the titans of the league, the previously undefeated powerhouse EL Gaming, finally went down to the Australians from Team Efficiency after an intense tiebreaker series on Friday. The upsets continued on Saturday as lowest place DarkWolves beat Caren Tiger on Saturday evening, followed by EL Gaming again going to an unexpected tiebreaker on Sunday.
The question this week will be: Are EL Gaming going to bounce back, or have the only true 'pro' team in the APAC region finally fallen off their top spot? There's only one way to find out, by tuning in on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!
CIS
Week 5 in WGLRU was filled with surprises and unpredictable results. At first, after a long and strenuous battle, Carpe Diem won against the regional favourites Natus Vincere! But it was not the sole blow to Natus Vincere, after regional outsiders IMPACT Gaming drew them to a tiebreaker on Sunday. What happened, NaVi?
The other big inexplicable result came from team Unique, who at first destroyed the top three team Not So Serious 5-0, but after this lost with the same 5-0 score to Brain Storm, who are on a lower position on the standings.
EUROPE
In this week of WGLEU we saw gohard lose against the experience of Kazna and ding, but they picked up the win against GRS. Kazna and Ding picked up two vital wins putting the top three teams within three points of each other. Oops finally recovered and took two out of three victories, which they desperately needed to bring them back into the fight for the playoffs. On the bottom half of the table, GRS are now gaining on esuba, who lost both of their games