Last week, Season II of the WGLNA World of Tanks Gold League kicked off with matches on Tuesday and Thursday. Two new teams, Valence and Top Tier, joined the ranks of the Gold League while the veteran squads of Apex and Eclipse battled in a rematch of the Season I Finals.
APEX VS VALENCE
The first match of the season started off with North America’s Season I champions, Apex, meeting the newest team in the league, Valence. The veteran team destroyed Valence in quick fashion. On the first map, Prokhorovka, Valence were able to split the score 1-1. After this however, Apex continued to roll over the new roster on their way to a 5-1 victory. Oxmathus and GodEmperorBrett were the fantasy standouts from this first match, but it is still too early in the season to call them the best fantasy assets on the team.
Wally with the best pro play of the season! @WorldofTanks #WGLNA pic.twitter.com/JXFsbwfaBf
— WGLNA (@WGLNA) January 11, 2017
TOP TIER VS AQUATIC M60S
The Gold League’s second new team, Top Tier, kicked off Season II against the WGLNA veterans, Aquatic M60s. After Cliff and Murovanka, Top Tier were off to a surprise 3-1 lead over Aquatic M60s. Both teams continued to split matches on Ghost Town and Himmelsdorf until Top Tier won their first WGLNA Gold League match with a 5-3 scoreline. Pompous deserves a special shoutout as he clutched a 1v3 on GhostTown to force match point for Top Tier. Mereelskirata, DarkNinja_, and pompous were the best fantasy players of the match and are certainly worth keeping an eye on in the future.
What just happened in this match!?! @WorldofTanks #WGLNA pic.twitter.com/pSHr56gNJo
— WGLNA (@WGLNA) January 11, 2017
DEJA VU VS TOP TIER
After Top Tier came off a big win against Aquatic M60s earlier in the week they moved on to face Deja Vu on Thursday. For a majority of the match, the teams were dead even. The score remained at 3-3 after Steppes, Murovanka, and Himmelsdorf. Unfortunately, Pompous couldn’t carry his team to another clutch victory on Ghost Town like he did on Tuesday and Deja Vu ended up winning the match 5-3. MyLittlePutin and ogHaKo were the surprise fantasy winners of the match, each scoring more than 450 points.
Pompous decimates Aggressor's T57 in his FV183! @WorldofTanks #WGLNA pic.twitter.com/MwrUjIoLo7
— WGLNA (@WGLNA) January 13, 2017
ECLIPSE VS APEX
The Season II match everyone was excited for, Apex vs. Eclipse, was an epic rematch of the Season I finals! With new players on each team, it was time to see how these rosters would stack up in the new season. It was a close match, with the two teams tied 3-3 after Prokorovka, Ruinberg, and Cliff. Going into the final map, Murovanka, it was expected that the two teams would split games again and go to overtime but Apex had other plans.
Apex started off strong by winning a Murovanka attack, which is one of the hardest sides to win on in the WGLNA. Apex then used that momentum to carry themselves to a defensive win on Murovanka and a 5-3 series victory. CanadianImpact and Dodoma showed up fantasy-wise for Apex.
It comes down to the last second in #Apex vs @eClipse_WGLNA! @WorldofTanks #WGLNA pic.twitter.com/WljzP1tFuF
— WGLNA (@WGLNA) January 13, 2017
OFFLINE MATCHES
With the new system this season, we now have four offline matches a week. You can see all of the replays from offline matches on wotreplays.com as well as the replays from the broadcasted matches. Launch these replays and check out the spots the pros use from their first person perspective!
On the first match night of the season, Eclipse soundly defeated Rival 5-1, which isn’t a huge surprise given eClipse’s two trips to the finals in two years. Also, o7 won a close overtime match against their playoff rivals last season, Deja Vu. With o7 pulling off this slight upset, we will have to wait and see if they can continue to perform at this high level.
During the second match night, o7 gaming once again went to overtime with the new WGLNA team Valence. Valence won the match in overtime, which should leave teams other than Apex fearful that Valence could be the real deal heading into the rest of the season. Rival picked up their second loss of the season after a 5-0 sweep by Aquatic M60s.
FANTASY RECAP
Thank you to the thousands of people who played fantasy tanks this first week! If you missed out this week, don’t worry. Next week the slates will be wiped clean and fantasy players will compete for another 25k gold! You can make your team over at fantasytanks.com and study up with more helpful fantasy resources.
After one week of play, Wallhacks is the overall fantasy leader with a score of over 5300! He however is ineligible to win prizes so Tryzit, Esports_Legend_Jacob, and Nicook5 will take home this week’s grand prize of 2500 gold each. You can see the full standings to find out where you placed! Also, you can read the full prize list to see the list of weekly and season long prizes to be awarded for the fantasy league.
Looking forward, Ledif (o7) is the best fantasy player after this first week of matches due to his 258 Defense points reset as well as his 18 games played. BurndedFungus (DV) and Warbander (o7) round out the top three players in fantasy points scored. You can view the complete player standings to see how your favorite players performed this week and check out the stats page if you want to see exactly how each player scored their points.
TUNE IN
Watch your favorite teams and players compete live at live.wargaming.net every Tuesday and Thursday starting at 5:30PM Pacific!
Follow WGLNA on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date on all the latest #WGLNA news about the league, fantasy, and more!
