Last weekend, we saw the four regional championships of Wargaming.net League Season 1 being played out. Come take a look with us at all four clashes to find out which teams were able to claim the throne in their respective regions!
In APAC, the Chinese powerhouse EL Gaming remains unchallenged!
The semi-final between Japanese stalwarts B-Gaming and the Korean guns Meltdown proved to be great entertainment, with Meltdown getting off to an early 4-1 lead. But after a break, B-Gaming came back with all they had, to edge out Meltdown in a 7-6 comeback victory, leaving the Koreans visibly disappointed after coming so close.
After breezing through the 'home team' Team Efficiency 7-2, the Chinese powerhouse EL Gaming took out Japanese rivals B-Gaming in the final of WGL APAC Season I 2016-2017 in a convincing 7-4 victory, continuing their unbeaten run. With their sights set on the Grand Finals, they are sure to be the team to look out for as the APAC region heads to the global stage.
In Europe, DiNG stays unbeaten throughout the whole Season and wins the Title.
DiNG emerges as the WGL EU champions of this season. During the first semi-final they faced the young team of Oops-TTG. Although Oops participated in the offline finals for the very first time, they managed to be a real match for DiNG. After the initial defeats, they came back and, to the amazement of many, even got to the match point. However, DiNG eventually proved stronger and won this encounter.
The second semi-final saw Kazna Kru take on Utopia. After the initial 2-0 in favour of Utopia, the Polish team seemed to rest on their laurels. Kazna Kru immediately took advantage of that and managed to draw out the match. They even added three more rounds on top of that and the score went 5-2 in favour of Kazna. Utopia managed to recover from the shock and started winning again until the scoreboard showed 5-5, a draw again. The final score was 7-5 for Kazna against the weakened line-up of Utopia, who missed some of their starting players in this tournament.
In the Final, both DiNG and Kazna Kru looked very strong. However, DinG was better at capitalizing on their opportunities and remained unbeaten this Season. They won the trophy, the lion’s share of the prize money and will be going to New York together with their recent opponent Kazna to compete in the Challengers Rumble!
Natus Vincere still the best in the CIS region.
The Season 1 Finals in the CIS region in Kazan showed us some surprises. In the first semifinal all happened as expected with Natus Vincere winning 7-1 against Brain Storm.
This was followed by a ruthless beating in the second semifinal of Not So Serious by HellRaisers, who won 7-1 as well. It was definitely unpredicted and many fans were expecting a more masterful play from the leaders of the online part of this season.
The final match was keeping the viewers in a state of suspense until the very end. Natus Vincere went ahead twice with two points but HellRaisers caught up every time. In the end we got a tie-breaker which gave us a really fierce battle. Natus Vincere proved a little stronger, they got a victory over HellRaisers with the score 7-6 and added one more victory to their collection of achievements. This way they remain the most titled team in the CIS region.
They are one of the most stable teams in the league, who did not change their lineup in the past two years and the only team who became the World Champion of the WGL twice.
Apex emerge as the WGLNA World of Tanks Gold League Season 1 champions!
Apex and Eclipse were neck-and-neck most of the match aside from a few key moments that decided the series. Against all odds, Apex were able to win both sides of Ruinberg, which put Eclipse behind 1-3. Eclipse countered later on, winning both sides of Murovanka, another incredibly difficult task, to bring the score back to 4-4. The teams continued to go back and forth until the tie-breaker map, Prokhorovka.
Eclipse barreled down the eight line, looking for that decisive brawl, but were outmaneuvered by Apex who had already taken the other side of the railroad tracks with the perfect counter to Eclipse’s plan. It was all downhill from there for Eclipse and Apex overthrew the previous season’s champions 7-6.
Even more to come
This season may be over, but there is more World of Tanks action happening during the offseason! The NYC Rumble is coming up so pay attention to our social media channels for Europe (Facebook and Twitter), CIS (Vkontakte and Twitter), North America (Facebook and Twitter) as well as APAC (Facebook and Twitter).