The weekend started off strong for the two favourites of Fnatic and Team CryptiK, with the former pulling off an impressive 10-0 victory over the Japanese team Sengoku Gaming Extasy. On the other hand, CryptiK dispatched the South Korean side of Team Latency in a strong 5-2, 5-2 result.
However, much closer games were played in the lower bracket with both games going to the 3rd map. First there was Element Mystic, the recently picked up South Korean roster of Team Yetti, against the 2nd placed ANZ team of Dark Sided. This was expected to be one of the closest games of the day and technically delivered with Dark Sided coming back from a 5-1 crushing in map 1 to win both maps 2 and 3 in a 5-2 fashion.
The final QF of the day was NORA-Rengo, the top seed in Japan, against Scrypt, the relative outsiders in their very first season of Pro League. However, despite Nora-Rengo being the obvious favourites, the game ended up being the closest of the whole tournament; Scrypt initially took the lead in an 11 round victory on Border before another 11 round match on Consulate tied the game up 1-1. The final map of the day, Chalet, saw both teams give their all with NORA-Rengo finally managing to break the string of attacking victories, taking the map 5-3 and the series 2-1.
The following day saw the semi-finals with Fnatic playing CryptiK first off; these two teams came in as the tournament favourites however had to play each other earlier than either team would have wanted due to an unlucky bracket. The game started as close as expected with a narrow 6-5 victory by Fnatic on Kafe before a much more dominant Clubhouse game which saw CryptiK win 5-0 tying the series up 1-1. Finally, their last map of Oregon was fairly back and forth to begin with, with the teams reaching 2-2 on round count before Fnatic stepped up, winning 3 rounds in a row, and took the series 2-1.
The second semi-final of the day saw Dark Sided play Nora-Rengo which, despite Nora-Rengo’s weaker than expected performance the day before, was a fairly one-sided affair. Map 1 of border ended in a strong 5-3 manner with many rounds ending in last second and unprepared site pushes while map 2, despite Dark Sided taking the lead after round 1, ended in a 5-1 loss by the ANZ side with 4 of their rounds lost ending in 1v4s.
The last match of the day was the Grand Final between Fnatic and Nora-Rengo; this game, while key for preferential seedings, had less riding on it than the previous two semi-finals as reaching the grand final already guaranteed you a spot at the S7 LAN. This, however, didn’t mean Fnatic would take the matchup lightly as they made evidently clear in-game; the first map of Consulate saw them take 5 dominant rounds in a row winning 5-1 followed by a Chalet matchup in which they continued their streak with a closer victory of 5-3. The MVP of the game was clearly Lusty on Fnatic who ended the series with 15 kills to 2 deaths -- a whopping 7.5 K/D.
This means both Fnatic and NORA-Rengo will travel to the Atlantic City finals on the 19th of May to play off against the best of NA, EU and LATAM to crown the S7 World Champions.