📝 Al Qadsiah and Twisted Minds dominate: EMEA OWCS Stage 3, Week 3 summary

Week 3 was packed to the brim with closely matched teams and crucial rivalries. We predicted a close weekend across the board, but we ended up with 3-0 sweeps in all four games.

However, the final scorelines do not paint an entirely accurate picture of how close and competitive the games were over the weekend.

Al Qadsiah cemented their undisputed dominance, Team Peps and Goud Guys ANM achieved crucial victories in their bid for the playoffs, and Twisted Minds continued to build on their momentum ahead of their match against Virtus.pro next week.

Game of the week: Al Qadsiah 3 - 0 Virtus.pro

Virtus.pro was touted as the close runner-up to Al Qadsiah, with the addition of Kevin “kevster” Persson and Jonas “eisgnom” Stratemeyer gradually improving and cementing his position in the team. Al Qadsiah demonstrated that, regardless of composition and despite not having played against a double-flex-dps team in this competition yet, they are an elite team with enough versatility to topple any other team.

Despite the final score, Virtus.pro showed their quality. kevster and Kim “JaeWoo” Jae-woo’s partnership was as lethal as ever. Jesús Núñez “Galaa” López and Kwon “FiXa” Yeong-hun showed up when it mattered. However, Ilari “Vestola” Vestola was constantly scrambling to find his footing, but he never did. Vestola’s range of tanks, traditionally, might have worked well against Al Qadsiah’s ZIYAD and backline. However, Al Qadsiah, especially their ace DPS, Abdulelah “LBBD7” Alfaifi, showed incredible adaptability in putting a hard stop to anything Vestola attempted to do. LBBD7 was instrumental in this. He switched between multiple characters, from his iconic Sojourn/Cassidy to Bastion, Hanzo, Tracer, and Mei to apply non-stop pressure on Vestola, and open up Virtus.pro every time they found a way to resist Al Qadsiah.

It’s worth mentioning that despite LBBD7’s undeniable skill he displayed on a wide range of heroes, according to Al Qadsiah support, Landon “Landon” McGee, the actual credit for all the decision-making behind the team’s counterplays entirely goes to Baek “Checkmate” Seung-hun.

Virtus.pro will face Twisted Minds next week, and we will see whether this setback will cause a full stop to the team’s recent momentum, or just a minor speed bump that’s already behind them.

Zorrow updrafts Team Peps into the sky

Following their crushing defeat at the hands of Twisted Minds, doubts arose about the quality of Team Peps. The French team answered in kind with a massive 3-0 win over Gen.G Esports.

Leo-Kristian “Zorrow” Sundin proved invaluable to Team Peps’ victory this week. One of the newest arrivals to Team Peps, he came from Anomaly, where he played a vital role in helping the team secure a promotion to OWCS.

Zorrow joined Team Peps to fill in Moritz “cookie” Schmidt’s shoes—a hefty task with a lot of expectations. Zorrow expressed excitement and confidence in anticipation of playing in OWCS. And after a brief setback against Twisted Minds, Zorrow came through in both substance and style.

We saw glimpses of his deep hero pool with Reaper, Hanzo, and Tracer, but Zorrow spent the majority of the matchday on his top pick, Freja. He put an immense amount of pressure on Gen.G, with his constant pokes, timely picks, and complete takeover of team fights.

It was a great return to form by the Swedish marksman, and Team Peps will be looking for a repeat when they head out for their greatest challenge yet against Al Qadsiah next week.

Meta summary: EMEA is starting to settle in, and some wildcards are still about

The teams in EMEA are beginning to settle into their go-to compositions. There aren’t too many changes from last week’s meta summary.

Kiriko, Lucio, and Wuyang continue to be the leading backline picks for most teams, with Wuyang receiving increasingly more playtime as support players become more comfortable playing him.

The Symmetra compositions we reported on last week are still around. This week, Twisted Minds also brought out Symmetra against Team Vision, and Al Qadsiah showed her particular effectiveness against the double-flex, Genji + Tracer duo, which is favoured by Virtus.pro.

While not specifically part of the meta, we saw some off-the-cuff hero picks that performed exceptionally well in specific situations. Loïc “KroxZ” Ricci had a dominant showing on Roadhog against Quick’s Winston and Wrecking Ball compositions. LBBD7 brought out an incredibly effective Bastion against Virtus.pro’s Zarya. Vestola switched to Sigma, which proved to be quite effective against Bastion. Ultimately, LBBD7 also put on an outstanding performance on Mei and continued to expose Vestola’s weaknesses.

Results summary: Team Peps and Goud Guys ANM inch closer to playoffs

Gen.G Esports 0 - 3 Team Peps

An unexpected sweep by Team Peps. What was one of Gen.G’s closest matchups on paper turned to disaster as the French team kept a stranglehold over Gen.G throughout the entire matchup.

Gen.G continued their tried and true DPS composition from previous weeks with Symmetra and Cassidy. The Symmetra pick remained essential for the team. The Teleporter consistently worked really well to quickly flip the map and find unexpected trades. She also worked really well defensively by reinforcing Gen.G on whichever side Peps were attacking from with Sentry Turrets.

Still, Team Peps managed to play around her strengths and continuously targeted Daniel “xzodyal” Castro, and picked Zarya to counter Alexander “Tred” Madgwick-Smith’s D.Va.

In King’s Row, Gen.G banned Zenyatta to protect their Lucio and Kiriko backline, and Team Peps, in return, forced Gen.G out of their comfort zone by banning Symmetra. Team Peps were quite sloppy in their defence and gave away two uncontested points (C9) to Gen.G. However, Gen.G completely squandered a four-minute advantage to capture the last point. One of Gen.G’s best chances to tie the series, but relentless pressure from Leo-Kristian “Zorrow” Sundin on Freja and a multitude of unforced errors from Gen.G pushed the series to 2-0. The Wuyang Kiriko worked exceptionally well for Team Peps on this map, elevating the neutral pressure to a much higher level.

Gen.G took Team Peps to Esperança, where they’ve shown before they can win. Their heavy reliance on ensuring Lewis “crispy” Beer plays Lucio, saw Gen.G do another protect-ban in Mercy. This puts Gen.G back on their favoured Symmetra and Cassidy duo, but a ban on Tred’s D.Va revealed more chinks in Gen.G’s armour. Team Peps consistently punished Tred, and, combined with a few errors from Gen.G, quickly turned the tide in their favor, successfully pushing for a 3-0 series win.

Quick Esports 0 - 3 Goud Guys ANM

Goud Guys ANM achieve a convincing statement win that not only sees them score a crucial point to avoid relegation, but also puts them above Gen.G in the standings as their critical faceoff approaches next week.

Quick Esports came into the fixture, meaning business. They immediately banned KroxZ’s deadly Roadhog, forcing the Frenchman to play Hazard. However, Goud Guys demonstrated that their quality is clearly superior to their opponent’s, and they take two maps without a hitch. On Junkertown, KroxZ showed why the opposition was quick to ban Roadhog, especially when paired with Adrian “EgS” Serwatka on Mercy. Kio was also very effective on Widowmaker.

For the last map of the game, Quick Esports selected Hollywood, where they’ve seen some success against other teams in the past. The match quickly devolved into chaos, as both teams opted to kill the other at all costs. And despite Quick Esports almost equalising, Goud Guys were simply better in their coordination and individual skill level.

Team Vision 0 - 3 Twisted Minds

The fixture between Team Vision and Twisted Minds can be presented as the clash of incredibly high-skilled individual players. At the end of the day, Twisted Minds emerged as the clear victors, as they overwhelmed their opponents due to their extremely high-level team play and coordination.

Team Vision displayed the same level of individual tenacity that earned them our game of the week shoutout last week. Park “Viol2t” Min-ki brought his iconic aggressive playstyle, charging ultimates quicker than everyone else. Choi “ChoiSehwan” Se-hwan flipped entire fights Vision’s way. However, despite their brilliance, they were matched toe-to-toe with equal brilliance from Twisted Minds.

Twisted Minds showed up not only on an individual level, but they also possessed a level of teamwork that completely took over Vision’s game plan and the series as a whole. Whether out of respect for Viol2t’s threat level or purely to exploit his aggressive playstyle, or both, Twisted Minds were relentless in making sure Viol2t was picked off before every fight. Ibrahem “Quartz” Alali was consistently picking off one or two Vision players, ensuring that there weren’t fair teamfights.

It’s worth mentioning that a glimpse of Team Vision’s communications, which was broadcast, may have shed some light on the level of difference in coordination between the two teams. Team Vision seemed to lack cohesion and certainty in their target priority and Particle Barrier callouts.

Ultimately, Twisted Minds comfortably won all three maps, surpassing Virtus.pro in the standings, ahead of their showdown this Sunday.