With the end of Playday 6 and 7 APAC North Division Stage 1 has concluded and the teams are now heading to the playoffs.
The results were not surprising for the North Division except the poor performance of Fnatic throughout the group stage. Without further ado let’s see who gets to play at the playoffs next week.
Results & Standings
Here are the current standings after the conclusion of the group stage.
| # | Team | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | DAMWON Gaming | 4-1-1-1 |
| 2. | Talon Esports | 3-1-2-1 |
| 3. | CYCLOPS athlete gaming | 3-1-1-2 |
| 4. | SANDBOX Gaming | 4-0-0-3 |
| 5. | FAV gaming | 3-0-0-4 |
| 6. | T1 | 3-0-0-4 |
| 7. | Fnatic | 2-1-0-4 |
| 8. | REJECT | 2-1-0-5 |
Tiebreakers: 1. H2H | 2. Round Diff | 3. Match Win % | 4. Round Win %
Scoring system: default win gives 3 points, win in overtime gives 2 points and defeat in overtime gives 1 point
Damwon Gaming also won the $15,000 prize for coming in the first place out of the total $41,000 prize pool.
Recap
First four teams in the standings get to play at the playoffs next week, namely: DAMWON Gaming, Talon Esports, CYCLOPS athlete gaming, SANDBOX Gaming.
Damwon held up their performance throughout the stage and came in first, but it’s better not to forget for the future that they were bested by SBXG (SANDBOX Gaming) on Playday 3.
Talon followed up from behind yet proved not as good as Damwon at the end, which the former lost to the latter in a very close 7-8 score and lost their chance to get a tiebreaker after losing against SBXG and later to FAV gaming.
DK also flopped in the face of SBXG in the same manner as the other top dog. It would be safe to say at this point that SANDBOX Gaming could be considered the scourge of the top runners and good news is that they also qualified for the playoffs in 4th place.
It will be exciting to see what SBXG can brew up in the upcoming playoffs where the best of APAC North and South will face off.
Fnatic fared poorly throughout the league except getting a surprise 8-6 win against Talon Esports on Playday 4. But that luck didn’t save them from the bottom of the pit and they lost their chance at the playoffs. Fnatic ought to have a hard look at their roster if they want to keep up in the future APAC events.
There’s a new star player rising in the name of h3dy in Talon’s roster.
Yugeun "h3dy" Kwon of Talon Esports was the team's worst-performing player during stage three last year, with a SiegeGG Rating of 0.89. Despite remaining on Hibana and Smoke at this point, the player has turned around his performance to become a significant reason Talon presently tops the APAC North rankings.
On offence, h3dy now has a 1.27 Rating and the best entry record while serving as the team's sole hard breacher and with a whopping 10 plants.
10 plants from h3dy in six games is more than Talon secured as a team during Stage 3 2021. It also has the greatest plant number in all of APAC.
While his defence performance suffers, his teammates, Daeyeong "Demic" Kim and Sihyeon "Soldier" Lee, make up for it with two of the league's top five kills-per-round stats.
Without making a single change, Talon appears to be a completely different squad, and h3dy looks like the major reason for this.
