Elite League Swiss Stage Day 4: Nigma Galaxy’s Run Ends Early
The fourth day of the Elite League Swiss Stage has concluded, with Nigma Galaxy, kev, and Nouns facing an early exit from the tournament. Meanwhile, Tundra Esports, OG, and PSG Quest have successfully passed the first phase and will join the big dogs in the second stage.
2-1 Pool Matches (Winner Advances)
The first advancement match of the day was between Tundra Esports and the Filipino squad, Blacklist International. The Southeast Asian team started the series with their guns out, taking a convincing lead in the early game by shutting down Topson's Sniper. Despite building a massive advantage, Tundra could still make the game close and attempt a comeback. However, Blacklist’s late game draft still came out on top to win the first map.
However, Blacklist could not replicate their early game success in the next two maps, and were completely blown out, giving Tundra a 2-1 victory. This win meant Tundra would finish the Swiss Stage 3-1 and qualify for the second stage.
OG and Heroic were set to play against each other for another spot in the second Group Stage. The first game was extremely even for the first 55 minutes, but eventually, Timado’s carry Pudge and OG managed to pull ahead to win the first map after a 70,000 net worth lead at the 72-minute mark.
Bzm had one of his poorest Invoker performances in the second map, ending with a KDA of 5/12/15 to allow Heroic to keep the series level. Still, OG could put up a great team effort to win the third map in very convincing fashion. Ceb and company have made it past the Swiss Stage.
PSG Quest finally found success in 2024, as they have been through tough times since Team Falcons came into fruition. The MENA squad has defeated Talon Esports to make it to the top sixteen.
In the first map, No!ob played a clean game on his mid Keeper of the Light to help PSG Quest take an easy win. However, No!ob could not repeat his performance in the second game with KOTL as well, because Talon Esports won the laning stage and snowballed their advantage to tie the series. In the end, Malik’s Pangolier in the decisive map found massive impact, 13/0/15, to help PSG Quest take the series win.
The losers of this set of matches will have another chance to qualify for the next stage tomorrow.
1-2 Pool Matches (Loser Is Out)
Unfortunately, we had to bid farewell to three teams in the 1-2 pool.
The first victim was kev, the underdog Chinese team. They were taken out by Aurorain a quick 0-2 defeat. Both games were total stomps, and nothing too interesting happened.
The next series was between Virtus.pro and Nouns. Though the series ended 2-0 in favor of the Eastern European roster, the series was closer than you’d expect. The first map of the match was a back-and-forth game lasting 92 minutes. Nouns took a massive lead in the game, but could not manage to break Virtus.pro’s high ground against squad1x's Keeper of the Light. After a string of mistakes from Nouns, Virtus.pro capitalized and made a comeback after being down 33,000 gold. The Virtus.pro mid laner ended the map 13/1/8, only dying once in an hour and a half. Still, Kiritych~'s Luna, who had a KDA of 4/7/14, dealt the most damage in the team, 67,000.
It looked like the first game exhausted the Nouns roster, allowing Virtus.pro to easily stomp the second game to win the series 2-0.
The last match of the day was between Team Secret and Nigma Galaxy. Unfortunately, Nigma Galaxy will continue missing out on tournaments, as they were blown out 0-2. Team Secret had full control over the first game. However, a disastrous fight allowed Nigma a way back in. Still, Crystallis and Kordan could eventually clean up the game and take the map. The second game was a 25-minute stomp in favor of Puppey and the crew, making quick work of Nigma and eliminating them from the tournament.
One day remains in the Swiss Stage, where three more teams will advance to the Round Robin stage, while the other three will be eliminated. Keep in mind that Satanic will stand in for Aurora in the match against Team Secret.