A Catalysm For Success
Of the top sixteen ranked teams in Europe for the Winter Split, almost half were eliminated on day two of Regional Event 3. Get ready for the gold rush this weekend, as Denied, Endpoint, and others will be trying to grab as many points as they can in the last two days of the regular season, in hopes of qualifying for the Winter Major. This week, all of my standout players qualified for Day Three and were their team’s greatest contributors. Let’s meet the first:
5. JACK “SPEED” PACKWOOD-CLARKE - TEAM LIQUID
Maybe we should have seen it coming. Maybe Top Blokes’ form has ended. They haven’t progressed beyond the quarterfinals in either recent The Grid event. They were swept by Oxygen Esports in the Monaco Gaming Show event, and now they’ve gone 0-2 in the third Regional Event at the hands of Team Liquid and Denial. Now Ronaky has been talked about more than enough in the last week, so I’m going to shine the spotlight on the glue of Team Liquid - Speed.
The British all-rounder worked his magic and achieved a goal participation rate of 75% (three goals and three assists out of eight goals in total for Team Liquid) against Top Blokes, a stark contrast to The Grid last week where he was playing a more defensive role (he recorded only 1.25 saves per game this week also).
4. OTTO “METSANAURIS” KAIPIAINEN - ENDPOINT
The man with all the clips has (unsurprisingly) made top five of my list this week. Metsanauris put a very respectable 3.07 shots on target per game at the weekend, including this outrageous delayed musty flick in overtime against Sauce Squad’s Yukiss.
Endpoint leaned heavily on their team play this week, with 92% of their goals being assisted (the highest of any team that survived day two) and Metsanauris played his part in that with an above-average 0.64 per game.
3. MAËL “KISAI” VILLAIN - WOO
I’m not even sure WOO know how they passed unscathed through the upper bracket, but I can give you my best guess. Some notes first - WOO are twenty-first in terms of shots per game as a team at 6.56 and seventeenth in terms of shots against per game at 8.44. The Frenchmen were essentially locked in defence the entire time, and somehow they held on - somehow Kisai held on. He was responsible for around half of WOO’s saves at 2.67 per game, that’s second out of the seventy-two participants last weekend, and that’s not the only place he was doing work:
2. EUAN “TADPOLE” INGRAM - TRIPLE TROUBLE
Somehow I got it in my head that Tadpole was, at some point, already a standout player this split. Contrary to my beliefs, I haven’t included him once, so I’m going to give some credit where it’s due.
Triple Trouble’s well-balanced Welshman achieved a goal participation of 69.7% this week and a shooting percentage of 30.2%, both putting him seventeenth out of the seventy-two. He sent 2.87 shots towards net each game in a region where (and I can’t stress this enough) the number of shots per game is dropping very quickly while keeping his saves per game on par with his teammates.
1. LEONARDO CHRIST “CATALYSM” RAMOS - TRAINHARD ESPORT
I talked about TrainHard way back in October, and they’ve finally made good on their promising performances. Their eighteen-years-old star Catalysm put up 0.93 goals per game (tenth) and 0.71 assists (sixteenth) to accompany them, leading to a goal participation rate of 71.88%, a truly monumental contribution to his team. His best statistic of all, however, was his shots per game at 3.36, sixth out of all the players who played at least two series.
Once again, TrainHard has a solid chance of getting into the next iteration of The Grid, but they will need Catalysm and Ekon to maintain their form if they’re going to make any real dent in that Closed Qualifier bracket they failed to reach in November.
RLCS X action continues tonight with South America’s Phase 2: Midweek Mayhem 1 event featuring True Neutral, Novus Aevi and Carnage Gaming, who just signed the Chromax roster. The second stage of the third Oceanian Regional starts late on Friday night in the UK while EU Regional Event 3 concludes on Saturday and Sunday with a starting time of 4pm GMT. Can’t wait until then? Don’t worry; there’s plenty of other features and interviews here at GGRecon!
Images via ZeeboDesigns
