This past weekend, CyberPowerPC kicked off the first tournament of its #ExtremeSeries with the $5k Overwatch Invitational. With EnVyUs and Rogue in Korea for APEX Season 3, and Selfless off hunting in the wilds, the field was open for a team to position themselves near the new NA triumvirate.

With a mix of old guard, new guard, and rebrands o'plenty, 8 teams were ready to do battle, but over the two days of play it was LG Evil who secured first place, defeating Counter Logic Gaming in the Final. Meanwhile Cloud9 swept Rise Nation in the Bronze Final to take 3rd place.

Final Standings

This tournament saw a mix of upsets, predictable results, and surprising compositions shown by all involved. Here are just a few surprising stories that came out of this short tourney...

Not what some predicted

Looking at how each of the 8 teams were seeded, as well as the reputations and current standings of some, it was quite surprising seeing the tourney unfold as it did. The only 3-0 happened in the Bronze Final, with most of the matches going all the way -- that means each team took at least one map win. Yes, internet, NRG did not completely crash and burn!

Perhaps the biggest outlier was IMT vs CLG in the first round. CLG took the first two maps, and two points on Lijiang before IMT took the next three points and map 4 to take it to Anubis where CLG put up a strong performance taking the series 3-2. A great series, absolutely recommend watching.

A change of preference

CyberPower employed a map draft where teams banned maps first before each picking two maps of the match order, with the 5th map being decided randomly from what was left. King's Row, historically the default map in competitive Overwatch, was played a total of zero times throughout the weekend, either being taken out during the banning phase or being ignored by RNGsus. In its place, Eichenwalde became the tournament favorite, being picked and played in all but one match (NRG vs Cloud9). This may be due to the verticality of Eichenwalde favoring general dive comps while King’s Row generally favors more C.C., tanky setups. Or everyone’s saving their KR strats for Rogue once they return to the States.

Hero choices

While dive accounted for the majority of comps ran other the two days, Pharah was being used a bit more thanks to teams preferring to go to vertical maps such as Numbani and the aforementioned Eichenwalde. CLG was the biggest proponent of the Rocket Girl, as the PharMercy combo of Hydration and The propelling their team the finals. Some interesting choices included Widowmaker (Surefour and IDDQD), triple tank (LG Evil), McCree (Babybay, Waffletastic), and even Reaper (Spirit), with each being played played to various effects. If a team could run a hero very well, then they ran it!

While CyberPower was a short tourney, it was full of fast-paced, nail-biting action. You can find all the VODs timestamped per map under each match in our event page. Recommended matches: Immortals vs CLG and LG Evil vs Cloud9.