Review of WePlay! Pushka League

B8 Esports’s unlucky streak seems to drag down. OG Seed did not meet the expectations

OG Seed showed themselves well in the European qualifier and having beaten all the opponents, the players managed to make it to the first division of WePlay! Pushka League. Despite this, the team faced serious difficulties at the group stage. The only team that OG Seed managed to defeat was the OG main roster. While playing Nigma, Alliance, and NiP, the gamers were able to oppose somehow and took one map from each of them, but at the meetings with Team Secret and Team Liquid, they were unable to do anything.

B8 Esports also has a rather unsatisfactory performance at the championship. If some of the betters chose the strategy “To bet only on B8 Esports’ failure”, they gained a lot of money. The reason was Danil ‘Dendi’ Ishutin and his teammates’ gaming. Twelve played maps and zero wins are, to put it mildly, nothing expected by former NAVI legioner’s fans. The gamer had left the club to create a new organization. Many people explain it by Danil’s unwillingness to leave his favorite position to another and more useful role. And they are likely to be right as 15 lost maps in a row including 12 played ones at WePlay! Pushka League just proves it. OG Seed at least managed to win 5 maps and one meeting at the championship while B8 can not boast even about one victory. The audience had not seen such a fiasco in a long time. At the recent English-speaking podcast by B8 Esports, Danil finally said something many fans had been expecting for a long time. Now he is ready to opt for another role as he understands that he needs to change something immediately. Also, he said that he needs some time to adapt to the new role, so the first matches for him as a new player were likely to be failed.

OG Seed and B8 Esports showed the worst results in their groups and deserved to leave the first division. In the next season of WePlay! Pushka League, their spots will be taken by the finalists of the second division: Team Unique and Vikin.gg.

OG has problems

After the end of The International 2019, OG got relaxed and several people from the roster decided to give up their careers and left the roster temporarily. As the roster has been renewed, OG has not been able to achieve any serious result and at WePlay! Pushka League their tendency continued. The Europeans beat Nigma 2-0 and took a win 2-1 away from NiP. As for the other battles, they were losing and could not advance to the playoff. The consolidation prize for them is a fact that they got invited to the first division of the next season of WePlay! Pushka League. But the recent competition brought the team place 9-10 and $7,000.

Nigma did not surprise

Nigma is a rather contradictory and unpredictable team. They can go to a LAN final in Kyiv, take the first place at the tournament with the prize pool of $300,000, and get $130,000. But also the players can participate in the online league and get placed at the 11-12 position, getting a consolidation reward of $5,000. That is what happened with WePlay! Pushka League. Nigma managed to beat only one team, OG Seed. As for the rest of the matches, they, as we can see, lost all of them. These results gave them a chance to pass to the next season to the first division but did not let them take part in the playoff. This time when Nigma was playing Dota the gamers won only $5,000.

And how is NAVI?

Continuing talking about not the best results, we should have a look at Natus Vincere as well. Unlike all the mentioned teams, the players made it to the playoff but at the final stage, they were not able to win any map even while playing Team Secret and Alliance. At the group stage, “Born to Win” was really born to win and pleased their fans on repeated occasions. They won matches with B8 Esports, FlyToMoon, and Team Spirit and while fighting Virtus.pro, the gamers proved that at that tournament, they were kings of the CIS stage and beat Solo and his teammates. As a result, Natus Vincere took the 7-8 place at the championship and earned $10,000 getting invited to the next season of WePlay! Pushka League. Could they have performed better? Absolutely! Can we say that NAVI disappointed their fans? No, that is definitely not the answer as none of the CIS rosters was able to beat “Born to Win” at that championship.

Team Secret is sitting pretty this time

Not a long time ago Secret was not able to show anything at ESL One Los Angeles 2020 Online but this time they had a rather different performance. At the group stage, they made it clear that they were not there to mess with. The only team that managed to beat Secret at the initial stage was Team Liquid. Secret won the next matches. It is remarkable that Puppey and his teammates lost only three maps at the championship. Two of the fails happened at the match with Liquid and one of them happened at the meeting with OG. At the playoff, they destroyed all their opponents and left them no chance to win. The second map of the grand final ended up in 17 minutes which was a record as on average a match lasted 30-40 minutes.

Team Secret’s did not limit themselves with only one win. MATUMBAMAN and Puppey got the titles of the most valuable players as a carry and a support, consequently, it tells us about the high individual abilities of each of Team Secret representatives.

VP.Prodigy that could

After Virtus.pro signed the second roster with epileptick1d, Save- and the other players, the team started to play better. Young guys won Parimatch League Season 2 Relegation, Gaming World, Stayhome Challenge, and became the best at the CIS qualifier at WePlay! Pushka League. If we say that the performance was rather successful for relatively new players on the professional stage, it will be an underestimation. At the group stage, VP.Prodigy beat B8 Esports, HellRaisers, Team Spirit, and the main Virtus.pro roster which was a complete surprise for everybody. Having got into good gaming shape and warmed up, the young esportsmen did not stop at what they had achieved and defeated Alliance and NiP with the score 2-0 but could not oppose to Team Secret’s power. When they climbed down to the final of the lower bracket, VP.Prodigy dealt with Team Liquid and advanced to the grand final to try to win a rematch with Secret. The attempt was not a success and in the end, VP.Prodigy took second place at the tournament. They got respect from the audience, making a surprise for them, and also earned $45,000 and an invitation to the second season of WePlay! Pushka League. Having left all the players from the Virtus.pro main roster behind, VP.Prodigy proved that they must be reckoned with and that it is not the first time we see their beautiful performance.