Photo courtesy of Perfect World
After two, full three-game series, Evil Geniuses and Final Tribe were the next two teams to be eliminated from GESC: Thailand, being sent home without any DPC points to their name.
GESC: Thailand began the playoff portion of the event, approximately 24 hours after the latest —and significant patch update. With little to no time to prepare for the changes, four teams went head to head.
Evil Geniuses had pinned their hopes on a top finish at the event to give them a much-needed boost in the DPC rankings and fighting chance in the last leg of events for a top 8 finish to the season and the highly coveted TI8 invite. Instead, their only win in the three-game series was flanked by two overwhelmingly convincing wins by Keen Gaming who knocked out the NA hopefuls.
The North American fans still were able to get behind and root for one more team - VGJ.Storm. The rising NA team has been doing consistently better and better since the end of March when the seized two Pro Circuit spots back to back, sweeping through compLexity 2:0 to qualify for GESC Thailand Minor and then overpowering OpTic Gaming 3:1 to qualify for MDL Changsha Major. They then made a surprising change to the roster a few weeks later, taking on Roman "Resolut1on" Fominok in place of Enzo "Timado" Gianoli and qualified for last DPC stop on the circuit - The China Super Major.
In an utter stomp, VGJ.Storm crushed The Final Tribe in the third and deciding game of the series, bringing about an end to the Swedish team's hopes to continue further.
Neither VGJ.Storm nor Keen Gaming can do anything with those lust-worthy DPC points —both being ineligible for any invites even if they were to fall into the top 8 DPC ranks.
The event will conclude tomorrow, May 12th. The action resumes with the semifinals 11:00 local time/06:00 CEST before moving onto the Grand Finals.
