EG Black continue winning ways in ECL S43 playoffs

The second day of the ESL Season 43 playoffs came to a close last night, seeing Evil Geniuses and MIBR triumph over Nouns and oNe + LOS, respectively, setting up a clash of titans in the upper-bracket final. Meanwhile down in the lower bracket, Iron Blood and ATK kept their runs alive at the expense of Vendetta and Disconnected.

The first of our upper-bracket games featured a Brazilian brawl, as MIBR and LOS + oNe went head to head for the second time this season. The two squads had met before in the regular season, with oNe + LOS taking care of MIBR quickly with a simple 2-0 win. This time around would not prove to be so easy, however, as MIBR fought tooth and nail in this series to keep their place in the upper bracket. In the end, MIBR secured their revenge in the rematch with a hard-fought 2-0 victory.

The other match in the upper bracket saw Nouns and EG Black square off in what ended up being a hotly contested series, going all three maps. The two squads secured their own map picks, with their opponents breaching double digits both times, taking the series to an Inferno decider. On Inferno, Nouns fumbled a 14-9 lead, allowing EG Black to reach match point before the map devolved into overtime, where Jeorge "jeorgesnorts" Endicott powered his squad to a 19-15 victory against his old teammates.

The matches in the lower bracket were far less close than their upper-bracket counterparts. First, ATK tussled with Disconnected for a shot at keeping their ECL run alive. This series produced two maps of duplicate scorelines, as ATK took 9-6 leads on both Vertigo and Mirage before going on 7-0 tears in the second half, besting Disconnected 16-6 on both maps to send Christopher "Swahn" Swahn and his men packing.

The other lower-bracket affair featured a matchup between Iron Blood and Vendetta, with the latter squad appearing in the lower bracket due to an unfortunate forfeit the night before. Iron Blood triumphed in a relatively close first map of Ancient with a 16-11 scoreline and recovered from a 4-8 deficit on the second map of Mirage with twelve rounds in a row, knocking Vendetta out and keeping Iron Blood alive in the lower bracket.

With only six squads remaining, here are tonight's ECL playoff matches:

These all-important matches will be kicking off soon, with the games scheduled to begin at 08:00PM.