EG Black qualify for ESL Challenger Melbourne
The second day of the ESL Challenger Melbourne qualifier has drawn to a close, seeing EG Black take down ATK 2-1 in the finals after initially being sent to the lower bracket by the international side during the first day of play. EG Black will now be joining their countrymen Complexity in Australia in late April.
EG Black endured a marathon of a Tuesday evening, first having to battle through a map deficit versus Vendetta in order to secure a place in the grand finals. After dropping Vendetta's pick of Mirage, William "RUSH" Wierzba, Paytyn "junior" Johnson, and Colby "Walco" Walsh picked up the pace in the following two maps to secure their team a revenge match against ATK.
RUSH and Walco continued their stellar form on their pick of Vertigo in the series versus ATK, powering EG Black to a 13-2 T side thanks to their 1.90 and 1.85 respective ratings. ATK were able to deny EG Black's pistol round conversion and simultaneously put up a nice run of five rounds, but EG Black only required two more rounds to close out their pick 16-8, giving them a leg-up in the all-important series.
It seems that ATK simply need some time to warm up in the series, as they managed to procure an early 6-1 start on the offense on their pick of Mirage, setting a drastically different tone for this map compared to Vertigo. EG Black found it in themselves to tie up the scoreline 6-6, but ATK quickly rebounded to take a respectable 9-6 lead at halftime. A CT-side pistol round victory helped propel ATK to double-digit rounds, but their control of the game started to slip away once they secured match point. Up 15-8, ATK's lead soon dwindled to 15-13 before Gareth "MisteM" Ries' men were able to lay claim to their map pick 16-13.
Inferno is where the series would ultimately be decided, but certainly not in a one-sided fashion. ATK secured an early 3-0 start on their T side thanks to a pistol round win, but EG Black kept them honest as they evened up the scoreline. The half then descended into the two squads trading streaks of rounds, with EG Black narrowly coming out on top 8-7. ATK snatched the second pistol round alongside three more rounds to reclaim the lead 11-8, but EG Black started to pick apart the defense as ATK would go on to manage only one more round before EG Black snagged the decider 16-12.
ATKEG Black| ATK |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Gareth 'MisteM' Ries |
53 - 55 | -2 | 74.0 | 61.7% | 0.93 |
 Ethan 'reck' Serrano |
57 - 57 | +0 | 68.5 | 63.0% | 0.93 |
 Jonathan 'djay' Dallal |
39 - 51 | -12 | 68.1 | 67.9% | 0.91 |
 Jonathan 'b0denmaster' Bodenmalm |
43 - 54 | -11 | 58.8 | 61.7% | 0.85 |
| Michael 'Swisher' Schmid |
39 - 57 | -18 | 62.4 | 66.7% | 0.84 |
| EG Black |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paytyn 'junior' Johnson |
61 - 36 | +25 | 78.6 | 77.8% | 1.26 |
| William 'RUSH' Wierzba |
58 - 50 | +8 | 76.8 | 76.5% | 1.20 |
| Jadan 'HexT' Postma |
52 - 48 | +4 | 76.0 | 66.7% | 1.09 |
| Colby 'Walco' Walsh |
56 - 47 | +9 | 69.2 | 70.4% | 1.09 |
| Jeorge 'Jeorge' Endicott |
44 - 52 | -8 | 73.3 | 66.7% | 0.95 |
With that, the team list for ESL Challenger Melbourne is now:
Complexity
IHC
Rare Atom
Grayhound
Bad News Eagles
ECSTATIC EG Black VERTEX
EG Black will be eagerly looking forward to the start of their ESL Challenger Melbourne campaign, with the event slated to run from April 28th to April 30th.
