MAG1 1-Year Invitational
To celebrate 1 year of MAG1, a $10,000 team-based and individual tournament was organised. The top 32 players were invited to first play a 5-round Swiss bracket, followed by a day of private ladder to generate an overall leaderboard. As the #1 and #2 ranked players, Tungdil12 and Apooche each drafted an Upper Team from the remaining top 10 players, whilst cast and Scion as #11 and #12 did the same with the remainder of the top 20 to form Lower Teams. Upper Teams and Lower Teams then competed on separate days in Blitz, 1v1 and 2v2 Compact formats to determine a winner for each. In the Lower Team Competition, the series went to all 5 games with captain Scion winning the decider. Sledgehammer and Void Eye starts were the most popular openers in this match, with Arclight/Raiden being the best-performing composition. In the Upper Team Competition, all 5 games were required as well, with Tungdil12 stepping up in the final game to claim victory for his team. Here too, Void Eyes and Sledgehammers were the most popular starters, though Sandworm ended up as the best performing unit for this group. Aside from the team portion of this tournament, the 4 captains also competed in a GSL-style format to determine who would qualify for a BO7 final and their share of the prizepool. Here, Tungdil12 and Scion came out victorious. In their match, Scion dictated the pace of the game with his Sledgehammer/Raiden build, but Tungdil’s was well prepared and successfully countered the build to win the Captain’s Cup. Celebrating the last weekend of the MAG1 1-Year Anniversary, a King of the Hill rematch was held between the [501] and [201] region, commemorating the finals of the first MAG1 event. As team GODOG (201) took on team n_sacco (501), things quickly turned south for the English team as Shark Hunter took out 3 of 501’s competitors. However, Forgotten Arbiter then went on to do the same to team GODOG, leaving only Flower Fairy to defend. But who better to have as your anchor than the 3-time MAG1 champion? Showcasing their strength, Fairy took out Arbiter’s army of Sandworms with Fortresses and proceeded to beat last man Apooche with a horde of War Factories. The victory for [201] in this event meant that they were now tied for wins against [501] in the region based tournaments. The games played that day saw a good variety of strats, with Sabertooth openers being most popular and Sandworms the most picked giant.