We’re nearing the end of NSE Winter, and although it’s getting colder and darker outside, the competition seems to be heating up at the top of our Overwatch tournament bracket. This week, we’re going to take a look at that bracket, and quickly summarise the positions of various teams for finals. We’ll also be talking about the remaining weeks of the Swiss format, and how that’s worked out for the 50-odd teams that are currently not playing in the top division of Overwatch NSE Winter.
As most expected, York’s Underwatch (now FuzzyDuck) have dominated the top tier of competition, dropping just three maps, and no full games in their race towards NSE’s finals in Nottingham. Despite performance being plagued by poor substitutes and rushed ringers, they remain the team to beat for many of the contenders at the top of the universities bracket: it seems that the rubbish name change has hardly dented their abilities, and they’re guaranteed to reserve their spot at Nottingham.
Whilst you could be forgiven for thinking the University of York had the team on lockdown, one team that has taken games off them in the past is Bournemouth University’s BUsted. They most recently faced FuzzyDuck in round five, (and lost,) but have maintained an otherwise impressive record against other teams, including a hard-fought win against Warwick Angels, and an impressive series against Watt Wolves.
For the rest of the teams at the bottom of the Championship, this season will likely be a disappointment, although there are success stories from elsewhere in the league in the Swiss bracket. Durham Defenders, and LAN hosts the University of Nottingham’s Pachimari Pack both secured strong 8-4 win loss records in stage two of the season, securing them the top of the Swiss tournament, and (moderate) bragging rights until the return of NSE’s tournaments in Spring.
We hope you enjoyed playing NSE Overwatch Winter: best of luck for those final matches tomorrow: you might not have made our Nottingham LAN finals, but we hope that you loved playing some great competitive Overwatch anyway. Maybe Blizzard servers will be more cooperative next season, although we won’t be getting our hopes up.
Before we go, it would be a shame not to highlight the Monster Plays competition, where week four submissions are now open. It would be great to see Overwatch’s first representation in the competition, and everyone loves free Monster, right?
