Winners League Season 2 is now at the halfway point of its group stage, and the hierarchy between teams is beginning to manifest.
The early favorites to dominate have looked solid. Teams like Virtus.pro and Lazarus Esports sport winning records and seem to be strong candidates to make the playoffs. But it’s the new teams like Polar Ace Esports and Royal that have really looked best to this point.
This week saw a number of fresh faces step up and put on strong performances. Here are the standouts.
There are a lot of talented Russian teams competing in Winners League’s Europe division, and almost all of them have enjoyed some success thus far. That was certainly the case for DreamEaters this week, as the team took a pair of strong wins over Absolute Legends and 5balls.
Though Absolute Legends has struggled to get on the scoreboard to this point in the season, the team has pushed each of its opponents thus far to the limit. DreamEaters was no different, but the team was able to lock up a solid 16-13 win to start its Monday.
From there the Russians took on 5balls. Though their countrymen looked the part of a real threat on paper, DreamEaters had little trouble taking the victory with Semyon “kinqie” Lisitsyn propeling his team to a 16-7 victory.
Now sitting atop Group C in the Europe division, DreamEaters is in a strong position en route to the playoffs.
Big Frames has been one of the most impressive new teams in Winners League Season 2 thus far, and a big part of that has been the team’s ability to make the big plays. Most of those have come from Ryan “Church” Church, but in the early goings of their game against Variance it was Andy “Devastation” Parr that came up aces.
Devastation opened the game with an impressive ace, making his P2000 look like a sniper rifle. Not only did he kick the game off with a big round, he closed it out in style with a quad kill to knot up the 16-12 win.
There are just two undefeated teams left in the North American division’s most stacked group. By this time next week, there will only be one.
Counter Logic Gaming Red has looked solid in their first games of season two. The wins haven’t come easily given a pair of double overtime marathons they had to endure, but the side has looked like a strong playoffs contender to this point.
At the same time, ATK has established itself as arguably the team to beat in the division. The South African squad debuted in Winners League by trucking through Variance Gaming and followed that up with an upset win over Lazarus Esports. The former Bravado Gaming team is looking like a possible force in North American CS:GO, and is no doubt wanting to keep it that way moving forward.
The two teams face off on Wednesday, May 1.
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