XGS playoffs start tonight, and there’s plenty of interesting narratives to go around. The 8 teams survived a brutal swiss system that saw teams like Hong Kong Rebels, Illness (temporarily Orbit), and Method miss out on playoffs. If you haven’t stayed up to date on the every moment of Xenon, no worries. I’m going to pick 3 narrative throughlines and talk about them to give you an idea of what to look forward to for this week’s matches.
Arial Arise Main
Arial Arise Main is the talk of the town, with good reason too. This team hasn’t lost in months and is in constant talks of being on the cusp of Tier 1 levels of play, held back only back the closed nature of the NAL. They’re coming hot off their previous wins, Solar Flare League and GameRogue’s Cinco de Mayo, and are coming into these playoffs as the team to beat. Honestly this tournament is theirs to lose as the pressure is on Arial to continue their dominance until an org can’t help but pick them up and give them a shot at T1.
Their first match is against Penthouse in what’s sure to be their toughest match of the bracket. Penthouse may a pugstack, but it’s a pugstack of pros and co. In a bit of dramatic irony Arial Arise’s continued dominance of T2 will have to come as a result of beating Tier 1 opposition, albiet not a full pro team. That said, Hat and Drip are no slouches in the server and while the tactics may not run deep, the fights should certainly be explosive in this match. If Arial Arise wins this match, they have a clear shot to the trophy.
Arial Arise Academy
Arial Arise Academy is in a bit of an odd spot. While I want to put them as a major contender of the tournament, and they’re certainly still a threat off talent alone, the team is in flux as players like Ashn come of age with plenty of Pro League interest. With no insider info I don’t know if this is the “current” Arial Academy roster going out with a bang with the full 5 or if players like Spiker will be coming in as the roster simply pugs it out.
Arial Academy faces off against Oulast Main for their first match. While oL have gotten recent gameday reps in GameRogue they didn’t make a deep enough run to convince me that they’ll do much more than challenge Arial. In all likelihood this will lead us to another Arial Main vs Arial Academy semifinals.
1HP
If you asked me what my expectations were of 1HP going into these playoffs 48 hours ago, it would’ve been very positive. The team went to the finals of GameRogue, beating WildCard Gaming handedly and looking in good form for XGS playoffs. Given that WildCard is 1HP’s first match, this would seemingly be a good thing and they have the easier side of the bracket overall, lending itself to a better chance of a deeper run.
However, it isn’t 48 hours ago and 1HP got trounced against Arial Arise Main in the finals. That’s got to be a hit to the team’s confidence, if only for the short term. But esports is confidence based. The difference between winning and losing key rounds is confidence and that mental damage from losing in such fashion to Arial Arise could have taken some wind out of 1HP’s sails.
On top of that, a trend across all esports that remains constant is that when teams rematch within a short period of time, the team that lost originally usually wins the rematch. While there’s a new patch that will shift the meta to some degree, the curse of the rematch is very real and going against 1HP.