Kolento will be defending his VGVN crown tonight. Photo: Millenium
Europe triumphed in the group stage of VGVN #3 by taking all of the playoff spots after two days of competition, leaving Hyped, Kibler and Firebat out.
The European lot entered had the numbers advantage coming into Group A but by the fourth series they had to say goodbye to two-times open qualifier winner Xixo. The ROOT player, who's the only player to take part in all three VGVN tournaments, received losses against top two NA BlizzCon seed Firebat and Cloud 9 powerhouse Kolento. That put him at 0-2 with virtually no hope moving further.
The group was eventually topped by Kolento but the Ukrainian couldn't quite pin this 3-0 run from last edition. In fact, the top three players came to a 2-1 series tie, broken only by the individual map scores which had Kolento on top with 8-4 and Fake as second with 7-5, leaving Firebats's 6-6 out of the competition.
Played over two days, Group B was arguably the highlight of the group stage. It started with a 3-0 win of Neirea against Magic: The Gathering veteran Brian Kibler and continued on the next day with a set of high entertainment matches. Such was the face-off between Brian Kibler and Savjz where a clutch four game series ended with a crucial misplay the American that had him losing the series.
The third series of the group featured what was arguably the best match for the tournament so far. Facing each other in a Mage versus Miracle match-up, Hyped and Neirea entered a sequence of great plays to entertain the crowds. In order to prevent the 1-health Hyped from using [card]Alexstrasza[/card], Neirea fills his board with whelps from [card]Leeroy Jenkins[/card] and [card]Backstab[/card]s it so that whelps can't be traded. In response, Hyped use [card]Cone of Cold[/card] on his whelps and [card]Mad Scientist[/card], pings the latter which gives him a timely [card]Ice Block[/card] and he lives long enough to win the game. Unfortunately for him, his mage couldn't carry him for a third game in a row and Hyped ended up losing the series.
Hyped tried to recover from the loss to Neirea in the next two games and took a 3-2 win from Kibler but a loss to Savjz with the same score cast him out of the tournament and pushed Savjz in the top four. Neirea was proclaimed victor of the group with zero series losses and 9-4 in map score.
This leaves an all-European bracket with Neirea, Kolento, Savjz and Fake, with the Ukrainians on both sides of the bracket, making for a possible Ukrainian war in the finals. Games are set to begin 00:00 CET tonight.
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