?The second week of the SEA HoN Tour G-League is in the books and only five games remain for teams to clinch the playoff spot and enhance their seed, but also only 15 points are handed out in order to secure the G-League status for teams in danger. While ORGE and MiTH are a lock for the playoffs, KaiD and Anti Moon Queen are still in jeopardy.
With ten games already played the final of the second cycle in the G-League is upon us with three major selling points for the viewers and the teams. The first and most interesting question currently is more focused around the question in terms of demotion. While the playoff race seems to be fairly decided and the top three are already with one leg in the postseason, the demotion struggle is still keeping almost half of the league on their toes.
Still, as exciting as the demotion battle might be, the major teams are way ahead of the entire division with Orange eSports, Made in Thailand.Sorry Sorry and Turtle Master sitting comfortably on top of every other team and can already plan for the big playoff tournament in two weeks. The question of the seeds is still an interesting one with the Malaysian team of Orange currently leading the charge, but only by two points. Right behind them are the two standout Thai teams with Made in Thailand and Turtle Master, who are only two points apart between themselves. All those seedings questions are extremely interesting because of the format the playoffs are played in - the regular season champion gets a direct seed into the Grand Final, the runner-up awaits in the Semis. All three teams are more than keen to get their hands on those bye matchups early on, but only two can get those.
Two key matches might decide the race in the end, because those three front-runners still have direct duels left. In Round 13 MiTH will face off against their longtime rivals and nemesis of Turtle Master, while Orange eSports and Turtle Masters are set to close out the regular season in the 15th round. Those two matches might wind up being the most interesting bouts for the playoffs and might also determine whether Orange eSports can set a new point record or if Turtle Master's mark of Cycle 1 stays intact.
Playing catch up to the three big names and bRix as an extension team into the playoffs are two other Thai teams with Neolution eSports.MRR and iMpunity.Storm. While the placement of Neo.MRR might be a little bit disappointing at this stage of the game, the fact that iMpunity.Storm is now back in contention is admirable. It's not even a couple of days removed, that the team was more fighting off the danger zone at the bottom of the bracket, but a nice run as of late with two consecution victories has flushed the team right back up to the fifth spot. Still the mountain is very high to climb for both teams, as bRix is looking really strong and is still four points ahead. Only one direct duel between the chasing teams is left on the schedule, but especially bRix and Neo.MRR have really tough tasks still ahead.
The current playoff team of bRix and fourth place finisher of last cycle still has Made in Thailand and Orange eSports on their schedule, in addition to Insidious eSports, who have made some splashes against big teams already. Neo.MRR starts off the most important stage of this cycle with a rematch of the Cycle 1 Grand Finals against Turtle Masters and then follows that up with Made in Thailand and Open House Party, finishing against iMpunity.Storm in Round 15. Out of all those three teams iMpunity.Storm might be laughing last, because the team around NoVa and Emperor only has teams from the bottom of the standings left and might hold their fate in their own hands in the final moments against MRR.
After those initial batch of seven teams, two teams are sitting in the "ranking nirvana" with little hopes to become a serious factor in the playoff race, but also with little fear to get sucked into the demotion competition. Open House Party and Insidious eSports both are in that category and fittingly are looking at a tied win-loss record and plenty of ties to go with that. Six and seven points respectively are separating them from the last playoff seed and four and three points respectively are between them and the dreaded 13th place. The will coast to the finish of this cycle and might be a stepping stone for other teams on the way out, but they have nothing really left to play for.
That situation dramatically changes for the lower eight teams, who are all in serious danger to get demoted to D1 in six days. The last glimmer of hope for the only Vietnamese team left in the contest might already been gone as they are already seven points behind the safety zone, but they at least want to go out of the league gracefully. Only two points and eight losses are not good enough, but mathematical chances are still alive - although it looks more than grim for the Vietnamese guys.
FunFunPlace and DC Fabulous, as well as Anti Moon Queen and KaiD are currently just barely outside of the demotion zone, but especially aMQ has been on a losing streak lately. Since their victory over FunFunPlace in Round 3 the team around former Orange eSports player wangwang has failed to record a single victory. Four losses, three ties and therefore only three points are the more than disappointing result of the last seven games.
All four teams are in danger, but the teams under pressure are definitely Gspeed AVI, Step Gods and 2nd Runner Up. Both Thai teams and the Indonesian bunch of 3rd are currently on those dreaded demotion spots and need to put up points on the board quickly. They don't necessarily have to outrun everyone in the last five games, but they have to be at least better than their direct rivals to stay in the game. Veterans in this kind of affairs are both Gspeed AVI and 2nd Runner Up, who already fought for their survival in the G-League last cycle. New to this is Step Gods though after finishing the first cycle at a good seventh place with a winning record. Since then it went all downhill for the team. Now they have to put out their claws and show everyone that their seventh place was not a fluke - or they will go back to the D1 division of Thailand and meet up with teams like Kimochi eSports and NoCondom.Shooter eSports to fight for a G-League spot.
| SEA HoN Tour G-League Cycle 2 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Place | Team | W-L-T | Points | |
| 1. |
| Orange eSports | 8-0-2 | 26 |
| 2. |  | Made in Thailand.Sorry Sorry | 7-0-3 | 24 |
| 3. | | Turtle Master | 7-1-2 | 23 |
| 4. |  | bRix | 5-1-4 | 19 |
| 5. | | Neolution eSports.MRR | 3-1-6 | 15 |
| 5. | | iMpunity.Storm | 4-3-3 | 15 |
| 7. | | Open House Party | 3-3-4 | 13 |
| 8. |  | Insidious eSports | 2-2-6 | 12 |
| 9. | | FunFunPlace | 2-3-5 | 10 |
| 9. | | DC Fabulous | 1-2-7 | 10 |
| 11. | | Anti Moon Queen | 2-5-3 | 9 |
| 11. | | KaiD | 2-5-3 | 9 |
| 13. | | Gspeed AVI | 1-4-5 | 8 |
| 14. | | 2nd Runner Up | 1-5-4 | 7 |
| 14. | | Step Gods | 1-5-4 | 7 |
| 16. |  | Vietnam minion Team | 0-8-2 | 2 |
To keep up with all the action of the SEA HoN Tour check out GosuGamers.net for weekly updates and make sure to head over to twitch.tv/epicgamingtelevision and twitch.tv/garenahonsea to witness the casting of the EGtv crew surrounding Babael, ABSTRACT and Larcsm with two matches daily. On top of that, the Thai casting team around Winzy is streaming two games daily on their Youtube channel and Garena Vietnam takes a closer look at their representatives every single gameday on their streaming service.
