Cats crowned CIS HoN Tour Cycle 1 Champs

The international HoN scene already has two champions with stayGreen ruling over the NA/EU region currently, while Made in Thailand.Sorry Sorry is leading the charge in South East Asia. Now a third ruler joins that mix, with Cats Gaming securing themselves the first ever CIS HoN Tour Gold Division title.

Cats Gaming has been the standout from the CIS scene for quite a while, despite going through a mini crisis earlier this year. This slump is over now, since Cats Gaming has crowned themselves the first ever Gold Division Champion in the newly founded CIS HoN Tour.

The team already dominated every single competitor in the regular season group stage, when they did not drop a single map and went on to join the bracket stage as the undisputed #1 seed. Ironically that seed set them up for an epic first round match between the two CIS flagship teams of Cats Gaming and iTS, the two best teams as of late. Cats Gaming as the record setting G1-Champion and iTS as the reigning G1-Champion are clearly the pinnacle of CIS competition and so this match was just another chapter in the long rivalry.

At that point Cats was still undefeated in the entire Gold Division, while iTS barely snuck into the Upper Bracket portion of the brackets with a fourth place finish after the regular season. Still, the small winning streak of Cats came to an end with them dropping a map, but they only lost a battle and not the war. iTS lost 1:2 and Cats moved on to the Upper Bracket Finals, where they took care of the emerging SWAG team with ease. Cats was in the Grand Finals, their rivals iTS had a long way to go through the Lower Bracket to seek revenge.

They were well on the path to grace the tournament with yet another rivalry clash between Cats and iTS, but in the Lower Bracket Finals SWAG ended those dreams in one of the most exciting matches in the whole tournament. A back-and-forth match between those two, showcasing the promising plays of the CIS region, ultimately ending 2:1 and the DreamHack Summer 2013 participant iTS being eliminated as the second runner-up of the first ever Gold Division cycle.

So the Grand Final was a rematch of the Upper Bracket Finals, which Cats Gaming won in dominating fashion. This time they even had the incentive bonus of being up 1:0 to start the series - putting SWAG into a difficult spot right off the bat. Still the young Russian team dealt very good with that and was able to win the first match and therefore make Cats suffer the second map loss in the entire tournament. Unfortunately for SWAG, that was the only blow they delivered to the flagship CIS squad all tournament and Cats took care of business in the next two matches. A 3:1 Grand Finals victory, another major championship and a place in history as the first ever Gold Division champion are now with Cats Gaming, while SWAG's accomplishment of reaching their first ever Grand Finals are nothing to forget.