Korea’s most innovative team is on a 21-match win-streak and is two wins away from completing the royal road.
Once a challenger team searching for its stride, Meta Athena has now evolved into South Korea’s scariest contender. The sextet around captain Jong-Seok “NUS” Kim and star Zarya player Jae-Hoon “Hoon” Choi is yet to drop a match in their last 21 encounters and have been indomitable against some of world’s most established rosters, including EnVyUs, Afreeca Blue and, most recently, KongDoo Panthera.
Although they came into the match as the favorites, Kyo-Min “EVERMORE” Koo’s KD Panthera found themselves thoroughly outplayed. Meta Athena stayed true to their wild playstyle and barraged the Nexus Cup champions with strategies and moves nobody expected.
A fantastic Hanzo play from flex Hye-Sung “Libero” Kim helped Meta Athena to opening win on Nepal, but that was only the start. Solid play came from the former challengers to hold Panthera on Numbani, further adding to their unparalleled hybrid map record and Athena entered Hanamura with a two-game lead.
In a must-watch bout, Meta Athena were a walking advertisement for the diversity of left-field strategies in Overwatch. Athena opened the attack with a Sombra jumping over the chokepoint arc to hack the enemy Zarya and take Point A in an instant. The attack on Point B saw Libero switch to his signature Mei and perform a tricky wall feint to outsmart the confused KongDoo Panthera for a blistering two-point capture.
Playing his ninth different hero across all four roles, Libero spawned as Symmetra on Hanamura defense, delaying Panthera to allow them minimal time for a Point B siege and ultimately win the map in overtime for their sixteenth best-of-5 clean sweep in their last 30 matches.
Where Meta Athena is unstoppable and on their way to the gold, last season grand finalists Afreeca Freecs Blue are out of the running. Genji specialist Weon-Hyeop “Arhan” Jeong and his entourage ran into LW Blue’s roster which won IEM Gyeonggi in December, which ended their run in APEX Season 2.
Afreeca Blue’s play has been unconvincing all season long, with Arhan visibly having lost the top form which qualified him for the grand finals last season. Still, Afreeca went full five games against LW Blue before a full hold on Numbani ended their hopes for repeat finals. Still clinging to their tournament life, LW Blue now go against KongDoo Panthera to decide who will be the fourth and final team to qualify for the semi-finals of this season’s APEX.
For more competitive Overwatch news, follow us @GosuOverwatch.
