Moon Studio Mid-Autumn League Playoffs Stage

After many competitive weeks, Moon Studio Mid-Autumn League has finally entered its Playoffs Stage. Out of the initial 18 teams, only 12 of them are still competing. In this article, I will take a brief look at them and their initial Playoffs matches.

Upper Bracket

The top teams from the Group Stage will start in the Upper Bracket. These are basically the best 3 teams from each group. So 6 teams in total. The group winners start in the second round while the next two teams start in the first round.

Galaxy Racer – DeMonster

Galaxy Racer is one of the several teams that ended the Group Stage with 0 losses. They had 4 wins and 4 draws, but nobody managed to take them down. And keep in mind, this was in a group with competitors like Motivate.Trust, Neon Esports, and BOOM Esports.

DeMonster had similar results in the Chinese group, but lost one of the matches. Team Sirius proved to be too strong for them.

The favorite here seems to be Galaxy Racer, simply because they had a tougher group.

Team Sirius – Neon Esports

Team Sirius is one of the great Chinese competitors. Maybe not in the top 5 regionally, but certainly in the top 10. With players like Kamma and Fade, Sirius ended the Group Stage of Moon Studio Mid-Autumn League with 4 wins and 5 draws. Given that one of the teams abandoned, that’s actually 3 wins and 5 draws. Not amazing, but not bad either. In effect, nobody managed to beat them in a Bo2. And there were plenty of strong teams in their group: LBZS, MagMa, iG Vitality and others.

Neon Esports is a decent SEA team but they have little chance of beating Sirius in this match. Their Group Stage record was 3 W – 5 D. Still, the skill difference between the individual players of these rosters heavily favors the Chinese side.

Motivate.Trust & LBZS

Motivate.Trust needs no introduction at this point. By defeating both BOOM and Among Us and winning the title at BTS Pro Series Season 3: Southeast Asia, this competitor has made itself known to the world. It’s still quite impressive that a team from Thailand plays so well with relatively unknown players, but what is certain is that they are doing a really good job. In the Group Stage of Moon Studio Mid-Autumn League, Motivate.Trust lost one match (against Galaxy Racer) but managed to win 5 of them. And the Bo2 format really makes these matches hard to win.

LBZS is the strongest Chinese team in this tournament. But their Group Stage record was far from perfect: 4 W – 3 D – 1 L. The overall expectation is that they will do well at this event. Almost for sure, they will have to beat Team Sirius in the second round of the Upper Bracket. That’s almost guaranteed to happen, so the big question is: can they beat the strongest team in SEA? Because Motivate.Trust is almost guaranteed to be their rival.

Lower Bracket

In the Lower Bracket, BOOM and Cignal Ultra have already been eliminated. The remaining 4 teams are the following: Matador, IO, iG Vitality, and MagMa. out of these 4, iG Vitality and MagMa are the strongest. But one of them will get eliminated in the next match. Most likely, MagMa will survive this dispute and then go on to qualify for the 4^th and 5^th rounds of the Lower Bracket.

 

Photo credit: Valve