Lets Eliminate

With just 1 game in the groups stages remaining its now onto the Elimination stages of the ET Masters but first lets recap the last few games of the group stages.

Groups Recap
Group A
The only game of the group occured between ZeroPoint and Pingwins to decide who would qualify from the group as #1. With both teams already through to the elimination stage this game was all about pride however Zeropoint showed their dominance of Group A beating pingwins 4:0 and qualifying 12/0 having not dropped a map from start to finish.

Group B
With Agony Realm and Helix both folding the results were set after week 2, nick lamers 4I qualifying 1st and Netrunners in second.

Group C
Impact Gaming take on Morrigu in the final game of this group to see who will qualify 2nd in group C, The Last Resort having already qualified in 1st place like zP, having not dropped a round so far and looking extremely strong.

Group D
This is the group that everyone has talked about so far in the tournament. With Auxilia having qualified in 2nd place before the final game it was down to the match between -img and ViB to decide who would be joining them in the playoff stages.

Negative Image needed only a win to see them through against a ViB side who had nothing to win since they were unable to qualify anyway. That being said no one could have predicted what we saw in this game. With Finland having traffic routing issues through to the UK and Germany it left us with only holland as an available server location for the game.
Unexpectedly there was at least 1 person who still had issues to the forced match server. That being said the performance and attitude showed by ViB in the game left admins, players and spectators furious and i'm certain that ViB wont be getting any christmas cards from the Polar players this year. For those unaware we saw on battery a team turn up with no tactics planned, players disconnecting unhappy with their ping and eventually the whole team just going covert and messing around sniping. The sort of behaviour you would expect to see from a bottom league OC team full of children and not a respected ET Masters invitee.

In their defense they did come out later and apologise for their display although it was not enough for the ViB management team who quickly released the ET squad from their organisation.

The result of this meant that Polar eSports crashed out of the tournament very unexpectedly, since they were #1 seed in the group, on rounds won/lost. As disappointed as they will be i am sure they will look on this as a lesson learned and they will bounce back in EC and ET Masters season 2.

Now we move onto what some consider the more exciting stages, with what should be the best of all the teams battling it out knowing that they can only afford a maximum of 1 dropped game.
The preliminary schedule for the elimination stage looks like this:

Schedule
Grid Round 1 - Date: 21-29 March
Grid Round 2 - Date: 1-4 April
Grid Round 3 - Date: 5-8 April
Grid Round 4 / Winners Final - Date: 9-11 April
Losers Final - Date: 12-15 April
ET Masters Grand Final - Date: 16-19 April

For the full grid click here

ET Masters follows the same format as Clanbase Eurocup and so the maps in the elimination stages are not set. Each team chooses a home map and informs the admin 1 hour before the game is due to start. If both teams choose the same map then elimination will decide the second map with the admin deciding which map is played first.
Clans are forbidden to chose the same map, previously selected in their two most recent playoff games. Full rules can be found here

Fixtures
ZeroPoint vs. Auxilia

4I vs. Impact Gaming

TLR vs. Netrunners

-img vs. Pingwins


Maplist
- sw_goldrush_te
- Radar
- Supplydepot
- Braundorf
- Frostbite
- Battery


Good luck to all teams in the next rounds.

#Impact.Gaming
ET Masters Website