CIEC Recapitulation

The Crossfire & ESL Intel Seeding tournament has drawn to a close. Yesterday we witnessed the playoffs where all competing teams fought for a more beneficial position inside their respective playoff tree. With this system we were able to obtain a complete seeding of all teams, be it high or less high skilled. But we also took the opportunity with this tournament to send out a message to all players that wish to compete on a Crossfire LAN that all participating teams get a decent chance at playing a considerate amount of matches, even if you're only going for fun, instead of having to drop out after two or three games. Another reason for this tournament was to get teams active to raise the skillbar for CIC7 in order to get the most competitive LAN possible. With amazing performances on ETTV yesterday, we can conclude we're on the right way to achieve this.


The biggest upset came from the Polish side Perception. With having an infamous collection of ex-cheaters, they managed to turn some heads by winning their group without losing one single map, while being pre-seeded as a mid-team. They couldn't continue this winning streak in the playoffs where they faced Rockit, but nevertheless this performance is at least interesting, as they will most likely be judged on their LAN achievements in Enschede. This goes for all teams though, it will be interesting to see which teams can live up to their online seed. Expect a nice "online-only?" review of the teams after CIC7!

Also logiX.et put up a rather strange performance, as they were seeded amongst the high seeds (and almost got a top seed), but only ended fourth in their group. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the playoffs of the fourth division were a walk in the park for them, but nevertheless they only were able to obtain seed 25 (as that is the highest possible seed for division four).

Others on the other hand did just what people would expect from them. Blight took home the best seed as they won the final against Rockit. Perhaps Rockit were underperforming, or perhaps it was squall that added the magic ingredient, but whatever may be, I think we can all agree the best two teams were in the finals. And not to forget, on the entire opposite end of the seeding, we can rest assured, WCTNCTCPI and TEMR did exactly what they predicted, lose all matches and get lowest seed. If it weren't for them some serious team could get last spot, and we wouldn't want that now, would we?