Recap of the Fall Cup
The Fall Cup was a great follow-up to the fall open, filled with eventful matchups and upsets. To start off, we got to see two new teams in the top 16, with them being Sagetta and Vainshoes, in place of Team GanDerS and Xayfhers, the latter of which disbanded following the end of the Fall Open. The playoff spots were filled by the same teams as the last regional, with them being James Cheese, Detonator, Gaimin Gladiators, God Speed, Tough Love, Brokoli, 1620 Kings, and Nimmt55. Although we got to see a consistent top 8, the rest of the bracket was extremely unpredictable. BlueAbsLem was one of the teams whose results were surprising with them going out 0-3 in the swiss round with losses to God Speed, 1620 Kings, and Vainshoes. Especially the last series, considering they were the favorites going into it.
On day 2, the brackets played out as expected, James Cheese won the regional with a 4-0 victory against 1620 Kings in the quarter-finals, and a 4-1 victory against Detonator in the semi-finals, to eventually face Gaimin Gladiators in the finals and win 4-0. The quarter-finals had two very intense games with, God Speed having a very hard-fought series against Detonator in the quarter-finals which saw them barely lose in a 3-4 fashion. Tough Love as well had a very close game against Nimmt55, with them getting the edge over Nimmt55 in a series that went the full way and ended 4-3 in Tough Love's favor. Brokoli faced Gaimin Gladiators in the quarter-finals, in which they managed to take a game off, but in the end, Gaimin Gladiators were too strong an opponent for them, and they lost that series 4-1. The semi-finals saw Tough Love and Gaimin Gladiators fight it out in a 6 game series, which Gamin Gladiators got the better of and won the series 4-2, to face James Cheese in the finals.
A new challenger to the top 8 hierarchy
Vainshoes is a team that not many people had given a chance to. Although the players were fairly well known in the region, they were an unknown quantity as part of a team, and with the merger of APAC N and APAC S, they were considered to be one of the weaker teams in the region, bearing in mind the top talents from both the regions were playing in the same tournaments now. This team is made up of two players from BLAST, amatel and, Arrow of Lights who did have some top 8 results in the APAC N region last season, along with temma coming in from Method2Madness, who is the most experienced player amongst the three of them, with a top 4 finish and multiple top 8 finishes last season in APAC N.
In the Fall Open of the 2022-23 season of RLCS, they were one of the teams that were invited into the Top 16 qualifier. They went 2-3 in the closed qualifier, as well as 2-3 in the main event, which resulted in them not making the main event.
Come the Fall Cup, Vainshoes was one of the invited teams in the closed qualifier. Fortunately, this time they went 3-2 in the qualifiers hence making the main event, with wins over Sagetta, Team GanDerS, and AtlasGaming, dropping two series to NHK Esports and C.E.R.T. putting them as the 14th seed going into the swiss round of the main event. To put it mildly, they simply blew past their expected results in the main event. Although the beginning was slow, with 1-3 losses to Detonator and Asia Manji, they picked themselves up quickly with a 3-1 win against BlueAbsLem, knocking them out of the main event, followed by a rematch against GracesBlazes Refine, which Vainshoes got the better of them and knocked them out in a 3-2 fashion. The last game against Brokoli was a nail-biter, which saw Vainshoes take the match point in game 3, but Brokoli got the better of them in games 4 and 5, which featured two intense overtimes, especially in game 5 which lasted for 2 extra minutes in overtime.
Although the Vainshoes' run ended just outside the top 8, which resulted in them failing to make the Championship Sunday, they should be proud of their efforts to reach this stage after so many hard-fought games and should be looking to build up on the foundation that they've laid down.
The team that fell short of expectations
With the addition of Alem to the roster of Blue and AbsCrazy, after Kaotik left following the end of the Fall Cup, due to personal reasons, BlueAbsLem had quite a lot of pressure on them, especially Alem with having the role of filling Kaotik's shoes.
Going into the closed qualifier of the Fall Cup, they were expected to end the swiss round with a 3-0. They started the swiss bracket with a confident 3-1 win over AtlasGaming. Unfortunately, GracesBlazes Refine proved to be too much for them, as they lost 2-3 in that series, ending their chance of finishing with an 8th-9th seed going into the main event. They followed this up with 2 wins against MIYABI and NHK Esports, with a scoreline of 3-2 and 3-1 respectively. They ended the swiss round with an overall score of 3-1, which put them as the 11th seed for the main event.
Heading into the main event as the 11th seed, put them at a disadvantage as they had to face God Speed for their first match, who handed them a 0-3 loss. Following this, they took on 1620 Kings, who themselves were coming off of a loss to GracesBlazes Refine. BlueAbsLem managed to take a game off of 1620 Kings, but ultimately lost the series 1-3. The final matchup for them was Vainshoes, and going into this BlueAbsLem were the heavy favorites to come out of this series with a positive result, but alas, Vainshoes had come prepared and took the series away in a commanding fashion, resulting in a 1-3 defeat for BlueAbsLem. The last loss ended their run in the swiss round with a 0-3 score, which proved too difficult for the team to come out of, thus they disbanded shortly after.
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