TSM maintain off Reciprocity, take gold at EXP Apex Legends Invitational
Emily RandESPN
MINNEAPOLIS — Amid the settling mud from a just lately completed Moto X Large Trick occasion and cheers from the skate park setup in US Financial institution Stadium, the one sound lacking was the seemingly ubiquitous “TSM, TSM, TSM” chants that pepper their audiences throughout League of Legends matches worldwide. On Saturday, Jordan “Reps” Wolfe, Mac “Albralelie” Kenzie Beckwith and Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen of Workforce SoloMid have been topped gold medalists on the EXP Apex Legends Invitational on the X Video games, holding on to their Day 1 lead after a robust placements and excessive elimination counts in Day 2 of the competitors.
“They’re fairly heavy,” the members of TSM joked as they stood onstage with X Video games gold medals round their necks. “These items weigh like a pound, bro. It is fairly heavy.”
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After taking third total within the FACEIT Professional Sequence, TSM have been one of many favorites going into this weekend, though eyes have been additionally on T1, the second-place finishers in that very same match, and the EXP Apex Legends Professional-Am winner Coby “Dizzy” Meadows and NRG Esports.
Previous to Day 2, Reps said on the printed that they have been focusing extra on placement over eliminations, and TSM routinely discovered themselves among the many prime 5 finishers throughout Saturday’s video games, together with a Sport eight first-place end. Their consistency allowed them to remain forward of Workforce Reciprocity, Sentinels and Tempo Storm, who all made robust pushes Saturday. Workforce Reciprocity, specifically, took the other method, searching for kills even when it meant taking harm outdoors the collapsing ring to remain close to the highest of the leaderboard.
“One of many video games, Reciprocity tried to land on me solo as a result of they knew I might land on my own,” ImperialHal mentioned. “So that they did that on objective so they may kill me and actually mess us up, nevertheless it additionally messed them up on the similar time. We knew it was right down to the final recreation. It was a very tight prime three. We received to the spot that we needed to. We noticed [Eric] ‘Snip3down’ [Wrona] and his workforce and Sentinels. They have been all combating, which was a very good signal.”
.@Arda and @GlitterXplosion speak with #EXP @PlayApex Invitational champions @TSM about their victory, customized lobbies and the way forward for Apex Legends.
Full Interview: https://t.co/x3TnSFVnhM pic.twitter.com/2w5YA8c7k4
– ESPN Esports (@ESPN_Esports) August four, 2019
Though Fnatic pulled away with a win within the ultimate recreation of the day, TSM positioned nicely above each Sentinels and Workforce Reciprocity, clinching the gold.
Silver-medalists Workforce Reciprocity have been one of many greatest surprises of the match, led by 2016 X Video games gold medalist and Halo participant, Snip3down with the Finnish duo of Sebastian “Mimu” Vesala and Niko “ZeroNothing” Suominen.
Sentinels, whose Fortnite participant Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf just lately gained $three million for first place in solos on the Fortnite World Cup Finals, took house the bronze. Fnatic additionally had a robust exhibiting, ending fourth, simply outdoors of medal competition.
The match not solely marked the return of esports occasions to the X Video games, nevertheless it was additionally the primary main competitors for Apex Legends, a battle royale recreation developed by Respawn Leisure and distributed by Digital Arts. The subsequent main occasion for the sport would be the Apex Legends Preseason Invitational in Krakow, Poland, on Sept. 13-15, for which TSM will now concentrate on getting ready, constructing off of their X Video games win.
They don’t seem to be afraid to check out new methods, and even had some perception as to why scrims earlier than the invitational, particularly with the legend Caustic, seemed so totally different from what groups confirmed onstage, the place the trio of Wattson, Pathfinder and Wraith dominated the stage meta.
“We’re nonetheless going to be attempting new methods to see if we will provide you with something new,” Reps mentioned. “We have been doing Caustic in all of the scrims [before the invitational], and our reasoning behind that was as a result of we knew Caustic was not going to be pretty much as good on LAN as he’s on-line as a result of everyone performs means safer on LAN. The rationale we ran a lot Caustic was to make groups run Caustic, so in the event that they see us have success like that, we wish them to run Caustic, which you observed on the primary day.”