The first round of playoffs was played on Mout McKenna. This map has stood the test of time for being a favorite in competition. Considering other leagues had Mout in the rotation the past week, a lot of teams got plenty of practice going into this one. With a double-elimination format, the losers in week 1 will have a tough road ahead as they will play with their last life going forward.

CEVO Professional Matchups

overRated vs mugNmouse

MNM started strong on honor and built a 5-2 lead at half time. This gave them confidence to play aggressive on Loyalty. After discussing with mugNmouse.chrones, the second half played out as follows. 1st round: MNM rushed up the road to church as oR was setting up at their 2 objectives, and MNM took out all 4 guys flawlessly. 2nd round: spanker snuck in tunnels to kill 1, then died, both teams exchanged kills until noofy took out osiris 1v1 in church. 3rd round: oR failed A rush, and it was 3v1 and MNM took objectives to secure the win.
Result: MNM > oR 8-2

http://inno.clanservers.com/azk/logs/medlogs.htm

mugNmouse.noOfy 8-3
mugNmouse.spanker 8-5
mugNmouse.chrones 10-6
mugNmouse.hendrix 5-4
[oR.epic] 2-8
[oR.osiris] 7-9
[oR.scarface] 3-7
[oR.krazieguy] 6-9

Audigy vs just Cause project

With stan just getting back from vacation, senomore just getting back into AA, dtraf playing mostly source these days, and raf as their only true active AA player it was going to be tough for jCp. Stan felt it was a match they should have won, and they just hit a streak of bad rounds that they did not know how to stop. Plus stan's pc crashed twice, including in the final round.

jCp took control early starting on the hard side (loyalty) and went up 3-0. Audigy took command, and won the remaining rounds on honor. They took this momentum to loyalty and won the first 3 rounds with some sneaky maneuvers, then didn't look back, leading to an 8-4 victory. Raf mainly carried the load for jCP, with the kills being spread for aud.

Audigy roster: jonny, proton, toby, mofo
jCp roster: stan, dtraf, raf, seno
Result: aud > jCp 8-4



Next week jCp will be in tough to stay alive when they face overRated on Pipeline once again! The loser goes home. MNM and Audigy will fight for a place in the CEVO-p finals so this match will be huge.

CEVO Amateur Matchups

Knights of the Round Table vs Version 3

Knights started on Honor and were able to hold off Version 3 every round, giving them a huge 7-0 lead at half time. v3 couldn't seem to do anything but hold A, and had trouble trying to break into C or B. Version 3's strats were working on honor and gained a little hope after winning the first 3 rounds, but Knights finally took them down in the 4th round and the match ended with an 8-3 score in favor of Knights. All in all it was looking like it would have been a close match if they played all 14, but really v3 needed to take a couple in the first half to give themselves a better chance.

v3 roster: Snapshot, Byte, Maverick, Scoped
Knights roster: BuddhaBless, B!gballa, snigbe, Jagermeister
Result: Knights > v3 8-3

unRestricted vs Elite Tactical Unit

After watching the vidcast between unR and EFlow for the CAL-m finals, I had my doubts unR would show for the CEVO playoffs as they claimed the CAL match was their last. I asked Yokem if they would play the CEVO playoff match and he confirmed they would. Well ETU got the forfeit win, so it seems unR has lost interest in AA for now. Maybe they will come back when 3.0 comes out, or maybe they'll show this week vs another inactive team vI.
Result: ETU > unR FFW

Volatilis Infensus vs NeFarious Gaming

vI had pulled out of TWL due to inactivity and their active competitive players merged with FightClub, but figured might as well try to play CEVO playoffs. Mr.Clean (former leader of vI) was about to forfeit the match or play 1v4, until 1 other rostered player showed up and he checked the old vent and found another old vI guy playing WoW, so the match went ahead 3v4. Starting on loyalty, NeF proceeded to hold Alpha until the last minute and push 1 objective, usually church where they flanked from yellow and pushed from Alpha. This happened the first 2 rounds, then vI got a little more aggressive and clean aced them at alpha/grey. vI had another successful rush 2 rounds later, and finished off one round where Carlisle (from vI) got 3 kills and the objectives in the 1v1. Down 3-4 at half, vI switched to loyalty and did primarily road rushes which they lost all 4 rounds. The crucial round was when it was 5-3 in favor of NeF and vI had a 1v3 situation with the guy in church, we pushed in 1 by 1 like nubs and all died. For Twitch from NeF it was a big clutch. This was the point where we decided we didn't care so we rushed the road from then on, with Clean getting tk'd in the final round cuz Carlisle is bad :).
Result: NeF > vI 8-3

FightClub vs IceNine

This definitely had potential to be a very tight match, as both teams are very decent and pretty close in skill level. Both teams were worried they wouldn't have 4 to start. In the end fc played 3v4 with lulu, split, and laz. Apparently sani from IceNine put on a show and took down fc hard with a 9-2 kill-death ratio. FightClub lost hope after the first 4 or 5 rounds and got swept 8-0. Legit, wh!z, & myz played for i9 as well as sani. IceNine started on Loyalty and pushed aggressively and were able to take every round with the 4v3 upperhand.Result: i9 > fc 8-0

Next week we'll see better competition in CEVO-a since the top 4 teams had a bye in week 1 (Even Flow, Radiance, Dropouts, Unreasonable Ownage)