Overwatch League Stage 1 Playoffs Preview
By Wyatt Fossett ·
The Overwatch League Stage 1 Playoffs begin today, and the top eight teams from the first leg of the season will slug it out for their share of the glory, and the prize money. \n
With all of the excitement of Week 5 behind us -- like Washington’s Ado getting his first OWL win ever -- we’re safely beyond the regular season and will see the Stage 1 Playoffs get rolling today. Here’s the rundown of how Overwatch League Playoff competitions are structured, who’s playing, and maybe even a taste of who we think will win.
Tournament Structure
Over the course of the next four days, we’re going to have some high-intensity, and important games, and that’s one of the neatest things about the Overwatch League. With their current structure of a four-stage season, the world is always given official elimination tournaments with a large sum of money on the line, at multiple stages of the year.
It’s a great league structure for fans of Overwatch.
Fighting for their share of a $500,000 prize pool, eight of the top teams in the Overwatch League through seven games are invited to participate in the Stage Playoffs in a single head-to-head elimination style bracket.
With the seeding based on stage performance -- rankings are determined by win/loss ratio, with the team’s map differential acting as a tiebreaker -- the bracket for round one is laid out with the 1st seed against the 8th seed, 2nd against 7th, and so on. The Overwatch League Stage 1 Playoffs first-round schedule has been set, and the matchups can be seen in the image below.
Teams will play a normal head-to-head, and the loser will be eliminated from playoff contention. The normal structure is a 4-map series, with a 5th map waiting in the wings if the teams are tied after 4. Each head-to-head matchup will determine who moves on to the next round, and who will head to the off-stage break early.
Who’s Playing the Playoffs?!
Through five weeks of regular season Stage 1 play, the first-round playoff bracket has been set in stone. Sure, it took a single tiebreaker matchup between the Seoul Dynasty and San Francisco Shock, but we’ve got our matchups ready to go now.
The Vancouver Titans managed to snatch the top seed away from the also-undefeated New York Excelsior, which will put them in a round-one matchup against the 8th seeded Boston Uprising. The Fusions-led Uprising have had an up-and-down Stage 1, but ultimately look really strong in their communication.
After an impressively dominant Stage 1, the New York Excelsior -- who recently traded away sub-support ArK -- lost the map differential standings battle with the Titans and come into the postseason with the 2nd overall seed. They will play the feisty and unpredictable Seoul Dynasty in round one.
With the 3rd seed, the Philadelphia Fusion will go up against the crazy team comps of fan-favorite Dafran and his Atlanta Reign in round one. This is probably the matchup to watch in this first round because the Fusion or are a steady force, and the Reign like to be flexible in their compositions. It could be a stellar 5-map series. The Reign are ranked in the 5th seed, so none of the rest of the matchups really make a whole lot of sense.
As we said, it’s a bit confusing, but the next matchup is between the 4th seed Toronto Defiant going up against the 6th seed San Francisco Shock. Both of these squads ran into some crucial trials during Stage 1 and proved to be able to work on cohesion at times, but fell apart at others. While we reached out to Blizzard regarding the seemingly odd first-round matchups, at the time of posting this, we have not received clarification.
While the teams will most likely play on the most recent game patch, it's important to note that assault support hero Baptiste will not be in the ranked or OWL line-up until after the Stage 1 Playoffs.
How To Watch The Overwatch League Stage 1 Playoffs
The exciting elimination tournament kicks off today (March 21st, 2019) and will take place over the course of the next four days, with the Stage 1 Playoff Finals taking place on Sunday, March 24th.
The Overwatch League schedule board automatically displays game times in your local timezone, so definitely check the page there if you’re looking for a specific matchup. Otherwise, the weekday matchups start at 6:00 PM PST, while the weekend games will begin at 12:00 PM PST (noon).
All matches will be played live on the Overwatch League Twitch channel, and via the Overwatch League website.
Who do you think has a chance to go all the way in the Overwatch League Stage 1 Playoffs?